Fred Emery
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Frederick Edmund Emery, nick Fred, (27 August 1925 – 10 April 1997) is an important figure in the field of Organizational development (OD), particularly in the development of theory around participative work design structures such as self-managing teams. He was widely regarded as one of the finest social scientists of his generation.
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[edit] Biography
Emery was born in Narrogin, Western Australia. Fred left school as Dux of Fremantle Boys’ High in Western Australia, aged only fourteen. He gained his honors degree in science from the University of Western Australia in 1946, and his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1953. He taught psychology at the two universities from 1946 to 1958.
A psychologist by training, his initial academic appointment at Melbourne University was where he made significant contributions to rural sociology, CPA, and the effects of film and television viewing.
He left Australia in 1958 at the insistence of its government, and went to London where the majority of his early work was then done. Constantly drawn towards testing social science theory in field settings, he then joined Eric Trist, one of his closest intellectual collaborators, at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. Over the next 10 years, he, with Trist and other colleagues, established "open socio-technical systems theory" as an alternative paradigm for organisational design - field-tested on a national scale in Norway, in partnership with Einar Thorsrud. Two of Emery and Trist's key publications were The Causal Texture of Organisational Environments (1965) - which became a citation classic - and Towards a Social Ecology (1972).
He was able to return to Australia in 1969, and went to the Australian National University (ANU). He was a senior Research Fellow there to November 1979, first in the Department of Sociology, RSSS, and then from 1974, at the Centre for Continuing Education. Fred has also been a visiting professor at Wharton’s Department of Social Systems Sciences and spent a year at the Center for Advanced Studies in Stanford.
He was awarded the first Elton Mayo award in 1988 by the Australian Psychological Society and received a DSc from Macquarie University in 1992. His collection of over 700 unpublished papers and letters is held by the Australian National Library.
At the ANU Fred continued his action research in industry and the public sector, and developed new tools for the diffusion of democracy in organisations and in communities. He also attended to a backlog of writing. Within the next 10 years he authored, co-authored, or edited 10 books for publication, and published around 30 papers.
In 1979 when his CCE Fellowship expired, efforts were made by some of his colleagues to find a permanent post for him at the ANU, but to no avail. Thus, long before their numbers swelled and their own association was formed, Fred became one of Australia's outstanding Independent Scholars. By 1985 he had published at least another 15 journal articles (a flow which continued to his last year), and governments, enterprises, students, universities, and many others, from this country and elsewhere, continued to seek his expertise, and later continued as a consultant. In this later period, he and Merrelyn Emery refined the Search Conference participative planning process (designed by Fred Emery and Eric Trist in 1958). In the final two years of his life, he co-edited the third and final volume of the "Tavistock anthology" being published by the University of Pennsylvania Press - The Social Engagement of Social Science.
[edit] Summary of his Work
Emery had a prime interest in the nature of work and in particular in how people organised themselves and the machines and other resources with which they worked, to achieve their goals and maintain their ideals and values, in the face of what he recognised as often “turbulent environments”. He made regular contributions to Business Review Weekly, consistently demonstrating his critical intelligence and willingness to challenge.
He knew that being ahead of one's time can be difficult: "I am inclined to agree with Max Born, the German physicist, who reckoned that the acceptance of a new quantum theory would occur only with the passing away of the old physics professors. The acceptance will await a new generation that starts off with a question mark." One story which illustrates this (and perhaps explains some of the reluctance to grant tenure at ANU was in 1975 when Fred and Merrelyn Emery [then both at the Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University] published a book which, among other things, discussed the neurological effects of television viewing (1). In response to a press article about the book in a university publication (2), six professors and heads of departments (zoology, physiology, pharmacology, psychology, neurobiology, behavioural biology) wrote a letter (3) which strongly criticised the book and abused the authors. The six professors outlined what they considered to be "the current limits of scientifically acceptable investigation of the nervous system" and after criticising the Emerys and their work concluded that the article about the Emerys' book "reflects upon the standards of brain research done in this University by those who are in it for the sake of finding out how a nervous system really works rather than for the support or refutation of a particular social issue". It would seem that the professors' case rested primarily on their collective prestige, since not only had they not read the Emerys' book, but their specific criticisms did not stand up to scrutiny (4).
[edit] Publications
The three books that perhaps best convey the extraordinary breadth and depth of his thinking are Toward a Social Ecology (1972, with Trist), On purposeful systems (1972, with Ackoff), and Futures We're In (1977). He also edited for Penguin two volumes of readings called Systems Thinking (the initial volume was reprinted six times), which will long remain a staple resource on the origins and development of open systems thinking throughout the life sciences.
1. Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery, A choice of futures: to enlighten or inform (Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University, 1975). 2. Anon, "CCE study: television socially, physically dangerous", ANU reporter, 6, 22 August 1975, pp. 1, 4-5. 3. S. A. Barnett et al., letter, ANU reporter, 6, 26 September 1975, p. 11. 4. Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery, letter, ANU reporter, 6, 26 September 1975, p. 11.
Emery died at his home on April 10 in Canberra, Australia.
A more detailed list of his publications includes the following: Emery, F. (1992, April). The Australian experience. Paper presented to Tusiad Symposium national Participation and Consensus, Istanbul.
Emery, F. (1989). Towards real democracy. Toronto: Ontario QWL Centre, Ministry of Labour.
Emery, F. (1981). Open systems thinking. Volumes I & II. Penguin.
Emery, F. (1980, Autumn). Communications for a sustainable society. Human Futures, 1-7.
Emery, F. (1978). Emergence of a new paradigm of work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.
Emery, F. (1978). The fifth wave? Embarking on the next forty years. In F. E. Emery (Ed.), Limits to choice. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education Australian National University.
Emery, F. (1978). Youth-vanguard: Victims or the new vandals? In F. E. Emery (Ed.), Limits to choice. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education Australian National University.
Emery, F. (1977). Futures we are in. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
Emery, F. (1975). Continuing education under a gum-tree. Aust. J. of Adult Education, 17-19.
Emery, F. (1972). Research and higher education. In G. S. Harman and C. Selby-Smith (Eds.), Australian higher education. Melbourne: Angus & Robertson.
Emery, F. (Ed.). (1969). Systems thinking. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Emery, F. & Emery, M. (1980). Domestic market segments for the telephone. Melbourne: PA Consultants.
Emery, F. & Emery, M. (1976). Choice of futures: To enlighten or inform (Part III). Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
Emery, F. & Emery, M. (1973). Hope within walls. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.
Emery, F. & Thorsrud, E. (1976). Democracy at work. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
Emery, F. & Thorsrud, E. (1969). Form and content in industrial democracy. London: Tavistock.
Emery, F. & Trist, E. (1965). The causal texture of organizational environments. Human Relations, 18, 21-32.
Emery, M. & Emery, F. (1991). Attitudes towards Centres for Professional Development at the University of New England. Lismore: UNE.NR.
