The Socio-Economic Approach to Management Revisited

A volume in Research in Management ConsultingSeries Editor Anthony F. Buono, Bentley UniversityThis volume is part of the ongoing collaboration between the RMC series and the Socio-Economic Institutefor Firms and Organizations (ISEOR), a French intervention-research think tank co-directed by Henri Savalland Véronique Zardet. Building on an earlier collaboration on the ISEOR approach - Socio-EconomicIntervention in Organizations: The Intervener-Researcher and the SEAM Approach to OrganizationalAnalysis (IAP, 2007) - Buono and Savall bring together over 30 talented intervener-researchers to exploreand examine the ongoing evolution of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM).This volume revisits the application of SEAM in the context of intervention challenges in the wake of the recent economic crisis and the disruptivechange that has taken hold across the world. The basic foundation of SEAM - built on the idea of strategic patience, the need to undertake holisticintervention in organizations, and the challenge to get organizational members to listen to themselves (through what they refer to as the mirror effect)- has remained the same. In response to economic and organizational pressures in the current environment, however, there has been a concomitantemphasis on helping client organizations achieve short-term results while still maintaining focus on the long term. Many ideas that have become partof the current discourse within ISEOR today were not as explicitly addressed in the initial volume - from the destructive effect of the Taylorism-Fayolism-Weberism (TFW) virus, to the need to focus on ways to ensure the sustainability of a SEAM intervention, the growing importance ofcollaborative interactions between external and internal consultants, and the growing importance of cocreatingknowledge with client firms and organizations.