Eric Trist: Organizing

Eric Trist was British scientist. Explore interesting quotes on organizing.
Eric Trist: 58   quotes 0   likes

“# 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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 11

Communication , Sense

“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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 8

Men , Personality

“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…”

Eric Trist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“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.”

Eric Trist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 8

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

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 6

“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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 20, cited in: Academy of International Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa. College of Business Administration (1982) Proceedings of the Academy of International Business: Asia-Pacific Dimensions of International Business, December 18-20, 1982, Honolulu, Hawaii. p. 163

“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.”

Eric Trist

Eric Trist, "A concept of organizational ecology." Australian journal of management 2.2 (1977): 161-175. p. 161; abstract

World , Study

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

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 9

“A main problem in the study of organizational change 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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 21

Behavior , Understanding , Problem , Study

“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.”

Eric Trist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 7

Idea , Time

“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.”

Eric Trist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 14

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