A comparison between New Ways of Working and Sociotechnical Systems

Copyright © 2017 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. For various reasons many organisations are currently introducing the new ways of working (NWW). By now, this occurs on such a large scale, that it becomes relevant to investigate whether the new way of working leads to the best way of working: are the measurements taken by NWW really resulting in pursued outcomes? NWW claims to make working more effective, efficient but also more enjoyable for the organisation as well as the employee (Bijl, 2007). In practice, it seems that more pragmatically reasons lead to changes in the way of working. In many cases this concerns the elimination of fixed workplaces, combined with the possibility to work from home or elsewhere, facilitation of working with new ICT, and establishing an organisational culture which aims at employee autonomy and goal attainment. To answer the question whether the NWW approach offers sufficient tools to provide effective solutions for occurring objectives, we compare NWW with a scientifically established construct regarding work design: Sociotechnical systems (STS) (Kuipers et al., 2010). We chose STS not only because it is a comprehensive approach to work design (all aspects of managing and organising are addressed), but also because the ambition is similar to NWW. STS considers, next to the 'quality of the organisation' (which is central to most work design approaches), also the 'quality of work' and 'quality of employment relationships' as outcome criteria. With incorporating the latter two, STS distinguishes itself from many other work design approaches and fits to the philosophy of NWW as mentioned above. Important foundations for the NWW approach are the quality of work as well as the willingness to organise teamwork. The comparison of NWW and STS reveals as most important finding that the NWW approach misses a coherent theoretical foundation for the design of organisations. NWW focuses on loose aspects of organisations, like workspace, work design, management, organisational culture and competences. This is also evident in the scientific research focused on NWW: many studies examine the impact of a specific measure (e.g. introduction of flexible workspaces) on specific aspects of the organisation (e.g. social cohesion). Due to the lack of a work design approach no framework exists to test whether the introduction of NWW fits to the organisation and how work is organised and divided. It is our statement that NWW can only be effective once a good theoretical foundation is provided for NWW and once a clear work design approach is deducted. Simultaneously, the NWW practices provide so many relevant practical experiences on skills and information underlining the potential of STS. Currently, STS mostly is focused on work in industrial organisations. STS and NWW have the potential to mutually extend each other, while tools may be developed with which new ways of working lead to the best way of working for organisations.edition: 1ststatus: publishe