A volume in Research in Management Consulting
Series Editor Anthony F. Buono, Bentley University
This volume is part of the ongoing collaboration between the RMC series and the Socio-Economic Institute
for Firms and Organizations (ISEOR), a French intervention-research think tank co-directed by Henri Savall
and Véronique Zardet. Building on an earlier collaboration on the ISEOR approach - Socio-Economic
Intervention in Organizations: The Intervener-Researcher and the SEAM Approach to Organizational
Analysis (IAP, 2007) - Buono and Savall bring together over 30 talented intervener-researchers to explore
and 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 disruptive
change that has taken hold across the world. The basic foundation of SEAM - built on the idea of strategic patience, the need to undertake holistic
intervention 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 concomitant
emphasis on helping client organizations achieve short-term results while still maintaining focus on the long term. Many ideas that have become part
of 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 of
collaborative interactions between external and internal consultants, and the growing importance of cocreating
knowledge with client firms and organizations.