New Forms of Coherence for the Social Engagement of the Social Scientist: The Theory and Facilitation of Organizational Change from the Perspective of the Emery–Trist Systems Paradigm and the Ilya Prigogine School of Thought

In this chapter I explore the theories and approaches inherent in the Emery-Trist systems paradigm (ETSP), including related work of their close collaborators (Babürog˘lu, 1992)1 on change and uncertainty through the perspective of scientific theories on chaos, complexity and dissipative structures from the Ilya Prigogine school of thought. In 1977, Ilya Prigogine won a Nobel Prize for his work on the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium systems, focusing on dissipative structures arising out of non-linear processes. I suggest in this chapter that finding parallels between the paradigm and the school of thought provides both theoretical and practical insights for the social scientist involved in the study, appreciation, application and facilitation of organizational change theory and process. In this chapter I pay particular attention to insights gained from applying the Prigoginian lens to Emery and Trist’s (1965) seminal article on contextual and turbulent environments and, more broadly, to the body of Trist’s work as well as that of Trist and Emery and their colleagues who over decades involved themselves

in research that relates theory and practice in a way that Trist refers to as The Social Engagement of Social Science (Trist and Murray, 1990, ‘Preface’).