He gained his honours degree in science from the University of Western Australia in 1946 and joined the teaching staff of the department there in 1947.
[3] As a staff member at the University of Melbourne, he made contributions to rural sociology, CPA, and the effects of film and television viewing.
[6] He, along with Eric Trist, one of his closest intellectual collaborators, and other colleagues, established "open socio-technical systems theory" as an alternative paradigm for organisational design—field-tested on a national scale in Norway, in partnership with Einar Thorsrud.
[7] After his return to Australia, he set about developing a new method to bring in jointly optimised Socio-technical Systems, designed for the diffusion of the concept rather than proof of an alternative to autocracy in the workplace.
[3] At the ANU, Emery continued his action research in industry and the public sector, developing new tools for the diffusion of democracy in organisations and communities.