Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics is a model of human development that posits a discrete and linear series of "stages of development" that individuals, organizations, and societies progress through, within dynamic and non-linear processes.^[1] It lacks mainstream academic validity or support, although it has been applied in management consulting and some academic literature.

It was initially developed by psychologist Don Edward Beck and communications lecturer Christopher Cowan based on memetic theory and the emergent cyclical theory of Clare W. Graves.^[2] A later collaboration between Beck and new-age writer Ken Wilber produced Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi).^[3] Several variations of Spiral Dynamics presently exist, with some drawing upon Wilber's pseudo-scientific integral theory.^[4]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Union College psychology professor Clare W. Graves published a series of articles which described what he referred to as an "emergent cyclical theory" of developmental psychology and human development.^[5][6][7]

Spiral Dynamics emerged as a result of a collaboration between University of North Texas (UNT) professor Don Beck, communications lecturer Christopher Cowan, and Graves.^[8] Beck and Graves first met in person in 1975, and was joined by Cowan shortly after in developing Graves's emergent cyclical theory, working closely with Graves until his death in 1986. In 1979, Beck and Cowan founded the consulting company National Values Center, Inc. (NVC).^[9] By 1981, both Beck and Cowan had resigned from UNT to work with Graves.^[10][11] During the 1980s and 1990s, Beck made over 60 trips to South Africa applying Graves's emergent cyclical theory in various projects.^[11] This experience, along with others Beck and Cowan had applying the theory in North America, motivated the development of Spiral Dynamics.^[12][13]

Beck and Cowan first published their original extension of Graves's theory in the 1996 book Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Exploring the New Science of Memetics).^[3] At around the same time, new-age author Ken Wilber published Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), which expounded and drew heavily upon Graves's work.^[14] Beck and Cowan introduced a color-coding for the eight value systems identified by Graves, and predicted a ninth value system. Additionally, Beck and Cowan integrated ideas from the field of memetics, identifying memetic attractors for each of Graves's levels. These attractors, which they called "^VMemes", are said to bind memes into cohesive packages which structure the worldviews of both individuals and societies.^[3]

In 1998, Cowan and Natasha Todorovic formed their own consulting company, NVC Consulting (NVCC).^[15] In the same year, Cowan filed for the service mark of "Spiral Dynamics" service mark, which was registered to NVC.^[16] Beck was against the nature of Spiral Dynamics as a service mark, and by 1999, the pair had ceased collaborating, in part due to Cowan's opposition to Wilber's theory, which he regarded as overtly spiritual and unrelated to Graves's original theory.^[17][18] That same year, Wilver published The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Vol. 4: Integral Psychology, which contained the first Spiral Dynamics reference in literature at the time.^[19]

Following the split of NVC, Cowan and Wilber began to expound upon two different conceptions of Spiral Dynamics. Wilber's theory increasingly incorporated elements of spirituality, religion and original concepts drawn from his integral theory.^[20] In the early 2000s, Beck and Wilber launched the Integral Institute and the Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi) brand.^[15] Beck also founded the Center for Human Emergence.^[21][22] By 2005, however, Beck and Wilber had fallen out due to disagreements on Wilber's changes to SDi.^[4] The following year, Wilber published Integral Spirituality, which incorporated chakras into SDi theory.^[4][23]

In 2009, NVC was dissolved as business entity,^[9] and the original SD service mark (officially registered to NVC) was canceled.^[16] The next year, Cowan and Todorovic re-filed for the SD service mark and trademark, which was registered to NVCC.^[24] By 2010, the three theories of Spiral Dynamics comprised Cowan and Todorovic's trademarked "SPIRAL DYNAMICS®", which purported to be fundamentally the same as Graves's emergent cyclical theory; Don Beck advocating SDi with a community of practice around various chapters of his Centers for Human Emergence; and Ken Wilber subordinating SDi to his similarly but-not-identically colored AQAL altitudes, with a greater focus on spirituality.^[4][25]

Spiral Dynamics describes how value systems and worldviews emerge from the interaction of social and historical conditions and mental processes. While the value systems occur in a particular order, the purpose of development within Spiral Dynamics is to align value systems with the relevant life conditions rathre than reach a set end goal.^[26] Under the theory, groups and cultures structure their societies around corresponding set of values, with each new value stage developed as a response to solving existing problems. Changes between states that occur incrementally are described as "first-order changes", whilst changes that emerge from a sudden breakthrough are known as "second-order changes".^[27][28] The emphasis on life conditions as essential to the progression through value systems is unusual among similar theories, and leads to the view that no level is inherently positive or negative, but rather is a response to the local environment.^[29]

In 2008, Cowan and Todorovic published an article on Spiral Dynamics in the peer-reviewed journal Strategy & Leadership,^[31] edited and published Graves's unfinished manuscript, and generally took the position that the distinction between Spiral Dynamics and Graves's ECLET is primarily one of terminology. Holding this view, they opposed interpretations seen as "heterodox."^[15]

Cowan and Todorovic's view of Spiral Dynamics stands in opposition to that of Ken Wilber. Wilber biographer Frank Visser describes Cowan as a "strong" critic of Wilber and his integral theory, particularly the concept of a "Mean Green Meme."^[32] Todorovic produced a paper arguing that research refutes the existence of the "Mean Green Meme" as Beck and particularly Wilber described it.^[18]

By early 2000, Beck was corresponding with Wilber about Spiral Dynamics and using a "4Q/8L" diagram combining Wilber's four quadrants with the eight known levels of Spiral Dynamics.^[23][15] Beck officially announced SDi as launching on January 1, 2002, aligning Spiral Dynamics with integral theory and additionally citing the influence of John Petersen of the Arlington Institute and Ichak Adizes.^[15] By 2006, Wilber had introduced a slightly different color sequence for his AQAL "altitudes", diverging from Beck's SDi and relegating it to the values line, which is one of many lines within AQAL.^[23]

Later influences on SDi include the work of Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Sherif in the fields of realistic conflict and social judgement, specifically their Assimilation Contrast Effect model^[33][34] and Robber's Cave study^[35]

Ken Wilber briefly referenced Graves in his 1986 book Transformations of Consciousness,^[36] and again in 1995's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, which also introduced his four quadrants model.^[14] However, it was not until the "Integral Psychology" section of 1999's Collected Works: Volume 4 that he integrated Gravesian theory, now in the form of Spiral Dynamics.^[19] Beck and Wilber began discussing their ideas with each other around this time.^[15]

By 2006, Wilber was using SDi only for the values line, one of many lines in his All Quadrants, All Levels/Lines (AQAL) framework.^[37] In the book Integral Spirituality published that year, he introduced the concept of "altitudes" as an overall "content-free" system to correlate developmental stages across all of the theories on all of the lines integrated by AQAL.^[38]

The altitudes used a set of colors that were ordered according to the rainbow, which Wilber explained was necessary to align with color energies in the tantric tradition. This left only Red, Orange, Green, and Turquoise in place, changing all of the other colors to greater or lesser degrees. Furthermore, where Spiral Dynamics theorizes that the 2nd tier would have six stages repeating the themes of the six stages of the 1st tier, in the altitude system the 2nd tier contains only two levels (corresponding to the first two SD 2nd tier levels) followed by a 3rd tier of four spiritually-oriented levels inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo. Beck and Cowan each consider this 3rd tier to be non-Gravesian.^[39]

Wilber critic Frank Visser notes that while Wilber gives a correspondence of his altitude colors to chakras, his correspondence does not actually match any traditional system for coloring chakras, despite Wilber's assertion that using the wrong colors would "backfire badly when any actual energies were used."^[41] He goes on to note that Wilber's criticism of the SD colors as "inadequate" ignores that they were not intended to correlate with any system such as chakras. In this context, Visser expresses sympathy for Beck and Cowan's dismay over what Visser describes as "vandalism" regarding the color scheme, concluding that the altitude colors are an "awkward hybrid" of the SD and rainbow/chakra color systems, both lacking the expressiveness of the former and failing to accurately correlate with the latter.^[42]

Spiral Dynamics has been criticized by some as appearing to be like a cult, with undue prominence given to the business and intellectual property concerns of its leading advocates.^[43] Psychologist Keith Rice, discussing his application of SDi in individual psychotherapy, notes that it encounters limitations in accounting for temperament and the unconscious.^[44]

The journalist Patrick Vermeren argues that Spiral Dynamics is an ideological construct that is in blatant contradiction to scientific facts and has no theoretical or empirical validity, noting that Graves' speculative assumptions about human developmental stages contradict established findings in biology, physics and evolutionary psychology.^[45] Vermeren also criticises Spiral Dynamics as ahistorical and factually inaccurate in its dating of human development stages; arbitrary in its use of color codes; reliant upon esoteric and pseudoscientific concepts; contradictory to evolutionary theory; and primarily a tool that consultants use to sell services to HR professionals.

Nicholas Reitter, writing in the Journal of Conscious Evolution, observes:^[46]

On the other hand, the SD authors seem also to have magnified some of the weaknesses in Graves' approach. The occasional messianism, unevenness of presentation and constant business-orientation of Graves' (2005) manuscript is transmuted in the SD authors' book (Beck and Cowan 1996) into a sometimes-bewildering array of references to world history, pop culture and other topics, often made in helter-skelter fashion.

Spiral Dynamics has been applied in some academic articles on management theory, which was the primary focus of the 1996 Spiral Dynamics book.^{[46][47][48][49][50][51]} John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia write that the vision and values of conscious capitalism as they articulate it are consistent with the "2nd tier" ^VMEMES.^[52] Rica Viljoen's case study of economic development in Ghana demonstrates how understanding the Purple ^VMEME allows for organizational storytelling that connects with diverse (non-Western) worldviews.^[53]

Spiral Dynamics has also been noted as an example of applied memetics.^[54][55] Schlaile also notes Said Dawlabani's SDi-based "MEMEnomics" as an alternative to his own "economemetics" in his chapter examining memetics and economics in the same book.^[56] Elza Maalouf argues that SDi provides a "memetic" interpretation of non-Western cultures that Western NGOs often lack, focusing attention on the "indigenous content" of the culture's value system.^[57]

Spiral Dynamics remains influential in new-age philosophy and spirituality.^[20][58]

SDi has also been referenced in the fields of education,^[59] urban planning,^[60] and cultural analysis.^[61]