UNIVERSAL MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
Universal management principles were first published in the IMC Universal Management System Standard MSS 1000:2014 which underpinned its creation. These principles were extended in the IMC Hub paper Integrated Management: The Definition in 2022.
The principles provide further elaboration to the definition of Integrated Management and its characteristics covered in earlier sections of the paper, and otherwise define universal constraining laws of management which are a subset of natural law.
Organisations are conceptually superorganisms comprising consciousness, structure, and processes. Optimal synergistic benefit from Integrated Management will be obtained if the principles are respected and applied collectively rather than in isolation. The principles are not necessarily an exhaustive set and others may be added in future. They complement each other and should be applied holistically.
Universal Management Principles are listed below:
Principle 1 - Management resides in consciousness
Principle 2 - Multi-faceted impacts emerge from aspects
Principle 3 - Management principles are space-time invariant
Principle 4 - Nature and purpose of an organisation
Principle 5 - Structure and process purpose diversity
Principle 6 - Interdependency of structures and processes
Principle 7 - Coherent integrated structures and processes
Principle 8 - Culture cannot be directly created or managed
Principle 9 - Purpose creates organisational cohesion
Principle 10 - Ontology and taxonomy
Principle 11 - Leadership and commitment
Principle 12 - Informed decision-making
Principle 13 - Declaration of policy and compliance
Principle 14 - Equitable stakeholder outcomes
Principle 15 - Continual alignment with stakeholder needs
Principle 16 - Best use of resources
Principle 17 - Empowered accountable management
Principle 18 - Activity based holistic transparent accounting
Principle 19 - Management system ownership
Principle 20 - Unbounded perspective
Principle 21 - Activity aligned competence
Principle 22 - Opportunity taking and uncertainty
Principle 23 - Criticality classification
Principle 24 - Overt and covert management
Principle 25 - Unbounded Data Focus
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See also Universal Management Definitions
Management is conducted within the conscious mind individually or collectively. The definition of Integrated management and these principles are meaningless outside of the conscious mind.
Organisations are conscious super-organisms empowered with a degree of free will to seek, accept and reject opportunities to fulfil their purpose while equitably satisfying customers and other stakeholders – see also Principle 8: Culture cannot be directly created or managed, and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Consciousness is the home of management and stakeholder thinking and satisfaction. The quality of management action depends on the extent of integrated thinking facilitated by the level of consciousness of the manager and the management teams. The consciousness of a person is the home of their thoughts, decisions, judgement, mental models of reality. It includes the understanding and ability to effectively apply management principles – see Principle 3: Management principles are space-time invariant.
Personnel require a working environment that heightens consciousness, promotes wellbeing, and does not cause stress. This nurtures and facilitates creativity, innovation, and productivity. A fully integrated unbounded management system creates orderliness reducing stress which aids the application of creative intelligence – see Principle 11: Leadership and commitment.
Perceptions of quality, prospect and risk are relativistic and judged according to the individual stakeholder beliefs and perceptions according to their needs, expectations, aspirations, and level of consciousness.
Management is conducted by people individually and collectively through people for people to achieve the organisation’s objectives and the relativistic needs and expectations of stakeholders – see Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes and Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
Motivation and demotivation are experienced within the conscious mind. A consequent decision to take or reject an opportunity depends on the superposition of several motivating and demotivating influences of which organisation culture is just one amongst others – see Principle 8: Culture cannot be directly created or managed and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
An organisation’s aspects can and usually do have multi-faceted potential impacts. These aspects of the organisation are the common source of the various and often diverse impacts which interest stakeholders directly or indirectly and may include health, safety, environmental, commercial, reputational, goods and service quality issues. For this reason, an organisation only needs a single unbounded Integrated Management System to manage all aspects of its functionality that may potentially impact stakeholder’s needs, expectations, and aspirations. This enhances effectiveness and efficiency – refer to Integrated Management Benefits.
Optimising aspects and impacts under uncertainty involve identification of options, and then selecting the optimal opportunity – refer to Principle 10: Ontology and taxonomy, Principle 20: Unbounded perspective, and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
It should be noted that intelligent threats such as conflicting stakeholders’ needs, and expectations require special attention and, where appropriate, covert arrangements – see Principle 24: Overt and covert management.
Management principles and tools are universally applicable across space and time, although the understanding and application of them may evolve and improve.
The physical world evolves including new industries and technologies etc., but genuine management principles are time and space invariant like the laws of nature that science shows are isotropic and homogeneous throughout the cosmos – i.e., the same everywhere with no grain. Fundamental management principles do not need to be continually reinvented or adapted for any specific time or location or situation.
Through proper education and training a manager can own these management principles for life.
The principles facilitate the creation of universal global management standards applicable to any organisations irrespective of type, size, and maturity.
The continual re-engineering of management system standards is unnecessarily disruptive, wasteful, and commercially damaging – see Principle 16: Best use of resources.
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An example of a universal space and time invariant management system standard is MSS 1000. Examples which are not space-time invariant are ISO management system standards which generally have a service life of 5 years after which they become invalid.
Organisations are a complicated mix of conscious, structural, and dynamic elements including personnel, commerce, data, matter, energy, and supplier components in varying amounts – see Principle 5: Structure and process purpose diversity, Principle 6: Interdependency of structures and processes and Principle 7: Coherent integrated structures and processes.
Organisations, projects, structures, and processes exist to fulfil a purpose by delivering value to customers and other stakeholders via goods and/or services. The delivery of purpose necessitates the orchestrated creation and retention of equitable stakeholder value in all its forms. Value is relativistic in its nature depending on the observer.
Every element of an organisation has one or more purpose that contributes directly or indirectly to the overall purpose of the organisation. An organisation can only endure while it continues to fulfil its purpose effectively and efficiently – see Principle 9: Purpose creates organisational cohesion.
The structures and processes of organisations can be created to deliver a variety of diverse single or multiple functions serving one or more purpose(s) respectively - see Principle 4: Nature and purpose of an organisation.
The following typical purpose classifications examples each have a purpose supporting an important facet of organisational functionality. They may act simultaneously – see Principle 16: Interdependency of structures and processes and Principle 7: Coherent integrated structures and processes.
5A Organisation’s Mode of Functioning
Organisations normally operate in their goods and/or service delivery mode but also need to be able to operate in a survival (contingency) mode during a crisis or emergency before returning to their normal mode. An organisation also needs to be able to manage small and large changes to its structures allowing it to evolve and stay aligned with its stakeholder’s needs, expectations, and aspirations – see Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
A1 ‘Normal’ - directly and indirectly delivering the organisation’s goods and/or services.
A2 ‘Contingency’ – in reserve ready to activate when abnormal circumstances demand.
A3 ‘Change’ - enabling the organisation to adapt or modify any aspect of its normal or contingency physiology or dynamics in a considered and controlled way, temporarily or permanently.
5B Organisation’s Breadth of Focus
In an organisation, strategy is generally decided by the board of directors, and tactics by the department heads for implementation by the junior managers and employees via operational processes.
Strategy takes a longer slower and operations a shorter faster perspective with respect to, planning, implementation, and improvement cycles. Appropriate effective and efficient integrated two-way communication and dialogue must exist throughout the levels and totality of the organisation to support its optimal functionality – see Principle 16: Interdependency of structures and processes and Principle 7: Coherent integrated structures and processes.
B1 Strategic – planning or methodology for achieving long-term objectives.
B2 Tactical - directly implementing strategy, planned and ad hoc activities meant to deal with the demands of the moment, and to move from one milestone to other in pursuit of the overall goal(s).
B3 Operational – implements a tactical plan and directly delivering a good or service.
5C Component Type
An organisation is created from personnel and other elements that act together to deliver its purpose – see Principle 4: Nature and purpose of an organisation.
This grouping may also be used to classify organisation inputs and outputs.
C1 ‘Personnel’ – employment life cycle, nurturing and competent deployment.
C2 ‘Commerce’ – internal and external trading of goods and services.
C3 ‘Data’ – data life cycles and processing.
C4 ‘Matter and Energy’ – life cycles of use of matter of and energy.
C5 ‘Suppliers’ – selection and life cycle control of suppliers.
C6 ‘Combinations of the above’ – structures and processes comprising two or more of the above.
5D Performance Criticality
See Principle 23: Criticality classification.
Natural or human made structures host processes, while processes create, maintain, change, and destroy structures. Nothing exists in isolation within or outside of an organisation. The interrelationships between entities are as potentially important as the entities. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts requiring organisations to be managed in an integrated way to deliver synergistic benefits – see Principle 13: Declaration of policy and compliance, and Principle 16: Best use of resources.
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See also IMC Paper: Interorganisational Networks.
Stakeholder needs and expectations can only be effectively and efficiently delivered by strategic, tactical, and operational structures and processes which are fully integrated and operate coherently and harmoniously together throughout the organisation at every level – see Principle 6: Interdependency of structures and processes.
A process has the potential to impact all facets of an organisation’s performance which may in turn impact the needs and expectations of its stakeholders – see Principle 2: Multi-faceted impacts emerge from aspects.
Fragmented systems tend to degrade functionality, damage communication, cause delay, create waste, and underutilise valuable finite resources.
However, systems should only be integrated so long as it adds value. Non-integration may be necessary when managing security – see Principle 24: Overt and covert management.
Effective and efficient structures and processes depend on the universal coordinated application of Plan-Do-Check-Act at strategic, tactical, and operational levels of the organisation and facilitates continual learning and improvement. This necessitates vertical and horizontal integration without barriers or silos. Synergistic benefits emerge from coherent integrated management thinking and actions achieved through competence, cooperation, coordination and the free flow of information and ideas – see Principle 21: Activity aligned competence and Principle 25: Unbounded Data Focus.
Culture is an emergent socially driven property which naturally forms by personnel’s motivation to align with established norms to receive the benefits of being part of the group. Culture is experienced within the conscious mind – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness.
The organisation culture will slowly change if changes to behavioural norms can be sustained for long enough. This can be achieved by sustained consistent robust leadership and enforced compliance with the management system – see Principle 11: Leadership and commitment.
Culture can strongly motivate and demotivate facets of personnel behaviour along with others.
Organisation culture can be a mixture of beneficial and harmful characteristics. Culture tends to have a sustaining and dampening effect on managerial influence on behaviour.
Purpose is the cohesive golden thread that holds organisational entities together and determines the interconnectedness and interdependence of its structures and processes. Purpose is the glue that sticks an organisation together. Unless redundant, every component of structure and process has a purpose that serves the overall principal purpose of the organisation which is the delivery of goods and/or services – see Principle 4: Nature and purpose of an organisation.
Component purposes can be diverse resulting in a variety of impacts of interest to stakeholders – see Principle 2: Multi-faceted impacts emerge from aspects.
Organisation performance may be improved by a process innovation serving the same purpose e.g., automation – see Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Unified definitions, conventions, concepts, and terminology create orderliness by improving understanding, accelerating learning, reducing human error and human violation, improving communication, and reducing occupational stress.
Logical clustering of management topics (taxonomy) facilitates greater use of less, simpler, and more generically defined management controls.
Ontology and taxonomy are critical to the creation of readily navigable and logical universal management systems and standards - refer to Principle 11: Leadership and commitment and Principle 19: Management system ownership.
Leadership and commitment to Integrated Management is principally demonstrated by its declared commitment to an equitable holistic stakeholder centric vision, mission, strategic planning, policy and resourcing a boundless Integrated Management System and its compliance – see Principle 19 - Management system ownership.
This is enhanced by proactive transparent behaviour that permeates all executive and managerial activity – see Principle 13: Declaration of policy and compliance.
Where beneficial, possible, and practicable, decision-making by competent people should be based on or informed by evidence, experience, and systematic analysis within the explicit and tacit knowledge bases within or accessible to the organisation – see Principle 21: Activity aligned competence and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Caution should be used in decision making where information is limited. The creation of new structures or processes whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted (precautionary principle). This is applicable to proposals to create novel structures and processes where there is little or no historical data or experience or scientific knowledge. Because such situations are novel it is not possible to conduct meaningful prospect and risk assessments or even bound the risk – see Principle 20: Unbounded perspective and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
An organisation must clearly and unambiguously declare its policy governing the delivery of its purpose potentially impacting stakeholder’s needs, expectations and aspirations, and its commitment to compliance – see Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
This is important to allow stakeholders to make informed choices where global differences may exist in business ethics, culture, and concepts of social responsibility.
Every aspect of the functionality of the organisation must endeavour to deliver value by directly or indirectly supporting a just and equitable achievement of stakeholder needs, expectations and aspirations. These are satisfied by respecting everything that they value during the conduct of strategic, tactical, and operational processes.
Sustainability naturally emerges from integrated management because it attempts to equitably satisfy stakeholders. Stakeholders may be global and those yet to be born – see Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs and Principle 20: Unbounded perspective.
Customers are particularly important stakeholders because they can critically impact the commercial viability and profitability of organisations and their reputation. The viability of organisations in general is impacted by the ways that stakeholders can exercise power.
Many stakeholder needs, expectations and aspirations are directed and enforced by national and local government regulation.
Personnel and teams need to be nurtured, respected, appropriately empowered, and treated justly. Justice is important to the individual and its demonstration is important to help create a disciplined, trusting, and participative workforce – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness.
The management system and the strategy, tactics and operations of the organisation need to be continually reviewed and action taken to optimally align them with the evolving needs, expectations and aspirations of the organisation's stakeholders making the best use of resources. Understanding of aspirations helps in anticipating changes to needs and expectations over the longer term. Even though the management system of an organisation may in principle become optimised at any given time, continual change is still required so that it remains aligned with the evolving requirements of stakeholders while taking account of the internal and external environment of the organisation and evolving technical innovation – see Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes and Principle 21: Activity aligned competence.
Human, physical and every other type of resource needs to be used effectively and efficiently in a coordinated, optimal and sustainable way to create and retain value in all its forms – see Principle 5: Interdependency of structures and processes.
Each contributing process element requires a productive coordinated mix of potentially personnel, commerce, data, matter, energy, and suppliers, and the minimisation of all types of waste – see Principle 4 - Nature and purpose of an organisation.
There must be an optimal balance between the effectiveness and efficiency of structures and processes through their intelligent and creative design, implementation, and operation – see Principle 6: Interdependency of structures and processes and Principle 21: Activity aligned competence.
Managers need freedom to create optimal solutions and should not be unnecessarily constrained by non-value adding management control. Optimal integrated thinking needs to be empowered where it will deliver the most value – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness and Principle 20: Unbounded perspective.
Personnel and teams need to cooperate and be appropriately coordinated, nurtured, competent, and empowered through responsible and enlightened management delegation so that thought, action, and decision making occurs at the optimal place and level throughout the organisation.
Organisations naturally contain coexisting uniformity and diversity. Generic management controls within the management system should be used only where they are appropriate and add value – see Principle 6: Interdependency of structures and processes, Principle 10: Ontology and taxonomy, Principle 11: Leadership and commitment and Principle 20: Unbounded perspective.
Activity based holistic and transparent accounting reveals the true total costs associated with each element of an organisation’s value creating and retaining structures and processes delivering its purpose. This includes the direct and indirect costs irrespective of capital type impacting stakeholders. The principle is important in the understanding and measurement of the true performance of any aspect of an organisation’s structure or dynamics informing opportunities for improvement – see Principle 4: Nature and purpose of an organisation and Principle 12: Informed decision-making.
The management system must serve the needs and expectations of all stakeholders, be universally valued, respected, followed by and be responsive to stakeholder suggestions for its continual improvement and evolution – see Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes.
Management system architecture should be organisation centric and not standards or regulation centric. It should be functional, elegant, suitable and sufficient – see Principle 10: Ontology and taxonomy.
The management system should control its own review, change and evolution. It must remain aligned with the evolution of the organisation’s stakeholder needs and expectations and its local and wider operating environment – see Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
Boundless Integrated Management Systems simplify the operation of the organisation by defining a place for everything and facilitating everything to be in its natural logical place. This creates managerial and operational orderliness, facilitates personnel coordination and cooperation, creativity, and innovation, reduces personnel stress, and promotes holistic integrated thinking – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness.
Management systems facilitate the orderly direction and guidance of personnel at all levels to achieve objectives through directing and guiding optimal shared patterns of behaviour.
The focus when assessing and managing any entity and its stakeholder impacts must span its complete potential life cycle in space and time from inception to cessation including legacy impacts. This focus is not restricted by space and time constraints and contributes to the realisation of sustainable outcomes – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness.
For example, it requires that design considers manufacturing, installation, operation, decommissioning, and demolition impacts etc. – see Principle 2: Multi-faceted impacts emerge from aspects, Principle 3: Management principles are space-time invariant, Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes, and Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
The competence of personnel and teams must align with the current and perceived future needs of the organisation’s structures and processes established to fulfil its purpose while making the best use of resources – see Principle 16: Best use of resources and Principle 20: Unbounded perspective.
Competence can be available to the organisation internally via its employees and externally via consultants, government bodies, trade bodies and other suppliers.
The fundamental principles for managing organisations are universal - Principle 3: Management principles are space-time invariant.
However, the development of management controls needed to guide and direct the creation and delivery of goods and/or services may require specialist competences - Principle 5: Structure and process purpose diversity.
This may include professionals able to advise on controlling health, safety, environmental, commercial, reputational, goods and service quality issues and able to advise on legal compliance and taking of opportunity involving balancing prospects and risks – see Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Since processes may be improved by changing the type of component (person, machine etc) of a process, the concept of competence can be applied to anything fulfilling a role or purpose. For example, we can talk about the competence of a supplier as a whole.
Employees need to be managed throughout their life cycle within the organisation’s life and evolution to collectively provide the competences required to support its structures and processes - see Principle 20 - Unbounded perspective.
The dual objectives of an organisation are to create value and to retain value while fulfilling its purpose and operating under uncertainty. Value is a relativistic stakeholder judgement – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness and Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes.
To fulfil their purpose, organisations must first identify the options open to them and then endeavour to seek and take optimal opportunities. Opportunities invariably include likely outcomes judged to be upsides and/or downsides by stakeholders. This continual decision-making process is conducted strategically, tactically, and operationally and constitutes the organisation’s behaviour which in turn determines performance according to the stakeholders. As far as practicable it should be evidence based or informed – see Principle 12: Informed decision-making.
This involves optimising the individual and aggregation of prospects and risks associated with equitably satisfying the needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders while making the best use of resources. This requires that organisations have a suitable and sufficient portfolio of competence appropriate to them according to their size, purpose and stakeholders – see Principle 10: Ontology and taxonomy and Principle 21: Activity aligned competence.
Organisations must be aware of the limitations of opportunity assessment. Likely outcomes cannot be known with absolute certainty because:
• The sources and mechanisms of value creation and loss prevention may not have been exhaustively identified,
• Their likely potential realisation cannot be known with certainty,
• Their likely magnitude cannot be known with certainty,
• The current and future needs, expectations, and aspirations of stakeholders cannot be known with certainty.
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Organisations must be able to justify to stakeholders the methodologies and processes utilised in making value creation and retention decisions – see Principle 15: Continual alignment with stakeholder needs.
The processes may be required to be compliant with commercial and criminal legislation and regulation. The precautionary principle should always be followed where novel technologies are being envisaged and/or there is ignorance of the governing laws of nature.
The management control of structures and processes is simplified by classifying them according to the potential to impact performance positively and negatively – see Principle 5: Structure and process purpose diversity and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
This facilitates proportionate graded application of management control e.g., only staff with an assured competence being permitted to work, or certified equipment being permitted to be used, on particular classifications of structure and/or process.
This enables an organisation to make the best use of its resources to maximise stakeholder satisfaction - see Principle 16:: Best use of resources.
An organisation’s arrangements should be managed overtly and covertly, as appropriate, to equitably satisfy the needs, expectations and aspirations of its customers and other stakeholders – see Principle 14: Equitable stakeholder outcomes.
Covert arrangements are necessary to guard intellectual property, malicious threats to assets and restricting competitors’ access to valuable information and knowledge. This may require separately controlled discreet management systems and ownership: see Principle 19: Management system ownership.
Overt and covert management arrangements should be informed by opportunity assessment embracing prospect and risk assessment – see Principle 12: Informed decision-making and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Data permeates an organisation’s internal and external environments, interfaces with the conscious mind and can contribute to the creation, retention and loss of value in multiple ways – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness, Principle 4: Nature and purpose of an organisation, Principle 5: Structure and process purpose diversity, and Principle 6: Interdependency of structures and processes.
Data can directly and indirectly impact stakeholder needs, expectations and aspirations. Data must therefore be carefully controlled and guided throughout the organisation’s structures, processes, goods, services, supply chains, delivery chains and environment to ensure that its quality, integrity, processing, communication, sharing, structure, confidentiality, encryption, security etc satisfies the needs, expectations, and aspirations of stakeholders. This requires a boundless impact perspective – see Principle 7: Coherent integrated structures and processes, Principle 20: Unbounded perspective and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.
Data can be static and retained on media to provide a store of explicit knowledge and also be dynamic flowing through and between processes and contributing to their coherence – see Principle 5: Structure and process purpose diversity, and Principle 7: Coherent integrated structures and processes.
The development of advanced data technologies, including artificial intelligence should not be permitted if they negatively impact human consciousness and/or stakeholder needs expectations and aspirations – see Principle 1: Management resides in consciousness, and Principle 22: Opportunity taking and uncertainty.