Luc Hoebeke

The person

Luc Hoebeke is a Belgian consultant, author and lecturer in the field or self-organization, innovation processes and human activity systems. Hoebeke has published extensively in academics books and has written numerous articles on the work of consultancy practice. His work is best known in Europe. Currently Luc is most active in the Metaphorum community and fora on the VSM, the Viable Systems Model.

The work

In his seminal book "Making Work Systems Better" (1994) he developes a work system model based on the original insights of Checklands Soft-Systems Model, Maturana's Autopoiesis Theory and Beers' Viable Systems Model.

The notion of a work system is defined by Hoebeke as:

"A work system is a purposeful definition of the real world in which people spend effort in more or less coherent activities for mutually influencing each other and their environment."

The model describes the generic transformation processes, control information, audit information and development information for human activities using four overlapping time domains:

* Added-value domain - This domain spans periods between 1 day and 2 years in which processes are characterized by Throughput Time, Volume Requirements, Quality Requirements and Price Requirements.
* Innovation domain - This domain spans periods between 1 and 10 years in which processes are characterized by Desirability, Feasibility, Transferability and Systemicity.
* Value-systems domain - This domain spans periods between 5 and 20 years in which processes are Generative, Tolerant, Dialectical and Congruent
* Spiritual domain - This domain spans periods longer than 20 years, up to 50 years. The generic transformatin processes in this domain is "To materialize through works of art or mere behaviour the universal understanding of one's own mortality".

As said the notion of a transformation process is central in Hoebeke's work. It is defined as:

"A transformation process expresses a basic purpose behind the work system and transforms a specified input into a specified output. The output must contain the input which has been transformed during the process."

The mentioned time domains (added-value, innovation, value-systems and spiritual) are overlapping. To handle this overlap Hoebeke uses the concept of process levels of which there are seven to span the time between 1 day and 50 years. Process level is defined as:

"A process of a higher order is one whose output creates conditions for one of a lower order. Processes can be differentiated in a hierarchy. To avoid confusion with what is seen in organisational terms as hierarchical levels we call this the process level"

So higher process level have lower processes levels embedded in them. In contemporary times the word nested seems more appropriated to describe the embeddedness.

The figure below summarizes the models' four domains,process levels, and their time spans

Hoebeke also defines the following concepts in terms not found in contemporary management literature:

* Contributions of People
* Responsibility and Accountability
* Clients, Actors, Owners (as stakeholders of the Process)
* Environmental Constraints and Weltanschauung
* The Management Process

To complete the models' dimensions Hoebeke defines three information processes:

* Strategic - "All information processes which contribute to management, we call strategic information processes. These create, convey and develop meaning to all people involved in a work system"
* Control - "Control information processes are those who lead to a corrective, regulative action by the people contributing to transformation processes"
* Audit - "Audit information processes are those which lead the actors to a more profound understanding of why the process is carried out, what it does, with what means it is performed and how these means are used"

Even an abbreviated description of the model is too large to publish here. Instead it is provided as a 1-page file

References

Making Work Systems Better - A Practitioner's Reflections. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, ISBN 0-471-94248-0, 1994

Note

The book has been out of print for year and is - in paper form - only available from Libraries. The author however kindly provides an Internet version of the book for free.