ABSTRACT
The sociotechnical systems model of work systems was developed empirically in the late 1940s and 1950s by Trist and Bamforth (1951) and their colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the UK. Follow-on research by Katz and Kahn and their colleagues at the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center, and by many others, served to confirm and refine the sociotechnical systems model. The basic tenets of sociotechnical systems theory, and the coining of the term sociotechnical systems, can be traced back to the classic studies by Trist and Bamforth relative to the effects of technological change in a deep seam Welsh coal mine (DeGreene 1973).
