Abbas, R.& Michael, K. (2023) Socio-Technical Theory: A review. In S. Papagiannidis (Ed), TheoryHub Book. Free pdf download at https://open.ncl.ac.uk / ISBN: 9781739604400. Socio-technical theory originated in the 1950s at the Tavistock Institute in London (Ropohl, 1999), led by Trist and Bamforth (1951) and Emery (1993), resulting from industry-based action research focusing on coal mining (Fox, 1990) and labour studies in Britain (Ropohl, 1999). Built on an open systems foundation (von Bertalanffy, 1950), the theory promised a “new paradigm” (Trist, 1981:p42) that defied the dominant technological imperative at the time, in favour of an approach that perceived people as more than extensions to machines (refer to Table 1 for an overview of the initial view of the new paradigm i.e., socio-technical theory). The proposed socio-technical paradigm also deviated from the notion that people were dispensable to a perspective where individuals were considered as a “resource to be developed”, encouraging collaboration, commitment and a risk-taking environment, as opposed to competition, alienation and minimal levels of risk taking respectively (Trist, 1981:p42).
