From STS Roundtable

STS/RT: Where STS theorists and practitioners come together as a professional learning community

We are a global (not-for-profit) network of business leaders, researchers, trade unionists, academics, managers, consultants, and students who share the values, principles and practices of socio-technical systems theory and a common interest in developing more humane and effective organizations.

Mission - Purpose

The purpose of the Roundtable is to provide an open environment in which to share research, knowledge, and practice to support community learning. The members of this professional learning community continually devote time and energy to advance the connections between the principles of democracy and the social and economic objectives of organizations.

The opportunities and challenges we face across the globe include:

• diminishing conditions of employment;
• rapid growth of multi-enterprise organizations;
• creation of bureaucratic and fractionated workplaces in the developing world;
• the dilemmas posed by wide and varied cultural differences in and among organizations;
• the need for long-term sustainability in the ways workplaces use their physical and human resources;
• the speed of change in information and communications technology and its impact on work; and
• the requirement for more responsive and responsible corporate governance.

In response to these demands, the members of the STS Roundtable are committed to:

• creating and maintaining high quality working lives in workplaces everywhere;
• developing productive workplaces that treat all resources as irreplaceable;
• providing innovative solutions to enterprise problems through action research;
• sharing knowledge and fostering learning with client organizations and each other;
• supporting each other and maintaining a spirit of community among Roundtable members across the globe.

Values

Since the 1980's, the STS Roundtable has been an open professional learning community advancing the values, theory and practice that create healthy and powerful work systems that are demonstrably capable and responsible … better places to work and places that work better.

The values of this community are participative democracy, human dignity and social justice.