The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British not-for-profit organisation that applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. It was initiated in 1946, when it developed from the

Tavistock Clinic 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 Kin ...

, and was formally established as a separate entity in September 1947. The journal ''Human Relations'' is published on behalf of the Tavistock Institute by

Sage Publications SAGE Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent publishing company founded in 1965 in New York by Sara Miller McCune and now based in Newbury Park, California. It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books ...

. The institute is located in Gee Street in Clerkenwell, London.

History of the Tavistock Institute

The early history of the Tavistock Institute overlaps with that of the

because many of the staff from the Clinic worked on new, large-scale projects during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and it was as a result of this work that the institute was established. During the war, staff from the

played key roles in British Army psychiatry. Working with colleagues in the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps a ...

and the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

, they were responsible for innovations such as the War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs) and Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs). The group that formed around the WOSBs and CRUs were fascinated by this work with groups and organisations, and sought to continue research in this field after the war. Various influential figures had visited the WOSBs during the war, so there was scope for consultancy work, but the Clinic staff also planned to become a part of the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

when it was established, and they had been warned that such consultancy and research would not be possible under the auspices of the NHS. Because of this, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was created in 1947 to carry out work specifically with organisations once the Clinic was incorporated into the NHS. The

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

awarded a significant grant that facilitated the creation of the institute. In the early years, income was derived from research grants, contract work, and fees for professional development courses. During the 1950s and 1960s, the institute carried out a number of signature projects in collaboration with major manufacturing companies including

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

, the Ahmedabad Manufacturing and Calico Printing Co.,

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

Bayer Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational corporation, multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of busi ...

, and Glacier Metals. They also conducted work for the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...

. Particular focuses included management, women in the workplace, and the adoption (or rejection) of new technologies. Projects on the interaction between people and technology later became known as the sociotechnical approach. The 1950s also saw the institute conducting consumer research and exploring attitudes to things as varied as

Bovril Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distrib ...

fish finger Fish fingers (British English) or fish sticks (American English) are a processed food made using a whitefish, such as cod, hake, haddock, shark or pollock, which has been battered or breaded. They are commonly available in the frozen food ...

s, coffee and hair. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a notable focus on public health organisations such as hospitals. Studies examined a range of aspects of healthcare, from ward management and operating theatres to the organisation of cleaning staff. More recently, the institute has conducted work for the European Commission and British government bodies.

Research units

In the institute's early years, there were four main units: Programme Groups A and B within a Committee on Human Resources; Organisation and Social Change and Operations Research Unit; and a Committee on Family and Community Psychiatry. The Human Resources Centre (HRC) and the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR) were established in the 1950s, and in 1963 the Institute of Operational Research (IOR) was established in conjunction with the British Operational Research Society. The Centre for Organisational and Operational Research (COOR) was created from a merger of the HRC and the IOR in 1979. The Self Help Alliance project begun in the 1980s led to further work in evaluation and the creation of a dedicated unit, the Evaluation Development Review Unit (EDRU) in 1990.

Key figures

The institute was founded by a group of key figures from the

and British Army psychiatry including

Elliott Jaques Elliott Jaques (January 18, 1917 – March 8, 2003) was a Canadian psychoanalyst, social scientist and management consultant known as the originator of concepts such as corporate culture, midlife crisis, fair pay, maturation curves, time ...

, Henry Dicks, Leonard Browne, Ronald Hargreaves,

John Rawlings Rees John Rawlings Rees, (25 June 1890 – 11 April 1969), also known as 'Jack' or 'J.R.', was a British civilian and military psychiatrist. Early life Born in Leicester to the Methodist minister Reverend Montgomery Rees and his wife Catharine Mi ...

, Mary Luff and

Wilfred Bion Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Early life and military service Bion was born in M ...

, with Tommy Wilson as chairman. Other well-known people that joined the group shortly after were

Isabel Menzies Lyth Isabel Menzies Lyth born Isabel Edgar Punton (1917–2008) was a British psychoanalyst in the Kleinian tradition, known for her work on unconscious mechanisms in institutional settings. Life Born and raised in Scotland, Her mother was Sara ...

J. D. Sutherland John Derg Sutherland (23 April 1905 – 14 June 1991), also known as Jock Sutherland, was a Scottish physician, psychoanalyst and theorist, notable also for his role as Medical Director of the Tavistock Clinic. Life and career John "Jock" Derg Su ...

John Bowlby Edward John Mostyn Bowlby, CBE, FBA, FRCP, FRCPsych (; 26 February 1907 – 2 September 1990) was a British psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attach ...

Eric Trist Eric Lansdown Trist (11 September 1909 – 4 June 1993) 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. Biograph ...

, and

Fred Emery Frederick Edmund Emery (27 August 1925 – 10 April 1997) was an Australian psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in the field of organizational development, particularly in the development of theory around participative work design struct ...

. Although he died before the TIHR was formally established,

Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) 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 applied hi ...

was an important influence on the work of the Tavistock: he was a notable influence on Trist, and contributed an article to the first issue of ''

Human Relations The concept of interpersonal relationship involves social associations, connections, or affiliations between two or more people. Interpersonal relationships vary in their degree of intimacy or self-disclosure, but also in their duration, in t ...

''. Many of the members of the Tavistock Institute went on to play major roles in psychology.

became first president of the

World Federation for Mental Health The World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) is an international, multi-professional non-governmental organization (NGO), including citizen volunteers and former patients. It was founded in 1948 in the same era as the United Nations (UN) and the W ...

. Jock Sutherland became director of the new post-war Tavistock Clinic, when it was incorporated into the newly established British

in 1946. Ronald Hargreaves became deputy director of the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

. Tommy Wilson became chairman of the Tavistock Institute. One of the most influential figures to emerge from the institute was the psychoanalyst

. Her seminal paper 'A case study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety' (1959) inspired a whole branch of organisational theory emphasising unconscious forces that shape organizational life. A.K. Rice did considerable work on problems of management, increasing productivity at one factory by 300%. Eric Miller became director of the ''Group Relation Program'' in 1969, and in this function he later developed the design of the Nazareth-Conferences. The Tavistock Institute became known as a major proponent in Britain for psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic theories of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

and his followers. Other names associated with the Tavistock include

Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested tha ...

Carl Gustav Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

, J. A. Hadfield,

Charles Rycroft Charles Frederick Rycroft (; 9 September 1914 – 24 May 1998) was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He studied medicine at University College London, and worked briefly as a psychiatrist for the Maudsley Hospital. For most of his caree ...

Enid Mumford Enid Mumford (6 March 1924 – 7 April 2006) was a British social scientist, computer scientist and Professor Emerita of Manchester University and a visiting fellow at Manchester Business School, largely known for her work on human factors and ...

and

R. D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment o ...

Current activities

The Tavistock Institute engages in educational, research, consultancy, project evaluation and professional development work in the

social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soci ...

and applied psychology. Its clients are diverse, ranging from public sector organisations, including the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

, many

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departments, Third Sector and private clients. The institute owns ''Human Relations'', the international social sciences journal. It also edits the journal ''Evaluation''.

Tavistock for the workplace

The techniques used to rehabilitate soldiers were believed by some researchers to be applicable to a more human-centered organisation of work in industry by empowering lower ranking employees. This agenda helped showcase the two sociotechnical scholarship attributes: the close association of technological and social systems and also, the importance of worker involvement.Sawyer, S., Hossein Jarrahi, M. (2013). "Sociotechnical approaches to the study of Information Systems". http://sawyer.syr.edu/publications/2013/sociotechnical%20chapter.pdf

History of the Tavistock Institute

Research units

Key figures

Current activities

Tavistock for the workplace

References

Further reading