Changing Complex Sociotechnical Infrastructures: The Case of ATM

The aim of the paper is to analyse the decision processes that are taken to implement a planned change, in a complex ecosystem. As described by various authors in the so called second-generation development of STS theory, decisions are obligatory passage points of any change that affects the evolution of infrastructures. In this work decisions processes are not discrete decisions, but are considered as patterns of exchange and communication which reduce the equivocality of a problematic issue. In particular, we analyse the decision processes carried on by experts in Air Traffic Management (ATM) system and we sketch out whether and to what extend different decision making practices come into play in the adoption of an ATM changes and in the construction of the correlated socio-technical system. As depicted in literature, we take advantage of the case study analysis which allow us to identity the main building blocks trough which infrastructures change.