Organizational Choice (RLE: Organizations)

Capabilities of Groups at the Coal Face Under Changing Technologies

E. Trist, G. Higgin, H. Murray, A. Pollock, E. L. Trist, G. W. Higgin, A. B. Pollock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135965211
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book develops and applies a new approach to the study of the working group and indeed of productive enterprises more generally. Unlike similar studies, in this volume the human is related back to the technological, and it is the socio-technical system as a whole that is the object of study. The work reported in this book shows how alternative modes of work organization can exist for the same technology, giving the possibility of organizational choice.

PART I
PATTERN AND PROCESS

SECTIONS

ONE.	The Nature of the Project: Methods and Concepts
TWO.	Traditional and Conventional Work Group Organization
THREE.	Emerging Forms of Work Group Organization

SECTION ONE

The Nature of the Project,
Methods and Concepts

CHAPTERS

I.	The Socio–Technical Approach
II.	Design and Methods
III.	The Appraisal of Socio-Technical Systems in Mining

CHAPTER I

The Socio-Technical Approach

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT

This presentation of research studies by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in a number of pits in North West Durham is concerned with the interaction of technological and social factors in industrial production systems—here represented by a variety of mining methods at differing levels of mechanization. The approach adopted, that of considering each production unit as a socio-technical system, originated in the first mining study carried out by the Institute (Trist and Bamforth, 1951). The usefulness of the concept having been demonstrated by subsequent work (Wilson and Trist, 1951; Trist, 1953), it has been further developed in two parallel Tavistock projects, one in the Indian textile industry (Rice, 1958), the other the present research. Wilson (1955) has noted that work on similar lines has developed independently in various countries and that similar findings have emerged (Walker & Guest, 1952; Westerlund, 1952; Touraine, 1955).

The propositions underlying the present studies may, following Trist and Bamforth, 1951, be stated as follows: ‘. . . the longwall method will 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. These interactive technological and sociological patterns will be assumed to exist as forces having psychological effects in the life-space of the faceworker, who must either take a role and perform a task in the system they compose or abandon his attempt to work at the coal face. His own contribution to the field of determinants arises from the nature and quality of the attitudes and relationships he develops in performing one of these tasks and in taking one of these roles. Together, the forces and their effects constitute the psycho-social whole which is the object of study.’

Rice, in Productivity and Social Organization, continues more generally: ‘The concept of a production system as a socio-technical system designates a general field of study concerned with the interrelations of the technical and socio-psychological organization of industrial production systems…. The concept of a socio-technical system arose from the consideration that any production system requires both a technological organization—equipment and process layout—and a work organization relating to each other those who carry out the necessary tasks. The technological demands place limits on the type of work organization possible, but a work organization has social and psychological properties of its own that are independent of technology…. A socio-technical system must also satisfy the financial conditions of the industry of which it is a part. It must have economic validity. It has in fact social, technological and economic dimensions, all of which are interdependent but all of which have independent values of their own.’

It is, of course, the socio-psychological (the people) and the technological (the things) which are the substantive dimensions. The economic dimension measures the effectiveness with which human and technological resources are used to carry out the primary task (cf. Williams, 1950). The importance of the distinctiveness of territory has been discussed by Miller (1959). Emery & Trist (1960) have further shown that the socio-technical concept requires to be developed in terms of open rather than closed system theory, especially as regards the enterprise-environment relation and the elucidation of the conditions under which a steady state may be attained:

‘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. Unlike mechanical and other inanimate systems they possess the property of “equi-finality”; they may achieve a steady state from differing initial conditions and in differing ways. Thus in coping by internal changes they are not limited to simple quantitative change and increased uniformity but may, and usually do, elaborate new structures and take on new functions. The cumulative effect of coping mainly by internal elaboration and differentiation is generally to make the system independent of an increasing range of the predictable fluctuations in its supplies and outlets. At the same time, however, this process ties down in specific ways more and more of its capital, skill and energies and renders it less able to cope with newly emergent and unpredicted changes that challenge the primary ends of the enterprise.’ (Op. cit.p.94.)

Inherent in the socio-technical approach is the notion that the attainment of optimum conditions in any one dimension does not necessarily result in a set of conditions optimum for the system as a whole. If the structures of the various dimensions are not consistent, interference will occur, leading to a state of disequilibrium, so that achievement of the overall goal will to some degree be endangered and in the limit made impossible.¹ The optimization of the whole tends to require a less than optimum state for each separate dimension.

FOCUSING ON THE SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM

This approach does not imply that in all circumstances a detailed study of all three dimensions must be carried out. It does, however, underline the importance, when any aspect of a production system is examined, of taking into account the manner and extent of its interdependence with the other dimensions. In the present mining studies the research focus is the socio-psychological system. It is through the people who comprise this system that technological and economic changes are successfully or unsuccessfully implemented. For such changes to be effectively introduced, understanding of the latent as well as the manifest functioning of the socio-psychological system is necessary (Merton, 1949; Jaques, 1951;Blau, 1955).

The socio-psychological system may be studied at different organizational levels in the coal as in other industries: at the level of the individual worker, the work group, the seam, the pit, the Area, the Division, or at the level of the National Coal Board itself, that is, the enterprise as a whole, when a very wide economic, political, and socio-cultural environment must be taken into account. The unit of study on which the present research is centred, however, is the primary work group. This is the smallest group whose membership carries out the whole set of activities constituting the unitary cycle of coal face operations. The boundaries of this social unit are defined in terms of the technological unit—the work cycle which it has to perform.¹ Just as the technical system of a coal face forms part of a larger system—the seam—in which it must be integrated for effective working, so does the primary work group—the cycle group—form part of a larger social system. The research is therefore concerned not only with the component work groups at the coal face which make up the cycle group but also with other individuals and groups in the seam population with whom they have immediate relations and who constitute the surrounding ‘seam society’.²

At the level of the cycle group, the technological, economic, and socio-psychological dimensions differ in the degree to which they constrain modification of the system by the group. There is least freedom in the technological system for other than very minor modifications, decisions on the mining side rarely being taken below pit level and frequently involving higher management. In the economic dimension there is somewhat more, though still limited, opportunity for change, as in initiating local negotiations regarding the basis or amounts of payment. Strict account, however, must be taken of the framework of existing agreements, which may be seam ‘prices’ or local colliery settlements; and at an early stage any proposal has to be considered in terms of county and national agreements. It is the socio-psychological system which affords the greatest opportunity for either formal or informal change at the level of the cycle group—in such matters as altering the pattern of work group organization.

It was not within our terms of reference to consider aspects of the economic system such as the capital, operating, maintenance, and wages costs, or the level of wages or piece-rate prices, as such. None the less, the form of the wages system has considerable bearing on the structure and functioning of the socio-psychological system and in this context is taken into account. Our principal concern is to examine that aspect of the socio-technical whole—the socio-psychological—within which the primary work group has relatively greater opportunity to develop various forms of work organization within imposed technological and economic limits. A set of concepts for describing the socio-psychological dimension is called for, which can be co-ordinated to concepts used in describing the technological.

THE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY

Over a number of years pilot studies of a variety of mining methods had been made by the Institute in a number of coalfields. Because these studies could be made only as opportunity arose, and because the seam conditions, customs, practices, and attitudes differed in each locality, systematic and detailed comparison of the mining methods was scarcely feasible. Further progress required that these should be simultaneously available for study and that pits using them should be in one Area of a coalfield so as to minimize differences in background and tradition. The opportunity to undertake such studies in an older Area of the Durham coalfield was particularly welcome. In the collieries offered for study there existed—often in the same pit and all actively functioning in the present—a wide variety of mining systems ranging from traditional unmechanized working, through partially mechanized conventional methods, to more highly mechanized emergent systems. Since the faces concerned were in the same low seam, the geological structure of which was noted for its constancy, a comparative study of systems at different levels of mechanization was made possible under conditions more closely similar than any hitherto available.

In the most widespread of the conventional technologies in Durham there also existed two radically different forms of work organization, one of which had its roots in the earlier traditions of the coalfield, the other reflecting a form of organization more widespread in manufacturing industries. Comparison of alternative forms of work organization within the same technology therefore became feasible. The hypotheses emerging from the earlier Institute studies made the carrying out of such an ‘experiment of opportunity’ a matter of central scientific interest.

The co-existence in the present of a historically related range of mining methods, the growing importance of low seams as the higher were exhausted, and the increasing use of more highly mechanized methods in low seams also presented an unusual opportunity to observe, as they occurred, the socio-psychological aspects of technological change.

This book, which covers the period January 1955 to March 1958, presents a general account of the research findings together with a series of field experiments and case studies, full technical accounts of which have been given in the source papers. A description of the design of the research and the methods used is followed by presentation of the concepts developed for the appraisal of work systems. The main mining methods are then examined in these terms, proceeding from the simpler to the more complex and more highly mechanized. In the field experiments and case studies a comparison is made of the operational effectiveness of alternative forms of work organization at the most commonly found level of mechanization. Accounts are given of the social development of composite work groups under advantageous and disadvantageous conditions. Finally, we consider problems of changes in work organization both with and without accompanying technological change.

¹ Such dissonances between system characteristics may be...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Orginal Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. Pattern and Process
• Part II. Comparative Studies and Field Experiments
• Summary and Conclusions
• Appendices
• Special Bibliography
• General Bibliography
• Index