Human factors of complex sociotechnical systems
Introduction
A number of changes are occurring in the business and socio-economic environment that contribute to increasing the complexity of work systems. Vicente (1999) lists several factors that contribute to work system complexity (see Table 1 for a list of the dimensions of work system complexity and their relevance to the healthcare and computer security domains). Increasing work system complexity poses unique challenges to the people involved in the design, implementation and maintenance of sociotechnical systems, including human factors and ergonomics (HFE) researchers and professionals. In this paper, we discuss two emerging trends that contribute to increased work system complexity: (1) working across organizational, geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries, and (2) the increasing role of the customer in product/service design.
The examples used in this paper draw from the healthcare/patient safety and computer security domains. Patient safety is a systemic problem of healthcare organizations worldwide. The issue of medical errors and harm caused by poorly designed healthcare systems made headlines in the US with the publication of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” (Kohn et al., 1999). The World Health Organization has recognized patient safety as a strategic issue in order to improve health and health care worldwide (http://www.who.int/patientsafety). HFE has a long tradition of involvement in helping assess and solve performance, quality and safety problems in health care (Chapanis and Safrin, 1960).
The issue of computer security is also a global problem, but it has received considerably less attention and contributions from HFE as compared to health care and patient safety. The 2005 CSI/FBI [Computer Security Institute & Federal Bureau of Investigation] survey of 699 people representing various industries shows that 56% of the companies experienced some type of unauthorized use of computer systems within the past year (Gordon et al., 2005), including laptop or mobile theft, denial of service, telecom fraud, unauthorized access to information and virus. There is slow recognition among computer security specialists of the importance of non-technical (human and organizational) factors in ensuring and maintaining computer security. For instance, in the CSI/FBI 2005 survey, a large number of respondents (63–70%) identified awareness training in various areas of security (security policy, security management, access control systems and network security) as very important to their organizations. HFE can make a significant contribution to improving the design and implementation of computer security technologies, policies and management systems (Carayon et al., 2005a).
The domains of health care and computer security pose unique challenges to HFE because of their high complexity. Much patient care involves people (patients, their families, and healthcare providers and staff) who work across various boundaries. Patients (and their families and caregivers) have an increasingly important role in the quality and safety of the care provided to them. Computer security is becoming increasingly complex because of the (distributed, decentralized) Internet and other networked systems that involve people working across various boundaries. Those people have a critical role in computer security: they can directly or indirectly affect security through their behaviors and actions (e.g., writing down passwords), or they can alert computer security managers of possible security breaches (e.g., when experiencing slow response to computer network access).
In the remainder of the paper, the trend towards working across boundaries and the implications for a greater focus on system interactions and integration within and outside the HFE discipline are discussed. We then describe the increasing role of the customer in product/service design, and the subsequent need for developing more comprehensive models of HFE in system design.
Section snippets
Working across boundaries
Many people no longer work for a single organization or only with people belonging to the same organization. They work across organizational, geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries in a world that is ‘flattening’ (Friedman, 2005) (see Table 2 for examples of boundaries in the healthcare and computer security domains, and other domains of application). Products and services are created as outcomes of multiple entities/organizations that work together across boundaries. Working across
Need to focus on system interactions and integration
According to Wilson (2000), the nature of ergonomics is to understand people and their interactions, as well as the relationships between these interactions, and to improve those interactions in real settings. Interactions occur between people and elements of sociotechnical systems. Various models have been proposed that define elements of sociotechnical system (see Table 3). These models present different ways of ‘slicing’ and describing sociotechnical systems, either vertically (e.g.,
Role of the customer in product/service design
Customers, i.e. patients, end users or workers, are becoming more involved in creating products and services and influencing the quality and safety of products/services. This should encourage human factors professionals and researchers to devise effective and efficient approaches for involving the customer in the design, redesign, implementation and continuous improvement of products/services and their creation/production.
Example in health care: In health care, there is increasing demand placed
Macroergonomic continuous system design
HFE recognizes the value and importance of system design and the implementation and change processes. Clegg (2000) has emphasized the need for developing principles for the design of sociotechnical systems, not just the understanding of the impact of sociotechnical systems and their changes onto people. Whereas many human factors experts have emphasized the need to better integrate HFE into system design (Meister and Enderwick, 2001), there is still much progress to be made in this area. HFE
Conclusion
The increasing complexity of sociotechnical systems in domains such as health care and computer security poses unique challenges to HFE professionals and researchers. Further integrating the different dimensions and elements of sociotechnical systems is necessary to anticipate the implications of working across organizational, geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries. HFE researchers and practitioners also need to reach out to domain experts and to other connected disciplines. This can
Acknowledgments
The research in the domains of healthcare/patient safety and computer security conducted by the author and her research team is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (‘Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety’ Grant ♯ P20 HS11561-01, Principal Investigator: Pascale Carayon; ‘Safe Medication Administration Through Technologies and Human Factors—SMArTHF’ Grant ♯1 UC1 HS014253-01, Principal Investigator: Pascale Carayon; co- Principal Investigator: Tosha Wetterneck) and
Pascale Carayon is Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Director of the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her Engineer diploma from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, France, in 1984 and her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1988. Her research areas include systems engineering, human factors and ergonomics,
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Pascale Carayon is Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Director of the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her Engineer diploma from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, France, in 1984 and her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1988. Her research areas include systems engineering, human factors and ergonomics, sociotechnical engineering and occupational health and safety. She is a scientific editor for Applied Ergonomics and a member of the editorial boards of Behaviour and Information Technology, Work and Stress, and the Journal of Patient Safety. She is the chair of the technical committee on Organizational Design And Management (ODAM) of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), and is a member of the executive committee of the IEA, in charge of the Ergonomics In Quality Design (EQUID) program and chair of the Science, Technology and Practice committee.