Every time the cycle is stopped, some 200 tons of coal are lost. So close is the task interdependence that the system becomes vulnerable from its nee… - Eric Trist

[The workmethods had] evolved from the experience of successive generations... Each other, often being members of the same family; supervision was internal, having the quality of 'responsible autonomy.

# Primary work systems. These are the systems which carry out the set of' activities involved in an identifiable and bounded subsystem of a whole organization - such as a line department or a service unit...

Ludwig von Bertalanffy's formulation enables exchange processes between the organism, or organisation, and the elements in its environment to be dealt with in a new perspective, it does not deal at all with those processes in the environment itself which are among the determining conditions of the exchanges. To analyse these an additional concept is needed - the causal texture of the environment.