Ken Eason

Obituary

Professor Ken Eason died on 13^th February 2026, at home surrounded by his family.  He was 83 years old.  Ken was at one time the Director of the Bayswater Institute and at the time of his death was still very actively involved in the work of the Institute as a Senior Consultant.

Ken was born on 22^nd September 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, in a farming community in Kent.  Growing up he saw his future in science and when he left school at the age of 16 he found work in the National Coal Board – it is often forgotten that in those days there were four coal mines in Kent – where his role was to analyse samples of gas, water and coal from underground.  Prophetically, writing later in his life, he had already identified a greater fascination with the working lives of miners beneath the ground than his everyday work tasks.  He studied on day release to pass A-levels in Physics and Mathematics and an HNC in Chemistry.  From there he moved to London to work for the Central Electricity Generating Board doing similar work to identify radioactive leaks from nuclear power stations.

When he was 21 he started a psychology degree at Brunel University.  It was a ‘sandwich’ course which involved three six-month work placements which he took in a large electrical manufacturer, with a hospital in West London and with a management consultancy working with a small manufacturer.  This set his future – at Brunel he was inspired by the social psychologist Marie Jahoda and he learnt sociotechnical systems theory from Laurie Thomas.  From the work placements he met Reg Revans who introduced him to Action Learning.

His first job after graduating was as an occupational psychologist in the Ergonomics Laboratory at EMI Electronics, one of the first industrial laboratories to be concerned with the use of computers.  Here he worked with Brian Shackel with whom he collaborated for many years.  In 1971, Brian moved to Loughborough University to establish the Department of Ergonomics and Cybernetics and the Human Sciences and Advanced Technology (HUSAT) research institute and Ken joined him, becoming a Lecturer.  Here, he developed working partnerships with Leela Damodaran, Tom Stewart and Patrick Waterson and became well-known for his expertise in sociotechnical design.

He was awarded his PhD in 1972 – his project was to study how managers used interactive computing.  In the event, his thesis recorded how managers avoided using interactive computing and delegated the tasks to junior assistants.  This was to become a familiar theme in his work.

He remained at Loughborough until his retirement in 2002 but during this period he had a number of significant secondments including to the Copenhagen Business School with Niels Bjørn-Andersen and the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations (where the ‘sociotechnical’ concepts were first developed).  Here he worked with Lisl Klein who was to become an important collaborator of his later career.  Lisl had been working on a major project for Esso Petroleum.  He also met Harold Bridger and Penny Jones who were to become important later in his career.

By the 1970s, he had developed a reputation in four distinct areas: the modelling of computer users; information technology and organizational change; information technology and system design methods; and the development of human factors techniques and tools.

At Loughborough his career progressed but involved, as always for academics, an increasing administrative workload and he rose to become Professor of Cognitive Ergonomics and Director of the Research School in Ergonomics and Human Factors.  While he valued this, with the opportunity it gave for him to help younger colleagues develop their own careers, he longed to return to closer work in organizations so when the opportunity arose in 2002 for him to take early retirement, he joined Lisl in the Bayswater Institute which they had created specifically to work as consultants with clients on sociotechnical issues.

At the Bayswater Institute, he worked on some of the most pressing sociotechnical matters of the day.  Perhaps the most significant of these was the NHS National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT).  This sought to develop a comprehensive patient record system for the entire country but after some years work and the expenditure of over a billion pounds, the whole project was abandoned.  Ken’s work in identifying the reasons for this – that the design was formulated in technical terms which ignored the importance of the social systems it was intended to support – stands as a masterpiece in sociotechnical analysis.

Ken will be remembered for his fundamental work on the evolution of sociotechnical systems through action research and organizational learning; for his work on the EU ESPRIT Project for IT Suppliers; for his development of guidelines for large scale procurement for the Ministry of Defence; and for the Organisational Requirements Definition for Information Technology Systems (ORDIT) methodology for EU ESPRIT II.  In his time his work was recognised through an Honorary DSc from the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, and for two awards of the Bartlett Medal of the UK Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, in 1985 and in 1992.  He is the only person to have received this award twice.

He also will be remembered for his profound humanity and modesty reflected in professional terms in the content of the work he did but also felt keenly, and with appreciation, by his colleagues and his unfailing support and commitment to the learning and development of others.

He continued to work on sociotechnical projects right up to the end of his life.  He will be sadly missed by his colleagues in the Bayswater Institute and in the world beyond.

He is survived by his wife Judy, by their adult children Claire and Mike and by their grandchildren Isaac and Kyra.

Ken D Eason, Cognitive Ergonomist, September 1942 – 13 February 2026.