MGT 501
Module 1 Case Analysis: The Socio-Technical Approach

Today’s corporations have experienced many organizational changes that affect how managers allocate their time. The balance of time spent between managing people and managing production is critical for a company to be successful. Along with this balance, one must include how technology affects the corporation’s success. One way to look at how the organization within a company is designed is by way of the socio-technical system (STS). The components of a STS include the people who work within the organization—the social subsystem, and the required technology to produce work—the technical subsystem. These two subsystems must be jointly optimized for an organization to function at its peak performance. In this paper, I will be examining a case study by Dr. George Callaghan entitled “Socio-Technical Systems and Call Centers: A Case Study Investigation.” (Callaghan, 2001) I will describe how the “socio” part of the STS causes the Telebank Call Center to be something other than a perfectly smoothly functioning machine. In doing this, I will break down the “socio” and technical aspects of the call center along with the kind of control the management has on each and the effects this control has. Finally, I will explore how the interaction between the two components of the STS affects the management of this call center. The working environment at Telebank is essentially a flat organizational structure with three basic categories; customer service representative (CSR), team leader, and call center manager (Callaghan, 2001). This organization can easily be described as a machine due to way it operates in a very mechanistic-like manner. Telebank is very centralized and structured, and the tasks performed are monotonous and predictable. There are very strict rules