Pierre Charles-André Malotaux (28 April 1923 – 14 February 2016) was a Dutch organizational theorist, business consultant, and Professor of Business Administration at the

Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

. His is known with

Jan in 't Veld Jan in 't Veld (16 December 1925 – 27 January 2005) was a Dutch aerospace engineer and professor of industrial organization at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Technical University of Delft. In the Netherlands he was one of the pione ...

for developing a specific

systems approach Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.Anderson, Virginia, & Johnson, Lauren (1997). ''Systems Thinking Ba ...

to organizational problems, called the Delft Systems Approach.Hans P. M. Veeke, Jaap A. Ottjes and Gabriël Lodewijks (2008). ''The Delft Systems Approach: Analysis and Design of Industrial Systems.'' Springer. p. viii

Biography

Youth, education and early career

Malotaux was born in

Delft Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

in 1923, the son of Robert Nicolas Marc August Malotaux (1898-1984) and Alice Cesarine Michiels (1897-1975). He was named after his grandfather, Pierre Malotaux, who came from

Valenciennes Valenciennes (, also , , ; ; or ; ) is a communes of France, commune in the Nord (French department), Nord Departments of France, department, Hauts-de-France, France. It lies on the Scheldt () river. Although the city and region experienced ...

, France. He attended the

Hogere Burgerschool The ''Hogere Burgerschool'' (''HBS'') (Dutch: Higher Civic School) was a secondary school type that existed between 1863 and 1974 in the Netherlands and the Dutch Empire. These schools, with a five- or sometimes six-year program, continued in 1 ...

, where he graduated in 1940. In that year he started to study

aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

at Delft University of Technology, where interrupted by the second World War he obtained his kandidaats exam in 1948 and his Engineering degree in 1951. After graduating, he started his career at the

Koninklijke Hoogovens Koninklijke Hoogovens known as Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken (KNHS) until 1996 or informally Hoogovens. is a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918. Since 2010, the plant is named Tata Steel IJmuiden. The steelworks based i ...

in IJmuiden in 1951 at the psychotechnical department. From 1953 to 1959 he was consultant at a consultancy agency for business economics. In 1959 he settled as independent business consultant, and participated in the working group on business administration at the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs.

Further career

In 1968 at the Delft University of Technology he was appointed Professor of Business Administration at the Department of General Science. The first Professor of Business Administration in Delft had been appointed in 1909 and Malotaux was the six professor in a row. He predecessor Jacob Louis Mey had served from 1964 to 1965. However, instead of appointed one successor, in 1968 three professors were appointed: Malotaux,

, and Henk Lombaers. Malotaux was to focus on general aspects of business theory, In 't Veld on industrial organization and Lombaerts on

Operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

. In cooperation with

and several other engineers and social scientists, Malotaux developed a specific systems approach to organizational problems, which is called the Delft Systems Approach. In the 1980s Malotaux was initiator of the national network on Reliability, Maintenance management and Maintenance technology company. Their publications on this subject gave a start on

life cycle thinking Life cycle thinking is an approach that emphasizes the assessment and minimization of environmental impacts at all stages of a product's life. This concept seeks to avoid shifting environmental burdens from one stage of the product's life to anot ...

about technical systems in the Netherlands. In 1994 he was succeeded by Jan Willem Koolhaas, who left in 1998.Christiaan Jongeneel (1998).
Koolhaas begint een hotel
. In ''Delta,'' 17-12-1998. Accessed 12 December 2017. In 2004 Malotaux received a Royal decoration and was invested as a Knight of the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau () is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has performed acts of special merits for ...

. In the same year with Jan in 't Veld he was appointed honorable member to the KIVI NIRIA Business Administration department. The PhD students of Malotaux (and year of graduation) have been Jan Willem Koolhaas (1980), Eduard Rudolf Muhring (1987), Willem Gerrit Monhemius (1990) and Riek Boswijk (1992). Malotaux died 14 February 2016 in

Bilthoven Bilthoven is a village in the Netherlands, Dutch province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of De Bilt. It has a railway station with connections to Utrecht (city), Utrecht, Amersfoort and Baarn. It is home to the Ne ...

Selected publications

* Pierre Malotaux and J.J.D. van der Gon,
Methode voor kwalitatief grenslaagonderzoek met behulp van gloeidraden zonder beinvloeding der stroming
'' Technische Hogeschool Delft, Aircraft Engineering, Report VTH-45, 1951. * Pierre Malotaux.
Subjectiveren en objectiveren
'. TH Delft inaugural lecture on thinking as a process, 1968. * Pierre Malotaux, Henk Lombaers and

. ''Trio-logie: Variaties over een thema uit de bedrijfsleer'', 1969. * Pierre Malotaux, Pieter Verburg, Klaas Halbertsma, and J.L. Boers (ed.). ''Organisatiewetenschap en praktijk''. Leiden : Stenfert Kroese, 1976. * Pierre Malotaux, Joop Doorman and

. ''Inleiding Methodologie: cursus 1977/78''. TU Delft, 1977. * D. J. Adriaanse, P.J.M. Maas and Pierre Malotaux.
Een psychiatrische behandeleenheid in ontwikkeling : het procesbeschrijvingsmodel in praktijk
'. Delft : Delftse Universitaire Pers, 1980. * Pierre Malotaux.
Een tussenbalans
'. Departure speech TU Delft, 1994. * Pierre Malotaux, H.K. Boswijk and H. van der Heide. ''Sturen of drijven?''. Alphen aan den Rijn : Samsom BedrijfsInformatie, 1995. * Pierre Malotaux, A.H. Schaafsma and A.F. van der Touw.. ''Besturend vermogen: organisatie in verval en herstel''. Stichting Maatschappij en Onderneming, 1998. * Wouter ten Haaf, Henk Bikker, and Johan Adriaanse with contributions from

and Pierre Malotaux. ''Fundamentals of business engineering and management: a systems approach to people and organisations''. , Delft: DUP Science, 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malotaux, Pierre Charles-André 1923 births 2016 deaths Dutch aerospace engineers Dutch systems scientists Business theorists Delft University of Technology alumni Academic staff of the Delft University of Technology People from Delft