british rail case study analysis

1. CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
Introduction
In 1971 British Rail (BR) chosen to contribute £13 million (1971 costs) in another in a new
computer system to improve the performance of its freight operations
Having considered an assortment of alternatives, including the likelihood of creating a
framework 'in-house', BR chosen to buy programming BR decided to purchase software
already developed and proven in railway freight operations in North America. The system in
question was known as ‘TOPS’
Issues
Information on the disposition of freight resources and the operating
situation was reported through a hierarchical structure, consisting of supervisors in local
marshalling yards, who reported to divisional control rooms who in turn reported to regional
control rooms.
The economic circumstances of the freight business meant that a solution to the problem of
supervising freight operations had to be found if rail freight was to remain competitive and
inbusiness.
The decision to computerize the control off Freight operations involved considerable
uncertainty and risk. There was no guarantee that
the system would arrest the decline of the freight business and every possibility that the
implementation of the system would run into
difficulties, with the risk of delays and the escalation of the costs of the project.
There was the question of how the introduction of the new
technology should be managed. Should traditional practice be followed, where each specialist
department was allocated responsibility for the
aspects of the project that concerned them (e.g. computing to Management Services,
retraining to Personnel etc.) and each BR Region
was given the responsibility for the management of change in its own local areas – or –
should a new approach be tried
The Two theory which can be associated with case are
Socio -Technical Systems –
Based on this analysis we propose a new pragmatic framework for socio-technical systems
engineering (STSE) which builds on the (largely independent) research of groups
investigating work design, information systems, computer-supported cooperative work, and
cognitive systems engineering. STSE bridges the traditional gap between organisational
change and system development using two main types of activity: sensitisation and
awareness; and constructive engagement.

2. From the framework, we identify an initial set of interdisciplinary research problems that
address how to apply socio-technical approaches in a cost-effective way, and how to
facilitate the integration of STSE with existing systems and software engineering
approaches.
Organisational development(OD),itiscommonly knowntobe the practice of changingpeople and
organisationsforpositivegrowth.
Benefits
OD helps all types of organisations by:
 empowering leaders and individual employees
 creating a culture of continuous improvement and alignment around shared goals
 making change easier and faster
 putting the minds of all employees to work
 enhancing the quality and speed of decisions
 making conflict constructive instead of destructive
 giving leaders more control over results, by giving employees more control over how
they do their jobs.