Biography of tom burns

Bio: (1913-2001) British sociologist. Tom Burns taught sociology at the University of Edinburgh from 1965 to 1981, where he founded the Sociology department.

He has also taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities. At the beginning of his career, he studied urban sociology, primarily the post-war reconstruction of cities. He later focused on studying large organizations, such as the BBC, local governments, and companies in the electronics industry.

Biography of tom burns

He was especially interested in the patterns of communication in organizations, the activities of managers, as well as the effect of introducing technological innovations.

The book The Management of Innovation (1961), co-authored with psychologist George Macpherson Stalker, is one of the most influential studies in the field of organizational theory and industrial sociology.

In this book, the authors divide organizations into two types: organic and mechanical. Mechanical organizations have a hierarchically organized bureaucracy,