Diversity Management: Triple Loop Learning
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Diversity Management: Triple Loop Learning RA Flood and NRA Romm John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 1996. xiv 253 pp. 24.95. ISBN 0 471 964494 2 Flood and Romm's book presents a new metatheory called diversity management and a new style of practice called triple loop learning. Diversity management in the sense used by Flood and Romm is: `about managing the increasing diversity of issues that confront humankind in contemporary organisational and societal affairs. Initially this meant people managing the increasing diversity of issues they confronted by increasing the diversity of types of model, methodology and theory available to do the job. Diversi®cation, however, created a brand new issue to be managedÐhow to choose between the models, methodologies and theories. Consequently the emphasis in diversity management switched to people managing the increasing diversity of models, methodologies and theories' (page xi, again with minor variations on 9 and page 53). The book promises (back cover) to `provide a strong intellectual contribution' to the issue of managing diversity, it states that it is `thoroughly illustrated with case studies' (back cover again), so far so good. It further promises that: `the focus on triple loop learning increases the fullness of learning about the diversity of issues and dilemmas faced. It brings together three main learning centres in one overall awareness so that the process is more re¯exive and those involved can operate more intelligently and responsibly' and that it: `shows theoreticians and interventionists how they can operate with a consciousness that is more than the sum of its parts' (the back cover again). Eager but slightly confused, I opened the book, anticipating my further growth and illumination. This review follows my journey through the book and then re¯ects on its aims and audiences. Let us start with an overview of the structure. The book begins with a short preface which explains the overall
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structure, de®nes diversity management and triple loop learning, and suggests different routes through the book for theoreticians and interventionists: the remainder is in four parts. Part 1, entitled Conclusion, is a single chapter containing an expanded version of the Preface. This addresses the background to the authors research program (sic) in terms of a brief Euro-centric history of human thought, introduces the concepts of diversity management (see above) and triple loop learning (see below), and introduces the authors' de®nition of four different types of stance found in social theory (pragmatism, isolationism, imperialism and complementarism). The ®rst three of these stances (as de®ned by the authors) are found wanting, and diversity management emerges as Flood and Romm's particular form of complementarism. Part 2 is then on diversity management, with chapters on `metatheory, philosophy and the history of knowledge', `metatheory, theory and methodology', `metatheory and systems thinking' and ®nally `contours of diversity management'. Part 3 is on triple lo
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