Works
- Studies in the social development of an industrial community (the Glacier Project), Human Relations 3(3), 223 to 249, 1950
- The Changing Culture of a Factory, Tavistock Publications, London (xvii and 341 pages), 1951
- Measurement of Responsibility: A Study of Work, Payment, and Individual Capacity, Tavistock Publications, London; reissued by Routledge, 2013, 1956
- A General Theory of Bureaucracy, Heinemann, London, and Halsted Press (Wiley), New York, 1976
- The development of intellectual capability: a discussion of stratified systems theory, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 22(4), 361 to 383, 1986
- Requisite Organization: The CEO's Guide to Creative Structure and Leadership, Cason Hall, Arlington, VA, 1989
- In praise of hierarchy, Harvard Business Review (January to February 1990), 1990
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Requisite organization
Ideas
Time span of discretion. The level of a role can be measured by the longest task its holder must carry out without review. Caveat: Hard to operationalize, according to critics, and independent tests are few (Carraher and Chait 1999). The book was not read.
Stratified systems theory. Individuals move through states of cognitive functioning measured in time horizons, and work measured in time spans yields a stratified hierarchy in which the same cognitive states recur at higher strata. Caveat: Offered as theory; the abstract presents hypotheses, not tests.
Requisite organization. Managerial layers should match the strata of work, so each layer adds a real step in complexity. Caveat: Only passages of the book were read; no large-sample test of the structural claim was found in the journals searched.
Time span and requisite strata. Jaques measured the level of a role by its time span of discretion and argued that requisite organizations have one managerial stratum per band of time span. Caveat: Developed largely from consulting work at Glacier Metal and elsewhere; independent tests are few.
In this section, “read” means read by the Organizational Structures series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.