Author: Bert Painter (LI), bertpainter@gmail.com
A number of us in our Sociotechnical Systems (STS) community of organization design practitioners and academics have been much impressed with ISSIP members’ espousal of “Human-Centered” AI (HCAI) for service innovation development in organizations. Indeed, having read books like Human-Centered AI (Shneiderman, 2022), we see a very strong affinity between HCAI development and STS design of modern organizations, networks and ecosystems. HCAI user experience design to augment human performance and well-being while increasing the level of automation is entirely consistent with the humanistic values and participative process of STS design based on people-technology joint optimization in an open systems context.
Moreover, we believe that the organizational context, with a digital STS approach to organizational design can be vital to practical fulfillment of the “Six Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenges”. For example, in a US healthcare redesign for improved kidney dialysis homecare (“Digital Sociotechnical System Design”.), there was need for simultaneous, coordinated development of the digital technology and social systems. This involved developing an application to enable patients to become confident, in-home self-administrators of dialysis treatment, while linked to coordinated support networks of community-based care providers and in-clinic physicians. Ultimately, this digital STS organization design has renewed the industry leadership of an innovative healthcare company dedicated to personalized care and life cycle dialysis service.
Similarly, in use of AI for predictive maintenance in manufacturing, STS “organizational choice” in the alignment of roles has often proved vital to achieve the goal that HCAI and STS share for augmentation of front-line roles of operators and maintenance technicians, rather than their displacement or constrained capacity for individual or collective initiative. And, at the same time, organizations have realized major cost-savings from lost-time prevention.
AI has also greatly influenced STS design. It has been part of changing our definition of what an ‘organization’ is, from a free-standing independent entity, into networks supported by digital platforms that connect (and with AI, increasingly coordinate) an ever-changing array of actors in a value creation ecosystem. Moreover, because AI and other forms of digital technology rapidly and continuously evolve, there needs to be simultaneous adjustment of social and technical systems, rather than earlier STS practices of designing social systems around a fixed technology and a fixed process in order to give workers greater control over their work. And, with generative HCAI, there is even greater opportunity for “supertools” to enhance collaboration through work crafting and dynamic STS design (STS Design & Organizational Change – Pasmore, 2018).
In summary, our view is that STS & HCAI theory and practice are mutually-reinforcing for service innovation development! On the one hand, organizational design choices and practices are key to fulfillment of HCAI’s overall purpose for human well-being, and the quality of human-AI interaction. (See: “Keeping the Organization in the Loop: A Socio-Technical Extension of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence”). Conversely, STS organization design must make a ‘technological choice’ for human-centered AI, in order to realize the full human potential in joint optimization of social and technical systems.
As an opportunity to initiate dialogue across our two communities, the Sociotechnical Systems Roundtable will host a (no-fee) 90-minute Web-Conference on the topic of “Linking STS Organization Design & Human-Centered AI”. We invite members of ISSIP to join us for a brief presentation + longer conversation on this topic, scheduled for November 16th. If you’re interested, please Register @stsroundtable.com. For Inquiries click ‘Contact’ on our website. We hope very much to meet-up with you!
Image Credit:
Microsoft Bing Image Creator powered by OpenAI DALL-E 3, Bert Painter, Jim Spohrer (20231031) Prompt “Human-Centered AI on the left, Socio-Technical Systems Design on the right – a powerful joining of forces to create better service innovations”