Review by A Brook
Jaques. (Pp. 262; ยฃ2-50.) London: Heinemann. 1970.
Professor Elliott Jaques has worked with the Glacier
Metal Company as a social-analytic consultant for over
20 years and the books he has written on the research
projects with which he has been involved are well known.
He has, since 1966, been Head of the School of Social
Sciences at Brunel University. This volume is a collection
314 Book reviews
of 14 papers, written by him over the past 15 years,
dealing with a wide range of topics such as industrial
work, management, economics, education, the meaning
of work, and problems of groups and of individuals. The
studies that Jaques describes, the conclusions he reaches,
and the ideas he puts forward, are based on the application
of the findings of the social sciences and of psychology; it
is this that gives the papers on these varied subjects their
particular quality of fascination and, at times, excitement.
One theme which runs through the papers is that it is in a
just environment that creativeness and the capacity for
work find their optimum conditions for expression. That
is the reason for bringing them together in this book,
and the aim throughout is to clarify thinking and to
define concepts.
The papers were prepared for different audiences; thus,
some will appeal more to one group of readers, whereas
others will be of greater interest to a different group.
Some, but by no means all, require a basic knowledge of
psycho-analytic concepts, and for those without this,
some of the papers will, in places, be hard to follow.
Most, however, should be ofchallenging interest to anyone
concerned with organizations, their structure and their
management, and the interaction between organizations
and the people who work in them. Several of the papers
are on topics which are of immediate concern to the
industrial medical officer. In the first, for example, Jaques
considers the human consequences of industrialization,
and in particular the highly complex relationship of
superior and subordinate. In a paper entitled 'Stress', he
identifies some stress-inducing situations and considers the
problems of the balance between a person's capacity
for work, the level of work he is carrying, his financial
reward for that work, and his rate of career progress.
Although 'Psycho-analysis and the Current Economic
Crisis', is concerned with the crisis of the mid-'50s, it is
equally relevant to the present one and he introduces his
original thinking on equitable payment. In the paper
'On being a Manager' he tackles the complicated problem
of what this really means. 'Death, and the Mid-life
Crisis' is a classic on some aspects of problems of middle
age.
It would have been helpful if at the beginning of each
paper there had been a note indicating when it had been
written and for which audience or journal it had been
prepared; also it would have been helpful if the papers
had been collected in sequence, which would have
indicated the development of Professor Jaques' thinking.
These are minor criticisms of an extremely valuable
collection of essays.