Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Work system has
been used loosely in many areas. This article concerns its use in
understanding IT-reliant systems in organizations. A notable use of the
term occurred in 1977 in the first volume of MIS Quarterly in two
articles by Bostrom and Heinen (1977). Later Sumner and Ryan (1994) used
it to explain problems in the adoption of CASE (computer-aided software
engineering). A number of socio-technical systems researchers such as
Trist and Mumford also used the term occasionally, but seemed not to
define it in detail. In contrast, the work system approach defines work
system carefully and uses it as a basic analytical concept.
