Front door

Working papers

Drafts and papers not yet published elsewhere

These are the papers I am working on now. Some will change, and some will appear later in journals, on the Substack or through the Schumacher Institute. Comments and disagreement are welcome: they are how a map gets corrected.

• Nobody Stands OutsideWorking paper. Third draft, 6 November 2026.

  Why no one can manage or regulate from outside the whole they take part in, and why that need not overwhelm.

• Responsible TransformationPosition paper for the Responsible Project Management community. Draft for discussion, 5 November 2026.

  A position paper for the Responsible Project Management community: who is still there to answer when a project’s consequences arrive?

• Before We Say ‘Consequence’Working paper. Draft 1, 22 October 2026.

  A definition of consequence, two questions it leaves open, and why consequences so often fail to come back.

• Before We Say ‘System’Working paper. 21 October 2026.

  The two things every use of the word ‘system’ leaves undeclared, and a third that only the world can answer. The longer version of Where Do Consequences Go?

• What Travels and What Stays BehindBriefing three on Recognition Theory. Working draft, revised 13 October 2026.

  Geoffrey Vickers in the light of cultural evolution: why institutions favour production over regulation, and why the imbalance is so hard to correct.

• Beyond OverrideConference paper, peer reviewed. Presented at EURAM 2026, Kristiansand, Norway, June 2026.

  Why knowing why projects fail does not stop them failing, and what governance by recognition might look like. Peer reviewed and presented at EURAM 2026.

• What Others Have Meant by ‘System’Note to file, version 6, 20 October 2026. Superseded by Before We Say ‘System’.

  How others, from Wiener and Ashby to Checkland and Ulrich, have defined ‘system’, and whether any of them asked what holds a system’s boundary in force and what keeps it together.