Social Change in Industry: From Insight to Implementation

Abstract

One industrial organization's attempt to influence its social system through determined use of developmental programs is described.

Referring to some ideas of the impending change of bureaucracy as we have known it in the past, the article points to the administrator's responsibility of not leaving the organizational and personnel development to chance in this era when both individual and organizational survival depend on the ability to adapt.

It describes a tentative model selected by the organization to induce the utilization of knowledge and effect a social change through extensive use of laboratory methods. The results of this attempt are described. They vary with emotional involvement: from the greatest impact on man's primary family life to a slower rate of progress in the affectively neutral organizational environment. The perplexing question still remaining with the administrator is how fast and how far this process can go.