Abstract
Based on empirical research within the aviation industry we have come to some surprising and sometimes counterintuitive conclusions concerning aircraft maintenance that are relevant for the discussion of social theory and its application towards the explanation and management of socio-technical systems. In this article, the human role in the activity of aircraft maintenance is taken as an example to illustrate the need for critical discussions on social theory in order to better understand safety in socio-technical systems This challenges us to consider the theoretical basis related to how we currently approach the human factor in management of such systems. We propose in the article that Roy Bhaskars' book “The possibility of naturalism—a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences (1979)” delivers a compelling social theory from which follows a social ontology of the objects of socio-technical systems that is a necessary precursor to developing applied models and empirical accounts of socio-technical systems.
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This article is based on findings conceived in the ADAMS, AMPOS, AITRAM and ADAMS-2 research projects, information available at http://www.tcd.ie/Psychology/aprg/home.htm, conducted by the Aerospace Psychology Research Group at Trinity College, Dublin (McDonald 1999; 2001; McDonald et al. 2000) and a field study of a Norwegian aircraft line maintenance department (Pettersen 2006; Pettersen 2008; Pettersen and Aase 2008).
There is also the expectation that this institutional and organisational stability can be adjusted, or if necessary transformed, for example in response to serious failure in a way which transparently reduces the risk of such failure in the future. However, the issue of leverage over the systems cannot be fundamentally addressed before stability/reproduction is sufficiently understood. This article will subsequently focus on the latter. A more thorough account of implications for leverage and management is prepared in an additional publication.
We understand social ontology as theoretical accounts of social reality describing the object(-s) of social science.
Bhaskar’s level of explanation is that of society. For the purpose of this article we have scaled down the level of explanation to that of socio-technical systems (i.e. organisations or systems of organisations). This is in essence a conceptual move and does not dramatically change the causal crux we need to explain from Bhaskar’s societal level of explanation.
Reductionism understood as a scientific program causally explaining the social system as a mere product of its parts (i.e. individual humans).
Systematic informal practices are nothing new, even in relation to safety and reliability outcome. Trist and Bamforth (1951) first introduced the relationship between social factors on the workplace, actions and technical outcome. Informal practice is perhaps one of the most pervasive themes of organisational and social psychology since Elton Mayo and the Human Relations School.
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Pettersen, K.A., McDonald, N. & Engen, O.A. Rethinking the role of social theory in socio-technical analysis: a critical realist approach to aircraft maintenance. Cogn Tech Work 12, 181–191 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-009-0133-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-009-0133-8