ABSTRACT
Most of the important thinkers who have contributed in the last 200 years or so to the interpretation and understanding of society as a whole have had to concern themselves more or less directly with the changing nature and dimensions of the organisational phenomenon. Many of them, much closer than us to the period of industrial take-off, saw or sensed the accelerative thrust of new science-based technologies and the rapid multiplication of work organisations implied in this. Today, the proportion of work in the industrial societies (other than the domestic work of housewives—though we can expect some changes here) that is not carried out by formal organisations is negligible, and the remnants of individual craft labour, subsistence agriculture, and to a lesser extent, self-employment, remain as reminders of our pasts.
