World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army who developed a number of radical, action-oriented organizational innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group," since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. At the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, they developed a pioneering mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes "The Social Engagement of Social Science." Previous volumes presented two of three interdependent perspectives: the socio-psychological (Volume I, 1990) and the socio-technical (Volume II, 1993). The latest volume, on the socio-ecological perspective, completes the set. The socio-ecological perspective is concerned with the coevolution of systems and their environments. It considers the broader environment which shapes not only the task environments of socio-technical organizations but the institutional and cultural environment that confronts the individual. Volume III focuses on nonhierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments. This perspective provides a guide to institution building for the future.

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume. Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extends the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society. The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, which will be presented in Volume II, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Working Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor. Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments-the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume. The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, presented in this second volume, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor. Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extended the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society. Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments—the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.