Sociotechnical Resilience: A Preliminary Concept

Abstract

This article presents the concept of sociotechnical resilience by employing an interdisciplinary perspective derived from the fields of science and technology studies, human factors, safety science, organizational studies, and systems engineering. Highlighting the hybrid nature of sociotechnical systems, we identify three main constituents that characterize sociotechnical resilience: informational relations, sociomaterial structures, and anticipatory practices. Further, we frame sociotechnical resilience as undergirded by the notion of transformability with an emphasis on intentional activities, focusing on the ability of sociotechnical systems to shift from one form to another in the aftermath of shock and disturbance. We propose that the triad of relations, structures, and practices are fundamental aspects required to comprehend the resilience of sociotechnical systems during times of crisis.

Interdependent Infrastructure as Linked Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems (SETSs) to Address Lock‐in and Enhance Resilience

“…Several authors have considered social‐technical and social‐ecological perspectives on resilience and infrastructure systems. Examples of social‐technical perspectives include Swilling et al (), Bolton and Foxon (), Walker (), Eisenberg et al (), and Amir and Kant (). Examples of social‐ecological perspectives include Berkes and Folke (), Walker et al (), Edwards (), Anderies et al (), Walker et al (), Folke et al (), Folke (), Walker et al (), Ostrom (), Fischer et al (), Muneepeerakul and Anderies (), Bene and Doyen (), Garrick et al (), and Walker et al ().…”

“…Several authors have considered social-technical and social-ecological perspectives on resilience and infrastructure systems. Examples of social-technical perspectives include Swilling et al (2013), Bolton and Foxon (2015), Walker (2015), Eisenberg et al (2017), and Amir and Kant (2018). Earth's Future thresholds, uncertainty, and surprise with respect to resilience (Berkes & Folke, 1998;Folke, 2006;Walker et al, 2006).…”

Disaster-Related Resilience as Ability and Process: A Concept Guiding the Analysis of Response Behavior before, during and after Extreme Events

“…However, by observing the nature of the ongoing resilience discourse it is expected that this proposal would also trigger discussions. Such discussion will be in line with current approaches seeking to conceptually deepen the understanding of resilience by introducing more nuanced conceptual structure [33], [34]. But it will also help approaches trying to measure or apply resilience by clarifying the oftentimes overlapping usages of similar terms such as resilience and degree of loss [35].…”

Modelling Multilevel Interdependencies for Resilience in Complex Organisation

“…To have a clear explanation, we first need to have a basic understanding of what constitutes resilience and what renders organisation to be resilient. Up to date, the concept of resilience has been applied in a wide variety of academic fields, including among others, ecology [51][52][53], sociology [54], psychology [55], supply chain management [56], strategic management [57], disaster mitigation [58,59], sociotechnical resilience [60,61], resilience engineering [62,63], organisational reliability [29,64,65], and resilience management [66][67][68]. In the following lines, we describe the concept of resilience with a primary reference to resilience engineering and management studies, which constitute the most relevant ground for this paper.…”