Yorkshire mining and the Tavistock Institute

[Roger Arevalo]

In the 1940s and 50s the Tavistock Institute studied productivity in British coal mining. They found the industry in a poor state, but one bright spot was a team of Yorkshire miners working the Haigh Moor Seam. They were multi-skilled, worked autonomously, and had much higher job satisfaction and better labour-management relations than anywhere else. This is the fullest version of the story I've found online - http://moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericsess/sessvol2/SESS_Volume_2_Contents_Intro/sess_volume_2_contents_intro.htm. The theory of sociotechnical systems that developed from it also became part of Volvo's Kalmar and Uddevalla plants, which instead of a production line had independent teams assembling whole cars from start to finish - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227615824_The_Volvo_Uddevalla_Plant.

Does anyone know which pit the original research was done at?

[Viners]

Is Elsecar Colliery near Barnsley a good candidate? I see that the same coal seam (Haigh Moor) would have been mined from multiple pits, which makes it harder to pin down the actual location. It sounds like the research on sociotechnical systems was done at a mine that Ken Bamforth had worked in before becoming more of an academic. If you can establish that he worked at Elsecar, that might help to confirm it.

1 Source:
https://breadtagsagas.wordpress.com/tag/elsecar-collieries/

"These areas of concentration were the discovery and analysis of industrial democracy underground in the Elsecar Collieries by Trist and Bamforth. The development of the theory of sociotechnical systems based on this and on insights from psychology and the social sciences." Tavistock Institute gets a mention.

2 Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Trist

"Organizational research

In 1949, his organizational research work, studying work crews in at Elsecar Collieries, with Ken Bamforth, resulted in the famous article, "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal Getting." This article highlighted aspects of the miners organisation that today would be termed lean or agile."

3 Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsecar_Collieries

"Elsecar Main

Coal extraction proper began at Elsecar Main between 1905 and 1908 when shafts were sunk to the Parkgate seam at 333 metres. Other seams worked were the Silkstone, Thorncliffe and the Swallow Wood seams. The Haigh Moor, Lidgett and towards the end of the colliery's life, Kents Thick seams were also mined. The colliery closed in October 1983."

This all fits roughly with the location of South Yorkshire and the mine where the work practices were found being "a recently opened seam" as at 1950/51. Trist and Bamforth were probably researching multiple things and might have visited lots of different mines, so references and quotes might have become a bit muddled. I saw a couple of mentions of other locations, but they don't fit as good as Elsecar does.

[Roger Arevalo]

When I first posted I remembered I'd heard Elsecar mentioned in some aspect, but couldn't remember where. Everything does make sense for it to be Elsecar, but it is interesting there don't seem to be any primary sources that just come out and say it. It's implied that the miners and managers on that seam asked Trist and Bamforth not to identify exactly where it was. They knew they had a good thing going on and didn't want to attract the wrong kind of attention that might have messed it up.

[Viners]

I found this blog from 2022 that talks about the work of  Eric Trist and Fred Emery for the Tavistock Institute. Bamforth is named. It does mention Elsecar Colliery specifically, but is still not really a primary source. Like you say, they might have deliberately been protective about the exact locations where they had observed things:  

https://breadtagsagas.wordpress.com/category/the-rest/

"These areas of concentration were the discovery and analysis of industrial democracy underground in the Elsecar Collieries by Trist and Bamforth. The development of the theory of sociotechnical systems based on this and on insights from psychology and the social sciences."