Henri Savall
A volume in Research in Management ConsultingSeries Editor Anthony F. Buono, Bentley UniversityThe reprint of Henri Savall’s classic Work and People, originally published in French in 1974, ispart of the Research in Management Consulting series effort to look backward as well as forward inexamining trends, perspectives, and insights - especially from different countries and cultures - into theworld of management consulting. Savall’s insights into the complexity of organizational life weregroundbreaking, articulating the need to examine both economic and social factors as part of the sameanalysis, assessing technical and behavioral patterns through the lens of an integrated framework. As he hasargued, there is a double-loop interaction between 'the quality of functioning and economic performance,' andunderestimating this socio-economic 'tension' leads inevitably to reduced performance and losses, which herefers to as 'hidden costs.'This approach, referred to as the socio-economic approach to management (SEAM), has significant potential for our thinking aboutorganizational diagnosis and intervention. As Savall emphasizes, the North American tendency to cast people as human 'resources' misses theessential point that human beings cannot be considered as simply another resource at the organization’s disposal. People are free to give or withholdtheir energy as they desire, depending on the quality of formal and informal contracts and interactions they have with their organizations. As such, theSEAM approach focuses on human 'potential,' underscoring the need for managers and their organizations to create the conditions under whichpeople will want to maximize their talents on behalf of the organization.Work and People focuses on the ramifications of this reality, as dysfunctions - the difference between planned and emergent activities andfunctions - can quickly lead to a series of costs that are 'hidden' from an organization’s formalinformation systems (e.g., income statements, balance sheets, budgets). As his insightful workunderscores, as organizations begin to accumulate dysfunction upon dysfunction, they inadvertentlyundermine their performance and create excessive operating costs, with lower productivity and lessefficiency than they could achieve. As readers will discover, the frameworks, tools and ways ofthinking about organizations, people and management in this volume - in essence the background to thesocio-economic approach to organizational diagnosis and intervention - continue to hold great promisefor our attempts to create truly integrative approaches to management and organizational improvementefforts.
