What are f-LAWS?
f-LAWS are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.
In 1958, Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson first articulated Parkinson's Law, which states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". His law and the accompanying book was based on his extensive experience in the British Civil Service and on his own scientific observations.
Almost 50 years later, Professor Russell Ackoff, renowned American management guru and systems thinker, compiled over 120 new laws in the same vein. Based on a lifetime's experience in public and private sector organizations, these f-LAWS (or laws as flaws) are designed to whet your appetite and get you thinking about the often-unacknowledged realities of organizations: what really motivates managers, why are companies run the way they are, how come they don't work better...?
Ackoff's f-LAWS are published in four different collections:
A Little Book of f-LAWS contains 13 of his most memorable f-LAWS. You can buy the book here or read it free online.
Management f-LAWS: How Organizations Really Work, was published by Triarchy Press in 2007. It has over 80 f-LAWS, each with a response from British author and consultant Sally Bibb. Responding in the light of current organizational thinking and best practice, her thoughts introduce a voice from another generation, another gender and another continent. You can buy the book here.
Systems Thinking for Curious Managers is published in March 2010. Finalised by Russ Ackoff shortly before his death, it includes 42 new and previously unpublished f-LAWS, a foreword by Ackoff's long-standing friend and business partner Jamshid Gharajedaghi and an extended introduction by Andrew Carey that links the f-LAWS to Ackoff's lifetime of working with Systems Thinking and Interactive Design.
You can buy the book here.
Ackoff’s F/laws: The Cake is a full collection that brings together the original text of all Ackoff’s 122 f/laws and his commentary on each of them. It’s the ideal way to explore Ackoff’s thinking on organizations and management.
Published in 2012, Ackoff’s F/Laws: The Cake is available on Kindle, as an ebook and in print as a hardback.
You can buy the book here.