The authors of this book provide a comprehensive diagnosis of the increasing number of problems afflicting the performance of business and other institutions. These problems are defined as people problems' - springing from the behaviour of those who manage as much as those who do the work. The traditional solutions - coercion, percentage staff reductions across the board, sharing of information, the quick fix' - are examined and found wanting.

Ketchum and Trist look beyond people problems' to the organization of work, and concentrate on the mismatch between the characteristics of people...

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the...

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the...