Venster op het Tavistock Institute of Human Relations

Samenvatting

An account of the activities of the Tavistock Institute of HR, founded in London in 1947. The 4 chief areas of activity are: (1) fam psychiatry and mental health (a strong Med basis exists in the Tavistock Clinic, a unit of the Nat' 1 Health Service; an emphasis on psychoanalysis is reflected in the list of res topics); (2) the org of human resources (industrial sociology emphasis on results of technological changes rather than employer/employee relationship, largely due to commission basis of work; deficient knowledge of empirical data on industr sociol, esp US, illustrated by the book The Enterprise and its environment by A. K. Rice, Tavistock Publications, 1963); (3) applied social res (this is a misnomer, since much of the work in the first 2 areas belongs here; it refers to consultant service); and (4) operational res (carried on by a separate Institute for Operational Res: project work and training, but little basic res). It is concluded that, for all its shortcomings, the Institute provides the sociol'tt with some indispensable data. I. Langnas.