Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century - Hardcover

Jaques Elliott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886436037 ISBN 13: 9781886436039

Publisher: Cason Hall & Co Pub, 1996

Synopsis

Built upon a rigorous theoretical base, Stratified Systems Theory, Requisite Organization relates all aspects of leadership, work and human resources in a unified total system.

About this title

About the Author

Jaques is Visiting Research Professor in Management Science at George Washington University. He has been engaged in practical field work over the past 50 years in the development and real life testing of a comprehensive theory-based system of organizational structure and managerial processes, including fundamental developments in our understanding of the meaning of work. This system calls for sweeping changes in approach to organizational development work and in the evaluation and development of individuals engaged in work.

This development work has been carried out in projects in industry and commerce, in government, in social, educational and health services, in the Church of England and the U.S. Army. In this latter connection Elliott Jaques was awarded the Joint Staff Certificate of Appreciation by General Colin Powell on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces for "outstanding contributions in the field of military leadership theory and instruction to all of the service departments of the United States."

Throughout his career, Jaques has continuously combined work with organizations and with individuals against the background of a B.A. Honors Science degree from the University of Toronto, an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School, a Ph.D. in Social Relations from Harvard, and qualification as a psychoanalyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry. Author of 18 books, including Requisite Organization, 1996, Human Capability, 1994 (with K. Cason), and Executive Leadership, 1991 (with S. Clement).

Jaques served as a Major in the Canadian Army during WWII as liaison to the British Army War Officer Selection Board (WOSB). He remained in England after the war. He was a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations but quickly found that the group dynamics approach did not accurately reflect the reality of managerial accountabilities.1 In 1964, he was invited, as Head of School, to develop the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University in London, and its Research Institute of Organizational Studies.

During his career, Jaques has been responsible for a series of major discoveries in the social sciences, contributing in a significant way to our understanding of human nature and social institutions. The most well known is his formulation of the mid-life crisis, but others with very significant implications include: -

a method for objectively measuring the complexity of work roles, that in turn made possible the discovery of the unexpected existence of universal norms of fair pay for work, which upturns our current assumptions about human greed in relation to pay; -

an objective understanding of the nature of human potential capability, and of its maturation throughout life from infancy through old age, that will change the basis of developmental psychology, and our approach to education; -

the detailed specifications of a range of different organizational systems for industry and commerce, public service, churches, schools and universities, hospitals, and the military, that are requisite in the sense that they provide both for efficient work and for socially healthy settings for human relationships and individual growth.

These developments and many others will make a substantial contribution to the betterment of society and its values. (See "On Leaving the Tavistock Institute". Human Relations, Vol. #51, No. 3, 1998, pp. 251-257).

From the Back Cover

"Those rampaging against hierarchies today rarely stop to consider that hierarchy as a form of social organization occurs throughout nature. Instead of throwing rocks at hierarchies, it behooves us to try to understand why hierarchy might actually be important and the principles that might guide leaders in distinguishing functional from dysfunctional hierarchy.

"No one has done better thinking on this subject than Elliott Jaques. His Requisite Organization should be required reading for all managers genuinely interested in what-rather than simple tradition, established biases, and pure power politics-might truly JUSTIFY hierarchies capable of serving human and organizational goals."

Peter M. Senge

Center for Organizational Learning

MIT

"A critical application of Dr. Jaques' theories enables today's CEOs to organize their corporations correctly to utilize each employee's God given talents, and to promote and develop employees to their maximum potential unencumbered by bureaucracy, personalities and seniority issues. Dr. Jaques' system, in its eighth year of evolution at Commonwealth Aluminum, has allowed our company to run a system based upon a meritocracy where good performance leads to more opportunity and poor performance leads to removal from role. The employees perceive this as a fair system and the company has achieved significantly improved performance."

Mark Kaminski

President and CEO

Commonwealth Aluminum

"Using Requisite Organization principles in our management system has brought about a clarity of expectations that has been liberating to individuals and immeasurably beneficial to the company."

Dr. W. J. Privott

President and CEO

Novus International, Inc.

"This system is not 'flavour of the month'! It is a comprehensive, integrated, disciplined and rigorous system for all managers, which, when followed, makes such good sense. For any manager faced with the competing demands of running an organization, especially in times of uncertainty and change, the up-front investment of time and effort pays off-it simply makes life easier!"

Karen Robinson

General Manager

Ontario Hydro, Hydroelectric

"The 'magic' in Elliott Jaques' concepts is simply that they work in the field ... I have employed them daily in my work for over 6 years at both the corporate headquarters level of a major global company and, more recently, in its rapidly developing Asia operating region. Whether in 'Peoria' or the People's Republic of China, I wouldn't leave home without Elliott Jaques!"

Tom Helton

Vice President, Human Resources,

Whirlpool Asia

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface, A memo from Dr. Elliott Jaques Desirable products and services, and a highly creative leader, may give a competitive edge in the short- and mid-term, despite serious shortcomings in organization. In the long-term, however, sustained success and even survival depend upon effective organization and accountable managerial leadership.

It is effective managerial leadership and organization which ensure that the right people continue to be deployed at the right level in the right kind of work, that they can work together to deliver competitively the goods and services needed currently, and to develop and create the new ones needed in the changing circumstances of a restless world.

Gaining and sustaining an effective managerial leadership system is not an easy matter. I have here brought together the fruits of almost fifty years of practical research, with colleagues, in the development of working organizations of all kinds. I believe that this experience has now produced the foundations of a comprehensive system of principles, concepts, and procedures, for creating truly effective organizations.

I have tried to describe this comprehensive system as sharply as I can, in brief outline, with diagrams. I cannot promise that you will find it easy going. Nearly all of it will be different from the ideas you have learned and are used to. Some of it may irritate you. Some of it may amuse you. I trust that all of it will interest you-and in particular, that it will give you a way of doing business which will win and hold your competitive edge in a rapidly changing world.

If you are looking for the kind of quick fix given by organization fads and instant management development, you have opened the wrong book: you will find no simple gimmicks or formulas in it, nothing you can lay on mechanically without the need for understanding.

To get the best out of this book: first, you must be prepared to understand the theory and the concepts it presents. And second, you must be willing to undertake a substantial long-term program of organizational and managerial leadership development in which you yourself and your senior colleagues sustain a personal interest and commitment. I know of no easier way to give strong leadership for these developments. The Second Revised Edition

There are many differences between this revised edition and the first edition of Requisite Organization. Much water has flowed under the bridge since 1989, new developments have taken place, and new knowledge has been gained. For example: The whole book has been totally reorganized into three main sections: human nature; organizational structure; and managerial leadership processes. Personal effectiveness appraisal methods are reformulated. The notions of primary and secondary sets have been replaced by complexity of mental processes. Individual career development and selection processes have been elaborated. The principles of functional alignment have been re-written. There is a more central emphasis upon effective accountable managerial leadership. And so on. A Major Finding: Human Nature Explains Hierarchy

The most extensive change is the far-reaching finding obtained in a recent study11 by Kathryn Cason and myself, with respect to the nature of human capability and the reasons why the managerial hierarchy exists in the first place. It is such a fundamental finding, that I hope I may be excused for referring to it as "the big finding."

This finding was obtained in a controlled and systematic study of mental complexity, carried out for the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) in a company in the USA and one in Australia. What we were able to demonstrate in this study is as follows: 1. There is a hierarchy of four ways, and four ways only, in which individuals process information when engrossed in work; which we named declarative, cumulative, serial and parallel processing. 2. This quartet of processes recurs within higher and higher orders of complexity of information. 3. Each of these processes corresponds to a distinct step in potential capability of individuals. 4. Finally, and most significantly, our study showed a .97 correlation between the universal underlying managerial layering of the managerial hierarchy and each discrete step in complexity of mental process (and thus, potential capability).

The major conclusion from this finding is that: The existence of the managerial hierarchy is a reflection in organizational life of discontinuous steps in the nature of human capability.

This conclusion, and the work that goes with it, will be seen to: Explain the continuous existence of the managerial hierarchy in all post-tribal societies for the past 3,000 years (and suggest that it is likely to be around for the next 3,000 years). Provide a solid foundation for achieving a method of making an accurate match between individual capability and role complexity in filling positions, and therefore, also, of laying the basis for effective managerial leadership.

Kathryn Cason and believe that this breakthrough in what is referred to these days as "cognitive psychology" will usher in a new era in our understanding of managerial organization and leadership, and of human nature in general. Its impact will be found throughout this new edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cason Hall & Co Pub
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1886436037
• ISBN 13: 9781886436039
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 288