Work and People

A volume in Research in Management Consulting
Series Editor Anthony F. Buono, Bentley University
The reprint of Henri Savall's classic Work and People, originally published in French in 1974, is
part of the Research in Management Consulting series effort to look backward as well as forward in
examining trends, perspectives, and insights - especially from different countries and cultures - into the
world of management consulting. Savall's insights into the complexity of organizational life were
groundbreaking, articulating the need to examine both economic and social factors as part of the same
analysis, assessing technical and behavioral patterns through the lens of an integrated framework. As he has
argued, there is a double-loop interaction between "the quality of functioning and economic performance," and
underestimating this socio-economic "tension" leads inevitably to reduced performance and losses, which he
refers to as "hidden costs."
This approach, referred to as the socio-economic approach to management (SEAM), has significant potential for our thinking about
organizational diagnosis and intervention. As Savall emphasizes, the North American tendency to cast people as human "resources" misses the
essential point that human beings cannot be considered as simply another resource at the organization's disposal. People are free to give or withhold
their energy as they desire, depending on the quality of formal and informal contracts and interactions they have with their organizations. As such, the
SEAM approach focuses on human "potential," underscoring the need for managers and their organizations to create the conditions under which
people 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 and
functions - can quickly lead to a series of costs that are "hidden" from an organization's formal
information systems (e.g., income statements, balance sheets, budgets). As his insightful work
underscores, as organizations begin to accumulate dysfunction upon dysfunction, they inadvertently
undermine their performance and create excessive operating costs, with lower productivity and less
efficiency than they could achieve. As readers will discover, the frameworks, tools and ways of
thinking about organizations, people and management in this volume - in essence the background to the
socio-economic approach to organizational diagnosis and intervention - continue to hold great promise
for our attempts to create truly integrative approaches to management and organizational improvement
efforts.