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This table summarizes the physical environment of the STS and how it can constrain or enable action.
Physical surroundings
Physical Surroundings Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks
Physical environment imposes constraints (limits) over actions that restrict possibilities and shape implementation. Influence of rivers, mountains, and valleys on social and economic activities such as travel, trade, economic and agricultural activity, commerce, industry, and manufacturing. Classroom environment enables or constrains different teaching and learning styles. For example, one can pair off technically enhanced and technically challenged classrooms with student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogical styles and come up with four different learning environments. Each constrains and enables a different set of activities. The physical arrangement of objects in the classroom as well as the borders created by walls, doors, and cubicles can steer a class toward teacher-centered or student-centered pedagogical styles.
This table shows the social or stakeholder environment of the STS. A stakeholder is any group or individual that has a vital interest at play in the STS.
People, groups, and roles (stakeholders)
Stakeholders Description Examples Frameworks Frameworks
Any group or individual that has a vital interest at play (at stake) in the STS. Market Stakeholders : Employees, Stockholders Non-Market Stakeholders : communities, activist groups and NGOs Role : The place or station a stakeholder occupies in a given organizational system and the associated tasks or responsibilities.
customers, suppliers retailers/wholesalers, creditors business support groups, governments, general public (those impacted by projects who do not participate directly in their development Interests : Goods, values, rights, interests, and preferences at play in the situation which the stakeholder will act to protect or promote.
(Distinction between market and non-market stakeholders comes from Lawrence and Weber, Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy , 12th edition. McGraw-Hill, 14-15. Alliances are discussed by Patricia Werhane et al., Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships: Globalization, Markets, and Economic Well-being . Routledge (2009). Relation : Each stakeholder is related to other stakeholders in an alliance and each relation is tied to goods and values.
Procedural environment
Procedural Description Examples Framework Framework
A series of interrelated actions carried out in a particular sequence to bring about a desired result, such as the realization of a value. Procedures can schematize value by setting out a script for its realization. Hiring a new employee: (a) settling on and publishing a job description; (b) soliciting and reviewing applications from candidates; (c) reducing candidate list and interviewing finalists; (d) selecting a candidate; (e) tendering that candidate a job offer.Other procedures: forming a corporation, filing for bankruptcy, gaining consent to transfer TGI and PII to a third party (Toysmart: opt-in and opt-out procedures). Value Realization Process in Software Engineering: (a) Discovery : Uncovering values shared by a given community; (b) Translation : operationalizing and implementing values in a given STS; (c) Verification : using methods of participatory observation (surveys and interviews) to validate that the values in question have been discovered and translated. Challenging the Statement of Values : (a) A stakeholder group raises a conceptual, translation, range, or development issue; (b) Group presents their challenge and response to other stakeholders; (c) If other stakeholder groups agree, then the challenge leads to a revision in the SOV; (d) Community as a whole approves the revision.

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Source:  OpenStax, Professional ethics in engineering. OpenStax CNX. Aug 29, 2013 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10399/1.4
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