About Us
One of Honesty Research's specialisms is to focus upon complex relationships and interactions between people, commerce, organisations and the built and natural environments.
The history of such topics stretches back long before the Ancient Egyptians. But, more recently, a well known 'codification' of certain human rules was drafted by Vitruvius in the fifteenth century BC.
Vitruvius's best known pronouncement was quoted in Sir Henry Wotton's version of the Ten Books in 1624, namely that: "Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight."
Honesty Research seeks to extend this principle when investigating or evaluating, for example, an organisational context or programme, by looking at, inter alia, the environment in which activities take place. Typically, four important questions need to be asked: Is the organisational context and its environment sound and sustainable? Does the context fulfil its function(s) properly as judged by its users, including perhaps sustainable business operations? Does the context lift or dampen the spirits?...and the fourth question (which does not seem to have been posed by Vitruvius, but is increasingly relevant in the modern world)......
.....does the entire 'package', whether it is a development programme or a community renewable energy project, represent value for money for the promoter, owner, landlord, sponsor and/or other stakeholders?
Some questions are more readily answered than others. This is because stability and functionality are easier to measure than emotions and value judgements.
It took twenty years and twenty thousand workers to build the Taj Mahal. It is structurally sound. It fulfils functions as a mausoleum and as a tourist attraction. It lifts most people's spirits just to look at it. But different groups will inevitably evaluate it in different ways...........
