Sunday, November 9, 2008

GROUP IN AN ORGANISATION


TAVISTOCK STUDY




The Tavistock is a study that was carried by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations for British Coal demonstrating not only the important of the Social relationships between individuals within working groups but also the effect of the interdependence of the social and technical systems.
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations has had a profound effect on the moral, spiritual, cultural, political and economic policies of the United States of America and Great Britain. It has been in the front line of the attack on the U.S. Constitution and State constitutions. No group did more to propagandize the U.S. to participate in WWI at a time when the majority of the American people were opposed to it.

Much of the same tactics were used by the Social Science scientists at Tavistock to get the United States into WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Serbia and both wars against Iraq. Tavistock began as a propaganda creating and disseminating organization at Wellington House in London in the run-up to WWI, what Toynbee called “that black hole of disinformation, a lie factory.” In 1821, operations that were to shape the destinies of Germany, Russia, Britain and the United States were transferred to the Tavistock Institute. The people of these nations were unaware that they were being “brainwashed.” Tavistock’s “mind control,” “inner directional conditioning” and mass “brainwashing” methods, still very much in use today, are explained in this easy to understand book written with great authority. The fall of dynasties, the Bolshevik Revolution, WWI and WWII saw the destruction of old alliances and boundaries, the convulsions in religion, morals, family life, economic and political conduct and the decadence in music and art that can all be traced back to mass indoctrination (mass brainwashing) practiced by the Tavistock Institute Social Science scientists. Prominent among Tavistock’s faculty was Edward Bernays, the double nephew of Sigmund Freud. It is said that Herr Goebbels, Propaganda Minister in the German Third Reich used methodology devised by Bernays as well as that of Willy Munzenberg.


SOCIAL-TECHNICAL.
Socio-technical systems design was the product of a group of social scientists who came together at the end of the second world war and formed the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. The Tavistock, or Tavi as it is colloquially known, was established in 1946 by this group, many of whom had collaborated in wartime projects and most of whom had been members of the Tavistock Clinic before the war. The Tavistock Clinic is a therapeutic establishment concerned with mental health and individual development and this was also the initial focus of the members of the Tavistock Institute, although they were applying their ideas to workers in industry.
Eric Trist, a founder member of the Institute, became aware of the influence of technology on people when he was working in the jute industry in Scotland in the late 1930's. He was a member of a small interdisciplinary team studying the unemployment that resulted from the jute industry being rationalized. He found that changes in technology were causing unemployment, deskilling and alienation: the technical and social systems were acting on each other in a negative way.
In 1949, the Tavistock Institute made its first major contribution to the theory of socio-technical design with a number of field projects in the British coal industry. These studies have now become classics and are widely taught in business schools throughout the world. The coal industry had recently changed its technology and mechanized its production system and the changes caused great stress among the workers. Morale was low and many miners suffered psychosomatic disorders. As the research progressed, the team recognised that the new technical systems had created and inferior and damaging form of social organisation. This let them to formulate one the the most important principles of socio-technical design:
If a technical system is created at the expense of a social system, the results obtained will be sub-optimal.
They decided that when work is being designed, the goal must always be the joint optimization of the social and technical systems.
This early research, together with many projects in Scandinavia and one in India, led to many of the work design principles which are proving useful and relevant today. By the sixties, the team had developed and published their ideas on:
The concept of socio-technical systems
Definition of organisations as open systems
The principal of organisational choice - the need to optimise and bring together social and technical systems
The importance of self-managing groups
The problems of work alienation
As it developed, socio-technical design came to be associated with a clear ethical principle, which was to increase the ability of the individual to participate in decision taking and through this to exercise a degree of control over the immediate work environment. Managers were advised to tell work groups what to do but not how to do it. The latter would come from the knowledge, experience and skill of each work group. Ways of working might differ as each group decided on the approach that would enable it to produce an optimal high quality result.
ECONOMIC WAY
We find that Tavistock also was much involved with Residential Development and impacts
of GDP..
He said the economic impact assess-
ment, conducted in conjunction with the
Government, had shown that the Albany
Project would generate 700 permanent, full-
time jobs. A further 400 “indirect and
induced” jobs would be generated from
entrepreneurial ventures and other spin-offs.
Mr. Anand said the economics study
had also shown that the Albany Project
would generate $400 million in property
taxes for the Government during its first 12
years in existence, with the $1 billion GDP
impact over the same timeline coming from
both the construction and operational phases.
Assessment
In 2017, the Albany Project is expected
to generate $67 million in annual GDP from
ongoing operations alone, according to the
economic impact assessment.
In an exclusive interview with The
Tribune, Mr Anand said the Albany develop-
ment will include 300 single family homes, a
“cottage component” and apartments locat-
ed around a marina.
The price range for the properties will
lie between $2 million and $20 million, with
the average around $3-$4 million. Mr.
Anand said the total value of the Albany
Project’s “home products” would lie between
$1.2 billion and $1.5 billion.
The three major shareholders and
investors in the Albany Project are the
Tavistock Group, the holding company for
Lyford Cay-based billionaire Joe Lewis’s
worldwide investments, and world-leading
golfers Ernie Els and Tiger Woods.
The development itself will be located
on the Albany House property, which most
Bahamians know as the property behind the
long pink wall on Adelaide Road as they
drive towards South Ocean, and other land-
holdings on the opposite side of the road.
The land is all privately owned by the
Tavistock Group’s Bahamian subsidiary,
New Providence Development Company.
Mr. Anand, who is also a director of the
Tavistock Group, said the Albany Project’s
homes were being marketed to “a pretty
unbelievable group of potential buyers that
included world-famous celebrities, major
sporting stars and wealthy businessmen. The
prospective clients include Bahamians and
non-Bahamians.
The investors and the Government are
in negotiations on a Heads of Agreement for
the development, and Mr. Anand praised the
administration for being “extremely reason-
able” and seeking “to do the right thing.”
He explained that it “would be easy to
see a project like this and give us what we
want,” but the Government was being “dili-
gent” to ensure the Albany Project fits into
its wider economic and social development
plans.
Once a Heads of Agreement is reached,
the investors are hoping to begin construc-
tion of the amenities and initial home sites at
the Albany Project in summer 2006.
That work is expected to take between
18-20 months, and the community itself will
open at some point between Christmas 2007
and spring 2008.
Mr. Anand said the full-time jobs creat-
ed by the Albany Project would run “the full
gamut” from high-income to low-income
professions, including doctors, lawyers, den-
tists, engineers, landscapers, designers, main-
tenance and golf course workers and clean-
ers.
Adding that the investors would be “on
a hell of a hiring spree” once negotiations
with the Government were concluded, Mr.
Anand said the goal was to maximise the use
of Bahamian labour during both the con-
struction and operational phases as this was
the only way “to make it work.”
Apart from committing to training pro-
grammes for Bahamians and equipping them
with high-quality skills, Mr. Anand said
employees would also be sent on “sabbati-
cals” to the Tavistock Group’s existing high-
end residential communities at Lake Nona
and Isleworth, both located near Orlando,
Florida.
“Our goal really is to create the best of
the best,” Mr. Anand said. “It’s really about
building something special and doing some-
thing good for our customers and good for the Bahamas.
Scola,Hassanatu,Jam Barrie

1 comment:

OBE STUDENTS said...

Hey guys geuss what the work in the blog..group work came up in 2008 december exams.....i would remember all the detals and am glad i passed my paper.thans to you all.