Glacier studies

Gen Mgt

research experiments conducted at the Glacier Metal Company in London from 1948 to 1965 to investigate the development of group relations, the effects of change, and employee roles and responsibilities. The Glacier studies were conducted by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations with the research being headed by Elliot Jaques and Fred Emery. Findings from the initial study came from a methodology called “working-through,” which examined possible social and personal factors at play in any potential dispute. From this arose an early form of works council where employees could participate in setting policy for their department. It was also discovered that employees felt the need to have their role and status defined in a way acceptable to both themselves and their colleagues. This research into job roles led Jaques to come up with the notion of the time span of discretion, according to which all jobs, no matter how strictly defined, have some level of content that requires judgment and therefore discretion by the jobholder. Jaques then examined this phenomenon in bureaucratic organizations. In defining a bureaucracy as a hierarchical system in which employees are accountable to their bosses for the work they do, he took a different stance from Max Weber. Much like the Hawthorne experiments, the Glacier studies had far-reaching implications for the way organizations were managed. The initial findings were written up by Jaques in The Changing Culture of a Factory (1951). In 1965, Jaques published the Glacier Project Papers with Wilfred Brown, the managing director of Glacier.