ABSTRACT
This chapter considers an experiment in cooperative self-recording in a department of a British engineering factory. It was designed to provide information about the way in which individuals at executive level spent their time, about their field of interaction, and about the distribution of work within a departmental executive group. Senior management encourage communicating by talk rather than by writing, and conversation, or informal meeting, is the regular manner of interaction. The production engineers had been added primarily to reduce the amount of direct interaction between the manager and the production lines. Their interaction with the heads of the planning and progress sections, as with Churchman in his role as design chief, is to be regarded as “lateral” rather than “vertical” communication. The size and distribution of interaction outside the department also, of course, bears a general relation to “administrative level”—e.g., to concern with matters of “policy” as against “productive effort”.
