ETHICS: The Past, Present and Future of Socio-Technical Systems Design - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 192

could be used within the ETHICS method. Mumford (Mumford and Henshall, 1979)
defined the following levels of participation:
1. Consultative - This is when an existing body, e.g. steering committee, is used
to implement the change process. This committee would then consult users on
the effect that change would have upon them;
2. Representative - This is when a cross selection of users affected by change,
are brought together into a design group. This ensures that representatives ef-
fected by change have the same powers in the committee as those bringing
about change; and;
3. Consensus - This is when all the staff impacted by the change are involved in
the design process. Representatives of the staff are elected to form the design
committee.
Another key area is the unique view of the Socio-Technical approach. Mumford
(1983a) redefines the Socio-Technical approach as:
“one which recognises the interaction of technology and people and produces
work systems which are both technically efficient and have social character-
istics which lead to high job satisfaction.”
The research undertaken by Mumford is encapsulated in the ETHICS methodology
(Mumford and Weir, 1979) to implement system design. The earlier ETHICS meth-
odology consisted of seven stages, which are (Mumford and Weir, 1979):
Step1 - Diagnosis: Determine the information required for the diagnosis of human
needs, collected through the use of questionnaires. The results of the survey
are analysed to determine user needs, the new system should be designed to
meet user requirements, as far as possible;
Step2 - Socio-Technical system design : Define the human objectives, which the
new system should achieve, based on the social diagnosis of step 1;
Step 3 - Setting out alternative solutions : Define the possible social and technical
solutions in order to achieve the desired requirements of step 1 and step 3;
Step 4 - Setting out possible Socio-Technical solutions : Combine the separate
social and technical solution into a combined list of solutions;
Step 5 - Ranking Socio-Technical solutions : List the Social-Technical solutions
which achieve the objectives set in step 2 and cater for the human needs as
defined within step 1;
Step 6 - Preparing a detailed work design : Develop system specifications and
work plans for the top choices from step 5;
Step 7 - Accept the best possible Social Technical solutions : Evaluate the plans
from step 6 and implement the best possible Socio-Technical solution.
Committees of individual users, managers and IT staff would be the ones who would
conduct the different stages of the ETHICS methodology. The original ETHICS
methodology was extended to take into consideration such issues as availability and
reliability of the systems once they have been introduced. The introduction of new
technology into an organisation can also be thought of as a human issue, relating to
(Mumford, 1995):