ABSTRACT
This presentation of research studies by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in a number of pits in North West Durham is concerned with the interaction of technological and social factors in industrial production systems—here represented by a variety of mining methods at differing levels of mechanization. The approach adopted, that of considering each production unit as a socio-technical system, originated in the first mining study carried out by the Institute (Trist and Bamforth, 1951). The usefulness of the concept having been demonstrated by subsequent work (Wilson and Trist, 1951; Trist, 1953), it has been further developed in two parallel Tavistock projects, one in the Indian textile industry (Rice, 1958), the other the present research. Wilson (1955) has noted that work on similar lines has developed independently in various countries and that similar findings have emerged (Walker & Guest, 1952; Westerlund, 1952; Touraine, 1955).
