Lasting Contributions: \'Social Analysis\' and \'Organizational Design: The Work-Level Approach\'

Speaker A I'm a natural writer. I love writing. Whether I'm a good writer is another question. But I write as the health service project that Brunel went on. First of all, working papers were written, and then two books were published. With multiple authorship. And the same happened with the social welfare or social services projects. First of all, working papers and two books. These may still have some interest. I was thought the health Services book hospital organization where I was the principal author might still have uses for hospital administrators and the like across the world. The social welfare, I think, is very oriented to the British scene and I would have thought was of less general interest. The two books which I regard as my particular lasting contribution, if I have one are Social Analysis which is a full scale exposition of the method which Elliot Jacks pioneered and developed but which was further developed as we worked. On it. And organizational design, the work levels approach which elaborates the theory of work levels. I'll just say a little more about that in a moment, but weaves it in to a general approach to organisational design of a very practical kind, I think, which, Paul, you've just touched on what are the levels? What are the accountability and authority relationships? What does this spell out for recruitment and assessment of personal abilities? So that's the second book. I would be very happy to think if people got something from those two books but forgot anything else I'd written, I'd rest. I was going to say I'd die. Now I'd rest a happy man. I just do want to say a word about work levels because although I haven't followed the story myself, I think there it has to be recognized here. Something of a parting of a ways in the whole social analytic approach and the people who practice it. Elliot's brilliant insight was that work in organisations is stratified and it has a basic time dimension. I think this is a huge and lasting social importance, as we all know, or we who are in the movement. He developed this instrument, the Time Span of discretion, which was developed initially to help for job evaluation, that is, the fixing of salary bounds. He then went on to explore in several different places what characterized these different strata. Not just beyond time, I should say. And of course, you have a very elaborate and rich and insightful descriptions. I tend to see them as psychologically oriented. They're telling us what the mind is, what the mental ability is that needs to do work at levels one, two, three, whatever. What the insight David BILLISON himself had, I think. And the original questions were posed by David, I must say. It's always they say in science, the most important things is to ask the right questions, and David certainly did. That was what about the required work itself? Can we say anything about the required work at levels 1234 whatever. And once the questions were posed like that, certainly answers popped up in my mind very rapidly indeed, almost in one evening. They needed a lot of work, which David and I did together. It was a very full and very real collaboration. And the formulations we finished with are very simple. They can be categorized in a couple of words at each level and have proved, certainly proved at the time. The last ten years, say, I was in the work very easy for managers from industry, commerce, all the public services to understand, virtually. Warren.