It was only on taking a temporary job as a factory worker that our friend and colleague Lisl Klein, who has died aged 87, found her true metier. Packing pills in the East End of London in the 1950s, she realised that improved efficiency meant both the co-operation of the workforce and the introduction of new production processes – and not one without the other.
After a spell as a personnel officer she moved into research and became an expert in industrial organisation and a distinguished social scientist with a central concern about the practical use and application of the social sciences. Lisl was a pioneering social sciences adviser at Esso Petroleum, before moving in 1972 to the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, where she undertook action research. Her projects included the German government’s Humanising Life at Work programme. After 20 years she left to found the Bayswater Institute.
Continue reading...