Socio - Economic Approach to Management A Successful Systemic Approach to Organizational Change

and Alla Heorhiadi In the United States organizational change and development work has a rich history, including the influence of Kurt Lewin, Rensis Likert, Douglas MacGregor, Warren Bennis, the socio-technical tradition of Tavistock, and more recently, work in large scale change, appreciative inquiry and chaos / complexity. In France, a different tradition has evolved, the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM). This movement, based in the Socio-Economic Institute of Firms and Organizations Research (ISEOR), began in 1973. SEAM shares many of the beliefs and practices of American OD, but adds some premises and practices that make this approach quite distinct. While courses on SEAM are taught at two business schools, Central Michigan University and New Mexico State, the SEAM approach is not widely known in the United States. There have been some articles and books (Boje & Gomez, 2008; Boje & Roslie, 2003; Buono & Savall, 2007) mentioning SEAM but they mostly describe how to do SEAM and are not specifically focused on the value system that underlies this approach. The purpose of this article is to introduce the reader to the SEAM approach, pointing out its values, along with similarities to and differences from traditional OD consulting. In a way, the SEAM approach seems simple. None of the steps is surprising for an American OD practitioner, and some of its management tools share common grounds with the OD tool-kits. A socioeconomic intervention “can be considered a ‘machine for negotiating’ innovative solutions, with the underlying goal of reducing the dysfunctions experienced by the enterprise” (Savall, 2007, p. 3). Innovative solutions are data driven and these data have accumulated over 35 years of experimenting into a solid database, which is part of why the SEAM intervention has been effective repeatedly. The difference comes from the deeper goals of the intervention, systemic aspect of the consulting team, and the researcher-intervener role of each consultant. SEAM offers a methodical, tested way to assess the hidden costs in an organization. Identifying such costs is not a practice one often finds in other management consulting, although there is the OD consultants’ intuitive belief that the hidden costs are very real. Without the SEAM measurement, however, the hidden costs remain hidden, and can be easily shrugged off by managers as soft. SEAM is based on a set of values and a belief system about management that is different from traditional management premises. Traditional management features a fragmented analysis of organizations that is based on financial data without sufficient attention to the persons involved. SEAM, the socio-economic approach, factors both people and finances into analysis. The result is an intervention that works with the whole organizational system. A core belief of SEAM consultants is that organizations do not exist only to make money, they exist to serve society in general and all the employees in particular. Therefore SEAM rejects the idea that employees are human capital, a term that degrades employees Socio-Economic Approach to Management