University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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the organization in a way that fits both developments in its environment
(intelligence) and its internal potentials for change (control).
These functions and their interactions provide a set of norms for diagnosing and
designing viable systems like organizations. Functions one to three, i.e. the ‘primary
activities’, ‘coordination’ and ‘control’ enable the system to realize its goals. Functions
three to five, i.e. ‘control’, ‘intelligence’ and ‘policy’ enable the system to adapt its
goals.
Achieving viability and high involvement responsibility means then that through the
entire organization, at all levels of recursion, the functions policy, intelligence and
control should develop inclusive performance goals (i.e. including social and
ecological values); and that the functions control, coordination and primary activities
should realize performance goals not only in reference to organizational viability, but
also in reference to a just society and the organization’s contribution to it.
To realize this, the design of the organizational structure is crucial. For instance, a
bad design of the division of labour may hinder the coordination between the primary
activities. Or, a too detailed and too frequent report system may overburden the
control function with data about the performance of primary activities. So, the design
of the organizational structure is an important enabler or disabler of viability.
The VSM however, does not offer a concrete design of the organizational structure
that is able to produce the required effects between organizational functions.
Sociotechnical systems theory does provide such a design that facilitates high
involvement innovation and responsibility.
Designing The Organizational Structure: Socio-
Technical Theory
With regard to the two additional goals for organizations - innovation and CSR -, the
traditional task-oriented tayloristic production concept is not adequate anymore by its
difficulties to adapt to the changing demands of the market (Marsden 1999; Kern &
Schumann 1985; Maurice et al. 1986; Piore & Sabel 1984; De Sitter 1998). So the
last few decades new work structures have been advocated that are more output
oriented. The fundamental difference lies in the organization of business processes.
Output-oriented structures are less hierarchical, more holistic and team-based than
task-oriented structures with their functionally differentiated departments, a focus on
individual tasks and rigid job descriptions. A decentralized, output-oriented
organizational structure as advocated by sociotechnical theory allows for high
involvement innovation and responsibility to be integrated throughout the
organization.
Conceived in the United Kingdom as a result of the accidental rediscovery of an old
colliers' work tradition (Trist & Bamforth 1951; Trist et al. 1963), the sociotechnical
concept was elaborated and put to the test in India, Holland and Scandinavia in the
1960s and subsequently exported to the United States and Australia as well. Several