Independence of social and technical skills and social movement politics and organization

Interdependence of social and technical skills

Social-technical skills in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that mainly focuses on recognizing the interaction between people and technology in the workplaces. This term also refers to the basic interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human’s behavior as a whole. Talking about this sense, the society itself, and most of its other substructures, are complex social-technical systems. The term social-technical systems were developed by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth, and Fred Emery, during the World War II era, based on their work with workers who were working in the English coal mines at the Tavistock Institute in London.

Social-technical skills describe the theory about the social aspects of people who are living in the particular society and society and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes. The technical does not explain the material technology. The focus is on procedures and related knowledge, which it refers to the ancient Greek term logos. The "Technical" is a term used to refer to structure and a broader sense of technicalities.The social-technical focuses on explaining on to the relationship between the social and technical aspects of an organization or the society as a whole. The social-technical theory is mainly about the optimization jointly, with a shared emphasis on achievement of both excellence in technical performance and quality where the people's work are mainly focused on. This sociotechnical theory is similar from social-technical skills, which describes a number of different ways of achieving joint optimization. These terms are usually based on designing different kinds of organization in which the relationships between socio and technical elements focuses on the emergence of productivity and wellbeing of the organizations. A sociotechnical skill is a term usually given to the socio and technical elements engaged in the goal-directed behavior. The social-technical systems are particular expression of socio-technical theory, despite the fact that they are not necessarily one and the same thing.The social-technical theory is also a mixture of sociotechnical theory, joint optimization and so forth and other general systems theory. The term social-technical describes that organizations have boundaries and that transactions occur within the system and also within its sub-systems and between the wider context and dynamics of the environment. A sociotechnical skill is focused on often describing a thing which is interlinked, systems based mixture of people, technology, and their environment.

Following are the facts about the social and technical skills

1. There are people who are working together with one another to produce a product or services.
2. These people are mainly focused on meeting or exceeding customers requirements in general.
3. People having social-technical skills have a clear understanding of their mission, roles, measures and operating guidelines of an organization.
4. These people demonstrate a high level of trust skills that is mainly providing the outcome of an effective communication, team meetings and handling of differences.
5. They also seek continuous improvement in the organization by monitoring their performance, setting goals, analyzing their processes and identifying and solving problem on a regular basis.
6. They are focused on planning, controlling, coordinating and improving their work.

Social movement politics and organization

In general, social movements are described as dynamic and dramatic mobilizations oriented towards such objectives as challenging the state to recognize group rights, seeking public goods to improve the quality of life focusing the middle class, or helping in the progressive social change. Hence, close to three decades of sociological research on social movements shows that there are many ways that movement politics are structured in organizational level at the local, national, and in the transnational or global level. Social movements can be defined as any of the types of group action.The social movements are large, sometimes informal and also the groupings of individuals or organizations which focus on specific political or social issues. They can also be defined as the factors which carry out, resist, or undo a social change.

The modern western social movements became possible through the increment in the level of education and increased mobility of labor due to the industrialization and urbanization of 19th-century societies. It is also sometimes not free from the arguments that the freedom of expression, education and relative economic independence prevalent in the modern western culture are responsible for the unprecedented number and scope of various contemporary social movements. Despite this fact, others point out that many of the social movements of the last hundred years grew up, like the Mau Mauin Kenya, to oppose western colonialism. Similarly, such type of the social movements has been continued to be closely connected with democratic political systems of a country.These social movements have also been involved in democratizing nations, but more often they have flourished after democratization. Over the few past 200 years, they have become part of popular as well as the global expression of dissent.

Modern movements are focused on utilizing technology and the internet to mobilize people globally. The use of the social media is to facilitate civic engagement and collective action. The political science and sociology have developed immensely with the increase of theories and empirical research on social movements. Let's take an example, there are some of the researches in the political science highlighting the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics.We cannot find any single consensus definition of a social movement.Mario Diani argues that nearly all definitions share three criteria: "a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in a political or cultural conflict, on the basis of a shared collective identity."

Sociologist Charles Tilly defines these social movements as a series of various performances, which displays campaigns by which ordinary people make collective claims on others. For Tilly, these social movements are a major vehicle for ordinary people's participation in public politics as well as culture.He also argues in a point that there are three major elements to a social movement. Sidney Tarrow defines a social movement as "collective challenges [to elites, authorities, other groups or cultural codes] by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents, and authorities." He is more likely on distinguishing between the social movements from political parties and advocacy groups.

References

Aberle, David F. 1966. The Peyote Religion among the Navaho. Chicago: Aldine.

Theories of political protest and social movements: A multidisciplinary introduction, critique, and synthesis. Routledge.

1966. The Peyote Religion among the Navaho. Chicago: Aldine.

Masses, Crowds, Communities, Movements. Collective Formations in the Digital Age. Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies 2014-02