Records management - social systems, technical systems and failure to adapt

Socio-technical systems theory emphasises the interdependence between people and technology in their environment.

The core idea is important for records management (and has seen some research attention in recent years).

For the last five hundred years, records management has been a technical discipline practiced in an expert social system.

So we have five hundred years of understanding the technicalities of managing records.

The technical system really hasn't changed, we are still trying to do the same things, with largely the same things.

What has changed dramatically though, is the social system of records management.

Records management used to exist in a relatively closed social system.

It was the social system of records managers, managing the records.

It had an interface point to the other social system.

The social system of the business making and using the records while they were active.

Over the last twenty years, those social systems have come together.

And the technical processes have somewhat come together.

A couple of conclusions about what this means for us.

First, our practices were designed to deal with a social system of records experts, with technical practices to manage the storage of information that is past its primary usage.

Second, If we take the premise of socio-technical systems, that social and technical systems are interdependent, we must conclude that the technical system of records management cannot continue to operate the same way when it is in a different socio-technical environment.

Third, the social environment much of the work of records gets done in now, is the system of people creating and storing records so they can get work done, with the primary focus being to support the way work is organised, and to provide to the informational needs of the people doing the work.

Fourth, if we consider these socio-technical systems jointly, we should realise that one (ours) was not designed to manage records in the process of being created for active work processes in which the informational needs of process workers is the primary consideration, and that the other was not designed to manage records with a primary focus on accountability and long term structural stability.

Fifth, if we consider Edgar Schein's definition of culture (pasted in below), we should realise that the two practice patterns and social systems evolved to solve totally different problems of integration and adaptation, and we shouldn't be surprised at how spectacularly unsuccessful we have been at getting the socio-technical systems of work production to organise their information around our principles of preservation and accountability.

Sixth, given this lack of success, we should realise the relative strength of the systems we are dealing with, our work has to adapt to support theirs.

That's a lot to digest.

The bottom line, is that records operates on socio-technical principles like any other.

We have technical practices that need to operate in harmony with the social practices of the system that we operate in.

When they don't, the results are predictable.

*Edgar Schein on culture - "Organizational culture is the pattern of basic assumptions which a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration which have worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to percieve, think and feel in relation to those problems."