II. Relative Applicability of the Various S-T principles and its Relationship
Theoretically, it has been widely known that information system has an important role in a business since it enables a company to redesign business process and take benefits of increased efficiency and effectiveness as results of the IS system deployment.
However, in practice, since human who operates IS system has diverse characteristics and attitudes, the implementation of any technology and information system often lead to problems due to resistance by the workforce and a failure to achieve the desired benefits.
Concerning the situation, some researchers, with a background in the behavioral sciences (Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology) at Tavistock Institute in London, recommended that in order to achieve expected results, the implementation of any technology should consider and match the technical sub-system and the social subsystem that made up an organization.
Technical subsystem composes of equipments, tools and techniques that an organization employs to yield outputs from inputs. Meanwhile, social systems consist of human resources at all levels together with values, skills, attitudes, knowledge, and needs they bring to the work environment in addition to supporting systems like remuneration and lines of authority structures in the organization (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Socio Technical Perspective
Knowing the two elements that influence the success in implementing a technology or management information system, socio-technical system design aims at designing a joint optimization of the two elements so that the interdependency of the two elements is recognized. Therefore, socio-technical system design exists to identify the impact of one element on the other and ensure that the two elements work in harmony to provide excellent results.
Based on the situation, a researcher such as Cherns (1976) and Land (2000) provides two principles of socio-technical system design; they are humanistic principles and managerial values.
In the first principle, the approach taken by system designer is to address the humanistic principle by enhancing the quality of working life and the job satisfaction of the employees. This is considered as highly important since any technology especially MIS is operated or managed by human. Therefore, to ensure that a technology works to its fully potential, there should be benefits for the individual so that the use of MIS will add value to the organization.
The second principle is managerial values that consider humanistic objectives have no internal values except their accomplishment provides better performance that yields the economic objectives of the organization such as achieved revenue and profit targets.
The two principles of socio-technical approach are relatively applicable with different consequences that may lead to conflict between managements and employees (Avgerou et al, 2004). For example, the decision to replace some people from line productions by a computerized system that only needs one person to operate it is excellent decision according managerial values since it helps an organization to save huge money from labor costs and increase accuracy and efficiency.
III. Ease or difficulty of applying the principles: Case of Socio-technical Aspects of Internet Security
An article in The Internet Security Alliance website revealed that there was a significant number of malicious ware (malware) attacks that existed in 2001. In turned out that such attacks can be seen from socio-technical point of view since the attacks emerged due to vulnerability of corporate networks from several attacks.
To strengthen the discussion on social-technological aspects, the writer address the issue of common platforms and applications, Microsoft’s products, that most corporations use to communicate and collaborate among peers over the Internet, which in turn speed up the corporation networks’ exposure to such malware attacks.
In addition, the article also provides appropriate elaboration on socio-technical aspects by addressing six trends of secured Internet. The six points are automation, sophistication of attack tools, faster discovery of vulnerabilities and permeability of firewalls, increasing asymmetric threat, and increasing threat from Infrastructure attack.
V. Characteristics of Successful or Unsuccessful S-T Approach
Successful and the unsuccessful of the implementation of socio-technical approach in MIS depend on how far an organization comprehends the requirements that are essential to succeed the approach.
Concerning the issue, an organization should pay attention to the implementation of MIS. According to James Senn (1998, p 7), there are three characteristics that an organization should consider when implementing information age as following:
- Work process are being transformed to increase productivity (Managerial Principle)
- Information technology poses as means to reengineer conventional business process (Managerial Principle)
- Success or failure of a company is largely determined by the effectiveness of information technology and the human who uses it (Humanistic Principle)
Therefore, an organization that does not improve its work process to adopt the use of MIS, we may expect that the organization is likely to fail since an excellent MIS involves the comprehensive work and business processes.
In addition, in the third point we see that human being still plays role in determining the successfulness of S-T approach in MIS. It means that management should encourage employees to keep learning and using new tools, which in turn help them to perform any tasks efficiently.
Works Cited
Arnold, David. (2004). Strategies for Entering and Developing International Markets. Retrieved August 9, 2006 from
Avgerou, C., Ciborra, C. and Land, F.F., editors. (2004). The Social Study of Information and Communications Technology: Innovation, Actors and Context. Oxford: OUP
Land, F.F. (2000). Evaluation in a Socio-Technical Context, in Basskerville, R., Stage, J., and DeGross, J.I., Organizational and Social Perspectives on Information Technology, pp.115- 126, Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers
Socio - Technical Theory. Retrieved August 9, 2006 from
McKnight, Lee W. and Joseph P. Bailey. (1995). An Introduction to Internet Economics. Retrieved August 9, 2006 from
Laudon, Kenneth C. Laudon, Jane P. (2002). Management Information System-managing the Digital Firm. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall International Inc.
Senn, James A. (1998). Information Technology in Business. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.
