The Principles of Sociotechnical Design

Cherns, A. (1976). The Principles of Sociotechnical Design. Human Relations, 29(8), 783-792.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1976

Volume

29

Issue

8

Pages

783-792

DOI

10.1177/001872677602900806

DOI registrant

SAGE Publications

Link

https://doi.org/10.1177/001872677602900806

Cited from

organizational_management

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Sociotechnical Systems
  • The work-design component including task variety, autonomy, learning opportunity, and meaning-making that determines whether workers are engaged or deskilled

Mechanisms

• Autonomous Team Formation
  • Done well it follows minimum critical specification

    This sourceDocuments specify the outcome and the boundaries; leave the internal structure to the team; what lets a small group out-adapt a chain of approvals.

• Joint Process and System Redesign
  • It embodies the joint optimization principle of sociotechnical systems theory: the social and technical subsystems reach a better joint result when designed together than when either is optimized alone.

    This sourceStates the sociotechnical principle that organizational objectives are best met by jointly optimizing technical and social aspects rather than optimizing either alone.

Verification

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Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 3 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.

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