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

Elliott Jaques (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996 | ISBN-10: 1886436037 | ISBN-13: 978-1886436039 | Edition: 2nd

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

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).

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Cason Hall & Co Pub; 2nd edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886436037
• ISBN-13: 978-1886436039
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #591,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pounding insight, September 4, 2004

By 

therosen "therosen" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century : Amended (Hardcover)

The Requisite Organization is a text explaining how to organize and properly staff a beaurocracy for maximum effectiveness. Sounds painful and dull, but perhaps beaurocrats get such a bad rap because they are operating ineffectively.

Stratified Systems Theory is a hard-core scientificaly derived theory on who has the adequate personal capabilities to be a manager. The key concept is that leaders should be given responsibility based on their ability to think about long term complex problems. All other management competencies (emotional intelligence and other soft skills included) are secondary to this ability. It's a hard concept to handle, but backed with sufficient data.

Many secondary implications are discussed too. How should one promote individual contributors? What's the effective span of control a manager can have? How does one handle organizational conflict? Should one override a subordinate in a staffing decision? All these questions are relevant to today's manager, and it is good to have a theoretical foundation to think about these questions.

There's two downsides to the book. First, whenever there's a book stating, "The whole world is wrong and headed to hell in a bucket!" I tend to greet it with skepticism. Secondly, although Jaques has a tremendous amount of impirical work supporting his positions, it is not clear if the ability to think long term is the driving factor of personal performance in todays world of shifting organizations and personal loyalties.

Even if you disagree with half of what Jaques says, the originality, insight and rigor put into such a soft field makes it well worth the read.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book. Follow its directives, January 19, 2005

By 

Charles K. Brooks (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century : Amended (Hardcover)

Want to reduce turnover, eliminate micromanaging, improve leadership and staff development, increase productivity, increase employee and managerial satisfaction, achieve organizational goals, and more? Read this book. Follow its directives.

It may take a while to digest the very dense information contained in this book, but for the serious student of organizational effectiveness, it is worth it. Very terse and prescriptive in his style, Jaques' writing may disenchant some. Yet the wisdom in this, his flagship tome, is immense. It took a while to sink in, and I found that reading several of his other books helped clarify the concepts for me. See for example: Executive Leadership, Social Power and the CEO, Human Capability, and Levels of Abstraction in Logic and Human Action. Requisite Organization, however, is the book to which I return for reference and details; it covers all the important concepts in a single volume. [The other books add detail and emphasize various points, so they have particular value too.] Organizational Design by Rowbottom and Billis helped me too, as did the excellent work by both Mark Van Clieaf at MVC Associates and Gillian Stamp at BIOSS.

I didn't, at first, fully understand the importance of the information contained in this book, or the solid research foundation that underlies it. A little known fact is that the concepts included in this book provide the foundation for leadership development, talent management, and compensation processes of organizations such as GE and the US Army. Many other authors and consulting organizations touting talent management, leadership pipelines, succession planning and the like derive their approaches directly or indirectly from Jaques - an interesting story in itself. Most give him little or no credit, though Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, honored Jaques with the Joint Staff Certificate of Appreciation for "outstanding contributions in the field of military leadership theory and instruction to all of the service departments of the United States". And the American Psychological Association honored him with the Harry Levinson Award of the Consulting Psychology Division for "a distinguished career and impressive accomplishments."

After reading Jaques, all the others seem derivative, shallow, trite, and somewhat off-target. Granted, other authors have something of value to say about organizational structuring, accountability, strategic planning, leadership, selection, mentoring, coaching, compensation, managerial practices, functional alignment, measurement, and the like. But while all the rest are shooting in the dark, Jaques hits center target!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-Provoking, October 31, 2004

By 

Neal J. Pollock (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century : Amended (Hardcover)

Elliott Jaques devised a system for analyzing executive ability based upon an individual's time horizon--the maximum period of time in the future toward which his/her work activities were aimed in their performance. He reached this conclusion during extensive, longitudinal, empirical studies in England (see "The Changing Culture of a Factory" for example). His series of books reflect his elaboration and extension of this finding. He worked, for a time, with Dr. Owen Jacobs of the U.S. Army (and then the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, ICAF). Jaques groundbreaking book, "Requisite Organization" is more pictorial than "Executive Leadership" which followed it or the later "Human Capability". While the present work may be oriented more towards organizational structure, it is useful to practicing executives. True, it may present an ideal which cannot, at present, be achieved, but as the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. I wish more bosses would read Jaques' works--and carefully at that. I bought and loaned some of them to my boss. This volume is rather pictorial: the charts provided are engaging and thought-provoking. The more extensive, "Executive Leadership" followed this book in sequence--it is a fine sequel.. These books are most strongly recommended for serious students and practitioners of management as well as human resource professionals. They go far in attempting to move management into management science.