'Soft' Questions in a 'Hard' Industry? : Sociotechnical Problems of the Mining Industry

Sammanfattning: The workplaces of mining industry fail to attract the skills and competences that the industry needs for maintaining its production and, in particular, tackling its future challenges. Some of the challenges that face the mining industry are technical and call for technical solutions: deeper and poorer ore deposits, greater environmental requirements, and lower ore prices, for example. Other challenges are social: the mining industry must secure its social licence to operate and, in particular, its current workforce is ageing at the same time as younger generations seem uninterested in employment in the industry. Yet, these technical and social—“hard” and “soft”— challenges relate in such a way that attempting to solve one question will depend on and be influenced by how other challenges are solved. This thesis argues that most of these challenges have a connection to the workplaces of the mining industry, such that the industry’s ability to provide attractive workplaces will significantly influence how it can overcome its other challenges—meaning, most challenges have social components and require social (soft) interventions as well as technical (hard) interventions. However, the mining industry approaches most of its challenges from a technical perspective and seeks to solve its problems with the help of technology; the workplaces of the mining industry do not have to be unattractive, but to make them attractive requires that the mining industry changes its approach to this question, so that the industry comes to treat the question as one of a sociotechnical process in which “hard” and “soft” issues are given equal attention. The purpose of this thesis is to outline such a process. The thesis seeks to develop an understanding of the interplay of social and technical matters in the mining industry and, through this, how workplaces and technology can be developed so that social and technical systems can come to harmonise.This thesis uses a theoretical framework based in the tradition of sociotechnical design but combines this with insights from social studies of technology, the “travel of ideas” literature and institutional pragmatism. This conceptualisation sees very little division between “hard” and “soft” questions and understands technology to be more than its physical artefacts; technology is the whole of the sociotechnical network that surrounds technology’s development, use and implementation. Technology, in this way, is best understood to be information, meaning that technology’s depiction (technology’s metaphors) has a important influence on final effects of technology. In extension, much can be understood about technology and its purposes (e.g., to improve the work environment) by treating technology as ideas and focusing how these ideas travel between different contexts. Such an analysis identifies the perspectives of individuals or actors, and how these perspectives differ, as important components in creating attractive workplaces in the mining industry. The empirical basis for this thesis comes from several projects conducted within and with the mining industry between 2014 and 2020. These projects have included investigations into how the mining industry has worked with safety, as well as the evaluation of work environment effects of new technology, and the providing recommendations for the development of new technology. These projects have entailed the use several different methods: interviews (including workshops) with technology developers, operators, work environment managers, and so on; document studies; and participant observations. The results of this thesis exemplify how technology and the design of workplaces in the mining industry can be conceptualised in the manner suggested by the theoretical framework, highlighting, for example, the constant presence of an interplay between technology and social matters, and how instrumental-rationalistic and institutional logic are present in both cases. The results also show that the way different actors understand technology has an important effect on workplace effects and whether these workplaces emerge as attractive or not. Thus, for technology to be able to address the lacking attractiveness of the mining industry’s workplaces—and in extension, for the mining industry to address its future challenges—requires technology to be developed and implemented using open, transparent, and participatory processes. This thesis contributes an understanding that harmonisation between technical and social systems (as understood in sociotechnical theory) depends on how different actors within these systems view technology, and that systems fail to harmonise when these views do not match. The thesis suggests, in this, that these views go beyond technical function and properties to include norms and values. Tackling the challenges of the mining industry requires rethinking and further developing participatory design and decision-making processes. There will be no one-fit-all solutions nor will single interventions be enough to address the mining industry’s challenges. Instead, the processes surrounding the development and implementation of technology need to further consider individual needs and desires, technical and otherwise; creating attractive workplaces in the mining industry is a humanistic and democratic undertaking.