Sociotechnical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to coherent systems of human relations, technical objects, and cybernetic processes that inhere to large, complex infrastructures. Social society, and its constituent substructures, qualify as complex sociotechnical systems.
Eric Lansdown Trist was an English scientist and leading figure in the field of organizational development (OD). He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London.
Frederick Edmund Emery was an Australian psychologist. He was a prominent early figure in the field of organizational development, particularly in the development of the theory around participative work design structures such as self-managing teams.
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness—in particular, psychosis and schizophrenia.
The New World Order (NWO) is a term used in several conspiracy theories which hypothesize a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history's progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been alleged to be part of a cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology founded in 1920 by Hugh Crichton-Miller.
Kurt Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career, Lewin's academic research and writings focuses on applied research, action research, and group communication.
John Rawlings Rees,, also known as 'Jack' or 'J.R.', was a British civilian and military psychiatrist.
Sensitivity training is a form of training with the goal of making people more aware of their own goals as well as their prejudices, and more sensitive to others and to the dynamics of group interaction.
Socio-analysis is the activity of exploration, consultancy, and action research which combines and synthesises methodologies and theories derived from psychoanalysis, group relations, social systems thinking, organisational behaviour, and social dreaming.
The British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) is a UK-wide umbrella association of training institutions and professional bodies providing psychotherapy services to the public, mainly in the private sector. As implied in the title their therapeutic approaches are guided by analytical psychology and the psychoanalytic schools of psychology and treatment. It is a registered charity.
The shadow government, also referred to as cryptocracy, secret government, or invisible government, is a family of theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not only with publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions. According to this belief, the official elected government is subservient to the shadow government, which is the true executive power.
Lamoraal Ulbo de Sitter was a Dutch sociologist and Professor of business administration at the Radboud University Nijmegen, known for his seminal work in the field of sociotechnical system in the Netherlands.
Isabel Menzies Lyth born Isabel Edgar Punton was a British psychoanalyst in the Kleinian tradition, known for her work on unconscious mechanisms in institutional settings.
John Derg Sutherland, also known as Jock Sutherland, was a Scottish physician, psychoanalyst and theorist, notable also for his role as Medical Director of the Tavistock Clinic.
Alexander Thomson Macbeth Wilson MD RAMC FRCPsych FBPsS FRSA was a British psychiatrist who was a pioneer of therapeutic communities.
Civil Resettlement Units, or CRUs, was a scheme created during the Second World War by Royal Army Medical Corps psychiatrists to help British Army servicemen who had been prisoners of war (POWs) to return to civilian life, and to help their families and communities to adjust to having them back. Units were set up across Britain from 1945 and later expanded to provide for Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOWs) as well as those who had been captive in European camps. By March 1947, 19,000 European POWs and 4,500 FEPOWs had attended a unit.
War Office Selection Boards, or WOSBs, were a scheme devised by British Army psychiatrists during World War II to select potential officers for the British Army. They replaced an earlier method, the Command Interview Board, and were the precursors to today's Army Officer Selection Boards. The WOSBs were also later adapted to civilian purposes such as selecting civil servants and firemen.
Gail Lewis is a British writer, psychotherapist, researcher, and activist. She is visiting senior fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics, and Reader Emerita of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, London. She trained as a psychodynamic psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic.
Eric Graham Howe was a British psychiatrist notable for his early, interdisciplinary approach to psychotherapy in the 1930s, featuring elements of psychodynamic psychology, existential phenomenology, Eastern philosophy and Christian spirituality. After serving in World War I, he became interested in Sigmund Freud and decided to study psychiatry. Following medical school, he worked at the Tavistock Clinic in the 1920s and 1930s, and established the Open Way Clinic in the 1950s, later renamed the Langham Clinic. Towards the end of his life, he was known as a practicing Druid. He was the author of more than a dozen books and was influential among a number of writers and psychiatrists, including Israel Regardie, Jean Lucey Pratt, Alan Watts, Henry Miller, and R.D. Laing.
