What To Do When You Can't Have It All: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Dependencies
提出社会技术系统理想特征间的依赖理论，帮助设计者在无法全部实现时做出取舍，基于86家制造企业数据验证，并开发了计算模型软件。
It is often the case that ideal sociotechnical systems (STS) profiles cannot be implemented. Consequently, STS designers often must decide which among the many design features in an ideal STS profile to implement. This paper presents a theory for understanding the dependencies among ideal design features. With such a theory, if choices among ideal features must be made, the relative impact of choosing not to implement one ideal feature on the effectiveness of other ideal features will be better understood. Several propositions are offered based on the theory, including a proposal that not all ideal design features are needed since some can compensate for others. The theory was applied to manufacturing organizations and tested using data obtained from site visits to 86 companies. The results indicated that the theory significantly differentiated higher from lower performing manufacturing organizations. The theory has been embodied in a computational modeling software program that has been used by over 50 industrial sites in the United States. Implications of such a theory for STS practice as well as furthering STS theory-building are discussed.