Ralph Rowbottom was born and brought up in England, spending his early career years in industry. In 1963 he took up a post as an internal consultant in the Glacier Metal Company, and in 1965 as a staff member of the Glacier Institute of Management.
In 1968 he joined Elliot Jaques, the then-director of the Brunel Institute of Organisation & Social Studies at Brunel University (near London) as a Senior Research Fellow, later Professorial Fellow. Here, for some twenty years, he undertook social-analytic work in the (British) National Health Service, and for about ten years of this time also directed a unit doing similar work in British social welfare agencies.
In 1986 he began to turn from social-analytic work in large organisations, and founded with two partners, a centre in Bath, England, dedicated to the practice of personal development and therapy, and continued in this until his retirement in 1996.
He has been author or joint author of a number of books including:
- Organisation Analysis (1968, with Derek Newman)
- Hospital Organisation (1973, as principal author, with Jaques and others)
- Social Services Departments – Developing Patterns of Work and Organisation (1974, with David Billis and Anthea Hey)
- Organising Social Services (1980, with various co-authors)
- Social Analysis – A Collaborative Method of Gaining Usable Scientific Knowledge of Social Institutions (1977)
- Organisational Design – The Work-Levels Approach (1987, with David Billis)
A collection of his later papers on a wide range of social, psychological, and philosophical topics, the result of a long collaboration with Nicholas Spicer, a Jungian analyst, are displayed on the website www.ralphrowbottom.info
