T. Burns

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Tom Burns spent more than thirty years at the University of Edinburgh, retiring in 1981 as Professor of Sociology. His early interests were in urban sociology, and he worked with the West Midland Group on Post-War Reconstruction and Planning. While he was at Edinburgh his particular concern was with studies of different types of organization and their effects on communication patterns and on the activities of managers. He has also explored the relevance of different forms of organization to changing conditions - especially to the impact of technical innvation.

In collobaration with psychologist G.M. Stalker, Burns has studied the attempt to introduce electronics development work into traditional Scottish firms, with a view to their entering this modern and rapidly expanding industry as the markets for their own well-established products diminished.

He created a term mechanistic organisation- and organismic (also called organic organisation) organization.