This dissertation is a historical case study of the payment system designed, built, and operated by Visa International Services Association (VISA, hereafter “Visa”). The system is analyzed as a sociotechnical one, consisting of both social and technical elements that mutually constitute and shape one another. The historical narrative concentrates on the period of 1970 to 1984, which roughly corresponds to the tenure of the system’s founder and first CEO, Dee Ward Hock. It also focuses primarily upon the events that took place within the United States. After establishing a theoretical and historical context, I describe why and how the organization now known as Visa was formed. I then explain how the founder and his staff transformed the disintegrated, paper-based credit card systems of the 1960s into the unified, electronic value exchange system we know today. Special attention is paid throughout this narrative to the ways in which the technologies were shaped by political, legal, economic, and cultural forces, as well as the ways in which the system began to alter those social relations in return. In the final chapter, I offer three small extensions to the literature on payment systems, cooperative networks, and technology and culture.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce / In a rapidly changing world of technological advancement and innovation, academic institutions are propelled to automate manual processes for more efficiency and access to a broader spectrum of applicants. For this reason, universities are investing in online application system to deal with long queues, malpractice, loss of documents, and undue costs incurred by the university. However, online application systems that do not adequately address sociotechnical requirements may result in an unsuccessful implementation, wasteful expenditure and sometimes reputational damage to the university. This research suggests a general sociotechnical conceptual framework which was informed by both the traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Effective Technical & Human Implementation of Computer-based Systems (ETHICS) methodology to understand the development of an online application system using a sociotechnical approach. An exploratory research approach was used on an online application system case study to understand what sociotechnical aspects were considered during the application development and the outcome thereof. Qualitative data sources were examined to understand the context and rationale for any sociotechnical issues incorporated or excluded in the online application system development. Based on new discoveries, the sociotechnical conceptual framework was enhanced to be more relevant for academics, practitioners and organisations to use as a guide for a sociotechnical system development approach. / NG (2020)

To compete in today's global economy, organizations are under pressure to improve their product development processes. The engineering design process is an important component of the overall product development process. This research considers the relationship of both social and technical variables to the engineering design process. The theoretical foundation of this research is sociotechnical systems theory. This theory states that optimum performance is achieved by jointly considering the technical and the social subsystems. The application domain of the theory is called macroergonomics. A technical variable considered by this research was engineering design process methodology. Two methodologies were considered: sequential engineering and concurrent engineering. Another technical construct considered by this research was the use of computer-supported cooperative work technology (CSCW) or groupware. The social variable considered by this research was group size. Two sizes were considered: large groups of six people and small groups of three people. This research sought to determine the optimum combination of technical and social variables that would result in highest performance. There were two phases of this research. In the first phase, a laboratory experiment was conducted using 180 engineering and building construction students as subjects. The experiment required that a system be conceived, designed, manufactured, and tested by student teams. The experimental design was a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial, between subjects design with five teams in each cell. In the second phase, the results of the first phase were provided to recognized industry and academic experts for their critique. This two-phased approach facilitated the identification of causal relationships among social and technical variables with higher external validity. In the laboratory experiment, there was no significant difference in performance between concurrent engineering groups and sequential engineering processes. Small groups significantly outperformed large groups in all conditions. CSCW did not significantly improve the performance of large or small groups. Participants in the experiment were equally satisfied with all conditions. The external survey strongly endorsed the superiority of concurrent engineering as compared to sequential engineering. There was no statistically significant optimal combination of variables that resulted in the highest design performance. / Ph. D.

Current organizational design changes such as restructuring, production advancements, and information technology improvements have caused many organizations to move to flatter management structures. Changes in the organizational structure along with the demand for improved performance have broadened the scope of responsibilities for first-level managers in manufacturing organizations. First-level managers are required to balance their time to meet greater demands. The sociotechnical systems principle of joint optimization states that organizations function optimally when design changes are made to meet the needs of both the social and technical subsystems in the context of the organization's environment. This study uses time allotment at the supervisory level to operationalize the sociotechnical systems principle of joint optimization. Ninety-one first-level managers from both the production and distribution areas of thirteen North American facilities participated in this study. Four survey instruments were used to measure the following dimensions: joint optimization, department performance, time allotment to the social and technical subsystems, and organizational values of appropriate time use. Five time allotment constructs emerged from the data collected on time use in the social and technical subsystems. These were time spent on Participation and Information Sharing, Customer Needs and Strategic Planning, Skill Development and Compensation, Quality, and Department Operational Needs. The results indicated time allotment constructs along with the organization's values on appropriate time use can be used to predict both joint optimization and performance at the department level. The results also indicated a strong relationship (r = .607, p < .05) between level of joint optimization and department performance. / Master of Science

The effect of national culture on the performance of teams is becoming an increasingly important issue in advanced western countries. There are many interlinked reasons for this, including the increasing globalisation of companies and the use of joint ventures for the development of expensive platforms. A further issue relates to the export of complex sociotechnical systems, where a culture clash between designer/manufacturer and user can lead to significant problems. This report describes research work that was carried out to analyse the cultural factors that influence the performance of teams (including researchers, designers, operators and crews), and to determine whether these factors could be captured in a tool to provide assistance to team managers and team builders. The original point of interest related to the development of increasingly complex sociotechnical systems, for example nuclear power stations, oil refineries, offshore oil platforms, hospital systems and large transport aircraft. Answers that might be sought, in particular by the senior managers of global companies, include (1) the best teams (or best national locations) for fundamental research, industrial research & development, product/system improvement and other key activities, and (2) the implications for system performance and, as a result, for system design, of targeting an eastern Asian market, a South-American market, etc. A literature review was carried out of the effects of culture on team performance, of culture measures and tools and of task classifications; in addition, empirical evidence of the validity of measures and tools was sought. Significant evidence was found of the effects of culture on teams and crews, but no national culture-based team performance prediction tools were found. Based on the results of the literature review, Hofstede's original four-dimension cultural framework was selected as the basis for the collection and analysis of empirical data, including the results of studies from the literature and the researcher s own empirical studies. No team or task classification system was found that was suitable for the purposes of linking culture to team performance, so a five-factor task classification was developed, based on the literature review, to form the basis of the initial modelling work. A detailed analysis of results from the literature and from the author s pilot studies revealed additional culture-performance relationships, including those relating to cultural diversity. Three culture-performance models were incorporated into software tools that offered performance prediction capabilities. The first model was primarily a test bed for ideas; the second model incorporated a task/behavioural approach which achieved limited success; the third and final model was evaluated against a range of team and crew performance data before being tested successfully for acceptability by users. The research results included the discovery that the effects of cultural diversity must be sought at the individual cultural dimension level not at the composite level, that the effects of national culture on team performance are consistent and strong enough to be usefully captured in a predictive culture tool and that the relationship between culture and behaviour is moderated by contextual factors.

Recent systemic failures such as the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Global Financial Crisis, and Northeast Blackout have reminded us, once again, of the fragility of complex sociotechnical systems. Although the failures occurred in very different domains and were triggered by different events, there are, however, certain common underlying mechanisms of abnormalities driving these systemic failures. Understanding these mechanisms is essential to avoid such disasters in the future. Moreover, these disasters happened in sociotechnical systems, where both social and technical elements can interact with each other and with the environment. The nonlinear interactions among these components can lead to an “emergent” behavior – i.e., the behavior of the whole is more than the sum of its parts – that can be difficult to anticipate and control. Abnormalities can propagate through the systems to cause systemic failures. To ensure the safe operation and production of such complex systems, we need to understand and model the associated systemic risk. Traditional emphasis of chemical engineering risk modeling is on the technical components of a chemical plant, such as equipment and processes. However, a chemical plant is more than a set of equipment and processes, with the human elements playing a critical role in decision-making. Industrial statistics show that about 70% of the accidents are caused by human errors. So, new modeling techniques that go beyond the classical equipment/process-oriented approaches to include the human elements (i.e., the “socio” part of the sociotechnical systems) are needed for analyzing systemic risk of complex sociotechnical systems. This thesis presents such an approach. This thesis presents a new knowledge modeling paradigm for systemic risk analysis that goes beyond chemical plants by unifying different perspectives. First, we develop a unifying teleological, control theoretic framework to model decision-making knowledge in a complex system. The framework allows us to identify systematically the common failure mechanisms behind systemic failures in different domains. We show how cause-and-effect knowledge can be incorporated into this framework by using signed directed graphs. We also develop an ontology-driven knowledge modeling component and show how this can support decision-making by using a case study in public health emergency. This is the first such attempt to develop an ontology for public health documents. Lastly, from a control-theoretic perspective, we address the question, “how do simple individual components of a system interact to produce a system behavior that cannot be explained by the behavior of just the individual components alone?” Through this effort, we attempt to bridge the knowledge gap between control theory and complexity science.

As práticas ágeis de desenvolvimento de sistemas de software são, neste trabalho, classificadas sob três aspectos: dependabilidade, domínios do ESSENCE e guidelines para redução de erro humano. A partir dessa classificação, um questionário baseado nas práticas relacionadas aos fatores humanos foi aplicado para desenvolvedores de sistemas de software com diferentes níveis de experiência com o objetivo de avaliar a interferência do ambiente na dependabilidade do sistema de software desenvolvido. O questionário foi respondido por 125 desenvolvedores. Os desenvolvedores foram separados em dois grupos e os grupos foram comparados em relação à percepção de certos guidelines para desenvolvimento de software para cada prática considerada. Os resultados do questionário mostraram que a utilização das práticas ágeis analisadas aumentou fatores que reconhecidamente facilitam a redução do erro humano. / In this work, agile software development practices are categorized using three aspects: reliability, ESSENCEs areas of concern and guidelines for human error reduction. From this categorization, it was applied to software developers with different levels of expertise a questionnaire with practices related to human factors with the goal of evaluating the interference of the environment on the reliability of the developed software. The questionnaire was answered by 125 developers. For every practice considered the developers were separated in two groups and compared in relation to the perception of certain guidelines. The results show that the use of those agile practices increase factors that help reduce human error.

The innovative advancements of information communication technology (ICT) combinedwith a globalized economy have given rise to organizational forms that manipulate timeand distance. Today, competitive advantages are more elusive than tangible as a result ofdynamically complex environments motivating organizations to adjust in structure andfunctional capacity. New emergent forms of organizational structures have resulted inthe virtual organization (VO), which employs a network structure and allowsorganizations the flexibility to perform core processes amongst distributed teams, units,departments, and/or organizations. In essence the virtual organization may be viewed asa strategic response to dynamic environmental forces that have encouragedorganizations to rethink the concept of competitiveness. Virtual organizations havegained popularity throughout the last decade as a more effective way of managing andcommunicating information within and across organizations. Information communicationtechnology (ICT) has aided in the globalizing effect of informationalism. Theinformational flows within a virtual organization have direct bearing on individual andgroup efforts to obtain and employ information essential to organizational objectives.This thesis investigates the information interchange within virtual organizations througha theoretical study, which converges identified relevant subject areas and introduces theMedia Rich Social Information Interchange (MERiSii) model. The empirical study isdesigned to further investigate the validity of theoretical concepts employed in theMERiSii model and to expand its development to facilitate the function of informationinterchange. VGR-IT is an IT infrastructure provider, for hospitals and healthcarefacilities in the Västra Götaland region of Sweden. Interviews conducted with an accountmanager for VGR-IT and an IT strategist for Borås Hospital give insight into thecommunicative tasks of information interchange that must be effective to support the coreprocesses within VGR-IT and the service VGR-IT provides to Borås hospital. The resultsof a comparative analysis between the theoretical and empirical studies support a revisedMERiSii model that may be implicated in future research to further verify itseffectiveness. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Process control is essential in chemical engineering and has diverse applications in automation, manufacturing, scheduling, etc. In this cross-disciplinary work, we shift the domain focus from the control of machines to the control of multiple intelligent agents. Our goal is to improve the optimization problem-solving process, such as optimal regulation of emerging technologies, in a multi-agent system. Achieving that improvement would have potential value both within and outside the chemical engineering community. This work also illustrates the possibility of applying process systems engineering techniques, especially process control, beyond chemical plants. It is very common to observe crowds of individuals solving similar problems with similar information in a largely independent manner. We argue here that the crowds can become more efficient and robust problem-solvers, by partially following the average opinion. This observation runs counter to the widely accepted claim that the wisdom of crowds deteriorates with social influence. The key difference is that individuals are self-interested and hence will reject feedbacks that do not improve their performance. We propose a multi-agent control-theoretic methodology, soft regulation, to model the collective dynamics and compute the degree of social influence, i.e., the level to which one accepts the population feedback, that optimizes the problem-solving performance. Soft regulation is a modeling language for multi-agent sociotechnical systems. The state-space formulation captures the individual learning process (i.e., open loop dynamics) as well as the influence of the population feedback in a straightforward manner. It can model a diverse set of existing multi-agent dynamics. Through numerical analysis and linear algebra, we attempt to understand the role of feedback in multi-agent collective dynamics, thus achieving multi-agent control in sociotechnical systems. Our analysis through mathematical proofs, simulations, and a human subject experiment suggests that intelligent individuals, solving the same problem (or similar problems), could do much better by adaptively adjusting their decisions towards the population average. We even discover that the crowd of human subjects could self-organize into a near-optimal setting. This discovery suggests a new coordination mechanism for enhancing individual decision-making. Potential applications include mobile health, urban planning, and policymaking.

As práticas ágeis de desenvolvimento de sistemas de software são, neste trabalho, classificadas sob três aspectos: dependabilidade, domínios do ESSENCE e guidelines para redução de erro humano. A partir dessa classificação, um questionário baseado nas práticas relacionadas aos fatores humanos foi aplicado para desenvolvedores de sistemas de software com diferentes níveis de experiência com o objetivo de avaliar a interferência do ambiente na dependabilidade do sistema de software desenvolvido. O questionário foi respondido por 125 desenvolvedores. Os desenvolvedores foram separados em dois grupos e os grupos foram comparados em relação à percepção de certos guidelines para desenvolvimento de software para cada prática considerada. Os resultados do questionário mostraram que a utilização das práticas ágeis analisadas aumentou fatores que reconhecidamente facilitam a redução do erro humano. / In this work, agile software development practices are categorized using three aspects: reliability, ESSENCEs areas of concern and guidelines for human error reduction. From this categorization, it was applied to software developers with different levels of expertise a questionnaire with practices related to human factors with the goal of evaluating the interference of the environment on the reliability of the developed software. The questionnaire was answered by 125 developers. For every practice considered the developers were separated in two groups and compared in relation to the perception of certain guidelines. The results show that the use of those agile practices increase factors that help reduce human error.