The purpose of this page is to provide a resource for those doing organization design, whole-system architecture or socio-technical systems design. Each document, I believe, serves a need in terms of resource material for students and practitioners of whole-system architecture. Some of the articles are not directly on the subject of WSA or STS, but provide examples of transformation to lean or TPS which necessarily involves redesigns of the social and technical systems.

Categories and Reference:

Many of the below papers fit into more than one category, but for the most part they can be divided into the following categories:

Conceptual & Academic Papers: #1, 2, 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24

Manufacturing Cases: #1, 8, 17, 25

IT Case Studies: #27

Healthcare Cases: #3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 16, 20, 22, 26, 29

  1. Dissertation – Lean Manufacturing – An Integrated Socio-Technical Systems Approach to Work Design by Mohammed Iqbal Raja, May 2011
  2. Whole-System Architecture, by Lawrence M. Miller
  3. Buurtzorg – Personal Care by Highly Professional Self-Managing Teams Wim Sprenger, Amsterdam, March 2013
  4. Organizational Transformation – A Model for Joint Optimization of Culture Change and Evidence Based Design: Hamilton, D. Kirk, et al
  5. What is the Relationship Between Systems Thinking and Lean? by Michael Balle
  6. Socio Technical Requirement Analysis for Clinical Systems: M. Reddy M.S., P. Dourish and M.M. Shabot.
  7. Healthy Work Environments – Healthcare: Journal of Adult Education – What Managers do to create healthy work environments.
  8. Enriching Production – Perspectives on Volvo’s Uddevalla Plant as an Alternative to Lean: This explores what happened in Volvo’s experiments with alternative work systems and provides perspectives in relation to lean manufacturing. It also includes papers on the redesign that Toyota undertook when they encountered a 25% turnover rate in the 1990′s.
  9. Lean Implementation in Home Health Care: Lawrence M. Miller
  10. Towards Safer, better healthcare – harnessing the natural properties of complex sociotechnical systems: J. Braithwaite, Runciman & Merry.
  11. The Promise of Lean in Healthcare – John S. Toussaint & Leonard L. Berry Mayo Clinic Jan2013
  12. Socio-Technical Systems Theory, An Intervention Strategy for Organizational Development, Steven H. Appelbaum.
  13. The Conference Method Of Redesign, Al Wilgus, Miller-Howard Consulting Group
  14. INTEGRATING JOB CHARACTERISTICS, SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEMS AND REENGINEERING – PRESENTING A UNIFIED APPROACH TO WORK AND ORGANIZATION DESIGN: Farias, Gerard, Varma, Arup
  15. Operating Room Teamwork among Physicians and Nurses: Teamwork in the Eye of the Beholder: Makary, Martin
  16. A Successful Plant Shares Its Lessons Learned From Whole System Architecture and Implementation of Teams: Helene F. Uhlfelder, Ph. D. Miller Howard Consulting Group.
  17. Whole System Redesign in a Bank Operations Division: Helene F. Uhlfelder, Ph.D., Miller Howard Consulting Group.
  18. The Dutch IOR Approach to Organizational Design: An Alternative to Business Process Re-Engineering? Fran s M. van Eijnatten and Ad H. van der Zwaan, Human Relations, Vol. 51, No. 3, 1998.
  19. Accelerating Healthcare Transformation through Adaptive Work System Design – Fairview Case; Martinson, Winby, Worley.
  20. Adaptive Work Systems: A Perspective on the Evolution of Socio-Technical Systems: Stu Winby.
  21. Experiment Social Innovation in Long Term Care: Pierre van Ameslvoort, NL
  22. The Evolution of Socio-Technical Systems – a conceptual framework and an action research program– Eric Trist
  23. Socio-Technical Systems – From design methods to systems engineering: Gordon Baxter & Ian Sommerville
  24. Lessons from NUMMI, John Shook: MIT Sloan Management Review on the joint Toyota/GM revival of this plant.
  25. Are teams more at home in the homecare organizations Mathijs Almekinders
  26. STS Design of Knowledge Work and Information Technology – A Case Study 2002 Bert Painter
  27. Multidisciplinary Teamwork in Health Care: Bitter, Veen-Berkx, Gooszen and Ameslvoort