STS Roundtable is an international not-for-profit association of professional and scholarly practitioners of Sociotechnical Systems Theory. Sociotechnical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are compl
ex sociotechnical systems. The term sociotechnical systems was coined in the 1960s by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, who were working as consultants at the Tavistock Institute in London. Sociotechnical systems theory is theory about the social aspects of people and society and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes. Here, technical does not necessarily imply material technology. The focus is on procedures and related knowledge, i.e. it refers to the ancient Greek term logos. "Technical" is a term used to refer to structure and a broader sense of technicalities. Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization or the society as a whole. Sociotechnical theory therefore is about joint optimization, with a shared emphasis on achievement of both excellence in technical performance and quality in people's work lives. Sociotechnical theory, as distinct from sociotechnical systems, proposes a number of different ways of achieving joint optimisation. They are usually based on designing different kinds of organisation, ones in which the relationships between socio and technical elements lead to the emergence of productivity and well-being.
