Changing culture of a factory

During the past fifty years there have been increasing opportunities to test the view that a scientific approach may assist the understanding of social problems and provide one means of improving decisions taken in tackling them. One recent opportunity has arisen through the interaction of three factors in the British industrial field-economic pressure for maximum productivity; severe limitation of re-equipment or expansion; and the altered social climate of a full employment situation. In these circumstances the part played in productivity by social and psychological factors has become particularly obvious, and increased support has been forthcoming for research.

The project described in the present book emerged from this background. It shows how the large-scale problems of British industry are reflected in the social development of a single industrial unit-a light engineering firm of some fifteen hundred people. The attempt of this firm to understand its problems is the theme of the book; but there are also illustrations of the close relationship between technological and social development, and of the difficulties in applying scientific method outside the lab oratory in the world of social reality. This last point is a main interest of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, the research organization which collaborated in the work reported; and it may therefore be appropriate to offer some remarks on the Institute's general methods of social research, as represented in this industrial study.