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, has compiled over 80 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...?
We've also asked British author, Sally Bibb, to respond in the light of current organizational thinking and best practice. Her thoughts introduce a voice from another generation, another gender and another continent.
For A Little Book of f-LAWS, we've selected just 13 f-LAWS. A larger volume, Management f-LAWS: How Organizations Really Work, is published by Triarchy Press in January 2007. Click here for more information.