As it happens, I've spent a lot of time interviewing the principals
in that story and going over documents. The designers of the effort are
all active in sociotech-style consultation today. One of them, Lyman
Ketchum, coauthored a book with Eric Trist called "Not All Teams are
Equal."
I wasn't in the QWL movement but I interviewed a lot of people
from that movement for the book I'm writing, The Age of Heretics.
You are quite right that the executives who ran Topeka were not permitted
back into the system. Ketchum was given a staff job at General Foods,
and had an increasingly frustrating time trying to help some of the
other plants in the GF system, and ultimately left in 1975. Ed
Dulworth also hung on until 1975. Essentially, none of the managers at
Topeka were promoted, because no other plants in the GF system wanted
a manager who was "corrupted" (my word, not theirs) by the Topeka
innovations.
SO you could call it a failure of dissemination. But that's not all
the story. Herm Simon, who replaced Ed Dulworth as plant manager in 1975,
was hired to "cut out the missionary crap" -- to stop trying to convert
the rest of GF. He gradually became a booster of the new Topeka approach.
He just retired last year, I gather, and the plant is still operating
under its sociotechnical system, with a new generation of people in
place. It has been through four (!) corporate owners since General
Foods. And General Foods, as you probably know, is long since taken
over by Kraft.
From: Art Kleiner <art@well.sf.ca.us>