Background

In the 1980's, I was working with Ralph Rowbottom on projects involving re-design of organizational structures using levels of work and other Jaquesian notions.  At the same time, my colleague, Jimmy Algie pointed out to me that Elliott Jaques' approach was «structuralist» in decision-making terms, and suggested that there were alternative methods to consider.

The practical experience of introducing effective accountability structures, superimposed on pragmatic management, taught me a great deal about pragmatism in the workplace. Once the structures had bedded in, there was a transformation in productivity and morale. However, over time, the structuralist values degenerated and we saw the development of empires, silos and disconnections. Battles to defend turf were far more powerful than they had ever been in the pragmatic culture.

Attempting to reverse this degeneration by further structuralist initiatives gave short term improvements at best, and it became evident to me that our consultancy was becoming too ideological. It was as if we consultants were committed to just one way of thinking, rather than seeking above all to assist and heal people.

Inspired by Ian Mitroff's writings on dialectic methods, I concluded that this was the way of thinking to be introduced into organizations showing structuralist degeneration. This, indeed, proved successful.

In the context of plotting decision methods on the standard 2x2 Table (now called a TET), I could see the beginning of a trajectory. 

If that hypothesis were correct, then it would be likely that introducing the rationalist mode was the next stage. At the time I was writing Working with Values so I was attuned to the likely issues and requirements. About that time, the UK government was, albeit unknowingly, pushing a variety of initiatives that were rationalist in nature (e.g. TQM). This provided the necessary external impetus in some of the projects, and the first cycle of the trajectory was confirmed.

I started writing up the findings. The practical consulting work continued as computerization hit the UK National Health Service and enabled installation of the empiricist mode.  However there never was an opportunity to install the imaginist and systemicist modes. I imagine it was because the social environment has to be supportive, at least in public sector bodies. 

Only in recent years have imaginist values become truly valued, and it is not likely that systemicist values will become mainstream for at least 5-15 years. Formulations in these last two Stages are naturally more tentative, given the absence of practical experience.

The discovery was published in 1994 as Strengthening the Management Culture. The substance has stood the test of time and has not needed to be altered for this web version of the material.  You can download the book free here. The web-version is slightly different: It re-writes and reorganizes the material slightly and offers additional links and comments based on subsequent findings.

Since publication of Strengthening the Management Culture (SMC), there has been a progressively increasing interest in the imaginist mode—especially in the past decade. Many consultant groups claim to have 'discovered' it. A more aware consultant, Peter Duchinsky, explicitly uses the SMC framework and calls his firm: The Imaginist Company.

There has also been a greater feel by academics for the realities of work. They are slowly coming to realize that simple optimization is not the way things usually happen (cf. John Kay's Obliquity).  However, academic disciplines struggle to engage directly with psychosocial reality: it just seems so messy and unmanageable.

The global financial collapse of 2007-2008 was seen in advance by many people, but not by academic economists. As economics was always the leader, seemingly the most scientific, of the social sciences, its abject failure may yet have positive consequences.

To maintain freshness, the material posted here has tackled new areas supported by work for TOP.

The approaches to ethical choices (PH'6) are homologous to the decision-making approaches (PH'1). This encouraged development of the related spiral that turned out to provide the basis for POLITICS, starting with maturation of political institutions.

In POLITICS, the spiral framework led naturally to development of a tree (determinants of political choices), a derived structural hierarchy (political activities in society), and its related tree (changing society by participating in politics.

If the political spiral was so fertile, It made sense to trace a similar development from the management culture spiral.  This has been done here, leading to several more frameworks with the same underlying formal structures (i.e. but in PH'1 rather than PH'6). You can judge the results for yourself.

The Original Book

You can read the story of how to strengthen the management culture in this free downloadable e-book. By all accounts it is a good read, not too long, and its flow may carry you along more easily than this web version will. Many excellent but atheoretical texts on organizational cultures, management techniques, leadership and culture-change are now available. The ideas in this e-book should help you put such views in context and increase your benefit from them.

However, TOP's web version makes some additional points, and has links not found in the book.

The Literature

Each of the decision approaches and organizational stages has generated vast numbers of ideological articles and books explaining and elaborating them in great detail, as well as offering suggestions about how to apply them. My aim was to be concise and accessible by penetrating to the essential assumptions adopted in these writings.

A published, detailed account of the decision approaches and references to the management literature, up to the late 1980's, is provided in: W. Kinston & J. Algie, Seven distinctive paths of decision and action. Systems Research, 6 (2), 117-132, 1989. Download here .

Assist us by updating the decision-achievement-leadership literature to 2011? This will demonstrate how the same material is continually re-discovered, re-named, re-articulated and re-cycled as 'the latest thinking'.

THEE Publications

For the theoretical basis (i.e. the explanation of why there are just seven and why these seven in particular) together with the link between decision and inquiry see: W. Kinston, Decision, Inquiry, and a New Framework for Action. (London: The SIGMA Centre, 1990) which draws on: W. Kinston, A total framework for inquiry. Systems Research, 5 (1), 9-25, 1988. The hierarchical order of the approaches stemmed from these early papers and has not survived the test of time: further research has led to some minor re-ordering. These papers can be downloaded. The latest findings in Inquiry-RL2/PH2 are available here.

For the relation between decision approaches and ethical choice, see Ch.6 in Working with Values: Software of the Mind. Because the rationalist mode is central to achievement, the workable language (provided in the text) is absolutely essential to handle effectively the many different types of values, objectives, purposeful processes and participative activities.