Before the Internet: The Relevance of Socio-Technical Systems Theory to Emerging Forms of Virtual Organisation

The widespread adoption of the internet means that, for many people, the computer is now a major means of communication with other people far and wide. As a result many forms of human organisation have an increasingly virtual character; the people who co-operate in the organisational endeavour are not necessarily in face-to-face contact. These developments can be classed as new forms of socio-technical systems in which emergent and virtual social systems are dependent upon and mediated by the internet and all the technical applications it has spawned.

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