Trust in Technology: A Socio-Technical Perspective (eBook)

Contents 6
List of Contributors 7
Introduction: A new Perspective on the Dependability of Software 9
Chapter 1 Trust and Organisational Work - Karen Clarke, Gillian 26
1. INTRODUCTION: NOTIONS OF TRUST 26
2. TRUST AND PAPER RECORDS 31
3. TRUST & COMPUTER SYSTEMS
4. CONCLUSION: OCCASIONING TRUST 42
REFERENCES 43
INTRODUCTION 46
Chapter 2 When a Bed is not a Bed: Calculation and Calculability in Complex Organisational Settings 46
1. INTRODUCTION 46
2. GOOD REASONS FOR BAD RECORDS:REPRESENTING THE WORK 48
3. THE ABIDING CONCERNS OF THE ORGANISATION: BED MANAGEMENT. 51
4. ‘MINUS NINE BEDS’ 53
5. CALCULATION AND CALCULABILITY 55
6. CAUTIONARY TALES FOR THE DESIGN OF SITUATED AND PUBLIC DISPLAYS 61
REFERENCES 62
Chapter 3 Enterprise Modeling based on Responsibility 64
1. INTRODUCTION 64
Modeling a Socio Technical System 65
The Core Concepts: Role and Responsibility 67
2.RESPONSIBILITY AND THE RESPONSIBILITY RELATIONSHIP 68
The Nature f he Responsibility Relationship 68
The Responsibility - Obligation - Activity Relationship 70
Delegation of Responsibility 71
Functional and Structural Obligation 73
Types of Structural Relationship 75
3. CONVERSATIONS 77
Attributes of Conversations 78
The Composition of Roles 80
Combining Theoretical Roles 81
Applying the Normative Framework to Market Conversations 82
4.HEALTH ENTERPRISE: AN EXAMPLE OF RESPONSIBILITY MODELLING 84
Introduction 84
The Basic Model 84
Health Care Delivery 85
Constructing a Health Sector 88
Instruments, conversations and activities 90
5. RESPONSIBILITY MODELLING IN THE DESIGN PROCESS 91
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 92
REFERENCES 92
Chapter 4 Standardization, Trust and Dependability 94
1. INTRODUCTION 94
Standards, trust and the dependability of socio- technical systems 95
Socio-technical approaches to standardization 97
Levels of standardization 99
2. THE TRANSFER OF DEPENDABLE PRODUCTION PROCESSES: THE CASE OF COMPUTERCO 101
Sources of inter-site heterogeneity 101
The ‘Exception Process’ and the reduction of diversity 103
Standardization and the persistence of diversity 104
Standardization and Trust as two different modes of coordination across heterogeneous cultures and organizations 106
3. STANDARDISING ACROSS HETEROGENEOUS ORGANISATIONAL DOMAINS AND COGNITIVE STRUCTURES: THE CASE OF MOTORCO8 107
4. NHS URBAN 113
Organizational and professional complexity and variety 114
Old and new systems 115
The Contact Purpose menu 116
The clinical view 117
The administrative view 118
Accommodating diversity: managing standardization? 119
5. DISCUSSION 121
6. CONCLUSIONS 126
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 127
REFERENCES 127
Chapter 5 ‘Its About Time’: Temporal Features of Dependability 130
1. INTRODUCTION: TIME 130
2. TIME AND TECHNOLOGY 131
3. TIME IN MEDICAL SETTINGS - ILLNESS TRAJECTORY AND RHYTHM 134
4. “IMPROVING KNIFE TO SKIN TIME": TIME, NEW PROCESS MODELLING AND TECHNOLOGY 138
5. TIME AND PROJECT WORK: TEMPORAL ASPECTS IN DEVELOPING A DEPENDABLE EPR 139
6. CONCLUSION: DESIGNING SYSTEMS IN TIME 142
REFERENCES 144
Chapter 6 Explicating Failure 148
1. INTRODUCTION: EXPLICATING FAILURE 148
2. 'RED HOT' FAILURE 150
The roughing process 151
3. ENSURING DEPENDABLE PRODUCTION: COORDINATION, PLANNING AND AWARENESS 153
Coordination: 153
Dependability, plans and procedures 155
Dependability and Awareness: 156
4. BLINDED BY THE LIGHT: ORGANISATIONAL RESPONSES TO FAILURE 158
Workaday and catastrophic failures 160
Safety Strategies 160
SPADs: Different Perspectives 161
5. DISCUSSION: EXPLICATING FAILURE AND DEPENDABILITY 163
REFERENCES 168
Chapter 7 Patterns for Dependable Design 172
1. INTRODUCTION: DESIGN AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 172
2. DESIGN AND THE PROBLEM OF GENERALISATION 174
3. PATTERNS AND PATTERN LANGUAGES 174
Principles of Pattern Generation 176
Developing a Descriptive Pattern Language 177
4. PATTERNS OF COOPERATIVE INTERACTION 178
The Patterns Collection 179
5. THE PATTERNS COLLECTION: SCENARIOS OF USE 185
Specific Use: scenarios and reflections 185
6. PATTERNS FOR DEPENDABILITY 187
7. CONCLUSION 190
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 191
REFERENCES 191
Chapter 8 Dependability and Trust in Organisational and Domestic Computer Systems 194
1. INTRODUCTION: DEPENDABILITY AND DOMESTIC SYSTEMS DOMESTIC SYSTEMS 194
2. DEPENDABILITY - A TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE 196
A dependability model for domestic systems 205
3. DEPENDABILITY - A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE 202
4. DOMESTIC SYSTEMS DEPENDABILITY 204
5. DEPENDABILITY, TRUST AND DISCRETIONARY SYSTEMS DESIGN 213
6. CONCLUSIONS 216
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 217
REFERENCES 217
Chapter 9 Understanding and Supporting Dependability as Ordinary Action 220
1. INTRODUCTION 220
2. METHODOLOGY 222
3. THE CASE STUDY 223
4. DOING DEPENDABILITY: NORMAL NATURAL TROUBLES 224
5. DEPENDABILITY AND I T SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTATION 230
6. DEPENDABILITY AS A MEMBERS' PHENOMENON 233
7. DEPENDABILITY AS ORDINARY ACTION 235
8. CO- REALISING DEPENDABILITY IN IT SYSTEMS 237
9. CONCLUSIONS 238
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 240
REFERENCES 240
Chapter 10 The DIRC Project as the Context of this Book 242
1. THE DIRC PROJECT AS THE CONTEXT OF THIS BOOK 242
REFERENCES 246

Socio-technical approaches to standardization (p.72-73)

Standardization can be defined as the activity of establishing provisions for ‘common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context’ (11), or as conformity with ‘any set of agreed-upon rules for the production of (textual or material) objects’, spanning more than one community of practice and persisting over time (12:13). The concept needs to be considered in context, since there are different levels and types of standardization, including those of product and service, the processes and technologies for their delivery (operational), and administrative or financial procedures (informational), and organizations may practice all or only some of these. Some standards are generated externally to organizations. Some may be in widespread use; some are adhered to (or not) by practitioners operating within particular domains of knowledge and practice. Other standards may be internal to a specific organization. Indeed, it could be suggested that standardization is one of the distinguishing features of current organizational life.

Standardization tends to be premised at least partly on the prior existence or creation of classification systems: apparently simple but significant technologies for ordering the world. Classification appears to be a fundamental human activity enabling us to tame ‘the wild profusion of existing things’ (1:xv) and make sense of the world’s complexity. It is an intensely social undertaking, rooted in communities of practice and contexts (13), and is often domain-specific. It involves ordering entities into groups on the basis of their relationships to establish a classificatory system, the assignation of subsequent instances of such entities to groups in an established classificatory system (14), and using the results of that classification as a basis for future action. Again, classifications can be generated externally to a particular organization, as in the case of the International Classification of Diseases (12), or they may be organizationspecific (15).

The design of computer-based systems tends to assume that certain aspects of a user organization’s practice and knowledge have been (or will be) standardized, in order for the system to operate effectively. At the very least, there needs to be a decision within the organization about what data should be recorded, and how data should be structured within the system to allow for subsequent retrieval and analysis. There may also be decisions about who may enter or extract data, and how and when this may be done. For example, the classification systems inherent in database fields imply that a shared, standardized way of thinking about and recording (and sometimes doing) activity and information has already been developed, even where this has not actually occurred or been fully adopted. This becomes a particular issue in organizations where several communities of practice interact, each with their own bodies of knowledge and ways of ordering that knowledge.

The Motorco case study highlights the translation effort required between different professional domains when an organization attempts to integrate previously separate information systems, and the consequent potential for undependability. Can standardization be seen as both a prerequisite for and a result of the implementation of computer-based systems; a means of enhancing and enforcing dependability?