Xerox Research UK: Social Impact of New Products project

This was a project undertaken by Eric Miller, Alistair Bain and Hugh Murray on behalf of the Tavistock Institute using a socio-technical methodology to explore the job design and organisation for the creation of new products, along with the implications for marketing, selling and promoting new products as socio-technical products. The project was conducted in parallel with a major shift in the product strategy of the organisations, from copiers to office information systems.

The first phase of the project was the analysis and design of a socio-technical work organisation within the company to enable the shift in product strategy. The second phase of the project continued from this and assessed the events that took place during the installation of an Administrative Processing Centre and further analysed its condition from a socio-technical perspective. Pase 2 was conducted with a view to developing installation guidelines for future installations