Constituents or Sub-Environments of Business Activity

Paragraph summary of sub-environments of business followed by a table devoted to each one.

• Technology including hardware, software, designs, prototypes, products, or services. Examples of engineering projects in Puerto Rico are provided in the PR STS grid. In the Therac-25 case, the hardware is the double pass accelerator, in Hughes the analogue-to-digital integrated circuits, and in

153 Machado the UNIX software system and the computers in the UCI laboratories that are congured by this system. Because technologies are structured to carry out the intentions of their designers, they embed values.

• Physical Surroundings. Physical surroundings can also embed values. Doors, by their weight, strength, material, size, and attachments (such as locks) can promote values such as security. Physical surroundings promote, maintain, or diminish other values in that they can permit or deny access, facilitate or hinder speech, promote privacy or transparency, isolate or disseminate property, and promote equality or privilege.

• People, Groups, and Roles. This component of a STS has been the focus of traditional stakeholder analyses. A stakeholder is any group or individual which has an essential or vital interest in the situation at hand. Any decision made or design implemented can enhance, maintain, or diminish this interest or stake. So if we consider Frank Saia a decision-maker in the Hughes case, then the Hughes corporation, the U.S. Air Force, the Hughes sub-group that runs environmental tests on integrated circuits, and Hughes customers would all be considered stakeholders.

• Procedures. How does a company deal with dissenting professional opinions manifested by employees?

What kind of due process procedures are in place in your university for contesting what you consider to be unfair grades? How do researchers go about getting the informed consent of those who will be the subjects of their experiments? Procedures set forth ends which embody values and legitimize means which also embody values.

• Laws, statutes, and regulations all form essential parts of STSs. This would include engineering codes as well as the state or professional organizations charged with developing and enforcing them

• The nal category can be formulated in a variety of ways depending on the specic context. Computing systems gather, store, and disseminate information. Hence, this could be labeled data and data storage structure. (Consider using data mining software to collect information and encrypted and isolated les for storing it securely.) In engineering, this might include the information generated as a device is implemented, operates, and is decommissioned. This information, if fed back into rening the technology or improving the design of next generation prototypes, could lead to uncovering and preventing potential accidents. Electrical engineers have elected to rename this category, in the context of power systems, rates and rate structures.

Technological Component

Component Description Examples Frameworks More

Frame-works Technological Hardware:

Ma-chines of dierent kinds

Door (with tasks delegated to it such as automati-cally shutting and being locked)

Value Discovery (identifying and locating values in STS)

Social

Constructionism>: Restoring inter-pretive exibility to reconstruct a technology to remove bias and realize value continued on next page

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154 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS Table 5.1: Technological component of STS

Table 2: Ethical and Social Component

Component Description Examples Frameworks More

Frame-works

155

Table 5.2: Ethical Environments of the socio-technical system

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156 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS Physical Surroundings

Physical

Sur-roundings Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks

Physical

Table 5.3: This table summarizes the physical environment of the STS and how it can constrain or enable action.

People, Groups, and Roles (Stakeholders)

Stakeholders Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks

Any group or

157

Table 5.4: This table shows the social or stakeholder environment of the STS. A stakeholder is any group or individual that has a vital interest at play in the STS.

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158 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS Procedural Environment

Procedural Description Examples Framework Framework

A series of

Legal Environment: Laws, Statutes, Regulations Laws, Statutes,

Regulations Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks

Laws dier from ob-jective of a tort is to make the

159

Envi-ronment Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks

Business takes

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160 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS

(5,1) (5,2) (5,3) (5,4) Ghoshal: bad

management

Information Environment: Collecting, Storing, and Transferring Information

161 Information

En-vironment(1,1) Description(1,2) Examples(1,3) Frameworks(1,4) Frameworks(1,5)

(2,1) How data and

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162 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS

(4,1) (4,2) Conditions of

Informed Con-sent Information, Comprehen-sion, Voluntari-ness.(4,3)

(c) Identify context-relative norms that guide activities within context and be-tween one context and another. (Ma-terials on privacy in context are taken from Helen Nissembaum in her book, Privacy in Context(4,4)

Fair Informa-tion Practices:

(a) Notice: full disclusure and redress (way to resolve prob-lems); (b) Choice:

Choice about how informaitn is to be used; (c) Access:

access to stored and about to be disclosed informa-tion; (d) Security:

ways that informa-tion will be kept secure and unau-thorized access prevented incol-lection, storage, and transfer of information.(4,5) Table 5.8

163 System of the Natural Environment

Natural

Envi-ronment(1,1) Description(1,2) Examples(1,3) Frameworks(1,4) Frameworks(1,5)

(2,1) Wicked

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164 CHAPTER 5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS Table 5.9

5.1.4

Ethics of STS Research

• Right of Free and Informed Consent: This is the right of participants in a research project to know the harms and benets of the research. It also includes the right not to be forced to participate in a project but, instead, oer or withdraw voluntarily their consent to participate. When preparing a STS analysis, it is mandatory to take active measures to facilitate participants's free and informed consent.

• Any STS analysis must take active measures to recognize potential harms and minimize or eliminate them. This is especially the case regarding the information that may be collected about dierent individuals. Special provisions must be taken to maintain condentiality in collecting, storing, and using sensitive information. This includes careful disposal of information after it is no longer needed.