The Legacy of Elliott Jaques

“All definite knowledge”, contended Bertrand Russell in History of Western Philosophy, “belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy” (Russell, 1946, p. 13) If a philosopher was fortunate, continued Russell, they would be the cause of beliefs which mould the politics and institutions of later years.

Elliott Jaques carved out the theory of Requisite Organization in No Man's Land, attempting to establish the scientific foundations for the art of ordering human affairs. The culmination of his life's work was Life and Behavior of Living Organisms (2002b), where he unites science and philosophy by providing a scientific foundation for understanding human nature and social organizations. He did this by constructing the theoretical framework of a five-dimensional world, with three spatial dimensions and two temporal dimensions. The Scientific Revolution, according to Jaques, allowed a radical reconceptualization of the world we live in by introducing precise measurement for the fourth dimension, which is the unfolding of chronological or sequential time (chronos). Jaques argued that introducing a fifth dimension - the time-span of intentional goal-directed locomotion (kairos) - will lead to a total revolution in the behavioral sciences.

Throughout Jaques' career, his ideas swung between the dogma of grand theory to the definitive prescriptions of scientific implementation. Noteworthy attempts of grand theory were A General Theory of Bureaucracy (1976), The Form of Time (1982) and Human Capability (with Kathryn Cason, 1994). He also published treatises on implementation of the theory in Glacier Project Papers (with Wilfred Brown, 1965), Requisite Organisation (1997) and Social Power and the CEO (2002a). The theory was generated from 55 years of large-scale implementation with organizations such as Rio Tint