Elliott Jaques

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elliott Jaques (born January 18, 1917 in Toronto , Ontario , † March 8, 2003 in Gloucester , Massachusetts ) was a Canadian psychoanalyst in the field of organizational development (OE). He was a co-founder of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) in London .

Life

Jacques graduated from the University of Toronto with a BA in Science in 1935 , completed his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University with an MD and received a Ph.D. in social sciences from Harvard University in 1940 . During World War II he served as a major in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in London, where he was liaison officer to the psychiatric department of the Army Officer Selection Board. After the war he worked with Melanie Klein in London and qualified as a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society . In 1946 he was a co-founder of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations . In 1964 he founded the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University in London, where he taught as professor and principal at the Research Institute for Organizational Theory.

Jaques was a co-founder of the Royal College of Psychiatry . In 1980 he retired from Brunel University for reasons of age. In 1991 he settled in Gloucester , Massachusetts and became a research professor in Operations Research at George Washington University in Washington DC.

To continue his work, he and his wife founded the Requisite Organization International Institute for Education and Research in Massachusetts in 1999 .

plant

Jaques was one of the first to apply the discipline of psychology to theorizing about organizational structure, management and leadership. In the 1950s he moved away from the group dynamics of the Tavistock Institute and developed the Stratified Systems Theory and the management leadership system Requisite Organization . A scientifically oriented model of human maturation and development that made a link between organizational and social theory.

With his concept of time-span autonomy , he tried to determine the individual position within the workplace hierarchy. He believed that the greater the time span between the start and the completion of a task that an employee could complete, the higher the employee could occupy in the hierarchy. While the routine work at the lowest level would span a period of one day to three months, a CEO would be able to think and plan in periods of ten to twenty years. With the tests developed by Jacques on this basis, the intrinsic value of a job was determined in order to enable fair wages and to be able to deploy the right man in the right place. He was convinced that only the latter would ensure the long-term success and survival of an organization.

For Jacques, hierarchy was a natural form of social organization that elegantly solved the problem of integrating the individual aspirations of people with diverse abilities and knowledge. He stood in contrast to many others in the area of organizational development because he maintained the primacy of hierarchical responsibility in the establishment of socially just and productive organizations. Theorists who emphasized the importance of teamwork, employee participation, democratic management models and flat hierarchies accused him of elitist thinking.

His concept of social systems as a defense against unconscious fear should show the close relationship between the organizational task and the unconscious group dynamics and how the group members interact positively or negatively. His ideas are still very influential in psychoanalytic studies of organizations.

Jacques' approach to organizational development was an important pioneering contribution to the concept of Positive Adult Development .

His consultancy work from 1949 to 2003 took him to Europe, Australia and America. He has worked on projects for industrial and commercial companies, governments, political organizations, social, educational and health organizations, including the Church of England and the American Army, where his model was also used for cadre selection among generals and top managers.

While examining the careers of numerous composers and artists such as Dante or Paul Gauguin , he discovered sharp changes in style or productivity at the age of around 35 and he suspected that generally at this age a critical change begins, based on the realization that the lifetime is limited. He is considered to be the father of the term midlife crisis , which he used in his 1965 book on the work patterns of geniuses.

Award

  • 1982 presented Colin Powell with the Joint Staff Certificate of Appreciation for exceptional contributions in the field of military leadership theory and instruction.
  • In 2000 he received the Harry Levinson Award from the Consulting Psychology Department of the American Psychological Association (APA) for "an exceptional professional career and impressive achievement".

Fonts (selection)

  • The Changing Culture of a Factory: A Study of Authority and Participation in an Industrial Setting . Tavistock, London 1951.
  • Measurement Of Responsibility: A study of work, payment, and individual capacity (Glacier Project) . Tavistock, London 1956; Reprint: ISBN 041526443X .
  • Time-Span Handbook: the Use of Time-Span of Discretion to Measure the Level of Work in Employment Roles and to Arrange an Equitable Payment Structure . Heinemann, London 1964.
  • Death and the Midlife Crisis. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 46: 502-514 (1965) ( abstract ).
  • A General Theory of Bureaucracy . Heinemann Educational, London 1976, ISBN 0435824732 .
  • Commitment and the Time Span of Discretion: A Note on the Economic Foundations of Elliot Jaques Sociological Theory of Wage Differentials. In: Journal for the entire political science . 136: 161-165 (1980) ( online ).
  • with Kathryn Cason: Human Capability: Study of Individual Potential and Its Application . Gower, London 1994, ISBN 0566076527 .
  • Requisite Organization: Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century . Gower, London 1997, ISBN 0566079402 .
  • The Life and Behavior of Living Organisms: A General Theory . Praeger, Westport 2002, ISBN 0275975010 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Requisite.org: biography of Elliott Jaques  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.requisite.org
  2. ↑ APA Award Winners
personal data
SURNAME Jaques, Elliott
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Toronto
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 2003
Place of death Gloucester , Massachusetts