ABSTRACT
Since Irving Borwick outlined his ideas on Organizational Role Analysis he has influenced his thinking in four identifiable ways. First, he enabled him to make the move from thinking of organizations as being composed of individuals in groups to conceptualizing them as systems, roles, and individuals. Second, he furthered the thinking on the concept of the management of self in role, which Eric Miller and the author had just started to puzzle out. Third, he made the concept of the working hypothesis real and the author have used it ever since in his work. Finally, the author able to see with hindsight how systemic thinking has influenced his thinking in developing new ways of understanding realities, such as Social Dreaming. Memory is imperfect and subject to the gnawing tooth of time but some incidents remain vividly clear. The initial programmes of Borwick were a mixture of small groups and inter-group events in the Tavistock tradition.
