An early conceptual version of the Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA) framework was published in 2025 (Macdonald, 2025).

This paper expands, formalises, and analyses that framework for academic and applied contexts.

The Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA) Method

See The Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA) Method

A Systems-Based Framework for Understanding Care, Trust, Ability, and Work

Abstract

This paper presents an expanded academic treatment of the Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA) method. An early conceptual version of AMVA was published publicly in 2025 (Macdonald, 2025). This paper formalises, analyses, and extends that work by modelling trust as an elastic structural membrane connecting a Care Plane and a Work Plane, and by providing failure analysis and a way forward.

1. Introduction

Modern organisations and public systems frequently struggle to translate effort into sustainable outcomes. The AMVA method builds upon its original public publication (Macdonald, 2025) to offer a formal framework for understanding these failures.

2. Theoretical Framework

AMVA asserts a functional equivalence between care, trust, ability, and work over time, treating trust as a structural connector between the Care Plane and the Work Plane.

3. Analysis of Trust as Structure

Trust behaves as an elastic membrane that can stretch, thin, crystallise, or fracture. These behaviours determine whether care can be converted into ability and productive work.

4. Way Forward

Future work includes diagnostics, empirical validation, and application of AMVA across welfare, workplace, and social systems.

References

See Macdonald, A. (2025). Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA). 

Why the AMVA Framework Matters Now

AMVA matters now because organisations are failing not due to lack of skill or technology, but because trust has become structurally unsupported. By modelling trust as a core system component, AMVA provides a necessary framework for sustainable change.

About AMVA – Action Monitoring Values Analysis

The Action Monitoring Values Analysis (AMVA) framework was developed to explain a pattern that many people experience but few systems clearly articulate: work fails not because people lack ability, but because trust is structurally unsupported.

AMVA emerged from sustained experience within complex operational, engineering, and organisational environments where formal systems repeatedly failed despite capable people, defined processes, and significant investment. Over time, a consistent insight became unavoidable — when care is absent, trust erodes; when trust erodes, ability cannot be accessed; and when ability cannot be accessed, work becomes fragile, performative, or unsustainable.

Rather than treating trust as a cultural value or behavioural outcome, AMVA reframes trust as a structural connection between two realms:

• The Care Plane — where people experience support, safety, recognition, and care-ability
• The Work Plane — where ability, productivity, and outcomes are expected to emerge

Trust functions as an elastic membrane between these two planes. When care is coherent and sustained, the membrane is strong and flexible, allowing ability and productive work to emerge naturally. When care is fragmented, inconsistent, or absent, the membrane thins, fractures, or collapses — regardless of individual competence or intent.

AMVA provides a systems-based language for understanding why:

• well-planned work collapses under stress
• change initiatives fail despite effort and compliance
• welfare-to-work models struggle to produce lasting outcomes
• workplaces experience burnout, disengagement, and chaos
• social capital enables resilience where formal systems cannot

The framework treats trust as a measurable, stress-sensitive system component, not a soft or abstract concept. By doing so, AMVA offers a way to diagnose structural failure, design more humane systems, and rebuild the conditions under which people and organisations can function effectively.

AMVA is both reflective and forward-looking: grounded in real-world experience, yet oriented toward the design of resilient systems where care, trust, ability, and work reinforce rather than undermine one another.