Fred Emery Quotes (15 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

F. E. Emery (1980) in " This Week’s Citation Classic http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1980/A1980KT80900001.pdf" in: CC. Nr. 52. Dec 29, 1980. p. 292: Emery reflecting on his 1963 article "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments" with Eric Trist.

“In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking.”

Fred Emery

Frederick Edmund Emery (ed.) (1969) Systems thinking: selected readings Penguin, p. 7: Beginning of editorial by Fred Emery.

“There are reasons to believe that the world economy is once again in the throes of a phase change. There are also reasons to believe that this phase change, like the preceding ones, will involve a paradigmatic shift in the organization of people around their work. If this is so, then our perceptions of what has happened in the past decade or more in the world of work may need to be modified; likewise our perceptions of where those changes are leading us”

Fred Emery

Fred Emery (1982) " Socio-Technical Foundations for a New Social Order? http://www.moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericsess/sessvol2/Soc_Order.pdf" in Human Relations, Vol 35: p. 1095-1122.

“Yet more complex are the environments we have called turbulent fields. In these, dynamic processes, which create significant variances for the component organizations, arise from the field itself.”

Fred Emery

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 30.

“The next level of causal texturing we have called the disturbed reactive environment. It may be compared with Ashby's ultra-stable system or the economists' oligopolic market.”

Fred Emery

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 29.

“In a general way it may be said that to think in terms of systems seems the most appropriate conceptual response so far available when the phenomena under study--at any level and in any domain--display the character of being organized, and when understanding the nature of the interdependencies constitutes the research task. In the behavioral sciences, the first steps in building a systems theory were taken in connection with the analysis of internal processes in organisms, or organizations, when the parts had to be related to the whole.”

Fred Emery

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

“The basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking, is that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.”

Fred Emery

Russell L. Ackoff and Fred Emery (1972) On purposeful systems, cited in: Lloyd Dobyns, Clare Crawford-Mason (1994) Thinking about quality: progress, wisdom, and the Deming philosophy. p. 40.

“Yet more complex are the environments we have called turbulent fields.”

Fred Emery

In these, dynamic processes, which create significant variances for the component organizations, arise from the field itself.
Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 30.

“The next level of causal texturing we have called the disturbed reactive environment.”

Fred Emery

It may be compared with Ashby's ultra-stable system or the economists' oligopolic market.
Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 29.