Methodologies for Socio-Technical-Systems (STS) Development: a Comparison

The trends in the macro environment of organizations coupled with advances in information technology have created opportunities for organizations to increase their effectiveness. If managed appropriately, these trends and advances can increase the strategic advantage to the organization. This requires a perspective on the organization and its use of information technology which incorporates social-organizational as well as technical-economic aspects of information technology use. However, the traditional narrow techno-economic focus of system designers and information systems development methodologies, and the consequent neglect of socio-organizational aspects of the systems, has resulted in only a limited increase in organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, in many instances, this has led to a deterioration' of the organizational climate and quality of working life within it, thereby causing systems problems and implementation failures. There is, therefore, a need for an information systems development paradigm and associated methodologies which jointly consider both the social-organizational and the techno-economic aspects of information systems. The socio-technical systems (STS) approach to systems development is one such approach. This paper describes the principles, assumptions, and the development process of the socio-technical systems approach. It then goes on to analyze and compare three socio-technical methodologies (Mumford 1983a; Pava 1983b; and Bostrom and Heinen 1977b) available in the information systems literature. The analysis and comparison of the methodologies indicates that no one methodology is complete and comprehensive in all aspects of STS development. This points to the need for mixing and matching various components of different methodologies and augmenting them where necessary. INTRODUCTION the function of IS within them. These points of view influence the designer's perception of the Traditionally the advocates of a Socio-Technicalproblems within the system and the choice of design Systems (STS) approach have justified the sigalternatives. Hence, if their viewpoints (frames of nificance and usefulness of the STS concepts by reference) are inadequate or unrealistic, then referring to the high incidence of systems failures. inappropriate or unacceptable systems designs are Their major argument centers around the reported produced which in turn lead to organizational and observation that there have been numerous failures behavioral problems. Bostrom and Heinen (1977a, p. of multi-million dollar information system (IS) 21) identify conditions which characterize the projects. The STS advocates suggest that the major limited frames of reference held by system designreasons for these systems problems and failures are ers. There is also empirical evidence that system the faulty and inadequate assumptions imbedded in designers in North America and the United Kingthe traditional design methodologies. dom, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe, have a primarily technical and economic orientation Design methodologies reflect the way system towards systems development, and, in general, are designers view organizations and their members, and less sensitive to the socio-political-psychological