Introduction

Our research studies transitions that occur when new technologies are implemented in industrial work processes. We are particularly interested in analyzing the developmental dynamics of production processes, and are concerned with examining the production process as a “sociotechnical system.”

The effect of technology can be seen to be mediated by social activity in two senses. First, any technology is itself socially constructed and therefore only one alternative of several possible ones. Second, the technology takes its concrete shape through use and is therefore influenced by the choices of the users. In this chapter we especially concentrate on the latter aspect of the social mediation of technology; i.e., we examine the role of operators in constructing the sociotechnical system through the use of technology as a tool of activity.

The dynamics of change in sociotechnical systems

Due to the principal difficulty, even impossibility, of anticipating precisely the functional and economic constraints of a system in its future operation, which is also reflected in internal difficulties in organizing the design process, a system in design deviates from one in operation. The more complex the system is, and the more flexibly it is expected to function in future use, the more difficult it is to predict and specify during design.

As a consequence, there exists a need to develop the design activity (Rouse & Cody 1988; Martin et al., 1990). As the design process has become an object of research, the inadequacy of different formal design models to comprehend the actual design activity has become apparent (Rouse & Cody, 1988; Hyötyläinen et al. 1990).