John Seddon is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

occupational psychologist and author specializing in organizational change within the

service industry The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the s ...

. He is the founder and managing director of Vanguard, a consultancy firm established in 1985. He is also a visiting professor at Buckingham University

Business School A business school is a higher education institution or professional school that teaches courses leading to degrees in business administration or management. A business school may also be referred to as school of management, management school, s ...

. Seddon's prominence grew following attacks on current

management thinking. These included the belief in

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of Productivity, output produced per unit of cost (production cost). A decrease in ...

, quality standards such as ISO9000Teaming Up With Local Teens
18 June 2005, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. Accessed 3 August 2007. and much of public sector reform including "deliverology", the use of targets, inspection and centralized control of local services. The ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

'' described him as a "reluctant management guru", with a background in

occupational psychology Industrial and organizational psychology (I-O psychology) "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effec ...

.Bootcamp tactics won’t win the battle
, Stefan Stern, ''

'', 16 February 2006. He is critical of target-based management, and of basing decisions on

, rather than "economies of flow".''Freedom from Command and Control: a better way to make the work work'', John Seddon (2003), Vanguard Press. () Seddon has published seven books. In his 2008 book, ''Systems Thinking in the Public Sector'', he criticized the

UK Government His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

reform Reform refers to the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The modern usage of the word emerged in the late 18th century and is believed to have originated from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement, which ...

programme. He advocated its replacement by

systems thinking Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.Anderson, Virginia, & Johnson, Lauren (1997). ''Systems Thinking Ba ...

. His book, ''The Whitehall Effect'', was published on 5 November 2014. In it he articulates a more productive role for government in public-sector reform. His latest book, ''Beyond Command and Control'', was published on 30 September 2019 and promises to expose the inherent fallacies contained within command and control management. Seddon won the first Management Innovation Prize for 'Reinventing Leadership' in October 2010."Announcing the M-Prize Winners: Audacity, Imagination, Experimentation"
Polly LeBare, 22 November 2010 Management Innovation eXchange (MIX)

Academia

John Seddon earned a BSc (Hons) in

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

with the

University of Wales The University of Wales () is a confederal university based in Cardiff, Wales. Founded by royal charter in 1893 as a federal university with three constituent colleges – Aberystwyth, Bangor and Cardiff – the university was the first universit ...

in 1974 and graduated with a MSc in

from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

in 1977.

Debate about local government management

An opinion piece on the detrimental effects of inspection regimes prompted discussion on the

Local Government Chronicle The ''Local Government Chronicle'' (''LGC'') is a British weekly magazine for local government officers, and is published by Metropolis. The magazine was launched in 1855 by bookseller and publisher Charles Knight. It was then published by Em ...

(LGC) website with David Walker, Managing Director, Communications & Reporting, at the Audit Commission. The debate was also covered in newspapers including

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

, which featured it on 31 July 2009.

Campaign

Seddon wrote an open letter dated 31 January 2011 calling for the Rt. Hon Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud, the ministers responsible for Welfare Reform, to "halt the current programme of reorganization associated with the Single Universal Credit and embark on a better course". In the letter, he wrote: "This campaign is not about the concept of the Single Universal Credit as such. It is about the design and implementation of its delivery". He says the weakness in the proposals for online and call center delivery of the new Single Universal Credit is the "continuing unquestioning faith in economies of scale". In August 2011, a petition was started on the Government e-petitions site Rethink the centralised, IT- dominated service design for Universal Credit - e-petitions
Epetitions.direct.gov.uk (2012-08-18). Retrieved on 2013-07-26. as part of the campaign. The petition calls for

Iain Duncan Smith Sir George Iain Duncan Smith (born 9 April 1954), often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British politician who was Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Le ...

to rethink the centralized IT-dominated service design of

Universal Credit Universal Credit is a United Kingdom based Welfare state in the United Kingdom, social security payment. It is Means test, means-tested and is replacing and combining six benefits, for working-age households with a low income: income-related Emp ...

References

External links

Memorandum by Professor John Seddon
submitted to HM Parliament Public Administration Committee January 2003

on Universal Credit Implementation to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee September 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Seddon, John Living people British psychologists British systems scientists Alumni of the University of London Year of birth missing (living people)