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Hollnagel’s test: being ‘in control’ of highly interdependent multi-layered networked systems

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Abstract

Advances in technologies for networking, sensing, and automation have resulted in multi-layered networked systems that extend information gathering, interactions across roles, and the potential for control over wider ranges. But these systems also represent a scale shift in complexity in terms of the density of interdependencies across processes and activities. In the new systems, coupling has run amok introducing new challenges about how to control processes when they are part of such highly interdependent webs. Based on the joint cognitive systems perspective, Hollnagel examines, or tests, technology changes by asking two key questions: what does it mean to be in control and how can control be amplified? Hollnagel has shown that the answers to these questions are not inherent in technology itself but rather point to emergent system properties that can and should be supported to produce success and avoid failures. This paper applies Hollnagel’s test to the reverberations of technology change that are producing multi-layered networked systems. The paper shows how being ‘in control’ of multi-layered networked systems requires the ability to navigate interdependencies and shows how ‘amplifying control’ then consists of tools that help reveal/track relevant interdependencies and help anticipate how projected actions will propagate (resonate) across interdependencies relative to goals. The end result is that a shift is underway from supervisory control to polycentric control architectures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, Ohio State University, 290 Baker Systems Engineering, 1971 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    David D. Woods

  2. Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, Ohio State University, 372 Baker Systems Engineering, 1971 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Matthieu Branlat

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  1. David D. Woods
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  2. Matthieu Branlat
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Correspondence to David D. Woods.

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Woods, D.D., Branlat, M. Hollnagel’s test: being ‘in control’ of highly interdependent multi-layered networked systems. Cogn Tech Work 12, 95–101 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-010-0144-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-010-0144-5

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