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We know from experience that technology can be changed. We have learned in the quality-of-working-life enterprise not to accept the technological imperative.

— Eric Trist Eric Trist cited in: Alternatives. Vol 8 (1980)

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More quotes by Eric Trist

Socio-technical analysis is made at three levels - the primary work system; the whole organization; and macrosocial phenomena.

The evolution of socio-technical systems (1981)

Every time the cycle is stopped, some 200 tons of coal are lost. So close is the task interdependence that the system becomes vulnerable from its need for 100 percent performance at each step.

Socio-technical studies needed to be carried out at three broad levels - from micro to macro - all of which are interrelated

The evolution of socio-technical systems (1981)

The longwall method [can be] regarded as a technological system expressive of the prevailing outlook of mass-production engineering and as a social structure consisting of the occupational roles that have been institutionalized in its use.

Occupational roles express the relationship between a production process and the social organization of the group. In one direction, they are related to tasks, which are related to each other; in the other, to people, who are also related to each other.

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If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Eric Trist (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.