ETHICS: The Past, Present and Future of Socio-Technical Systems Design - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 189

ETHICS: The Past, Present and Future
of Socio-Technical Systems Design
Shona Leitch and Matthew J. Warren
School of Information Systems,Faculty of Business and Law,
Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia, 3125
[e-mail]
Abstract. Since computers were first introduced in the late 1960's there has
been continued debate on the impact of technology, organisations and staff
within those organisations. Enid Mumford was one of the key researchers who
looked at the Socio-Technical implications through the decades, and as part of
her research she developed the ETHICS method to help improve the integration
of technology in organisations and society.
Keywords: Enid Mumford, ETHICS, participation, and systems design.
1 Introduction
Across the globe, there are now many different types of Information Systems in place,
from databases, expert systems, cloud computing application, transaction processing
systems, Internet based systems, decision support systems, etc. The use of these sys-
tems is very different from global Internet based systems, organisational systems to
personal systems where the number of users can vary from three hundred million us-
ers to a single user.
The computer revolution was predicted in the late 60's and during the next thirty
years we saw the introduction of corporate computer systems, personal computer sys-
tems, home micro computers and the development of the Internet. Enid Mumford
understood the impact that technology and systems would have upon us all and her
research over the decades focused upon the issue of this impact; on organisations as
well as on the individual.
This paper will explore the early social-technical research, the development of the
ETHICS model and how this has changed over the years and includes a discussion of
how Enid Mumford's research could influence future research areas and focus.
2 History of Socio Technical Design
According to Mumford and Beekman (1994), the Socio-Technical system design was
the product of a group of social scientists who came together at the end of the Second
World War and formed the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. The
Tavistock Institute was established in 1946 by this group, many of whom had collabo-
rated in wartime projects and most of whom had been members of the Tavistock
Clinic before the war. The Tavistock Clinic was a therapeutic establishment