Elliott Jaques

Elliott Jaques (January 18, 1917 – March 8, 2003) was a Canadian psychoanalyst, social scientist and management consultant known as the originator of concepts such as corporate culture, midlife crisis, fair pay, maturation curves, time span of discretion (level of work) and requisite organization, as a total system of managerial organization.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Jaques was educated at the University of Toronto and studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University, then received his Ph.D in social relations from Harvard University, and qualification as psychoanalyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society.

He was a founding fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain and was a visiting professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and honorary professor of the University of Buenos Aires.

During the Second World War, Jaques served as a major in the Canadian Army where in collaboration with Henry Murray of Harvard University using his education and training established the Canadian War Office Selection Boards.

He was assigned as liaison to the British Army War Office Psychiatry Division that developed their own War Office Selection Boards.

He was a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in 1946.

In 1949, he married the English actress Kay Walsh.

They adopted a girl, Gemma.

The origins of Jaques's theories can be traced back to 1952, when Britain's Glacier Metal Company asked him to help to develop a worker participation plan.

At one point, Jaques was asked if there was any importance to the fact that the salary of low-level workers was estimated on hourly, daily or weekly basis, while salary of executives was described as annual amount.

The question 'was the finest gift I've ever been given', Jaques said.

'It was absolutely, bloody brilliant.

They divorced in 1956.

After the war Jaques remained in England and qualified under Austrian-British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

Jaques also helped Klein to edit the manuscript of Envy and Gratitude (1957), evidence suggests that it was Jaques who suggested that the word "gratitude" should be included in the title of the book.

She appreciated his help in preparation for the publication of her book Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961).

In 1964, he founded the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University London and served as its Professor and Head of School.

In 1965 Jaques published an essay on working patterns of creative geniuses in which he coined the phrase midlife crisis.

His development approach to organizational development makes him one of the early contributors to positive adult development.

That's when I started examining the significance of time.' His work with Glacier Metal Company in London continued through 1977 and largely influenced the management theory.

Peter Drucker called this work "the most extensive study of actual worker behavior in large-scale industry".

Jaques incorporated his findings during "Glacier investigations" into what was first known as Stratified Systems Theory of requisite organization.

This major discovery served as a link between social theory and theory of organizations.

Jaques continued his development of theory of underlying Nature of Human Capability, that he first approached during his work with the US Army and this resulted in the discovery (with Kathryn Cason) of a method for evaluation of potential individual capability within the evaluation of Complexity of Information Processing.

As a result of the research carried out for the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and American and Australian companies on the study of mental complexity, it was found that individuals process information at work in four ways: declarative, cumulative, serial and parallel.

This study demonstrated the interdependence of layers of the managerial hierarchy and each separate step in mental processing complexity.

Jaques moved from London to Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1991.

He became a research professor at George Washington University.

From this work it was concluded that organizational life of intermittent steps in the nature of human capability reflects the essence of managerial hierarchical structure (Jaques, 1994).

As an outcome of the discovery and use of Time-span, work on Theory of the Nature of Time took place.

This led to another major contribution of Dr.Jaques, the development of the Time-span of Discretion instrument, the ratio-scale measure for a construct in the social sciences, which measures the complexity of work in each role within the organization.

The measure of how much responsibility an employee has is the concept Jaques is widely known for.

In 1999 Jaques established Requisite Organization International Institute, that operates as an educational and research group.

As a result of his work with different corporations, governments and U.S. Army, Jaques developed a scientific process that allows for the evaluation of the potential capability of individuals in the context of time-span of discretion, an instrument which measures work complexity in each role within the organisation.

This approach has been used by US armed services and large public and private organisations around the world.

In 1999, The Requisite Organization International Institute was established by Co-founders Elliott Jaques and Kathryn Cason.

Institute operates as research and educational centre providing support and consulting in implementation of principles of Requisite Organization worldwide.

Jaques' ideas are still very influential in a practical study of organizations and the optimization of structures and systems that support productive work for the achievement of the organization's purpose.

Jaques argued that the higher a person was positioned in a hierarchy, assuming the individual possessed a corresponding level of cognitive complexity, acquired skills and knowledge (gained through experience) and presuming that individual valued the work he or she was tasked, the longer he could work to complete a task without supervision.

He died in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 2003.