An analytic framework to assess organizational resilience

Background: Resilience Engineering is a paradigm for safety management that focuses on coping with complexity to achieve success, even considering several conflicting goals. Modern socio-technical systems have to be resilient to comply with the variability of everyday activities, the tight-coupled and underspecified nature of work and the nonlinear interactions among agents. At organizational level, resilience can be described as a combination of four cornerstones: monitoring, responding, learning and anticipating. Methods: Starting from these four categories, this paper aims at defining a semi-quantitative analytic framework to measure organizational resilience in complex socio-technical systems, combining the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results: This paper presents an approach for defining resilience abilities of an organization, creating a structured domain-dependent framework to define a resilience profile at different levels of abstraction, to identify weaknesses and strengths of the system and thus potential actions to increase system’s adaptive capacity. An illustrative example in an anaesthesia department clarifies the outcomes of the approach. Conclusions: The outcome of the RAG, i.e. a weighted set of probing questions, can be used in different domains, as a support tool in a wider Safety-II oriented managerial action to bring safety management into the core business of the organization

Revealing the Sociotechnical Complexity of Business Process Modeling – An Actor-Network Theory Approach

In the last few years, the modeling of business processes has achieved considerable popularity in organizations and academic research. However, business process modeling is often studied from either a technical or a social perspective, and as a result of this a priori fragmentation, tends to overlook the sociotechnical complexity involved in modeling projects. To overcome this problem, this paper adopts an analytical approach based on the Actor-Network Theory, and performs a case study on a process-based quality management project in a large aircraft maintenance company. The results of the case analysis show that the form and meaning of both the process models and organizational routines are negotiated by setting up sociotechnical networks in modeling projects, thus making it clear that models and organizational practices co-constitute each other. In this way, the paper provides an analytical tool that can help unravel the sociotechnical complexity involved in process modeling

Exploratory Study of the Privacy Extension for System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA-Priv) to elicit Privacy Risks in eHealth

Context: System Theoretic Process Analysis for Privacy (STPA-Priv) is a novel privacy risk elicitation method using a top down approach. It has not gotten very much attention but may offer a convenient structured approach and generation of additional artifacts compared to other methods. Aim: The aim of this exploratory study is to find out what benefits the privacy risk elicitation method STPA-Priv has and to explain how the method can be used. Method: Therefore we apply STPA-Priv to a real world health scenario that involves a smart glucose measurement device used by children. Different kinds of data from the smart device including location data should be shared with the parents, physicians, and urban planners. This makes it a sociotechnical system that offers adequate and complex privacy risks to be found. Results: We find out that STPA-Priv is a structured method for privacy analysis and finds complex privacy risks. The method is supported by a tool called XSTAMPP which makes the analysis and its results more profound. Additionally, we learn that an iterative application of the steps might be necessary to find more privacy risks when more information about the system is available later. Conclusions: STPA-Priv helps to identify complex privacy risks that are derived from sociotechnical interactions in a system. It also outputs privacy constraints that are to be enforced by the system to ensure privacy.Comment: author's post-prin

Connectivism: Its place in theory-informed research and innovation in technology-enabled learning

The sociotechnical context for learning and education is dynamic and makes great demands on those trying to seize the opportunities presented by emerging technologies. The goal of this paper is to explore certain theories for our plans and actions in technology-enabled learning. Although presented as a successor to previous learning theories, connectivism alone is insufficient to inform learning and its support by technology in an internetworked world. However, because of its presence in massive open online courses (MOOCs), connectivism is influential in the practice of those who take these courses and who wish to apply it in teaching and learning. Thus connectivism is perceived as relevant by its practitioners but as lacking in rigour by its critics. Five scenarios of change are presented with frameworks of different theories to explore the variety of approaches educators can take in the contexts for change and their associated research/evaluation. I argue that the choice of which theories to use depends on the scope and purposes of the intervention, the funding available to resource the research/evaluation, and the experience and philosophical stances of the researchers/practitioners

Metamodel for Understanding, Analyzing, and Designing Sociotechnical Systems

This paper presents a metamodel designed to help in understanding, analyzing, and designing sociotechnical systems. The metamodel extends and clarifies the work system framework and related concepts at the core of work system approach for understanding IT-reliant work systems in organizations [Alter, 2003, 2006a, 2008a]. Development of the metamodel supports a larger goal of creating an enhanced work system approach that is understandable to business professionals but that is somewhat more rigorous than most current applications of work system concepts and can be linked more directly to precise, highly detailed analysis and design approaches for IT professionals. The 32 elements in the metamodel include work system, the 9 elements of the work system framework (with information replaced by informational entity), and 22 other elements that clarify a number of questions and confusions observed in past applications of the work system approach. Specification of the metamodel clarifies ambiguities in the work system framework and forms a clearer conceptual basis for tools and methods that could improve communication and collaboration between business and IT professionals. It can also be used to organize much of the know-how and many of the system-related research results in the IS field

Electric Grid Decarbonization Pathways: Landscape Impacts, Policy Interactions, and the Need for Cooperation

Climate change has motivated governments around the world to ratify aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Meeting these targets will require improved energy efficiency, behavior changes, and energy system decarbonization. Many climate change and energy policy targets imply the deployment of large amounts of low carbon, renewable energy resources like wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels but do not specify how these resources will be sited on the landscape. The relationships between weather conditions, terrain, land cover, existing electric grid infrastructure, and electricity consumers will govern how these wind and solar PV infrastructure configurations develop and how quickly they will be implemented. This dissertation develops methods for modeling policy goal-compliant wind and solar PV infrastructure configurations and their land use requirements, extends these methods to explicitly account for the resulting land use/land cover change patterns, and concludes with a macro-scale discussion of energy system geographies and their co-evolution with the societies that rely upon them in a decarbonized electric grid future. Chapters 2 and 3 each feature a case study of Vermont and its ambitious energy and emissions-related goals. We find that Vermont can meet many of these goals with less than 1% of its land area occupied by wind and solar PV infrastructure using a wide variety of infrastructure ratios and siting strategies. Chapter 4 views energy systems through the proposed ‘energyshed’ lens. We define energysheds as the geographic area over which energy is produced, refined, transported, stored, distributed, and consumed. We argue that energy system decarbonization offers opportunities to democratize and decentralize energy systems physically and administratively and that the spatial relationships between energy system infrastructure, ownership, and energy consumers will dictate the trajectory of the electric grid decarbonization process

Encapsulation as a Key Concern in Analysis and Design for Service Systems

Concepts related to sociotechnical and totally automated services should play a role in systems analysis and design because every organization operates through internally directed service systems and because much the world GDP involves services for customers. This paper explains how the concept of encapsulation proves a crucial design variable for both sociotechnical and automated services. This paper defines the term service and explains how the degree of encapsulation is related to structures for delivering services, using outsourcing as an illustrative example. It shows how encapsulation-related design decisions appear in a service life cycle model. It presents a detailed operational metamodel that describes service systems and shows how aspects of the metamodel provide operational interpretations of ideas that are important in service system design. The implication is that the concept of encapsulation should be included in analysis and design methods and tools

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS OF JUST TRANSITION PATHWAYS TO 100% RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY

The transition to using clean, affordable, and reliable electrical energy is critical for enhancing human opportunities and capabilities. In the United States, many states and localities are engaging in this transition despite the lack of ambitious federal policy support. This research builds on the theoretical framework of the multilevel perspective (MLP) of sociotechnical transitions as well as the concept of energy justice to investigate potential pathways to 100 percent renewable energy (RE) for electricity provision in the U.S. This research seeks to answer the question: what are the technical, policy, and perceptual pathways, barriers, and opportunities for just transition to 100% renewable electricity in the U.S., at a state and local levels? In this dissertation, an analysis of factors contributing to RE transition in communities across the country is developed. Results from this are used to make further analysis and recommendations to research undertaken specifically in the context of Michigan’s Western Upper Peninsula (WUP). This dissertation demonstrates that research on achieving a just energy transition requires transdisciplinary approaches that integrate social sciences, engineering, and natural sciences and multiple ways of knowing from scientists, practitioners, and diverse community perspectives. This research provides tools for decision makers at all levels of government, local stakeholders, citizens, and the academic world in understanding what matters for success in a just transition to 100% RE in the U.S