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Sociotechnical specialist dies

BCS Fellow, Professor Chris Clegg, 67, who was the former Professor of Organisational Psychology in the Leeds University Business School, died peacefully at his home in Dore, Sheffield, on December 28.

Professor Clegg was one of the UK’s most influential and respected organisational psychologists, with contributions to research, practice, teaching and the professional development of the field. He was skilled at combining scientific scholarship with work of practical significance and made important contributions to both human factors and ergonomics, most notably his work on sociotechnical systems design, job redesign and function allocation.

More recently his research had expanded into areas such as agent-based simulation, the behaviour of crowds and the interaction between design, human behaviour and sustainability. During his long career he was involved, as either an editor or author, with 18 books and more than 100 journal articles and chapters. Many of his published papers are rightly held to be classics in their field.

He was a Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, of the British Psychological Society, and of the Royal Society of Arts; he was also a Chartered Psychologist and a Chartered Information Technology Practitioner.

Chris Clegg succeeded Enid Mumford as Chair of the BCS Sociotechnical group in the early 90s, until 2012. Under his leadership he was able to develop the profile of sociotechnical thinking and knowledge in the UK, and overseas. Under the flag of the BCS group, Chris was able to secure funding and lead on a number of projects surveying and reflecting on sociotechnical practice across several domains such as e-business and e-democracy. His commitment and contribution to the group attracted a number of high profile British sociotechnical scholars such as Ken Eason, Frank Land, Leela Damodaran and Elayne Coakes, to name but a few. His legacy continues to steer the agenda of the specialist group today.

Thanks to Patrick Waterson and José Abdelnour Nocera, from the BCS Sociotechnical Specialist Group, for their input into this news article.

 

Channel website: http://www.bcs.org/

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