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Joan Woodward’s primary contribution to organizational theory was the idea that organizational structure is contingent on the types of production technologies employed by the firm. Her detailed fieldwork in hundreds of postwar organizations in the UK shed light on how work was conducted, how this work was shaped by the organization structure, and why the most successful firms were the ones that matched their structures to technical requirements.

Woodward was born in 1916 in England. Having studied medieval history at Durham and Oxford, she worked during the Second World War as Senior Labour Manager of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Bridgwater. It was here, as her obituary (The Times 1971) said, that ‘she gained practical insights into industrial problems which illuminated and became one of the distinguishing features of her subsequent work in the field of industrial sociology’. After the war, she obtained her first academic job in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool (1948–1953), an accomplishment in the context of the very few opportunities available in postwar England’s academic institutions, especially for women (Sewell and Phillips 2010). There, she did research on employment relations, which led to the publication of The Dock Worker (1954) and The Saleswoman (1960). She moved next to the South East Essex Technical College (1953–1957), heading the Human Relations Research Unit. Her studies of more than a hundred manufacturers in the region served as the foundation of her insights on the relationship between technologies and organizations. She joined Imperial College London as a part-time lecturer in 1958, was engaged full time in 1962, and eventually, in 1970, became the second woman to be appointed as a chaired full professor. At Imperial, she built a research team and launched further studies to validate and amplify her Essex insights (Griffiths 2010). She died of breast cancer in 1971 at the age of 54.

Woodward’s groundbreaking research was conducted not in one of the prestigious universities of the UK but in a technical college in Essex. There, in a postwar effort to improve the economic performance of the region (in part funded by the Marshall Plan), she found that the most successful firms were those whose organizational structures matched the types of production technologies they employed. Originally published as a short pamphlet in 1958 (Management and Technology), this work was developed further in Woodward’s most well-known publication, Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice (1965). While criticized at the time as inductive (and therefore somehow not methodologically rigorous) and atheoretical, the insights from this study – along with the work of Burns and Stalker (1961) who also distinguished different types of production systems – served as a foundation for what later came to be known as contingency theory. Woodward identified three technological groupings – small batch (to customer order), large batch (or mass) production and process/continuous production – and suggested that structure and behaviour that conformed to the demands of these processes were more likely to lead to success than structure and behaviour that did not. The idea that there is not one prescribed ‘best practice’ for managing firms but rather that each firm must respond to the demands of its unique operating environment became the core assumption of contingency theory. Perrow (1967) and Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) had also begun to think along these lines, and, after a meeting they organized in 1966 with Woodward, published their own seminal pieces that further elaborated these ideas (Perrow 2010).

At Imperial, Woodward continued this work, focusing on the links between technical systems and management processes, pursuing research questions such as: ‘What actually happens to people in different technological and control situations? How can the appropriateness of a firm’s structure to achieve its objective be assessed? What are likely to be the organizational implications of any proposed technical changes? What are the skills, abilities and knowledge required to carry out the management task in the different technical situations?’ (Woodward 1970: x). This resulted in the publication of an edited volume in 1970, Industrial Organization: Behaviour and Control.

One might criticize her work as being too technologically deterministic (as some have), in that her focus was on the ‘constraints’ on individual behaviour in reaction to the technology of an organization and on the features of the technology that ‘limit’ the structure of the organization (Reeves et al. 1970). While these critiques have their merit, it is important to place Woodward’s contributions in the light of her environment at the time. Her proposal that different organizational structures might be appropriate in different situations flew in the face of classical management theory, which was recommending standard guidelines for organizational design such as the right number of levels in a hierarchy or an appropriate span of control (Klein 2006). Therefore, the emphasis on technologies as creating a framework for organizations was in some ways necessary in order to highlight the distinctions with earlier theories. Scholars who have built on her work have usefully relaxed this position, showing how technologies constrain and enable certain organizational forms, how these organizational forms may shape technical systems themselves and even, in calling into question the separability of technology and organizations, how socio-material configurations are constituted dynamically in practice (Orlikowski 2010).

Woodward is rightly remembered for her analysis of technology and organizations and her insight not only that both are important for understanding industrial management but that their interaction is central to the function and performance of organizations. But her commitments and her reach were much broader. Three other important themes emerge. First, she was always concerned with the worker on the front lines. From early research on employment relations to later research on the behavioural consequences of management control systems, she was interested in what people do and what actually happens to them. Second, her work approach involved real engagement in the field. In all her studies, she and her collaborators were talking to the people doing the work. She examined different units of analysis over time. In Liverpool, she started with the employees. The Essex study focused on production systems and firms. Later studies traced individual products from the decisions to make them all the way through production in order to understand all the systems that impinge on this process (Klein 2006). In every case, detailed fieldwork was central to the research. And, finally, Woodward was always concerned not only with making contributions to the development of organizational theory but also, at least as importantly, with having a practical impact on the lives of workers, on business performance and on economic development. In anticipation of the 30th anniversary of her death, a volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations reflecting on her contributions (Phillips et al. 2010) was dedicated to her.

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