The intellectual lineage
CIT’s research into levels of consciousness draws on one of the most substantive and empirically grounded traditions in the study of human development and organisational behaviour. The lineage runs from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, through Clare Graves’s emergent cyclic levels of existence theory, through the Spiral Dynamics framework developed by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, to Richard Barrett’s seven levels of consciousness model — the primary instrument in CIT’s applied research and consultancy work.
Each step in this lineage represented a genuine advance in the precision with which human motivation, values development and collective behaviour could be understood and measured. The instruments derived from this tradition have been applied in contexts ranging from post-apartheid South Africa to corporate transformation programmes across multiple sectors and continents. Their validity is not theoretical. It is demonstrated.
Towards and away-from motivation
CIT’s research into levels of consciousness draws on one of the most substantive and empirically grounded traditions in the study of human development and organisational behaviour. The lineage runs from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, through Clare Graves’s emergent cyclic levels of existence theory, through the Spiral Dynamics framework developed by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, to Richard Barrett’s seven levels of consciousness model — the primary instrument in CIT’s applied research and consultancy work.
Each step in this lineage represented a genuine advance in the precision with which human motivation, values development and collective behaviour could be understood and measured. The instruments derived from this tradition have been applied in contexts ranging from post-apartheid South Africa to corporate transformation programmes across multiple sectors and continents. Their validity is not theoretical. It is demonstrated.
Values alignment and motivational alignment are not the same thing. An organisation can have both or neither, but having one does not guarantee the other.
The design implication
The question of motivational alignment takes on additional dimensions in a workforce that includes AI systems alongside human participants. The way AI systems are deployed — the objectives they are given, the metrics they optimise for — reflects the motivational orientation of the humans who designed and deployed them. An organisation that deploys AI primarily to avoid risk and reduce cost is building from an away-from orientation. An organisation that deploys AI to expand human capability and amplify contribution is building from a towards orientation. The cultural and behavioural consequences of that difference are as significant as the technological ones.
CIT’s current research examines how the motivational architecture of an organisation shapes its AI deployment decisions, and what kinds of motivational development are required for organisations to build the kind of towards-oriented, generative AI integration that an OAI model requires.
