Seams and Sutures in IT Artifacts: Sewing Up the Socio and the Technical Together

After more than forty years the principles of the socio-technical approach still offer a sound basis on which Information Systems, interpreted as socio-technical systems, can be constructed to address the increasing need of flexibility of the modern organizations, and to satisfy the will to exploit the technological evolution that now offers unprecedented opportunities for adaptability and flexibility. The paper reconsiders some of the basic principles of socio-technical theory, namely openness, underspecification and interdependence, and on their basis it outlines new ways to conceive IT-supported organizations so that these organizations, their IS artifacts and the constituting IT artifacts can more easily co-evolve without mutually imposing unnecessary constraints. To this aim, we advocate the application of a socio-technical approach to both the design of the social structures and the design of the technical components of the organizations, by leveraging recent frameworks and technological platforms that are aimed at empowering the frontline end-users.