Alla Heorhiadi – författare

This book is the 20th volume in the Research in Management Consulting series and the sixth major collaboration with Henri Savall, Véronique Zardet, and their team of intervenerresearchers from the Socio-Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations (ISEOR) in LyonÉcully, France. In 2013, for the first time, ISEOR co-sponsored a conference on its Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) paradigm and methodology in the United States. The volume captures the ideas, applications, and exchanges of that meeting hosted by the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The book attempts to bring the reader into the conference itself. The different chapters include the contributors’ presentations (“Chapter Prologue: Conference Remarks”), revised conference papers, and the question and answer dialogue for the session. For those interested in delving further into the SEAM approach, the volume also contains a general bibliography on the development, critique, and application of the framework.

In May 2014, the French research laboratory ISEOR (Socio-Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations) and the University of St. Thomas co-sponsored a second conference on the application of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) paradigm and methodology in the United States. SEAM is a scientific approach to consultancy that focuses on uncovering the dysfunctions and hidden costs that exist in organizations, ''hidden'' in the sense that they are not captured by traditional accounting methods and financial analyses.

Through intervention that encompasses the entire organization – what the ISEOR team refers to as the HORIVERT approach (combining horizontal and vertical intervention) – the underlying goal is to enhance organizational performance by attacking the ''TFW virus,'' a vestige of the early work by Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber that has sufficiently infiltrated our thinking about management and organization to the point where are falling well short of our own potential. The resultant dysfunctions this virus unleashes creates hidden costs that readily destroy a firm’s value-added possibilities.

The volume captures the ideas, applications, and exchanges of that meeting, attempting to bring the reader into the conference itself. Chapters include the contributors’ presentations (''Chapter Prologue: Conference Remarks''), revised conference papers, and the question and answer dialogue for the session.