10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17255
This article aims to deepen our understanding of repair work in sociotechnical systems. It is based on three main bodies of literature, which are specifically attentive to materiality: STS studies on repair, studies of breakdowns and technological change in organisation studies and the sociology of work, and occupation studies in industrial workplaces. The present case study deals with a repair of a material device that is used by managers to repair the shop’s organization and restore their authority in the workplace. However, this attempt to repair the shop jeopardizes the repair of the machine. It reveals that the repair of socio-technical system combine different lines of repair – material and organisational, mundane and transformative – which are for some of them complementary, divergent for others.
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2038-3460
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Cynthia Colmellere
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
sociotechnical systems
Repair in Socio-technical Systems. The Repair of a Machine Breakdown that Turned into the Repair of a Shop
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https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
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Essays
2016-01-29
2023-06-17
2016-01-29
2023-08-03
81-111
TS
Cynthia Colmellere
2015
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17255
81
Paris-Saclay University
2038-3460
2
sociotechnical systems
en
111
Repair in Socio-technical Systems. The Repair of a Machine Breakdown that Turned into the Repair of a Shop
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17255/16119
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                                                                                Essay
Repair in Socio-technical Systems
The Repair of a Machine Breakdown that Turned
into the Repair of a Shop
!
Cynthia Colmellere
Paris-Saclay University
!
        Abstract This article aims to deepen our understanding of repair work in
        sociotechnical systems. It is based on three main bodies of literature, which
        are specifically attentive to materiality: STS studies on repair, studies of
        breakdowns and technological change in organisation studies and the soci-
        ology of work, and occupation studies in industrial workplaces. The present
        case study deals with a repair of a material device that is used by managers
        to repair the shop’s organization and restore their authority in the work-
        place. However, this attempt to repair the shop jeopardizes the repair of
        the machine. It reveals that the repair of socio-technical system combine
        different lines of repair – material and organisational, mundane and trans-
        formative – which are for some of them complementary, divergent for oth-
        ers.

        Keywords: repair; maintenance; organisation; opacity; sociotechnical sys-
        tems.

        Corresponding author: Cynthia Colmellere, Paris-Saclay University, SHS
        Department, Ecole Centrale Supélec, IDHES, ENS Cachan, UMR 8533 –
        Email: cynthia.colmellere@gmail.com.
    !                                                    !

1. Introduction

    Failures and breakdowns in socio-technical systems are moments of
disruption, vital to the understanding of the processes by which these sys-
tems actually work, are maintained, and evolve over time. These events
can be seen as forms of “unblackboxing” (Graham and Thrift 2014, 8),
for at least three reasons. First, even if the failure of a single machine is
identified as the principal cause, unanticipated consequences for the rest
of the system create a “tight coupling” (Perrow 1999) between its ele-
ments. Second, as repair becomes a major concern, this usually invisible

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Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
! (2) pp. 81-111 - ISSN 2038-3460
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82                                                                      Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

work comes to the fore (Star 1999, 385). Third, investigations to identify
the causes of breakdowns reveal patterns of organisation, work practices,
and cultural processes in professional groups such as “normalisation of
deviance” (Vaughan 1996) that lead actors to misperceive, misunderstand
(Vaughan 1999) and ignore crucial elements (Turner 1978). As a conse-
quence, the repair of breakdowns in socio-technical systems concerns
both material and social order and consists in fixing social structures and
practices as well as the defective machine.
    The scope of repair and associated changes can vary. At one end of
the continuum, repair can largely restore the status quo before the break-
down and preserve existing structures of practices and organisation. At
the other end, repair can consist in major organisational restructuration,
reallocation of human and economic resources, and modifications of con-
trol and decision processes, in order to make relationships between ac-
tors, as well as between actors and equipment, more ordered and predict-
able (Turner 1978). In this case, repair can be described as “the process
communities and institutions engage in to sustain their existence, identity,
and boundaries” (Sims and Henke 2012). Breakdowns in socio-technical
systems can be compared to technological change analysed in the sociolo-
gy of work and occupation and organisation studies (see for example Bar-
ley 1990; Orlikowski 2000). According to this perspective, breakdowns
“will engender opportunities for social change to the degree that they
open arenas of negotiation” within organisations (Barley 1988, 51). Their
repair can be described as a process by which “technical constraints, so-
cial power, on-going actions and interpretations mingle to create social
order” (Barley 1988, 52). Negotiations 1 consist in “carefully balanced dis-
cursive, institutional and material change” (Sims and Henke 2012, 326).
However, negotiations can be conflictual for at least two reasons. First,
the technology’s multiple and contradictory implications for the organisa-
tion of work (Chateauraynaud 1991). Second, because, depending on the
social and economic context, some actors may seize on the repair as an
opportunity for more radical change in existing structures and practices
(Sims and Henke 2012). In such cases, conflicts can occur because the
redistribution of resources enhance or degrade the authority and position
of groups in the division of labour.
    In this article, my aim is to deepen our understanding of repair work
in sociotechnical systems. When a major breakdown in a socio-technical
system occurs, how do actors repair material and social practices and
structures? How do they combine and balance these different dimensions
of the repair work? How do they use repairs as opportunities for more
extended changes in the workplace? Depending on the social and materi-
al context, what contradictions are they confronting with?


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
     1
         In his article (1988), Barley named this perspective “interpretive materialism”.
Colmellere                                                                  83
1.1. Presentation of the Case Study

    To explore these questions, I study the repair process of a major
breakdown in the biggest shop (54 employees, 7300 m2, 6 floors) of an
industrial pharmaceutical plant (650 employees). This study is part of a
larger ethnography (2003-2006) (Colmellere 2008). Before being closed in
2009, this shop was in activity seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Started
in 1986, it was dedicated to the production of two intermediate drugs
(beta blockers and anti-inflammatory), over periods lasting four to six
months. Even if extensively automated and computerized, the processes
utilized presented dangers for operators’ health and safety. Organic mat-
ter regularly clogged the pipes because of the ups and downs of the pro-
cesses. This required manual interventions to clear products that were
carcinogenic, had teratogen effects and could cause genetic mutations.
Over the years, this shop gained a strong reputation within the plant for
its unmanageable 2 and strike-prone production teams, and became
known as the “Gallic Village”.
    The breakdown studied here occurred on April 17, 2004. It caused
considerable disturbances to the workplace because it occurred during
the start-up phase of a major modification project involving the replace-
ment of the shop’s computer systems to comply with European and U.S.
Food and Drug Administration regulations. These regulations required
that the new computerized system record and document data for each
individual action during batch processes. As these records allow for ex-
tensive control over operators’ actions, plant and shop managers consid-
ered this new computerized system as an opportunity to reinstate hierar-
chies within operators’ teams and restore their authority over them.
    In this shop, managed by a production engineer and a deputy plant
manager, maintenance was not a key concern, despite aging and dilapi-
dated equipment. Persistent and recurrent failures of routine equipment
revealed that production workers institutionalized threats to equipment.
As much as possible, production teams tried to postpone basic repairs
(sensor failures, leaky pumps, etc.) until scheduled maintenance outages.
They routinely ignored these failures and disconnected defective materi-
als from the computerized control system. In addition, since 1990, daily
repairs and scheduled maintenance had been increasingly outsourced.
During production periods, sub-contractors performed repairs under the
control of the production technician in charge of consignment and de-
consignment. The two maintenance technicians dedicated to the shop
were used to work far from the equipment. They had to manage contracts
with maintenance companies, plan and prepare maintenance outage con-
trol, take care of complex equipment (like the “beast of grief”) and per-
form major equipment modifications. In addition, traceability and feed-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   2
     Over the last three years, three production engineers left the shop’s man-
agement team because of difficulties in managing production teams.
84                                                                  Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

back remained poor.
    The breakdown occurred after an initial six-month period of equip-
ment incidents and persistent IT outages. It concerned a complex and
highly sensitive device – a nozzle3 – tightly coupled with other equipment
components. It was usually referred to as “K”, after the name of the com-
pany that made its first version. Production workers discovered the fail-
ure as soon as they restarted production after the maintenance outage
control. Screens indicated that the level of pressure increased in the K’s
main body i.e., the air-tight vacuum was impossible to maintain. Howev-
er, neither data recorded nor local examinations were sufficient for opera-
tors to identify the breakdown causes. This failure exacerbated already
tense relationships: workers vehemently insisted on the responsibility of
the production engineer and plant management for the lack of resources
to restart production under proper conditions.
    The repair work – diagnostic phase and the repair itself – lasted three
weeks, during which production was completely interrupted. After one
day of trial and error to restart the “K”, the production engineer called in
the director of the maintenance department and the plant processes ex-
pert on a task force. After three weeks of false diagnoses and unsuccessful
trials, the team despaired of finding a solution and finally decided to ask
for help from the K’s maintenance expert. The repair itself took a few
hours. The technician diagnosed a small fix, which was performed by his
colleague, the other maintenance technician dedicated to the shop. Ac-
cording to him, his colleague did it to improve the equipment’s perfor-
mance. The technician at fault was never officially penalized but members
of the task force and their superiors emphasized his lack of skills. Howev-
er, diagnostic difficulties and the repeated complaints of production
teams revealed the shop’s lack of resources for proper repairs and
maintenance. Plant management – the plant director, the manufacturing
director, and the technical services director – decided to strengthen shop
management. They created a “plant management team” composed of the
production engineer, the deputy plant manager and a maintenance engi-
neer. In some respects, the maintenance manager succeeded in obtaining
more resources. However, they made no changes to either the number of
maintenance technicians dedicated to the shop or the sub-contracting
conditions. The shop continued to be plagued by conflictual relationships
between operator teams and management as well as equipment problems.
    The dynamic of this repair presents an opportunity to explore socio-
technical repair so as to deepen our understanding of combination be-
tween discursive, material and organisation changes. Therefore, I consid-
er the degree to which their choices to perform technical repair and or-
ganizational repair resulted from social (Stroobants 1993) and power rela-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
     3
      A conduit with a variable cross-sectional area in which a fluid accelerates in-
to a high-velocity stream (see McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopaedia of Engineer-
ing, 2002).
Colmellere                                                                 85
tionships (Alsène 1990; Thomas 1994) in the shop and in the plant as a
whole. The “beast of grief” case presents the story of an equipment repair
that is used by managers to actually repair their shop’s organization. In
this case, repairing organization means repairing operators’ material and
social practices. According to managers, it consisted in restoring hierar-
chies within operators teams, between operators teams and the two
shop’s managers, and, moreover relationships in the workplace.
    Compared with the cases studied in the literature dedicated to repair
work, this case presents three major specificities that will guide my anal-
yses of the concrete practices of diagnosis and repair. First, the repair of
this “beast of grief” is more than the repair of a machine. “As a technolo-
gy that became embedded in a matrix of interpretations, [the beast of
grief] acquires the status of a social object whose meaning and use were
progressively uncoupled from its physical design” (Barley 1988, 47). This
machine is fragile and non-stabilized; as Denis and Pontille demonstrated
for Paris subway signs, “[each] intervention inevitably goes with uncer-
tainty about materials. Instead of being stable resources, the material
properties of signboards are important issues of the maintenance work
itself” (Denis and Pontille 2011, 7). In the case studied here, uncertainty
is due to the equipment non-stability because of its transformations
through one mundane maintenance operation to another. Thus, I will
consider the representations associated with this material object and the
way its various states are represented and evoked in the workplace.
    Second, issues of power and social relationships are explicit, thanks to
two interconnected aspects: the specific context within which the break-
down occurred and the status and position of the managers who partici-
pated actively in the repair. The context included the particular economic
and social situation of the shop and the extended start-up phase of the
new computerized system. This reinforced the degree to which these
managers were caught up in the repair of the shop.
    Third, this case presents a combination of repairs: material, organisa-
tional, mundane fixes and transformative operations, which complemen-
tarities and divergences have to be considered.
    My paper is structured as follows. In a first part, I explore the relevant
literature and outline the characteristics of the repair of breakdowns in
socio-technical systems. I have drawn on three main bodies of literature
specifically attentive to materiality: STS studies on repair, studies of
breakdowns and technological changes in organisation studies and the
sociology of work, and occupation studies in industrial workplaces. I first
describe the characteristics of repair work. As the present case study in-
volves actors who are not repair specialists, I outline the skills and issues
specific to repairs in socio-technical systems. I emphasize the non-stability
of technologies as a specific issue. I then provide an overview of evolu-
tions in the organisation of maintenance activities in industrial sectors
since the 1980s — an overview that reveals the link between the invisibil-
ity of repair work and organisational opacity. Finally, combining these
86                                                           Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

points and preparing the discussion of actor choices in the empirical sec-
tion, I explain how these evolutions call into question relationships in
workplaces and organisations.
    In the second part of the paper, I describe the methodology em-
ployed, providing additional context to make clear the conditions of my
fieldwork in this shop and on this breakdown in particular.
    The third part is empirical, divided into three sections. First, I de-
scribe the diagnostic work by focusing on material and discursive practic-
es. Second, I draw links between the two interrelated dimensions of re-
pair: material and social structures and practices. I insist on the fact that
the organizational repair is based on an incomplete diagnosis of the social
practices that caused the breakdown. I provide explanations of the man-
agers’ diagnosis of the breakdown as the consequence of individual error.
Third, I focus on the way the maintenance engineer’s choice (to reinforce
maintenance management in the shop) go along with the production
management willpower to restore authority over operator teams and to
correct their practices. This combination ultimately served to repair the
shop’s material and social orders. In this empirical part, I specifically
highlight the conditions of repair linked to the breakdown context: the
opacity of maintenance and latent conflicts between management and op-
erator teams.
    Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodo-
logical issues raised by the study of the repair of major breakdown in so-
cio-technical systems within a framework that combines the sociology of
work and occupations, organisation studies, and STS.


2.2. Repairing Breakdowns in Socio-technical Systems: a
Review of Studies on Skills, Opacity, and Power

2.1. Drawing on Resources and Coping with Contingencies

    STS studies of repair work analyse it as an on-going process of negoti-
ation between humans with intentions (Akrich 1992) and non-humans,
both considered as parts of a network. Combining this network perspec-
tive with sociology of action, this approach places particular emphasis on
materiality. It analyses repair work as a blend of material and discursive
practices that consist in taking care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) of fragile
and vulnerable objects (Denis and Pontille 2011). It imports from ethno-
methodology and studies of situated activity the emergent character of
social order and the dialectical relationship between human activity and
setting (see for example Suchman 1987; Hutchins 1995) – referring to the
physical environment and the sets of social and material relations sur-
rounding action – or workplace that constitutes a “network of associa-
tions between the social and material” (Henke 2000, 59). These studies
Colmellere                                                                87
emphasize a triangular relationship between technicians in charge of re-
pairs, machines and users (or customers) (Orr 1996), based on discursive
practices and on close connections between bodies and objects to repair
(Henke 2000).
    Repair work is composed of two main phases: diagnosis and the repair
itself. Diagnosis consists in “the creation of a coherent account of the
troubled state of the machine from available pieces of unintegrated in-
formation” (Orr 1996, 2). Both phases take place in settings and work-
places that are arenas (Dodier 1993) in which technicians perform “medi-
ations” (Akrich 1993) between things and users in order to change their
representation of objects and of the workplace. In this approach, repair
work concerns not only machines but users as well (Thomas 1928, cited
in Henke 2000), highlighting two main points: first, as mentioned in the
introduction of this paper, the status of machines as “social objects”; se-
cond, the importance of the relationships between repair workers and us-
ers (Orr 1996) whose maintenance depends on the technicians’ ability to
take care of machines.
    Therefore, improvisation, “bricolage”, innovation and ingenuity are
essential characteristics of repair work (Graham and Thrift 2007). Repair
specialists are able to combine acute skills that are not completely explicit
even for those who are experts (Orr 1996): kinesthesis, sensory-motor,
discursive (Barley 1996). As emphasized in sociology of work and organi-
sation studies on technicians, these skills are distributed (Cicourel 1994)
and collective (Barley and Bechky 1994; Barley 1996). They are devel-
oped and maintained through the sharing of experiences with machines,
people, workplaces and their relationships, relationships in the specialists’
communities and professional networks, documents on repairs such as
procedures, repair logs, repair sheets (Denis and Pontille 2014), and the
maintenance of a shared history via “war stories” (Orr 1996). A skilled
repair worker draws on a range of resources within the workplace and
outside it, according to the level of difficulty of the breakdown and con-
tingent circumstances.
    What are the specific issues entailed in repairing breakdowns in com-
plex socio-technical systems, like the one studied in this article? At this
point, three major issues arise, linked to the fact that diagnosis and repair
must be considered in the context of the system of which the broken ma-
chine is an interrelated component. First, as for copiers (Orr 1996) and
signs (Denis and Pontille 2010), fixes and misuses of the machine are
permanent issues in repair work. Technology remains unstable because
transformed through one maintenance operation to another and eventual
threats. Moreover, as shown in the literature on major breakdowns (Per-
row 1999; Perin 2004), because component parts of socio-technical sys-
tems are tightly coupled, the act of fixing – with “technology that com-
pensates for, repairs, or replaces faulty technology” (Perrow 1983, 525) –
has two faces: a positive one because it consists in repairing; a dark one,
because of its unanticipated and dangerous consequences for the system.
88                                                              Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

    Second, in a certain sense, repair work is even more complicated
when facing tricky issues where the relationship with users is at stake.
There are few ways to escape, for example, as with copiers, replacing the
machine to save the relationship with customers. Third, and linked to the
previous point, repairs introduce changes to the workplace. Yet, organi-
sation studies4 based on the practices of people working to implement
technological change highlight the interrelation between technological
and social changes and explore this aspect thoroughly. Therefore, repairs
in socio-technical systems question the combination of material and social
components and the way they influence one another. Thus, to understand
precisely how actors repair material social practices and structures in so-
cio-technical systems, two questions must be addressed: to what extent
does the technology (to be repaired) shape organisational choices (social
structures and practices)? Conversely, how do existing organisation influ-
ences repair practices?
    These issues are studied in the first two sections of the empirical part
of this paper. I turn now to another characteristic of repair work that
makes its consequences for systems difficult for actors to foresee: its invis-
ibility and opacity.

2.2. Opacity

    STS studies on machine and infrastructure repair work highlight its
invisibility (Henke 2000; Graham and Thrift 2007; Graham 2010). They
suggest that failures and breakdowns render these usually hidden aspects
of organisational life visible. In several studies on technicians, bridging
the sociology of work and occupations, organisation studies and the soci-
ology of science, Barley insists on the status of technicians within organi-
sations as one of the root causes of their invisibility. Technicians work at
the interfaces, as intermediaries between groups of people and between
people and objects, as “buffers” (Barley 1996, 420). As such, they connect
the material world and they master with the symbolic world of the people
for whom they work. Therefore, they must harness language, theories,
plans, know-how, and tricks of the trade to perform diagnostics and ob-
tain data that they then translate into a symbolic language accessible to
their customers. As “brokers” (Barley 1996, 422), they also have to trans-
late user needs, which requires establishing and maintaining strong rela-
tionships with their occupational community. Their opportunities for
professional advancement are more constrained than for other occupa-
tions, especially in organisations where career opportunities are mainly
hierarchical (Barley and Bechky 1994). However, repair specialists often
prefer to remain in their teams and their community rather than becom-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
     4
      See Orlikowski and Barley (2001) for a synthesis of organisation studies in
the field of information technologies, which takes into account the institutional
context and the materiality of technologies.
Colmellere                                                              89
ing managers or experts (Orr 1996). Quality work, the ability to fix tricky
failures and cooperative relationships with customers are the main
sources of professional recognition.
    Even if invisible most of the time, repair workers are presented as
powerful because organisations are vulnerable to the loss of their exper-
tise. This gives them leverage to negotiate resources and working condi-
tions (Crozier 1964; Shaiken 1984). Nevertheless, since the 1980s, indus-
trial organisations have implemented changes in their structures and prac-
tices to the detriment of local repair and maintenance workers whose ac-
tivities where not fully understood. This change affected resource alloca-
tion for repair and maintenance, relationships within workplaces and with
machines.
    As many studies of industrial organisation have shown, repair and
maintenance activities have been pushed, since the 1980s, to the margins
of industrial systems through progressive out-sourcing. Routine repairs
and maintenance outage control operations have been increasingly en-
trusted to outside companies. Maintenance in local departments has been
steadily reduced to control, preventive maintenance, planning, contract-
ing and major equipment modifications. At the same time, group cohe-
sion was gradually undermined. It became more difficult to ascertain and
appreciate the condition of installations because knowledge about them
became more difficult to gather. This knowledge was unequally distribut-
ed between the different groups of workers in charge of the different as-
pects of repair and maintenance: permanent employees of the plant, sub-
contractors of varying status depending on the terms of their contract. In
addition, systems of traceability and accountability were not properly re-
designed in light of increasing outsourcing. Despite successive improve-
ments, local repair and maintenance workers face more technical and re-
lational issues in their activities. Knowledge of local idiosyncrasies con-
cerning equipment, practical know-how, and relationships between users
and equipment became simultaneously more critical and more difficult to
acquire and maintain.
    These characteristics and the non-stability of technologies to be main-
tained have lead to the “opacity” of maintenance within industrial organi-
sations (Hannan et al. 2003). It reinforces its invisibility and misunder-
standings of what is entailed. Analysing the breakdown of the British
Bank, Barings Brothers, Hannan et al. describe opacity as a consequence
of organisational architecture, which can be extended to maintenance or-
ganisation in industrial socio-technical systems. They outline the charac-
teristics that allowed a trader to operate and cause the demise of the
bank. Firstly, people working in the organization had limited awareness
about how different units in their organisation were interconnected and
worked together. Secondly, the structure of the organisation was porous
with no clear lines of responsibility and accountability. Thirdly, the ma-
trix structure of trading activities does not work properly in practice be-
cause of confusion in lines of reporting, ambiguous responsibilities, lack
90                                                           Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

of traceability and poor communication between different organizational
sub-units.
    The design of such organisational structures was the work of engi-
neers and managers who considered technologies as stable despite succes-
sive repairs and considered repair work as “little more than applying pro-
cedures” (Orr 1996, 3) to solve problems that could be anticipated, de-
scribed and decoded using procedures and guidelines (Duclos 1991). As
a consequence, they neglected the workplace’s characteristics as well as
the distributional and collective dimension of knowledge.
    These representations were reinforced by the extent of automation in
modernising production processes. As many studies in the sociology of
work have shown, industrial processes and organisations are adapted to
the degree of automation (Naville 1963; Shaiken 1984; Terssac 1992;
Stroobants 1993; Dodier 1995; Terssac and Maggi 1996). Organisation,
working practices, technical devices and production facilities kept pace
with a “chimerization” of industrial processes. Based on the model of oil
refining, fluidity was expected even in processes including material and
solid products (Vatin 1987). Computerized systems were commonly set
up. Because of the economic, organisational and human costs of these sys-
tems, considerable resources were invested to enhance their reliability
and performance. Dedicated technical and engineering departments were
created. Production work became more and more abstract and issues of
automation and control, especially man-machine interfaces, were estab-
lished as priorities to the detriment of the enhancement of working prac-
tices in installations. “Silos” between design, production and repair activi-
ties were reinforced (Perin 2004).
    The developments described above go a long way to explaining the
invisibility of maintenance and repair. They consist in the redistribution
of resources and changes in relationships within organisations. In the fol-
lowing sections, I examine the consequences of these changes on the in-
fluence and opportunities of actors involved in maintenance and repair.

2.3. Influence and Power

    The opacity of repair and maintenance in the workplace and the de-
velopments in industrial organisation described above had crucial conse-
quences on the working conditions, practices and the effective influence
of internal repair and maintenance workers. It affected their relationships
with users as well as machines. Because less numerous and cohesive,
working far from the equipment, these workers had to find resources that
were more individual and specific to the idiosyncrasies of the workplace,
and to become more flexible. However, they lost visibility, recognition
and power. Classic conflicts concerning the availability of machines and
working conditions described in organisations studies (Crozier 1964;
Bourrier 1999) became concealed. Actually, this is not to say that these
workers completely lost resources or influence. I only mean to point out
Colmellere                                                                91
that even if they remained close to the “technicians” described in the lit-
erature, their influence was based on practices, relationships, and net-
works that are more difficult to identify. It explains why other workers
and managers know so little about their work and practices, and some-
times disparage them. Combined with the dilution of workers’ influence
and the opacity of maintenance activities, this misreading creates an “area
of uncertainty” (Crozier and Friedberg 1977). Non-specialists can then
use repair work as a resource to serve their objectives, in the case studied
here, other repairs.
    Considering the importance of the issues of relationships within or-
ganisations outlined above and the characteristics of repair work in socio-
technical systems described in the first section of this article, the ques-
tions that guide my investigation can be formulated in the following
terms:
    How do actors combine material and social structures and practices to
repair breakdowns in socio-technical system? How do material character-
istics, local social practices, structures (Alsène 1990) and relationships
within the workplace compel their work?
    I address these questions in depth in the empirical part of this article,
and then further explore the way “technical constraints, social power and
on-going actions and interpretation mingle to create social order” (Barley
1988, 52).
    But let me first describe in further detail the methodology employed,
and specifically the organisation and practices of repair and maintenance
in the shop, in order to make clear the context in which I studied the
“K’s” breakdown.


3. Methodology

    I began conducting ethnographic research on this shop in February
2003. I was able to gain access to this place after meeting the plant manu-
facturing manager, the shop manager (production engineer) and the
computerized system project manager. Because of the risks, I underwent
a medical examination and safety training. The reason for my fieldwork in
this plant was that I was interested in major modifications in high-risk in-
dustries. More specifically, I wanted to study how technicians and engi-
neers consider human and organisational issues during design projects. I
chose this project because of its scope and the issues concerned: techno-
logical and organisational changes and the explicit management desire to
enhance operator practices and restore their authority over production
teams.
    The breakdown concerned a nozzle, designed specifically for the
shop, was equipped, improved and adapted over time according to the
shop’s processes, needs and optimizations. Usually referred to as “K”, af-
ter the name of the company that made its first version, this machine was
92                                                             Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

nicknamed by former and current shop workers the “beast of grief”. Ac-
cording to the shop workers, “beast” derived from its “unpredictable”,
“capricious behaviour”, due to its extreme sensitivity to external condi-
tions (temperature, pressure, humidity). “Grief” referred to the conse-
quences of its malfunctioning. If it did not work properly, the production
process could not run. Moreover, any repairs or modifications were
bound to have unexpected consequences for the entire shop and its activ-
ities. Such situations might have been frequent occurrences, because the
machine had to be restarted after each maintenance outage control (three
to four times a year). But, they rarely happened because one of the two
maintenance technicians assigned to the shop had specific knowledge and
skills to “domesticate and master the beast”, in local parlance. Therefore,
production operators and managers considered the “K” as a “black box”
whose functioning was taken for granted and whose failure remained only
a potential catastrophe.
    When the failure of the “beast of grief” occurred (April 2004), I had
already spent more than a year studying people at work in the shop and
on the project. I had already observed small equipment breakdowns and
significant failures in the new computerized system.
    During my fieldwork, I used semi-structured interviews and non–
participant observations of production, repair and maintenance activities,
project meetings and computer programming work. I studied documents
related to work in the shop and on the project: procedures, handbooks,
guides, plans, and regulations. I gained access to all areas concerned: the
main control room, the shop’s equipment installations, its dedicated la-
boratory, the meeting room, the lounge area and the cafeteria. During the
repair of the “K’s breakdown, I observed formal and informal meetings,
conducted interviews5 with 20 people and observed them at work: pro-
duction workers, managers, members of the task force, maintenance
technicians, and the former shop maintenance engineer who was the ex-
pert on the “K”.
    When the breakdown happened, the production engineer had been
working as shop manager for six months. The other members of the task
force had been working at the plant for at least ten years. The two shop
maintenance technicians were highly experienced. The one who identi-
fied the fix and solved the problem had been working at the plant for al-
most 40 years and as a supervisor for ten years. The technician who per-
formed the fatal fix was less experienced. However, he had been working
in the shop as a technician for five years and at the plant for more that
twenty. Both had spent their entire careers working in maintenance de-
partments in the chemical industry.
    In my investigations, I was keen to resituate the breakdown and its re-
pair in the larger project dynamics. For each actor I interviewed, accord-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    5
      Despite my repeated and insistent efforts, the maintenance technician who
did the fatal fix on the machine refused to meet me.
Colmellere                                                                         93
ing to the situation, I tried to understand what was at stake for them,
their involvement in the repair work, their diagnosis of the breakdown,
their contribution to decision-making, and the way they imagined subse-
quent operations. I interviewed production operators more specifically on
what mattered most in the situation (of breakdown and repair), how they
understood the breakdown, the work of the people involved in the repair,
how they anticipated restarting production and the shop’s activities with
the K repaired and the new computerized system.
    I will now move on to the empirical description, analysing actors at
work in diagnosing and repairing the breakdown. Let me first provide
further details about the resources that maintenance workers can employ
in response to failures and breakdowns: observations revealed that rou-
tine repairs were performed under the control of production teams. Most
of the time, they followed a request by operators to their colleague, the
production supervisor in charge of consignment/deconsignment. These
requests were written on dedicated forms or remained informal depend-
ing on the level of emergency and gravity as perceived by operators. The
production supervisor would then contact the sub-contractors concerned
and prepare their intervention: a formal authorization, the license to op-
erate at the facility, lock-out/tag-out sheets. He entered in the shop log-
book the nature of the intervention and the time (start, duration, end), its
location, the number of people working, the specific risks. However, in-
terventions were not systematically reported because operators sometimes
asked subcontractors for them directly without mentioning it to the su-
pervisor. In addition, traceability and feedback on repairs were not for-
mally reorganised with the development of subcontracting and the num-
ber or the extent of repairs performed were not systematically reported in
the dedicated logbook according to procedures.
    Repairs are one of the items on the agenda of daily shop meetings.
The deputy plant manager conducted these meetings, every day at 13:30.
They consisted of a review of the actions completed, currently underway,
and scheduled in the shop (production, quality of production, repair and
maintenance operations). Maintenance technicians did not systematically
participate in these meetings. Moreover, they spoke only if they were in-
vited to do so, in answer to specific questions.
         Daily meeting, shop meeting room, November 11, 2013:
         Deputy plant manager: “Maintenance?”
         Maintenance technician: “I’ll pass”.
         Production supervisor, consignment-deconsignment: “I will clean
         the oven if I find one or two people tomorrow. There was a prob-
         lem with the heating of the (equipment) 41. This morning, there
         was a strange noise so we added water but the noise did not stop.
         It was a defective chromatograph. There was no alarm, but I have
         a sense that there are failures. I got on the elevator; there were
         three serious drips at flanges so we just started. Still, I requested a
         top flange from the silo to avoid drips”.
94                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)


    Local maintenance technicians were called for the repair of some spe-
cific equipment and to prepare and set up modifications. They prepared
and reported repairs in the same way as described above. They used to
consult production documents (procedures, manuals, etc.). However,
they barely used the computerized system themselves to diagnose failures
and test equipment. They asked operator teams, if necessary.
       Our work is based on what we see. We use the IT system very lit-
       tle. There are other signs that indicate what is happening: noises,
       smells, heat, etc. At the beginning, the system crashed all the time
       so it was hard for us to use. Now it has been stabilized, but we
       didn’t receive any specific training. I learned some basics with col-
       leagues (the electrical service instrumentation maintenance), but
       most of the time we avoid using it... We ask production staff, those
       who know how to use it. Usually it works well that way. (Mainte-
       nance technician, expert on the K)

    They were used to cope with difficulties in gathering data and infor-
mation, because operators were not cooperative.
    The technician who solved the problem explained the main difficul-
ties of diagnosis:
       One of our difficulties is the transparency of information. To solve
       technical problems, it would be easier if everyone would forget the
       idea that they were responsible. When a piece of equipment fails
       they are not necessarily responsible. For us technically, it would be
       easier if we had more information to diagnose and repair properly.
       When we are working on a problem, it is hampered by a lack of
       availability on the production side. (Maintenance technician, ex-
       pert on the K)

    They would document modifications using technical modification
forms, investment demand forms, validation forms.
    In addition, they were in charge of internal and external scheduled
equipment inspections and their documentation. Finally, when inter-
viewed, maintenance technicians regretted the loss of skills and know-
ledge of equipment and criticized the growing power of the companies
contracted for maintenance.
    Developing my empirical description further, I will now explain how
production and maintenance managers repaired the K’s breakdown and
seized on it to repair their authority over operator teams and finally the
shop itself. I first show that despite a highly structured and systematic
process they failed to diagnose the breakdown. I then outline the on-
going collapse of the relationships between operators and production and
maintenance management. In the second part, I describe the task force’s
partial diagnosis of social issues in the shop, analysing it in terms of indi-
vidual and collective attempt to repair the shop’s organisation. In the
Colmellere                                                                      95
third part, I deepen this analysis to explore two issues: Why did the task
force refuse to call for external help for three weeks? Why did they ana-
lyse the failure as the consequence of a single individual’s faulty action?
Finally, I have synthetized these results to show how production and
maintenance managers focusing on the repair of the shop have jeopard-
ized the repair of the breakdown.


4. Fixing the “Beast of Grief”: toward a Repair of the Shop

4.1. Unsuccessful Technical Diagnosis

    The repair consisted of the diagnosis and the repair itself. The task
force began the repair with the diagnosis. They rapidly realized that the
K’s breakdown was an “un-described situation” and a tricky one. As Orr
describes it, in the case of difficult diagnosis, “if the problem is not rec-
ognized, however, an analysis must be done using information form a va-
riety of sources, and the most difficult diagnoses are those for which none
of the information sources provides a clear answer” (Orr 1996, 115).
However, for the three members of the task force, diagnosis and repair
remained, for almost three weeks, a technical issue.
    The three engineers organized their work to perform diagnostic tests
according to three interrelated principles. First they gave priority to for-
mal methods. Second they adhered to a work style based on compliance
with rules and methods. Third, as a consequence of the first two points,
they preferred heuristics derived from formal knowledge than those
based on experience. Their work took place in a small meeting room,
close to the main control room. At certain moments, as needed, they
joined the main control room or equipment installations, in the K’s area.
    Now, I turn to their physical and discursive practices. They consid-
ered the K as if it was an isolated device, disconnected from the rest of
the equipment, except for the computerized system. They started by
gathering together the plans and schemas for the K and its operation as
well as the modification and repair log which would turn out to be in-
complete. Then, they began to work on the diagnosis itself. They followed
a procedure they described as “normal” and “classic”. Based on “func-
tional analysis” - used to design new systems - it consisted of dividing the
K into parts and examining and testing each to see if it runs properly.
         There, I intervened because we were not making any progress.
         This was the first time we met with big problems. I tried to under-
         stand the operation of the equipment K. I knew a little but I'd
         never seriously looked at it. I tried to understand how it was built
         and how it worked. With V (manufacturing engineer and head of
         the workshop), we understood that a parameter escaped us. In
96                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

       that case, I brought in the method. We checked all the equipment
       to be sure there were no abnormalities. Meanwhile, we had docu-
       mentation on this type of equipment. (29/06/2004, Maintenance
       Engineer, Head of the Maintenance Department of the Plant)

     The examination had a physical dimension but bodies where only par-
tially engaged: most of the time, the maintenance engineer visited equip-
ment installations in the K’s area. He had a look at the parts that were
tested and compared their appearance with descriptions on plans, sche-
mas and documents. Observations revealed that he paid attention to the
visible features but hardly used sensory-motor skills (sound, smell, etc.) to
complete his examinations and pre-diagnosis. Neither he nor other mem-
bers of the task force demonstrated any close connection to the machine
through their bodies, and “the ability to make sense of subtle differences
in the appearance of materials and the behaviour of machines” (Barley
1996, 425). The maintenance engineer reported his observations as factu-
al descriptions, close to the formal description of procedures and tech-
nical descriptions like those written on schemas and plans. He detailed
his observations in terms of conformity/differences with what was indi-
cated on the documents. He described his practices as a “systematic” and
“methodological” way of working.
     To perform tests and gather and interpret data, the three engineers re-
lied on two intermediaries: the new computerized system and two com-
puter processes specialists. They asked the latter to participate because
they did not know how to use the system to launch tests, experiments and
batches, or how to read and interpret the information on the screens.
However, they refined their practices while advancing through the diag-
nostic process.
     In their initial statements, they attributed the same importance to all
of the K’s parts. They described the condition of its various parts and the
way they functioned according to the manual’s procedures and descrip-
tions. However, after one week of systematic research, the test results and
the study of the repair and modifications log helped them to identify the
most sensitive parts of the machine. They determined the function that
had failed and its cause: leaks in the machine made it impossible to main-
tain the airtight vacuum in the main body of the K. They then began to
search for leaks. This part of their work consisted in a very long protocol,
because it concerned each component of the machine. They inferred from
these tests and from reports on previous modifications to solve this kind
of problem that defective ejectors were the most probable source of leaks.

       After a physical inspection of the equipment, in a systematic and
       methodical way, after one week we had not found anything. We
       thought, it's not normal ... what is difficult is that you are under
       pressure to restart quickly. We are forced to go fast when I know
       from experience that we can spend a lot of time looking to the side
       of the target. (Maintenance Engineer, Head of the Maintenance
Colmellere                                                                     97
         Department, task force)

   However, because they were not sure of their diagnosis or of their
proposed fix, they decided to ask for external help from experts at the
company which designed and installed the K.

         Task force at work, meeting-room close to the main control-room:
         Maintenance engineer: “The problem is to maintain the vacuum;
         therefore, ejectors are needed. Perhaps we have to know more
         about the ejector failures”.
         Production engineer: “Don’t know…”
         Discussion revolves around the machine’s plan to determine the
         part of the machine that caused the failure…
         Plant processes expert: “I am still not convinced… I don’t know”.
         Maintenance engineer: “Perhaps we can call the manufacturer of
         the K, they could tell us if the problem…”
         Production engineer: “We have no other option for the moment”.
         …Pause
         The maintenance engineer called the specialists who designed de-
         vice. He returned back to the team without any firm answer:
         “They said it was not the problem. Actually they think the prob-
         lem is that we did so many modifications and improvements that it
         makes any diagnosis tricky. According to my description of the
         breakdown and of the efforts we have made until now, they said
         we could not infer that the ejectors are the issue”.

    At the beginning of the repair phase and during the entire diagnostic
phase, members of the task force never asked operators to participate in
the tests. However, as mentioned in the methodological section, mainte-
nance technicians were used to doing so. Operators did, however, remain
informed about the repair process. Every day, at the beginning of the
production meeting, the deputy plant manager updated them on the pro-
gress of the diagnostic process. In addition, he filled out the shop’s field
notebook, noted the trials and results and provided specific instructions
to follow, especially for evenings, nights and weekends.

         Ejectors were dismantled on K. Nothing to report, the result is al-
         ways the same. So for this evening and tonight, make it work by
         supplying 18% of the VC (volume capacity)”. Message signed by
         the deputy plant manager. (Extract from the shop’s field note-
         book, April 20, 2004)

    He mentioned in interviews the fact that he deliberately limited the in-
formation to facts in order to “preserve operator morale and keep them
motivated for the restarting.” This empirical statement shows that, in the
minds of this actor and the task force, the most important element of rela-
tionships within the shop was authority based on credibility.
    Observations in the workplace during this period showed that these
98                                                               Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

practices deepened divisions in the workplace: divisions between man-
agement and operator teams, between design (computerized system re-
placement) and production. It widened the cracks in the relationship be-
tween operator teams and management and revealed the extent to which
the relationship between maintenance workers and production were bro-
ken. I will now elaborate on these two points.
   Even informed operators exhibited strong reactions to shop manage-
ment and the task force. They considered that the failure prevented them
from doing their jobs. They insisted on the strong constraints they were
subjected to because of the combination of the K’s failure, the unreliable
new computerized system and defective shop materials:
       This scene took place in the main control room. Operators explained
       their situation to me; two members of the task force are present.
       “If the filter is running and the K works, we can start up. But we
       do not manufacture, that’s not manufacturing!... If we put the
       product in a new filter and then it drips, it would be ok. But they
       do not want to put up the cash. We make the raw product with a
       Z (equipment), and its pure part with an ancient filter from the
       Middle Ages! The oven is fully loaded, a ton and a half rather than
       a ton! How can it work?”

   Moreover, during one production meeting, they expressed resentment
and doubts as to the task force’s ability to solve the problem.
       This scene took place in the main control room, operators com-
       plained to their manager (production engineer):
       “Give us the means to do our job…the manufacturing director
       must provide money. Nobody cares about our situation here… it
       still doesn’t work!”
       Production engineer, shop manager: “No, H [Maintenance Engi-
       neer, Head of the Maintenance Department] stayed twenty hours
       last week.”
       Operator, loudly: “For what purpose? None!”

    Two days later, operators mandated their union delegates to give the
manufacturing manager a grievance letter. This deterioration of the situa-
tion changed the task force mind. They decided to call for help.
    At this point, we have some concrete illustrations of engineers engag-
ing in repair work to maintain a common objective, which was first asso-
ciated with the replacement of the computerized system, of restoring
management’s authority in the workplace. More specifically, the members
of the task force tried to demonstrate their capacity through actions guid-
ed by compliance with methods and procedures. With the help of two
computer processes specialists, they worked to change operator represen-
tations of the computer system and its performance, their relationship to
procedures, materials and practices. However, the task force did not suc-
ceed in diagnosing the cause of the breakdown. Because of the context in
Colmellere                                                                     99
the workplace and because they stuck to compliance with rules and pro-
cedures, they preferred not to improvise fixes or “bricolages”. They rec-
ognized their insufficient knowledge of the “beast of grief”. But, they did
not want to give operator teams further reason to criticize their actions
and run the risk of a strike action.
    They reached a point at which they had no other choice but to ask for
external help. They called on the maintenance technician expert on the
K, justifying this decision in terms of the need for a “fresh perspective”
on the problem. The technician listened attentively to what had been
done to examine and diagnose the failure. However, he went to the ma-
chine, inspected it meticulously and understood immediately what hap-
pened: a small modification – a small piece added - prevented the K from
functioning. He took off the added device, checked and tested the K
carefully, and restarted it successfully.
    Concerning earlier vain attempts at a diagnosis, the technician pointed
out the task force’s misunderstandings and errors. In doing so, he empha-
sized the specific skills needed to repair the K. At the same time, he de-
scribed divisions between production and maintenance and the local
maintenance specialists’ lack of credibility when dealing with sensitive
equipment issues:
         They solved the most obvious issues but they didn’t go to see and
         understand what was happening at the exit of the device…(where
         the small modification had been made).

    He pointed out that some diagnostic errors where due to the methods
employed. Because they studied the K as an isolated device, they had not
noticed certain things and misunderstood what was rendered by the
computerized system. In term of skills, what was necessary was the ability
to construct a representation of the state of the machine based on the cor-
rect association of information read on the screens and physical phenom-
enon observed on the machine:
         In this context, the diagnosis was false and the problem was that
         the effect of trials and errors which could produce facts different
         from what the computerized system indicates.” (Maintenance
         technician, expert on the K)

    Moreover, he emphasized the fact that the task force, even while in-
tending to work in a professional manner, reproduced habits that consist-
ed in fast forwarding to solutions before properly performing diagnostic
tests:
         More fundamentally, one of the main problems here, in this case
         and in this shop, is that when facing a problem, people offer solu-
         tions but didn’t know how to do the intermediate work of analy-
         sis…
100                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

      The former maintenance engineer confirmed this when interviewed:
         When the K doesn’t work there are many managers who have ide-
         as but they actually don’t know how it works…we had an operat-
         ing method in which we had specific reliable procedures for tests
         with nitrogen. Using nitrogen sensors, we tried to find the leaks…
         One day, we had water in the K. It was catastrophic! Actually, it
         was the result of some operators’ oversight. But the deputy plant
         manager thought that the K was leaky. We (maintenance) knew
         that this was not the case but we spent the whole weekend making
         a heat exchanger, because the management of the shop was sure of
         its diagnosis.

    According to both actors it is due to the fact that production manag-
ers didn’t recognise the specific skills of maintenance and when confront-
ing serious problems opted to consult external specialists rather than hav-
ing confidence in the local maintenance specialists.
         I could give you an example, but there are so many. Some years
         ago, before the K became reliable, we had problems maintaining a
         constant quantity of steam. The deputy plant manager insisted on
         installing a steam “super heater”. I knew and said at the time that
         this was not the correct solution; moreover, it will have conse-
         quences for the rest of the machine. But they insisted. That’s why I
         asked someone at SP to explain, with strong technical arguments
         that steam functions with constant flow but not by heating. So,
         they accepted that it was not a good solution. (Maintenance tech-
         nician, expert on the K)

    However, they didn’t pay specific attention to an important statement
of the K maker: one of the problems to diagnose the failure was the suc-
cessive modifications and adaptations made on this equipment.
    These two points show that social repair was needed. There was op-
position between local maintenance specialists and production managers,
which reflected conflicts between local maintenance technicians and op-
erators because of the latters’ practice of neglecting equipment. Thus, I
now turn to the aspects of the diagnosis and repair work that explicitly
concerned social structures and practices.

4.2. Repairing Organisation but not Social Practices

    The diagnosis concerned not only material causes but also practices
that led to the fatal fix. Sociological studies on compliance with proce-
dures and rules have demonstrated that non-compliance can be used to
compensate poor organizational design (Bourrier 2003): organisational
lacunae, improper working conditions (Terssac 1992). In the present case
study, because of successive reorganisations, maintenance became opaque
for internal maintenance specialists as well as for all actors working in the
shop, even managers.
Colmellere                                                                       101
    On this part of the diagnosis opinions diverged, specifically between
technicians and managers. The maintenance technician explained his col-
league’s fix in terms of an attempt to repair a dysfunction:

         It is an untraceable modification, unofficial. But there were visible
         traces, insulation installed to make an isolation box. Someone who
         knew the piece of equipment well would have seen it […] In fact,
         this is a vacuum management system using ejectors. The double
         steam envelope that covers the ejector leaked. My colleague
         stepped in and put a tracer on the steam envelope to isolate it. But
         it created condensation in the ejector that made it impossible to
         obtain the vacuum level required. (Maintenance technician, expert
         on the K)

    At the same time he outlined developments in maintenance organisa-
tion that led to the loss of repair memory and organisational choices that
made work difficult.
    On the other hand, the maintenance engineer, the production engi-
neer and the manufacturing director explained it in terms of personal
misconduct, due to a lack of skill and knowledge and non-compliance
with procedures. In shop meetings, in informal reports addressed to the
operator teams and in interviews these actors never cited the name of the
technician who performed the faulty modification. In their statements,
they used the expression “the person who made the modification” to re-
fer to the technician in question:
         There was a change that the person found to be not significant.
         This was a problem of reflection and analysis. The person had not
         seen the scope of the modification, since the modification was not
         traced, we have not been able to identify ... This demonstrates the
         usefulness of the procedure and in particular modification proce-
         dures; the person who made the change did not say anything be-
         cause they did not consider it as important. (Maintenance engi-
         neer, head of the maintenance department, task force)

    However, despite his position in the hierarchy, the Maintenance engi-
neer never explicitly pointed to the responsibility of the technician and
did not take any steps to sanction the technician.
    He joined the two other members of the task force and the manufac-
turing director to insist on the lack of resources for managing the shop:
         This has revealed a deep problem: the state of the shop. It was re-
         ally a pity that nobody knew how to proceed when facing such a
         problem… No Proceed engineer dedicated to daily production.
         The new production engineer who is facing an incredible number
         of problems, and who doesn’t master the proceeds or the general
         situation… This shop is disorganised, unable to call for help.
         (Plant processes expert, task force)
102                                                         Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

    Yet, they did not question that these organisational choices were ones
for management – their peers and themselves. They did not try to elicit
the working conditions of the local maintenance technicians, which
would be to understand working practices as linked to structures and
equipment transformations through mundane maintenance, successive
adaptations and improvements. However, observations revealed that
maintenance technicians had to cope with a workplace where non-
compliance was a widespread and institutionalized practice. Because of
the fragmentation of maintenance and repair, they had to work with in-
complete information on the state of equipment. Due to poor internal re-
sources, they sometimes overcame failures and breakdowns on their own,
as in the case of the technician who set up the fatal fix. However, this re-
ality remained unknown to the maintenance and production managers
because of the increasing opacity of maintenance and repair work
through successive reorganisations and successive equipment evolutions.
    Moreover, members of the task force did not look for organisational
explanations for the difficulties they faced during the diagnosis. As a re-
sult they asked of and obtained a strengthening of the maintenance hier-
archy in the shop, without modifying concrete resources for local techni-
cians. They considered hierarchical forms of organisation as the solution
for repairing failures due to the previous matrix form. By reinforcing the
hierarchical structure of the shop, they denied any form of power related
to skills and the necessity for maintenance specialists – engineer and
technicians themselves – to benefit from the resources of an “interface-
actor” (Francfort et al. 1995) in the organization: between workers and
equipment, between subcontractors and production, able to understand,
document and record equipment evolutions and transformations. They
decidedly lost the prerogative of the “marginal-secant” (Crozier and
Friedberg 1997), unable to “reach a whole series of possible resources,
especially relations with the environment ... the control of information
and the allocation of resources but also membership in an informal net-
work, to control rules and cultural enhancement within the company”
(Francfort et al. 1995, 164). They underestimate the consequences of the
non-stability of technologies, more specifically, the unpredictable interac-
tions between fixes, which, as Perrow outlined it, threaten the system.
    At this point, one question remains: why, despite difficulties in per-
forming the diagnosis, were members of the task force reluctant to bring
skilled maintenance specialists into the process? To explore this question,
I will now turn to an analysis of how managers engaged in the task force
tried to combine the repair of the breakdown with the replacement of the
computer system to repair their shop. This will also help us to deepen our
understanding of the manager’s diagnosis in terms of individual fault.
Colmellere                                                                      103
4.3. Contradictory Repairs

   Why not ask for specialists’ help in the shop and at the plant? One
might imagine that it was due to the “silos” between production shops
and others departments. However, the pressure to re-start production
was at a climax. Paradoxically, according to the maintenance director, the
public character of the breakdown made it difficult to seek external assis-
tance:
         The breakdown has become the business of the plant; when this
         shop coughs, the plant catches a cold! But at the same time, the
         public nature of the problem makes it difficult to ask for external
         assistant and bring in people with real skills. (Maintenance Engi-
         neer, Head of the Maintenance Department)

    At issue here was the credibility of the management of the shop, con-
cerning both production and maintenance.
    The stakes for the maintenance director were to demonstrate his ex-
pertise and show operators and production managers that internal
maintenance was still useful and had sufficient skills to resolve major
breakdowns. Even though they were forced to work at a distance from
the equipment for many years, except during scheduled maintenance
shutdowns. Moreover, the breakdown was an opportunity for the
maintenance director to develop strong, on-going relationships with pro-
duction managers, especially with the production engineer and his depu-
ty. With their support, he gained a position from which negotiate re-
sources for maintenance. Because he participated in the resolution of the
shop’s difficult situation, he supported the new production engineer in
his delicate attempt to establish his authority.
    In return, the production manager and his deputy supported him; the
deputy plant manager knew exactly who had the skills to solve the prob-
lem but, like the managers, he wanted to deal with it without external as-
sistance. At the same time, his desire to protect operator morale partici-
pated in restoring the credibility of maintenance and production man-
agement. He tried to protect the task force from the operators, who saw
the task force at work without knowing exactly the issues they were fac-
ing. This was successful during the diagnostic phase.
    As the manufacturing director explained, the presence of the task
force and its members’ efforts to demonstrate their involvement in solving
the problem were vital to repairing the relationships between operator
teams and management.
         I suppose that people react to problems according to your level of
         involvement. If you show that you have an interest… With our
         teams, people are waiting for help. They know that you are in a
         position in the hierarchy and that you can act. Not taking that into
         account would be a lack of consideration. The boss is not only the
         one who gets the most out of the situation. He is the one who gets
104                                                             Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

       the job done. It takes time and effort. I consider it an important
       part of the job. (Manufacturing director)

       People are aware of the weaknesses of the shop; they expect a sign
       from us to show the importance that we give to this shop. (Manu-
       facturing director)

    The production manager and his deputy could explain their reluc-
tance to call in external assistance: this breakdown and the replacement
of the computer system were opportunities to recover authority over in-
dependent and unpredictable teams. The repair was an opportunity to
demonstrate operator skills and credibility, and, consequently, to reset
the shop’s working atmosphere and relationships. The reorganisation of
the plant management team established the production engineers as pow-
erful actors because able to negotiate and obtain resources from the
plant’s upper management. In addition, for the recently hired production
engineer, dealing with problems was a way to demonstrate to his supervi-
sors that he was able to control and manage shop activities and cope in a
competitive environment. Finally, they used the repair of this device to
repair their shop and its reputation within the plant. They considered the
“K” as a machine which complexity made its repair delicate. However,
they didn’t understand that the successive small fixes, not systematically
documented and recorded constrained the breakdown’s diagnosis and
repair.
    In light of these interrelated strategies the diagnosis of the faulty fix as
the consequence of individual error can be better understood. First, this
explanation tracks that used to justify the characteristics of the new com-
puter system: operators reluctant to follow procedures. This argument
was at the centre of the specifications of the system and linked to the ne-
cessity to restore authority. This perspective opposed the rationalisation
of the actions of unpredictable and unmanageable operators to the regu-
lation and reliability of actions imposed though the new system. In the
case of the fix performed on the “K”, the only way to control human er-
ror was to reinforce control through the presence of a maintenance man-
ager. Finally, the individual worker and collective action are represented
as the unmanageable elements of the systems that need to be fixed with
technical systems linked to hierarchical authority.
    In the end, the maintenance engineer, the shop manager and the dep-
uty plant manager succeeded. They obtained permanent resources follow-
ing the diagnosis of the shop’s situation that they reported to the plant
management: the shop’s management was reorganised into a “plant man-
agement team” composed of a production engineer, deputy plant manag-
er and a new maintenance engineer. This reorganisation aimed to increase
communication between maintenance and production, and make clearer
the lines of reporting for issues coming out of the respective departments.
    However, this reorganisation was focused on the control of produc-
tion teams and their relationship to equipment issues. Except for this new
Colmellere                                                                105
maintenance engineer, the organisation of repair and maintenance activi-
ties remained the same as before: the allocation of material, human and
economic resources, the distribution of tasks and responsibilities between
local maintenance technicians and subcontractors, the contract terms
with subcontractors, the control of routine repairs — all were maintained
unchanged.

5. Conclusion
    In this article, I have studied in depth a specific empirical context to
show how managers seized on the repair of a complex machine in a soci-
otechnical industrial system to serve their strategy, which aimed at restor-
ing their authority over production operator teams. Ultimately, this local
repair participated in a more large strategy oriented toward the repara-
tion of the material and social orders in the shop. The repair of the “beast
of grief” was part of a fragmented maintenance, distributed among actors
and collectives of workers. It consisted in a cautious and delicate inter-
vention that required precise skills, but also the ability to deal with the
opacity of maintenance in the workplace. This repair can be described as
a process by which “technical constraints, social power, on-going actions
and interpretations mingle to create social order” (Barley 1988, 52).
    To conclude this article, I want to discuss some theoretical and meth-
odological issues raised by this study of a major breakdown, within a
framework that brings together the sociology of work, organization stud-
ies and STS. In the case study presented here, I adopted an intermediate
perspective between workplace repair and infrastructure repair. I consid-
ered organisation, the dynamics of social relations and practices, and the
history of the shop so as to understand how the repair of a complex de-
vice, which constitutes a small part of a socio-technical system, is used to
repair the shop’s material order and its organisation.
    As emerged from the presentation of empirical data, the shop exist-
ence and its identity were at stake. However, the actors who performed
the diagnosis and repair were not specialists. As a result, the study of their
work revealed the specificities of machine repair in this kind of socio-
technical system and the state of the relationships in the workplace. Be-
cause of these features, the case and its study allows a discussion with the
sociology of socio-technical repairs initiated by Sims and Henke (2012)
on three main points. First, the strategy of weapons specialists to restore
their credibility was to embed their tacit knowledge in the new socio-
technical context. In the case study, discussed here, actors considered the
new computerized system as a support for organisational change. When
facing the K’s breakdown, they tried to embed it in the IT outages and
equipment failures.. They considered that diagnosing and repairing the
breakdown would help them to overcome the issue of their credibility
towards operators’ teams. However, this strategy that consisted in the
combination of technical and organisational repair failed. Actually, these
106                                                          Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

categories of repairs have appeared contradictory depending on their
scope and their nature. 1) As Perrow (1983) has noticed for other cases,
small and bigger technical repairs on the same equipment appeared to be
conflicting:, small fixes performed on the defective equipment introduced
constraints to the breakdown diagnosis and the repair, because of their
unexpected consequences and their invisibility for non-experts; 2) tech-
nical and organisational repairs were not complementary. Actors engaged
in the task force to repair the shop’s organization paid attention to tech-
nical repair. However, their focus on the shop’s organisation and ulti-
mately on its reputation within the plant threatened the diagnosis and the
repair of the defective equipment. Actually, they understood the break-
down according to the framework they derived from their main objective:
they analysed it in terms of individual errors, procedures non-compliance,
that would call for control over operators’ teams and reinforcement of
hierarchies.
    Third, Sims and Henke (2012) presented tacit knowledge as the main
resource for nuclear weapons scientists’ strategy. In this paper, I highlight
how the issue related to tacit knowledge is linked to opacity of mainte-
nance in the workplace: local maintenance specialists knowledge – ex-
perts of the “K” device – were not enough articulated, because of succes-
sive reorganisations of mundane maintenance and repair and because of
broken relationships in the workplace and within the plant. These weak-
nesses were strengthened by managers’ acceptation of technologies as
stabilized objects, with strong boundaries they could seize on to solve
higher-level issues. Their choices revealed that they were trapped in a
“technological fix” strategy: they tried to repair broken relationships, or-
ganisational failures with the new computerized system. However, they
neither “used the power of technology in order to solve problems that are
non-technological in nature” (Volti 1995, 23), nor they tried to simplify
problems that are intrinsically social and technological and too complex
to be solved as a whole (Weinberg 1967). The case of this breakdown re-
vealed an intermediate situation where technological and organisational
repair were only partially combined. As a result, studies on the repair of
sociotechnical systems could be deepened. First, the “sociotechnical re-
pair” category could be refined with the notion of “technological fix” and
its discussions (see for example Rosner 2004; Scott 2011). Second, we
could consider maintenance as an on-going process of work (cf. Barley
1988 cited above) on the categories of repair that actors try to combine,
and on the potential conflicting issues between them. This offers the op-
portunity to precise what “socio-technical” means in the case of repair
and the links between repairs practices and maintenance issues in the
workplace.
     I insist here on three additional steps in developing a sociology of re-
pair that brings together the sociology of work and STS.
    First, from a methodological perspective, this article is an attempt to
investigate an intermediate level, halfway between studies in ethnometh-
Colmellere                                                                107
odology and analyses of macro scale structures. However, this can be re-
fined (see for example Grossetti 2011). At this “meso” level lays the diffi-
culty of understanding human actions in the construction and the con-
flicting dynamics of social order. Because of the micro situations they
mainly analyse, ethnomethodological studies tend to overshadow struc-
tural issues in order to explore material properties and relationships to
things. Therefore, I considered organisation studies on technological
change. This perspective allowed me to understand how actors consid-
ered and combined the material components and social practices and
structures they repaired. Moreover, it drew attention to the fact that these
combinations were not only consequences of smooth negotiations and
machine properties but depended on organisational structures, social
practices and power. The maintenance of material and social orders de-
pended on local individual and collective strategies that were due to ac-
tors negotiating their participation in organisation. This participation is
not systematic and depends, among other things, on the social context
and on history. For this reason, it would be useful to consider historical
dimensions in a more extensive manner than I was able to in this study. I
presented only the elements of the history of the shop that highlighted the
breakdown and the maintenance practices in the shop. One problem here
is that it focuses on the elements that are important to the situation stud-
ied and downplays others. For example, it would be interesting to con-
sider, while studying repair and maintenance of industrial processes, the
history of collective resistance and mobilizations, major breakdowns and
accidents. This attention to history would deepen our understanding of
the way actors’ actions are linked to their intentions, to their adhesion to
the workplace productive order. Moreover, we would be able to specify
the underlying social dynamics of the workplace order.
    Second, I focused here on the work of maintenance technicians, with
no attention to the work of subcontractors. It would be interesting to ex-
plore their relationship to equipment and their participation in the mate-
rial and social order as intermittent actors. This orientation would enrich
the notion of the workplace so as to deepen the analysis of the dynamics
of construction of collective skills and distributed skills.
    Finally, this repair of a major breakdown in a socio-technical system is
a good case study for extending the “sociology of repair” initiated by
Henke (Henke 2000) and extending it to higher levels including power
issues. It offers insights for STS researchers who study scientific activities
in organised workplaces as well as for sociologists of work who are inter-
ested in analysing the links between technical work and social order. It
opens perspectives for developing case studies on repair, to complete the
results of organisation studies on technological change, and understand-
ing “why people do the things they do with technology and why organiza-
tions and practices acquire the forms they acquire” (Leonardi and Barley
2008, 172). Further theoretical discussions about theories of action in-
cluding actor intention, and the ways technology and organisations shape
108                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

one another, are needed to develop a complex frame of analysis. This
would stimulate further discussion of material and social determinism
and voluntarism, along the lines initiated by Leonardi and Barley
(Leonardi and Barley 2008).


Acknowledgements

    I would like to thank Ninon Vinsonneau and Jonathan Magidoff for their
thorough English proofreading and the evaluators for their wise inputs, which
considerably helped improve this article. I remain solely responsible for the ar-
guments put forward herein.



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Colmellere                                                                   111
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