Miller, Eric J.: Practicing Scholar in Action

This chapter traces Eric Miller’s early career from social anthropologist in industry through four decades as a second-generation social scientist for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR). We assert that each decade can be understood as emphasizing one of Eric’s contributions within four categories that sustain our field today. (1) Systems of Organization (Miller & Rice, Systems of organization: The control of task and sentient boundaries. Tavistock Publications, 1967) stands as a seminal contribution to organizational theory and work organization design. Not only does Eric’s original research with Ken Rice in Indian weaving sheds embody the emerging principles of socio-technical systems, but their ideas about boundaries, levels of analysis, representational meetings, and differentiation between subsystems led to extending systems thinking into other sectors. (2) Eric’s extensive action research shaped social policies in a range of “people processing institutions”: for example, geriatric and psychiatric hospitals; the education, treatment, and support of people with disabilities; and role changes for nurses, occupational health specialists, and wives in diplomatic service. His “working notes” and “working hypotheses” technique helps outsiders and insiders to mutually negotiate action, bringing together organizational development with action research. (3) By his third decade at TIHR, Miller demonstrated explicit concern with systems change and societal analysis, applying social science for social problems (e.g., workers’ strikes, relations between immigrant communities); he began using cross-boundary developments that required both systems design and psychodynamic interpretation (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, a Mexican water system). An outcome of this concern was an Organization for the Promotion of Understanding of Society (OPUS). (4) While Eric directed TIHR’s group relations and experiential learning offerings from 1970, he emphasized that culturally appropriate dissemination needed to be led by people within their own countries. Thus, while avoiding hero worship, Miller encouraged the formation of two dozen institutions scattered around the world, each identifying somehow with Tavistock schools of thought.