Academics From England

"Positivism : knowledge is hard, real, and capable of being transmitted in a tangible form."

"Quality means meeting customers' (agreed) requirements, formal and informal, at lowest cost, first time every time."

"In the modern systems approach, the concept "system" is used not to refer to things in the world but to a particular way of organising our thoughts about the world."

"We consider the notion of "system" as an organising concept, before going on to look in detail at various systemic metaphors that may be used as a basis for structuring thinking about organisations and problem situations."

"Different methodologies express different rationalities stemming from alternative theoretical positions which they reflect. These alternative positions must be respected, and methodologies and their appropriate theoretical underpinnings developed in partnership."

"Wyrd existed before the Gods and will exist after them. Yet wyrd lasts only for an instant, because it is the constant creation of the forces. Wyrd is itself, constant change, like the seasons, yet because it is created at every instant it is unchanging, like the still center of a whirlpool. The pattern of wyrd is like the grain in wood, or the flow of a stream, it is never repeated in exactly the same way. But the threads of wyrd pass through all things and we can open ourselves to its pattern by observing the ripples as it passes by."

"Nothing may happen without wyrd, for it is present in everything, but wyrd does not make things happen. Wyrd is created at every instant, and so wyrd is the happening."

"The threads of wyrd are a dimension of ourselves that we cannot grasp with words. We spin webs of words, yet wyrd slips through like the wind. The secrets of wyrd do not lie in our word-hoards, but are locked in the soul. We can only discern the shadows of reality with our words, whereas our souls are capable of encountering the realities of wyrd directly. This is why wyrd is accessible to the sorcerer: the sorcerer sees with his soul, not with eyes blinkered by the shape of words. Do not live your life searching around for answers in your word-hoard. You will find only words to rationalize your experience. Allow yourself to open to wyrd and it will cleanse, renew, change, and develop your casket of reason. Your word-hoard should serve your experience, not the reverse."

"Wyrd is the unfolding of our personal destiny. It has sometimes been translated into modern English as "fate." But it is much deeper than that. It does not see our lives as "pre-determined." Rather, it is an all-encompassing view which connects us to all things, thoughts, emotions, events in the cosmos as if through the threads of an enormous, invisible but dynamic web. Today, scientists know intellectually that all things are interconnected. But the power of Wyrd is to realise this in our inner being, and to know how to use it to manifest our personal destiny. Today, through a deep connection with wyrd, we are inspired to see our lives in a new and empowering way. It restores our experience of the healing power of love, nature and creativity. It is about letting into our lives the guidance of an extended universe of spirit. It brings ancient wisdom together with modern science in the service of enhancing our lives, and the integrity of our human presence on the planet."

"Wyrd is too vast and too complex, for us to comprehend, for we are ourselves, part of wyrd and cannot stand back to observe it as if it were a separate force. Just as fisherman cannot see the full extent of the seas, so even a sorcerer cannot view the totality of wyrd."

"All our lives are locked together in the shimmering world of wyrd in which all things are enmeshed and connected to one another by the threads of wyrd. … The wyrd sisters spin the web of wyrd and weave the loom of life, they do not thereby determine it … the wyrd sisters simply express the will of wyrd. And so do we. We cannot control our lives, because we too are inseparable aspects of wyrd and express its will. But this is not the same as saying our life is determined. Rather, it is saying we live like an ocean voyager, trimming our sails to the winds and tides of wyrd as we skim across the waters of life. And cresting the waves of wyrd is something that happens at every instant. The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it."

"“Frankly Jess, on the grand scale—” “You can’t think on the grand scale. You have to think on the small scale. Otherwise no-one’d ever do anything.”"

"That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was."

"I thought it was normal, that’s the thing. When you’re little you think everything is normal. If your mother had a pointed head and green ears you’d think it’s normal. Only when you grow up do you realise that not everybody is like that. Gradually you can even come to learn that the time you are living in is strange too, that it hasn’t always been like this. The more you feel uncomfortable and unconfident and want to find a way to be like everyone else and fit in, the more normality runs away from you because there isn’t any such thing. Or if there is, you have to find someone else who’ll agree with you what it is. Which I seem singularly unable to do."

"But naturally people fussed and objected like they always do when someone tries to do something positive."

"Every other method of resolving this difference of opinion has failed. We are reduced to violence, which is the last resort."

"“If you opt out, you don’t change anything.” “Why should I run round helping to get power for a group of idiots who’ll end up just as dangerous as the ones already in power?” You really don’t think anyone can make things better?” “No. What’s going to happen will happen.”"

"Critical systems thinkers like Midgley identify three waves of systems thinking over the last 50 years or so. Early systems theorists (e.g. Bertalanffy) described systems in physical terms, resorting to metaphors from electronic computation or biology. This 'hard systems' tradition still has its advocates and practitioners... Subsequently the limits of the physical metaphor... were reached, and the second wave of systems thinking developed. This 'soft systems thinking' employed social metaphors to develop appropriate systems approaches for human systems. The move to a more phenomenological, interpretative understanding of human systems, where meaning is central and is negotiated intersubjectively, parallels the new paradigm / crisis of social psychology of the 1970s. The Third wave, or critical systems school, in which Midgley locates himself, has drawn on the critical theory of Habermas, particularly in relation to theories of knowledge and of communicative rationality, and on the work of Foucault and followers on the nature of power."

"It wasn’t so long ago that complexity thinking was synonymous with bottom-up computer simulation. However, in the past 5-10 years we have seen other threads emerge from this mathematically focused starting point that acknowledge the profound philosophical implications of complexity."

"I’m basically interested in intervention. The key question for me is: how can you intervene more systemically? Systems approaches make the assumption that things are interconnected. That’s the fundamental starting point. However, we don’t have the privilege of a God’s eye view of that interconnectedness, so there are inevitable limits to understanding, and it is those limits that we call boundaries. So systemic intervention, for me, at a fundamental level, is how to explore those boundaries, and how to take account of the inevitable lack of comprehensiveness and begin to deal with that."

"When I started out, I believed that there were very distinct systems paradigms, and there was a need to choose and defend yours against other people’s paradigms. Today I prefer to see a systems perspective as something that you develop over a lifetime. It’s like building a house that evolves: you can redecorate it, even build an extension."

"# Macrosocial systems. These include systems in communities and industrial sectors, and institutions operating at the overall level of a society. They constitute what I have called "domains". (Trist, 1976a; 1979a). One may regard media as socio-technical systems. McLuhan (1964) has shown that the technical character of different media has far-reaching effects on users. The same applies to architectural forms and the infrastructure of the built environment. Although these are not organizations, they are socio-technical phenomena. They are media in Heider's (1942) as well as McLuhan's sense."

"One major figure in the (Tavistock) institute and its chairman for many years was Eric Trist, who is the primary author of sociotechnical systems theory. Trist was joined in his theoretical efforts and in his research by others who were either employed by the institute or strongly influenced by it. Thus in many respects sociotechnical systems theory is a product of the same kind of group interaction on which the theory itself focuses. Trist remains the prime contributor to the theory, even though he left the institute after some twenty years."

"# It was variety-increasing for both the individual and the organization rather than variety-decreasing in the bureaucratic mode."

"Socio-technical studies needed to be carried out at three broad levels - from micro to macro - all of which are interrelated:"

"# Primary work systems. These are the systems which carry out the set of' activities involved in an identifiable and bounded subsystem of a whole organization - such as a line department or a service unit..."

"# Whole organization systems. At one limit these would be plants or equivalent self-standing workplaces. At the other, they would be entire corporations or public agencies. They persist by maintaining a steady state with their environment."

"Trist both pioneered and embodied action research – an interplay between his deep interaction with real problems in organisations, and the forefront of academic thought in social science. through coal mines in Yorkshire to an entire manufacturing town in New York State – he was an active contributor to both theory and practice. He said that “I used to look with longing at what I called the ‘white-coated peace’, the tranquillity of the white-coated scientists working in the lab. But that was not for me. I didn’t have a white lab coat. I was in the messy, ambiguous, problematic stuff that you have to endure if you are going to be a psychologist”."

"What happened in the Haighmoor seam gave to Bamforth and myself a first glimpse of the "emergence of a new paradigm of work" (Emery, 1978) in which the best match would be sought between the requirements of the social and technical systems. Some of the principles involved were as follows:"

"# The work system, which comprised a set of activities that made up a functioning whole, now became the basic unit rather than the single jobs into which it was decomposable."

"The work organization of the new seam was, to us, a novel phenomenon consisting of relatively autonomous groups interchanging roles and shifts and regulating their affairs with a minimum of supervision. Cooperation between task groups was everywhere in evidence, personal commitment obvious, absenteeism low, accidents infrequent, productivity high. The contrast was large between the atmosphere and arrangements on these faces and those in the conventional areas of the pit, where the negative features characteristic of the industry were glaringly apparent. The men told us that in order to adapt with best advantage to the technical conditions in the new seam, they had evolved a form of work organization based on practices common in the unmechanized days when small groups, who took responsibility for the entire cycle, had worked autonomously."

"Coal being then the chief source of power, much industrial reconstruction depended on there being a plentiful and cheap supply. But the newly nationalized industry was not doing well. Productivity failed to increase in step with increases in mechanization. Men were leaving the mines in large numbers for more attractive opportunities in the factories. Among those who remained, absenteeism averaged 20 percent. Labor disputes were frequent despite improved conditions of employment. Some time earlier the National Coal Board had asked the Institute to make a comparative study of a high producing, high morale mine and a low producing, low morale, but otherwise equivalent mine."

"Fellows were encouraged to revisit their former industries and make a report on any new perceptions they might have. One of these Fellows, Ken Bamforth, returned with news of an innovation in work practice and organization which had occurred in a new seam in the colliery where he used to work in the South Yorkshire coalfield. The seam, the Haighmoor, had become possible to mine "shortwall" because of improved roof control."

"# Correspondingly, the work group became central rather than the individual jobholder."

"A main problem in the study of is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time."

"Socio-technical analysis is made at three levels - the primary work system; the whole organization; and macrosocial phenomena."

"# Internal regulation of the system by the group was thus rendered possible rather than the external regulation of individuals by supervisors."

"Considering enterprises as "open socio-technical systems" helps to provide a more realistic picture of how they are both influenced by and able to act back on their environment. It points in particular to the various ways in which enterprises are enabled by their structural and functional characteristics (“system constants”) to cope with the “lacks” and “gluts” in their available environment."

"Ludwig von Bertalanffy's formulation enables exchange processes between the organism, or organisation, and the elements in its environment to be dealt with in a new perspective, it does not deal at all with those processes in the environment itself which are among the determining conditions of the exchanges. To analyse these an additional concept is needed - the causal texture of the environment."

"The socio-technical concept arose in conjunction with the first of several field projects undertaken by the Tavistock Institute in the coal-mining industry in Britain. The time (1949) was that of the postwar reconstruction of industry in relation to which the Institute had two action research projects.(2) One project was concerned with group relations in depth at all levels (including the management/labor interface) in a single organization - an engineering company in the private sector. The other project focused on the diffusion of innovative work practices and organizational arrangements that did not require major capital expenditure but which gave promise of raising productivity. The former project represented the first comprehensive application in an industrial setting of the socio-clinical ideas concerning groups being developed at the Tavistock."

"The advantage of placing responsibility for the complete coal-getting task squarely on the shoulders of a single, small, face-to-face group which experiences the entire cycle of operations within the compass of its membership. [And furthermore], for each participant the task has total significance and dynamic closure ."

"The outstanding feature of the social pattern with which the pre-mechanized equilibrium was associated is its emphasis on small group organisation at the coal face. [Indeed], under these conditions there is no possibility of continuous supervision, in the factory sense, from any individual external to the primary work group."

"[The workmethods had] evolved from the experience of successive generations... Each other, often being members of the same family; supervision was internal, having the quality of 'responsible autonomy."

"Faced with low productivity despite improved equipment, and with drift from the pits despite both higher wages and better amenities... a point seems to have been reached where the [coal] industry is in a mood to question a method it has taken for granted."

"The longwall method [can be] regarded as a technological system expressive of the prevailing outlook of mass-production engineering and as a social structure consisting of the occupational roles that have been institutionalized in its use."

"Occupational roles express the relationship between a production process and the social organization of the group. In one direction, they are related to tasks, which are related to each other; in the other, to people, who are also related to each other."

"We are moving towards another type of society than that to which we have become accustomed. This is sometimes referred to as a new service society, the society of the second industrial revolution or the post-industrial society. There is no guarantee of our safe arrival. Not only are the interdependencies greater – they are differently structured... The changes in the policy field [housing, health care, urban rehabilitation, education, etc.] demand a new mobilization of the sciences."

"This paper introduces a concept of organizational ecology. This refers to the organizational field created by a number of organizations, whose interrelations compose a system at the level of the field as a whole. The overall field becomes the object of inquiry, not the single organization as related to its organization-set. The emergence of organizational ecology from earlier organization theory is traced and illustrated from empirical studies. Its relevance to the task of institution-building, in a world in which the environment has become exceedingly complex and more interdependent, is argued."

"# A design principle based on the redundancy of functions rather than on the redundancy of parts (Emery, 1967) characterized the underlying organizational philosophy which tended to develop multiple skills in the individual and immensely increase the response repertoire of the group."

"Every time the cycle is stopped, some 200 tons of coal are lost. So close is the task interdependence that the system becomes vulnerable from its need for 100 percent performance at each step."