Technological Systems (technological + system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Tyranny of Diagnosis: Specific Entities and Individual Experience

THE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002
Charles E. Rosenberg
Diagnosis has always played a pivotal role in medical practice, but in the past two centuries, that role has been reconfigured and has become more central as medicine,like Western society in general,has become increasingly technical, specialized, and bureaucratized. Disease explanations and clinical practices have incorporated, paralleled, and, in some measure, constituted these larger structural changes. This modern history of diagnosis is inextricably related to disease specificity, to the notion that diseases can and should be thought of as entities existing outside the unique manifestations of illness in particular men and women. During the past century especially, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment have been linked ever more tightly to specific, agreed-upon disease categories, in both concept and everyday practice. In fact, this essay might have been entitled "Diagnosis Mediates an Invisible Revolution: The Social and Intellectual Significance of Specific Disease Concepts." It would have been even more precise, if rather less arresting. The articulation and acceptance of specific disease entities constitute one of the most important intellectual and cultural events of the past two centuries. This notion is central to how we organize health care delivery, think about ourselves, debate and formulate social policy, and define and manage deviance. Diagnosis is indispensable to linking specific disease concepts with doctor and patient and the social and economic institutions shaping such clinical interactions. Disease is a social entity, not an array of ideal types. The history of medicine is partly the story of how disease entities have become social entities, accumulating the flesh of diagnostic and therapeutic practice, social expectation, and bureaucratic reification. Despite criticism of reductionist medicine in the West and less focus on disease entities and mechanisms, our social response still depends on this concept of sickness. But this concept can no longer remain invisible if we are to understand contemporary medicine as both a social and a technological system. The articulation and acceptance of specific disease entities constitute one of the most important intellectual and cultural events of the past two centuries. This notion is central to how we organize health care delivery, think about ourselves, debate and formulate social policy, and define and manage deviance. Diagnosis is indispensable to linking specific disease concepts with doctor and patient and the social and economic institutions shaping such clinical interactions. Disease is a social entity, not an array of ideal types. The history of medicine is partly the story of how disease entities have become social entities, accumulating the flesh of diagnostic and therapeutic practice, social expectation, and bureaucratic reification. Despite criticism of reductionist medicine in the West and less focus on disease entities and mechanisms, our social response still depends on this concept of sickness. But this concept can no longer remain invisible if we are to understand contemporary medicine as both a social and a technological system. The articulation and acceptance of specific disease entities constitute one of the most important intellectual and cultural events of the past two centuries. This notion is central to how we organize health care delivery, think about ourselves, debate and formulate social policy, and define and manage deviance. Diagnosis is indispensable to linking specific disease concepts with doctor and patient and the social and economic institutions shaping such clinical interactions. Disease is a social entity, not an array of ideal types. The history of medicine is partly the story of how disease entities have become social entities, accumulating the flesh of diagnostic and therapeutic practice, social expectation, and bureaucratic reification. Despite criticism of reductionist medicine in the West and less focus on disease entities and mechanisms, our social response still depends on this concept of sickness. But this concept can no longer remain invisible if we are to understand contemporary medicine as both a social and a technological system. The articulation and acceptance of specific disease entities constitute one of the most important intellectual and cultural events of the past two centuries. This notion is central to how we organize health care delivery, think about ourselves, debate and formulate social policy, and define and manage deviance. Diagnosis is indispensable to linking specific disease concepts with doctor and patient and the social and economic institutions shaping such clinical interactions. Disease is a social entity, not an array of ideal types. The history of medicine is partly the story of how disease entities have become social entities, accumulating the flesh of diagnostic and therapeutic practice, social expectation, and bureaucratic reification. Despite criticism of reductionist medicine in the West and less focus on disease entities and mechanisms, our social response still depends on this concept of sickness. But this concept can no longer remain invisible if we are to understand contemporary medicine as both a social and a technological system. [source]


Political ergonomics, macroergonomic battles

HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 5 2008
Leszek Pacholski
Humanocentric-oriented social and technological systems have to be perceived as the main source of technological advancement. This source it so attractive that from the point of view of acquisition possibilities it captures the attention of not only business people but also political incumbents who (according to Buchanan's theory) want to satisfy their particular interests. A characteristic feature of social and technological systems is their competitive market position. Taking over these systems by political lobbies with the legitimate usage of intended violence is an example of a contemporary macroergonomic battle. Both of Clausewitz's objectives of war are present: a political objective that is forcing the community that makes up the system to fulfill the politically determined will of the party taking over, and a military objective consisting of an attempt of the moral, social, or even physical destruction of the system leader and its direct coworkers. This article presents a specific example: a case study of a macroergonomic battle fought with a big industrial enterprise. This study serves as a starting point for general methodological premises pertaining to an effective strategy of fighting a macroergonomic battle. The essence of this strategy is learning three so-called exogenic levers of occasional acquisition. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Errors in technological systems

HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 4 2003
R.B. Duffey
Massive data and experience exist on the rates and causes of errors and accidents in modern industrial and technological society. We have examined the available human record, and have shown the existence of learning curves, and that there is an attainable and discernible minimum or asymptotic lower bound for error rates. The major common contributor is human error, including in the operation, design, manufacturing, procedures, training, maintenance, management, and safety methodologies adopted for technological systems. To analyze error and accident rates in many diverse industries and activities, we used a combined empirical and theoretical approach. We examine the national and international reported error, incident and fatal accident rates for multiple modern technologies, including shipping losses, industrial injuries, automobile fatalities, aircraft events and fatal crashes, chemical industry accidents, train derailments and accidents, medical errors, nuclear events, and mining accidents. We selected national and worldwide data sets for time spans of up to ,200 years, covering many millions of errors in diverse technologies. We developed and adopted a new approach using the accumulated experience; thus, we show that all the data follow universal learning curves. The vast amounts of data collected and analyzed exhibit trends consistent with the existence of a minimum error rate, and follow failure rate theory. There are potential and key practical impacts for the management of technological systems, the regulatory practices for complex technological processes, the assignment of liability and blame, the assessment of risk, and for the reporting and prediction of errors and accident rates. The results are of fundamental importance to society as we adopt, manage, and use modern technology. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 13: 279,291, 2003. [source]


Organizational meta-scripts as a source of high reliability: the case of an army armored brigade

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Issue 7 2003
Dov Zohar
Many high-reliability organizations must deal with the problem of requisite cognitive variety in operators of interactively complex technological systems. The present study describes an organizational script strategy dealing with this problem, based on development of shared meta-scripts sustained by continuous learning. Analysis of mission briefing and debriefing protocols in an armored brigade indicated that most task-related interactions were based on script language (i.e., verbs and action phrases signifying particular meta-scripts and relevant contingencies). These protocols suggest that script-trained operators construe complex missions as interchangeable combinations of 15 meta-scripts, reducing cognitive demands or requisite variety to manageable proportions. An ongoing learning process, maintained via repeated script-based feedback during debriefings, further reduces cognitive demands by increasing available variety in operators. Implications for performance reliability in ordinary organizations are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Crisis planning: Survey results from Hurricane Katrina and implications for performance improvement professionals

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 3-4 2008
Holly M. Hutchins
Modern organizations constantly face unparalleled changes and uncertainty in the competitive world, thus requiring strategic planning to mitigate crisis conditions. Underscoring crisis plans are performance interventions that prepare employees, technological systems, and the organizational culture to effectively respond to a crisis event. However, crisis planning has been an overlooked area in the performance improvement literature. In the present study, we review results of a survey on crisis planning conducted by the research team seven months after Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, performance improvement professionals (n=129) employed by organizations located along the western Gulf Coast were surveyed on the existence and composition of their organization's crisis planning before and after Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that organizations did increase crisis planning during the post-Katrina period, and that crisis plans consisted of components and activities supported in the literature. We use these results to identify and discuss how performance improvement professionals might leverage their knowledge of human performance technology (HPT) in supporting organizational crisis planning efforts. [source]


Science, Ethics, and the "Problems" of Governing Nanotechnologies

THE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 4 2009
Linda F. Hogle
Commentators continue to weigh in on whether there are ethical, social, and policy issues unique to nanotechnology, whether new regulatory schemes should be devised, and if so, how. Many of these commentaries fail to take into account the historical and political environment for nanotechnologies. That context affects regulatory and oversight systems as much as any new metrics to measure the effects of nanoscale materials, or organizational changes put in place to facilitate data analysis. What comes to count as a technical or social "problem" says much about the sociotechnical and political-historical networks in which technologies exist. This symposium's case studies provide insight into procedural successes and failures in the regulation of novel products, and ethical or social analyses that have attended to implications of novel, disruptive technologies. Yet what may be needed is a more fundamental consideration of forms of governance that may not just handle individual products or product types more effectively, but may also be flexible enough to respond to radically new technological systems. Nanotechnology presents an opportunity to think in transdisciplinary terms about both scientific and social concerns, rethink "knowns" about risk and how best to ameliorate or manage it, and consider how to incorporate ethical, social, and legal analyses in the conceptualization, planning, and execution of innovations. [source]