Editing Sociotechnical system (section)

===Whole tasks===
Another concept in sociotechnical theory is the "whole task".  A whole task "has the advantage of placing responsibility for the ... task squarely on the shoulders of a single, small, face-to-face group which experiences the entire cycle of operations within the compass of its membership."<ref name="Trist & Bamforth 1951"/> The Sociotechnical embodiment of this principle is the notion of minimal critical specification.  This principle states that, "While it may be necessary to be quite precise about what has to be done, it is rarely necessary to be precise about how it is done".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cherns |first1=Albert |title=The Principles of Sociotechnical Design |journal=Human Relations |date=August 1976 |volume=29 |issue=8 |pages=783–792 |doi=10.1177/001872677602900806 |s2cid=145391062 |doi-access=free }}</ref> This is no more illustrated by the antithetical example of "working to rule" and the virtual collapse of any system that is subject to the intentional withdrawal of human adaptation to situations and contexts.

The key factor in minimally critically specifying tasks is the responsible autonomy of the group to decide, based on local conditions, how best to undertake the task in a flexible adaptive manner. This principle is isomorphic with ideas like [[effects-based operations]] (EBO). EBO asks the question of what goal is it that we want to achieve, what objective is it that we need to reach rather than what tasks have to be undertaken, when and how. The EBO concept enables the managers to "...manipulate and decompose high level effects. They must then assign lesser effects as objectives for subordinates to achieve. The intention is that subordinates' actions will cumulatively achieve the overall effects desired".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Storr |first1=Jim |title=A Critique of Effects-Based Thinking |journal=The RUSI Journal |date=December 2005 |volume=150 |issue=6 |pages=32–35 |doi=10.1080/03071840509441981 |s2cid=144906980 }}</ref> In other words, the focus shifts from being a scriptwriter for tasks to instead being a designer of behaviours. In some cases, this can make the task of the manager significantly less arduous.