ABSTRACT
During the course of the research, which was at first directed towards the understanding of on-going systems, opportunities were sought to study units in the process of undergoing technological or organizational change. The intention was to identify the nature of the change and to follow its course. A change situation was defined as one new to the pit concerned. The situations studied, therefore, ranged from the applications of methods commonly found in other pits, such as double-unit layout, to major technological experiments or organizational developments, such as the installation of a Haarman scraper-peeler or the emergence of three-shift composite longwalls. Whether or not the innovations were more than local in their novelty, at the pit concerned they had the quality of operational experiments. The outcome of each was surrounded with some degree of uncertainty, though this was naturally much greater when something radically new was being attempted. How far such activities were perceived as ‘experimental’, and the change process approached accordingly, is a matter to which we shall return at the end of this chapter.
