Profiles
Our work is based on the Requisite Organization Model developed by Elliott Jaques, so it is only fitting that we should begin this section with his profile.
ELLIOTT JAQUES
MD, PhD (1917-2003) - ONE OF THE WORLD'S LEADING MANAGEMENT SCIENTISTS AND A PIONEER IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THEORY
The Canadian management scientist Dr. Elliott Jaques worked for over 50 years in organizational and leadership development in long-term projects in industry, commerce, civil, health and social services, the Church of England, the US Armed Forces and the Pentagon.
Dr Jaques became well-known initially for identifying and coining the term "mid-life crisis", as well as for his breakthrough discovery about the universal nature of organizational structure, and that a person's mental capability (Complexity of Information Processing) to perform complex tasks is both a lifelong process of maturation and is measurable and predictable. Jaques was the first person to develop an objective scientific process for testing and measuring mental capability through a numeric and validated methodology.
Jaques' work on human capability, the nature of work and organization began at the Glacier Metal Company in the UK in 1948 where he worked as an independent consultant until 1982. During this time Jaques was based at the Tavistock Institute (of which he was a founding member) in London. Jaques' research and findings at Glacier Metals came to be known as Stratified Systems Theory (later renamed Requisite Organization).
In 1965 Jaques became Professor and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University, UK. In 1970 he formed the Institute of Organizational and Social Studies (BIOSS). Jaques retired from BIOSS as Professor Emeritus in 1982 and moved to the USA to work with the Pentagon and the US Armed Forces during the first Gulf War. At the same time, he began a 17-year collaboration with CRA (Consolidated Rio Tinto Australia), a mining corporation, to transform their organization.
Dr Jaques gained a science degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, obtained his MD at Johns Hopkins Medical School, USA and went on to complete his PhD in Social Relations at Harvard. He qualified as a psychoanalyst at the British Psych-Analytical Society and was a Founder Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry. He later became Visiting Research Professor in Management Science at George Washington University, Washington DC and was Honorary Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Jaques was the author of 18 books (and many more research papers), tapes and videos on the subjects of organizations, managerial leadership, and (together with his wife, Kathryn Cason) human capability. Dr Jaques passed away in 2003, but his work is continued by his widow, Kathryn Cason, and other professional associates through the US-based Requisite Organization International Institute at www.roii.org and also through the Global Organization Design Society at www.globalro.org.