Organizational Design in Industry—Towards a Democratic, Socio‐technical Approach

Abstract

Industrial engineers have traditionally made an impact upon the behaviour of people in organizations in two ways. Through the design of technology they have established a technical framework to which the social system has had to adapt. Also because a large proportion of supervisory and managerial positions has been held by engineers, they have often had responsibility for specifying the network of roles and relationships which make up an industrial organization. Usually they have approached this task by taking a technological orientation to human beings and human problems. People have been treated like uniform bits and pieces, capable of being split up and put together at the will of the management. Social systems design has been treated as a one‐off job, such concepts as organizational development or stepwise design have been seldom taken into consideration. The goals of the organization and society have been stated in terms of technology and economy; social and psychological aspects of human behaviour have generally been neglected.

Citation

Gulowsen, J. (1973), "Organizational Design in Industry—Towards a Democratic, Socio‐technical Approach", Personnel Review, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 30-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055229