Totemics Library

What to expect from this Library.

The plan is for the library to hold a wide variety of source materials that in different ways and
formats give background context for Totemics and provide further reading for people who have
found working with the exercises useful and thought provoking.

As we get going, however, we are starting with fairly basic stuff. So, book lists, an article or two
reproduced here that have not been published, and then a shortlist of published papers that might prove to be useful reading for those who are researching in this general area. As a next step we plan to create some short audio presentations. In this initial book list, there are two sections. The first lists books that constitute the early influences on Totemics and the second lists books that were only published during the past ten to fifteen years.
Categorising like this makes sense here particularly because the later section covers subject areas that barely existed when Totemics was emerging and have made possible far better explanations.

Finally it needs to be said that the book lists are not of the proper reference kind, but more just a selection of the favourites. A little bit of history and background context. Totemics began around thirty-five years ago: it grew out of a research project on organisation structure for design and development that had funding from the UK Leverhulme Foundation at London Business School.

As is often the case with development, something developed for one purpose demonstrates its wider potential and so it was with the early set of Totemic exercises created as an exploratory tool for the research. A subsequent research project, with a small team, went on to explore and develop Totemics. This project was based at Cambridge University at the Judge Institute, and the funding came from one of the British research councils, known as the EPSRC. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. There can be no attempt here to make references to all those individuals and organisations who made contributions to Totemics. But in all development work it is the broad and varied set of collaborations that make something what it is and Totemics is no different!