Organization is certainly a form of social cooperation, but one might suspect that it is nevertheless a close relative of technology. We talk about organizational technology. We leave much of what used to be accomplished in the form of social interaction to computers. They can do it just as well, if not better. Classical sociology of organization also seems to have had this parallel in mind when it described organization as an apparatus of domination or even as a machine that performs designated tasks. The analogy is based on the assumption that organizations can repeat the same work processes reasonably reliably, and that if something does not work, the fault can be sought and found.
Max Weber as well as the efforts for a "Tayloristic" organization of work had worked with such ideas and from there it suggested to look for a general theory of organization. A political ruler could rely on an administrative staff and program it via rule input in such a way that the management is relieved of the decision of individual cases and yet can be sure that occurring cases will be decided according to the rules in the same sense. A Tayloristic work organization sets itself the task of decomposing the work processes in such a way that the best combination of the partial steps can be calculated. Both forms of organization can be inserted into the framework of a purpose/means scheme and thus ensure that the purposes are achieved reliably and with calculable costs. If this does not happen, the machine has to be repaired or parts have to be replaced functionally equivalent.
Based on its own empirical research, however, organizational sociology has moved away from these ideas step by step, without completely abandoning them at the level of management theories. A first step was taken by the theory of "sociotechnical systems".
It had developed parallel to interests in "informal organization" and "human relations," and its goal had been to identify connections between technology, work organization, and social relations in the workplace in order to gain scientific foundations for efforts to "democratize" and "humanize" the world of work. The progress compared to older studies on technology-determined work processes lay in the separation and linking of different system areas, i.e. in a difference-oriented systematization. The interrelationships between technology and organization did not permit the introduction of one without consideration of the other. Implicit in this was the assumption that there would not be frequent and rapid changes in technology.
Further development seems to be more interested again in problems of managing technological innovations and their implementation in a functioning work organization. This may be stimulated by the technological developments themselves (e.g. computer technology, jet propulsion of airplanes), further by other requirements of the market (e.g. more differentiated products with small quantities in each case or even individual production according to order), but also by the resistance experiences that had to be made during attempts of implementation. The research interest thus shifts from systematic correlations to perspectives for change planning. Once again, it becomes clear that technical innovations cannot be understood as the application of scientific knowledge available to everyone, but that to a considerable extent "tacit", company-specific, if not product-specific knowledge plays a role, emerging when it is needed. At the level of buzzwords, instead of "humanization of work," one now finds "socially acceptable technology design." "Socially acceptable" here seems to amount primarily to decentralization and user participation in the planning, introduction and ongoing modification of the system.