The Social Engagement of Social Science, a Tavistock Anthology, Volume 2: The Socio-Technical Perspective

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1993

The Social Engagement of Social Science, a Tavistock Anthology, Volume 2

The Socio-Technical Perspective

Edited by: Eric Trist , Hugh Murray and Beulah Trist

https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512819052

Overview
Contents

About this book

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science."

There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume.

The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, presented in this second volume, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor.

Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extended the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society.

Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments—the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.

Author / Editor information

Eric Trist, Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, was a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, and became internationally known as the "Father" of socio-technical systems in the further development of which his Australian colleague, Fred Emery, has taken the leading role. In the late 1960s he partnered Russell Ackoff in building the Social Systems Sciences Department then at the Wharton School. He is the principal author of Organizational Choice: Capabilities of Groups at the Coal Face Under Changing Technologies. Hugh Murray is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a senior staff member at the Tavistock Institute. He began working with Trist during World War II and is a co-author of Organizational Choice. Beulah Trist was on the administrative staff of the Tavistock Institute from 1942 to 1959.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Historical Overview The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute Eric Trist and Hugh Murray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Volume II. The Socio-Technical Perspective Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Introduction to Volume II Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
Shaping a New Field
The Stress of Isolated Dependence The Filling Shift in the Semi-Mechanized Longwall Three-Shift Mining Cycle Eric Trist and Ken Bamforth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
Alternative Work Organizations An Exact Comparison Eric Trist, Gurth Higgin, Hugh Murray and Alec Pollock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
Productivity and Social Organization An Indian Automated Weaving Shed A.K. Rice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
The Ahmedabad Experiment Revisited Work Organization in an Indian Weaving Shed, 1953–1970 Eric J. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Conceptual Developments
Designing Socio-Technical Systems for Greenfield Sites Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
The Assembly Line Its Logic and Our Future Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
The Second Design Principle Participation and the Democratization of Work Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
Socio-Technical Foundations for a New Social Order? Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	234
The Historical Validity of the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	254
Toward a New Philosophy of Management Paul Hill and Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Alternatives to Hierarchies David (P.G.) Herbst Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Designing with Minimal Critical Specifications David (P.G.) Herbst Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	294
The Coming Crisis for Production Management Louis Davis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Principles of Socio-Technical Design Albert Cherns Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	314
Socio-Technical Ideas at the End of the ’70s Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	324
QWL and the ’80s Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	338
Associated Studies
Organizational Choice and the New Technology Gareth Morgan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	354
On the Collaboration Between Social Scientists and Engineers List Klein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
Technology, Territory and Time The Internal Differentiation of Complex Production Systems Eric J. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	385
Strategic Projects
A Learning Organization in Practice M/S Balao David (P.G.) Herbst Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	409
Action Research in an American Underground Coal Mine Gerald Susman and Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417
The Limits of Laissez-Faire as a Socio-Technical Change Strategy Eric Trist and Charles Dwyer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	451
Socio-Technical Projects in the Canadian Federal Public Service Bill Westley and Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	474
The Norskhydro Fertilizer Plant Fred Emery and Einar Thorsrud Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	492
Visual Display Technology, Worker Disablement and Work Organization Trevor A. Williams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	508
A New Type of Labor-Management Contract Involving the Quality of Working Life Louis Davis and Stu Sullivan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	532
Collaborative Action Research
Socio-Technical Unit Operations Analysis Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	559
The Nine-Step Model Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	569
A Socio-Technical Critique of Scientific Management Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	580
The Participative Design Workshop Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	599
Legislating for Quality of Work Life Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	614
Socio-Technical Action Simulations for Engaging with Engineering Designers Hugh Murray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	618
Work Improvement and Organizational Democracy Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	633
Nonroutine Office Work Calvin Pava Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	644
Pava’s Extension of Socio-Technical Theory to Advanced Information Technologies Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	662
A Brief Introduction to the Emerys’ “Search Conference” David Morley and Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	674
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	679
Subject Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	681
Name Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	692
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	697

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 640
Keywords: Social Science; General

eBook

Published: April 7, 2016
ISBN: 9781512819052