Jung's Legacy And Beyond : Exploring The Relevance Of Archetype Philosophy To Organizational Change 9781845446833, 9780861767366

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Journal of

ISSN 0953-4814

Organizational Change Management

Volume 15 Number 5 2002

Jung’s legacy and beyond: exploring the relevance of archetypal psychology to organizational change Guest Editors Alexis Downs, Rita Durant and Ken Eastman Paper format Journal of Organizational Change Management includes six issues in traditional paper format. The contents of this issue are detailed below.

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Access to Journal of Organizational Change Management online _______________________________ 439 Editorial advisory board ___________________________ 440 Abstracts and keywords ___________________________ 441 Awards for Excellence _____________________________ 443 Introduction _______________________________________ 444 Leading change: insights from Jungian interpretations of The Book of Job Charles Smith and Michael Elmes __________________________________

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Competition archetypes and creative imagination Robin Matthews ________________________________________________

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Jung, archetypes and mirroring in organizational change management: lessons from a longitudinal case study Adrian Carr ___________________________________________________

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Synchronicity: a post-structuralist guide to creativity and change Rita Durant____________________________________________________

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Applying psychological type and ‘‘gifts differing’’ to organizational change Carol M. Jessup_________________________________________________

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS continued

The voice of the shuttle: mythical and organizational transformations David Starr-Glass _______________________________________________

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Leaving our fathers’ house: micrologies, archetypes, and barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts Liza A. Zanetti _________________________________________________

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Book reviews _____________________________________ 538

Journal of Organizational Change Management online

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD James Barker HQ USAFA/DFM Colorado Springs, USA David Barry University of Auckland, New Zealand Jean Bartunek Boston College, USA Dominique Besson IAE de Lille, France Steven Best University of Texas-El Paso, USA Mary Boyce University of Redlands, USA Warner Burke Columbia University, USA Adrian Carr University of Western Sydney-Nepean, Australia Stewart Clegg University of Technology (Sydney), Australia David Collins University of Essex, UK Cary Cooper Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK Ann L. Cunliffe California State University, Hayward, USA Robert Dennehy Pace University, USA Alexis Downs University of Central Oklahoma, USA Ken Ehrensal Kutztown University, USA Max Elden University of Houston, USA Andre´ M. Everett University of Otago, New Zealand Dale Fitzgibbons Illinois State University, USA Jeffrey Ford Ohio State University, USA Jeanie M. Forray Western New England College, USA Robert Gephart University of Alberta, Canada Clive Gilson University of Waikato, New Zealand Andy Grimes Lexington, Kentucky, USA Heather Ho¨pfl

University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK Maria Humphries University of Waikato, New Zealand Arzu Iseri Bogazici University, Turkey David Jamieson Pepperdine University, USA David Knights Keele University, UK Terence Krell Rock Island, Illinois, USA Hugo Letiche University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands Benyamin Lichtenstein University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA Stephen A. Linstead University of Sunderland, UK Slawek Magala Erasmus University, The Netherlands Rickie Moore E.M. Lyon, France Sandra Morgan University of Hartford, USA Ken Murrell University of West Florida, USA Eric Nielsen Case Western Reserve University, USA Walter Nord University of South Florida, USA Ellen O’Connor Chronos Associates, Los Altos, California, USA Cliff Oswick King’s College, University of London, UK Ian Palmer University of Technology (Sydney), Australia Michael Peron The University of Paris, Sorbonne, France Abraham Shani California Polytechnic State University, USA Ralph Stablein Massey University, New Zealand Carol Steiner Monash University, Australia David S. Steingard St Joseph’s University, USA Ram Tenkasi Benedictine University, USA Christa Walck Michigan Technological University, USA

Leading change: insights from Jungian interpretations of The Book of Job Charles Smith and Michael Elmes Keywords Change management, Jungian psychology, Leadership This paper explores insights from the psychology of C.G. Jung as it relates to leadership and the management of change in organizations. It draws especially upon Jung’s archetypal interpretation of the biblical story of Job, and the relevance of this story to the modern day study of organizational life. It suggests that the transformations of consciousness represented within the story of Job are highly relevant to the ways that organizations and their leaders face chaotic, turbulent, and/or unpredictable circumstances. In particular, it describes the role of the feminine and the shadow within such situations, as forces that allow a new order to unfold during periods of intense change. Competition archetypes and creative imagination Robin Matthews Keywords Creativity, Competitive strategy, Jungian psychology, Capitalism Organizational studies have been deeply influenced by three separate streams of research: the soft sciences; the hard sciences; and economics. This paper makes a case for an interdisciplinary approach, one that includes not only the social and physical and life sciences, but also methodologies that have a long history in mysticism. It illustrates how the similarities and relationships between depth psychology, in Jung’s theory of archetypes, and the ‘‘hard science’’ notion of complexity theory can reveal critical aspects of competition as expressed through capitalism. It also suggests that a methodology for accessing information about archetypes in general and capitalist competition in particular is through creative imagination. Jung, archetypes and mirroring in organizational change management: lessons from a longitudinal case study Adrian Carr Keywords Jungian psychology, Organizational change, Change management Jung’s discussion of archetypes and the psychodynamics of mirroring is applied to

the results of a ten-year longitudinal case s t u d y . E m pi r i c a l e v i d e n c e o f s u c h psychodynamics and insights into how these psychodynamics are related to the management of change are presented. Directions for further research are also discussed. Synchronicity: a post-structuralist guide to creativity and change Rita Durant Keywords Jungian psychology, Creativity, Organizational change Synchronicity was coined by Jung in 1955 to refer to the meaningful and acausal, or chance, correlation between an inner and outer event. Insofar as creativity is dependent upon chance for novelty, then creativity and synchronicity may have a supportive relationship. This paper uses narrative to explore the role of paradox in meaning, in chance, and in creativity. The nature of synchronicity, the relationship between synchronicity and creativity, and the implications of this relationship for management are discussed. Such implications include encouraging multiple points of view, understanding the role of emotion in creativity, allowing for movement across metaphorical and physical boundaries, honoring the body, and maintaining a lightness (with humor and joy) with which to adapt to inevitable ‘‘accidents’’. Applying psychological type and ‘‘gifts differing’’ to organizational change Carol M. Jessup Keywords Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs type indicator, Individual behaviour, Organizational change This paper applies concepts from the MyersBriggs type indicator (MBTI) to the context of organizational change. A brief history and explanation of type theory and the MBTI is provided. Psychological type is measured using four bipolar scales, each dealing with individual preferences (extroversionintroversion, sensing-intuition, thinkingfeeling, and judgement-perception). A total of 16 possible type combinations are derived from the results; subsequent arrangement of the type combinations within standard type tables facilitates recognition of patterns.

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Knowledge related to the four mental functions is specifically linked to organizational change issues, including implications related to both the dominant and inferior functions, and a recommended problem-solving model. Opposite preferences are highlighted as ‘‘gifts differing’’ for their relevance to communication, conflict management, and teambuilding issues. Finally, type concepts are integrated with topics related to organizational change interventions. The voice of the shuttle: mythical and organizational transformations David Starr-Glass Keywords Corporate culture, Psychology, Myths, Narratives, Organizational change While the literature has emphasized the literal and the narrative within organizations, this article will consider the visual and the imaginal. Organizations are known and experienced through images, and these images must be considered if organizational culture is to be understood or changed. We look at the imaginal inventory provided by classical mythology, with special reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and explore the potency and persistence of myth in imaginal terms and introduce the concept of the ‘‘voice of the shuttle’’, which imprints events within

the metaphorical weave of the mythical narrative. This ‘‘voice’’, always present in organizations, leaves significant and revealing images on the cultural fabric. We try to understand these images through the experiences of an organizational participant and of students trying to make sense of their college culture. Leaving our fathers’ house: micrologies, archetypes, and barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts Lisa A. Zanetti Keywords Organizational culture, Occupational psychology, Feminism, Assertiveness What does it mean to leave one’s father’s house? Archetypally, the father’s house represents the dominant content of a culture’s collective consciousness, as well as dominance in the form of tyranny and fear. There is little question that contemporary organizations remain edifices constructed in the image of the father’s house. This article is about articulating barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts, drawing on psychoanalytic theory and personal experience to explore some of the social and psychological structures that contribute to the repression of feminine attributes.

Literati Club Awards for Excellence Cliff Oswick Tom Keenoy

King's College university, London, UK, and

David Grant

University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

are the recipients of the journal's Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence for their Guest Editorial

``Dramatizing and organizing: acting and being'' which appeared in Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, 2001 Cliff Oswick is a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Analysis and Development at The Management Centre, King's College, University of London, England. He received a PhD from King's College. His current research interests are concerned with the application of aspects of discourse, dramaturgy, tropes, narrative and rhetoric to processes of management, organizing and consumption. He has co-edited several edited collection and published widely on these topics in journals, including recent and forthcoming contributions to Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Change Management and Organization. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Tom Kennoy is a Reader in Management at King's College, University of London, England. He received his DPhil in Industrial Relations from Oxford University. His current research interests include human resource management, time in organizations and industrial relations. He is also co-organiser of the biennial International Conference in Organizational Discourse and has co-edited Discourse and Organization (1998) with Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick. Recent contributions to journals include International Studies in Management and Organization, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Human Relations, and Organization. David Grant is a Senior Lecturer in Management in the Department of Work and Organizational Studies, the University of Sydney and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Management Centre, King's College, London. He is also co-organiser of the biennial International Conference in Organizational Discourse and a co-director of the International Centre for Research on Organisational Discourse Strategy and Change. His current research interests relate to discourse in the contexts of HRM, organizational change and organizational collaboration. He has published in a range of refereed journals and has co-edited Metaphor and Organizations (1996) with Cliff Oswick, Organisational Development: Metaphorical Explorations (1996) with Cliff Oswick, and Discourse and Organization (1998), with Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick.

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Introduction About the Guest Editors Alexis Downs is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Central Oklahoma,Oklahoma, USA. Rita Durant is a PhD graduate from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. Ken Eastman is an Associate Professor of Management at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA.

Exploring the relevance of archetypal psychology to organizational change We introduce this issue on the contributions of Jungian and post-Jungian analytical psychology to organizational change management with the story of our ‘‘chance’’ meeting at the Academy of Management: We – Rita and I – passed each other in the hotel lobby at the Academy of Management annual meeting. Then I turned back. ‘‘Excuse me,’’ I said, ‘‘After glancing at your name tag and moving on, I may have seemed rude, dismissing you somehow.’’ Rita laughed and as we continued talking, we discovered a common interest in Jung. The experience of synchronicity confirmed for me that I was on the right path.

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 444-447. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440351

At the time of the academy meeting, this special issue on Jung’s legacy was in process. Ken Eastman, from Oklahoma State University, and I had initiated the call for papers and requested submissions that addressed views of unconscious change processes during organizational change; the role of typologies and bipolarities; the impetus for organizational change; the role of synchronicity; and emerging change models. The papers selected for this issue suggest a variety of ways in which analytical psychology and organizational change management are linked: for example, by offering roadmaps for transformation; by linking the individual with the collective; by dealing with unconscious blocks to collaboration and change; by incorporating emotions; and, as in synchronicity, by blurring boundaries between inner and outer experiences. Jungian psychology has traditionally relied on myths and stories to represent the complexity of individuals in relationships and in the processes of transformation. Therefore, this issue opens with the paper by Smith and Elmes entitled ‘‘Leading change: insights from Jungian interpretations of The Book of Job.’’ Smith and Elmes incorporate a discussion of artistic rendering of the story of Job, thereby ‘‘illustrating’’ the power of the image as a means to assist in interpretation and communication. Further, these authors suggest that the incorporation of the feminine archetype into social, political, and economic systems is crucial for healing and restoration in a time of loss (certainly a timely concern in today’s economic and social crises). That is, the story of Job as presented by Smith and Elmes offers Jungian insights as roadmaps for transformation. Relying on the words of Rumi (1995), they say: ‘‘Don’t insist on going where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the Spring.’’ According to Smith and Elmes, the story of Job is the story of us all, today, and our changing definitions of authority, power, and soul.

Matthews (this issue) expands the Jungian contribution to organizational change by exploring links between the individual and the collective – between psychology and economics. Specifically, Matthews examines the relationships between Jung’s theory of archetypes and complexity theory in terms of the discourse of competition. According to Matthews, Jung’s archetypes share characteristics with complex adaptive systems in that both are dynamic with outer and inner ordering principles that underlie networks of relationships and inner self-adaptation, respectively. The interactions between and among these outer and inner dynamics lead to emergent characteristics – to not only planned but also unplanned change. Matthews argues that, as an ordering principle, competition contains mechanisms for the emergence of new forms of capitalism. With interdependence come increasing risks of disorganization as actions in one part of the network can produce unanticipated results elsewhere in the network. Given the emergent properties of new capitalism, management of change is increasingly difficult. Matthews offers the insights of Jung, together with elements of Sufi mysticism, as change aids and as alternatives to more traditional, rational approaches to change management. As suggested by the insights of Smith and Elmes and Matthews, change can be experienced as painful and therefore resisted. Unconscious blocks to collaboration and transformation inhibit change. Carr (this issue) explains key processes of identification, including archetypes, mirroring, and the ego-ideal, in their theoretical and historical context. Awareness of these psychodynamic processes in the workplace is valuable for change managers, particularly as power dynamics inevitably come into play during organizational changes. Because change is dynamic, Carr argues, longitudinal study of change is warranted. He provides the results of a ten-year study of organizational change and highlights the psychodynamic processes of the work settings. Any change requires a passage through a liminal territory: between past and future, idea and enactment, old and new, even self and other. During times of change, boundaries, which may have provided a sense of safety, become blurred. Jungian thought suggests that this in-between state is also sacred: Jung’s appeal to a collective unconscious and Matthew’s reference to Sufi mysticism blur the boundaries between the human and divine. Such border crossings – between the human and divine, the individual and the organization – have implications for organizational transformation. Durant (this issue) explores the movement across boundaries in relation to change management. She uses narrative and post-structuralism to explore paradox synchronicity, the acausal, but meaningful, correlation between an inner and outer event. Challenging either/or thinking, synchronicity is numinous and paradoxical; it expresses both/and. Durant relies on Jung’s notion of synchronicity to discuss creativity, which, like synchronicity, blurs boundaries and both acknowledges and unites differences. She then discusses implications of synchronicity and creativity for change management. Durant’s emphasis on ‘‘both/and’’ recognizes and unites differences. Jessup (this issue) focuses on the recognition of differences as ‘‘gifts differing.’’ She

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discusses Jung’s theory of psychological type, which deals with opposite personality preferences. Jung’s typology was refined by the mother/daughter team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers, whose work was influenced by a desire to understand differences and, more specifically, to make sense of the conflict of the Second World War. Their work yields the Myers Briggs type indicator (MBTI). Relying on words from the Biblical book of Romans, Isabel referred to individual preferences as ‘‘gifts’’: So we, being many, are one body . . . and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing (Romans, 12: 4-8).

Jessup assesses the contribution of personality typology to change management, emphasizes individual responses to planned and unplanned change, and, citing Isabel Myers, suggests that understanding of differences enables individuals and organizations to ‘‘go on’’ from wherever they are. Surely, ‘‘going on’’ requires not only a recognition of differences but also recognition of emotions. In a paper titled ‘‘The voice of the shuttle: mythical and organizational transformations,’’ Starr-Glass (this issue) explores elements of imaginal psychology from a perspective that considers reality in terms of images perpetuated through a shared mythology. Within the Jungian tradition, such images are archetypal. From an imaginal perspective, says Starr-Glass, sensemaking is primarily imaginal rather than verbal. Starr-Glass explains with the myth of Tereus and Philomela. After raping Philomela, Tereus severs her tongue, but Philomela weaves her story in a roll of cloth. Powerful emotions – through the voice of the shuttle – leave imaginal traces and, thus, to see events in a mythological way provides insights into current transformations. The final paper in our special issue is appropriately titled, in part, ‘‘Leaving our father’s house’’ by Zanetti. Zanetti asks, ‘‘What does it mean to leave one’s father’s house?’’ She answers: ‘‘Archetypally, the fathers’ houses represent the dominant content of a culture’s collective consciousness.’’ So, to leave the father’s house is to explore social and psychological structures that repress individual differences, specifically, for Zanetti, structures that repress feminine attributes. She explores these structures and elaborates outcomes of such repression in organizational settings. According to Zanetti, feminine consciousness is concerned with process and with the journey, not the goal. To leave the father’s house is not to invert the power in organizations, but rather to manage contradiction, embrace the ‘‘dark places we fear most,’’ and transcend conflict by managing the tensions. An important Jungian image and challenge is to square the circle. To Jung, the circle is a symbol of wholeness. We suggest that the final article, ‘‘Leaving our father’s house’’, is closely linked with the first article, about Job, in that both highlight the value of the archetypal qualities associated with the feminine as a means to bring about wholeness and health to our organizations. The implications of this for change is that the process – of caring, of relating, of accepting, of listening – is as important as the goal. Squaring the circle means bringing to earth the singular, concrete, and contextualized; it means

individuation. Any organizational change in the Jungian tradition is a journey inward as well as forward, toward authenticity and uniqueness. In this sense, Zanetti’s and Durant’s contribution of their personal experiences suggests the power of personal narratives; therefore, change managers might benefit from paying attention to the unique stories of organizational members and the organization as a whole. Respecting and balancing the individual and collective, the masculine and feminine, inner and outer, and similarities and differences are, in the Jungian tradition, essential for effective change management. Further, change managers are encouraged to look inside themselves for the ‘‘gifts differing’’ and to recognize the spark of the divine in these gifts. We encourage the reader to ‘‘take what you like and leave the rest’’ and to feel welcome to contact any of the authors or editors if they have a story they would like to share. Alexis Downs Rita Durant Ken Eastman Guest Editors

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

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Charles Smith

Received May 2001 Revised November 2001 Accepted January 2002

Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, USA, and

Michael Elmes Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Keywords Change management, Jungian psychology, Leadership Abstract This paper explores insights from the psychology of C.G. Jung as it relates to leadership and the management of change in organizations. It draws especially upon Jung’s archetypal interpretation of the biblical story of Job, and the relevance of this story to the modern day study of organizational life. It suggests that the transformations of consciousness represented within the story of Job are highly relevant to the ways that organizations and their leaders face chaotic, turbulent, and/ or unpredictable circumstances. In particular, it describes the role of the feminine and the shadow within such situations, as forces that allow a new order to unfold during periods of intense change. When you do things from your soul, You feel a river moving in you, a joy. When actions come from another section, The feeling disappears. Don’t let others lead you. They may be blind, Or worse, vultures. Don’t insist on going where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the Spring. Your living pieces will form a harmony. There is a moving palace that floats through the air, With balconies and clear water running in every part of it, Infinitely everywhere, yet contained under a single tent (Rumi, 1995).

Introduction In the literature on the successful leadership of change, two of the qualities cited as essential are vision and emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998). Here vision refers to a credible picture of a future that is better than the present and emotional intelligence is a sensitivity to self and others, and an awareness and understanding of emotions. If leadership of change is about telling participants a new story and guiding them through it, vision is the ‘‘happy ending.’’ Along with linguistic fluidity and personal charisma (Gardner, 1995), the leader with emotional intelligence can build interest in ‘‘the story’’ and offer a plotline by which everyone can move towards the desired goal (Barry and Elmes, 1997). Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 448-460. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440360

This paper was funded in part by a research grant from the Frank Zarb School of Business, Hofstra University.

Unfortunately, the literature on vision and emotional intelligence often reads Leading change: like a ‘‘how-to’’ checklist. There is, within this literature, a tendency to ignore insights from the deep and painful experiences that bring a person to genuine vision, Jung emotional intelligence, and wholeness of character. We suggest in this paper that before change leaders can be successful, they must first go through a ‘‘crucible of testing’’ (Guinness, 1990), one that radically alters the individual’s 449 relationship to life. Central to this shift, and explored herein, is an ever-deeper opening to the feminine and shadow elements of the psyche. Extending far beyond the ‘‘how-tos’’ of leading change, the crucible of experience can yield true confidence and wisdom to help others face the same difficult periods. In this paper, we use Carl Jung’s interpretation of the Book of Job from the Old Testament to understand ‘‘the crucible of testing’’ and the deep shifts that might occur. Specifically, with Jung’s insights and with the aid of further interpretive works by Edward Edinger and poet-artist William Blake, we will come to see how Job’s ‘‘crucible of testing’’ brought a deeper opening to the feminine and shadow elements of his being, and what these meant in terms of his own ways as a leader. The story of Job as guidance for leading change Usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves; we try to order things outside of ourselves. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized. You are the ‘‘boss.’’ When the boss is sleeping, everyone is sleeping. When the boss is doing something right, everyone will do everything right, and at the right time (Suzuki, 1970, p. 27).

William Safire (1993) depicts Job as the first great dissident, the individual who finally got up and complained about the way things were. In this sense, as we hear about Job, we can look much deeper than the story of an ancient seeker who went through a period of doubt about his faith. We find within Job the key attributes necessary for an individual to break from a rigid worldview, to transform, and to be lead when intense change and crisis prevails. Indeed, Job’s is a story of the transformative power of crisis and difficulty, of how, as Jung consistently observed, we have to go through some intensive experience before we accept the pain of change and approach our deeper identity – rooted in the transpersonal ‘‘self.’’ Job’s story describes the painful process of letting go of one’s picture of ‘‘reality’’ – for one that is more comprehensive, more embracing of the totality of the psyche. It includes a removal of the sense of separation between inner and outer life. In a sense the isolated self comes to know itself as the greater, transpersonal ‘‘self,’’ connected to all of life. This more expansive view of the self can embrace the masculine and feminine, darkness and light, order and disorder, creation and destruction. Such a reconnection with and among all the dimensions of the self allows an individual to become aware of and to work with the many difficult and uncertain aspects of change. Ultimately, realizing the self brings a sense of

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oneness with change. It is the very ‘‘self’’ that is transforming, resisting, responding, and becoming creative within any context of change. With such a vision, there is no longer any sense of separation from what is being experienced. Working with a situation is working with and discovering the nature of the self. By way of introduction, we note that Job’s story is not at all about an otherworldly or abstract spirituality. Appearing as the first book of the ‘‘wisdom writings’’ of the Bible, it is meant to be useful in practical life. The story speaks of the discovery of meaning in a life full of turbulence, injustice, betrayal, and overwhelming difficulty, not unlike the writings of Victor Frankl (1968) and Etty Hillesum (1983), who chronicled the ways that people found meaning within the horrors of the Holocaust. Such experiences are extreme cases of what we all go through: the challenges of the outer life demanding a reorientation of the human being at a most fundamental level. In fact, to Jung, the story of Job was the story of the predicament of a modern human being, involving a changing image and definition of the sources of authority, power, and soul. After recounting the Story of Job, we will explore the ways that it calls us to see things differently, and to frame issues of organizational change differently. We will also examine the elements of Job’s ‘‘crucible of testing’’ and look for the parallels to our own experience and our ability to work with periods of intense change. The Story of Job The following is our narrative of the story of Job, drawn from the interpretations of Jung (1958a) and Edinger (1986), and based on illustrations by William Blake. We are especially grateful for Edinger’s penetrating insights into Blake’s drawings, which give shape to our story and clarity to the issues involved. Job is a great leader. He has vast flocks of sheep, good workers, and the highest standards. Though he is only a farmer and merchant, he has the respect and power of a king. The leader’s land is well fenced, yielding great harvests and nourishing his vast flocks. Under Job, people take a place of subservience. In Blake’s first illustration (Figure 1) of the story, all the members of the family are looking at Job. The situation is lifeless: musical instruments are hung up and not in use, and the animals are sitting in obedience. In Job’s kingdom, there is no time for music and dance: there are things to be done and remuneration for doing them. People seem appreciative of being in his domain, and yet there is a lack of energy, of what Jung called ‘‘numinosity.’’ Job follows to the letter what he thinks to be God’s rules. He is an extremely ethical man, has much faith, and gives generously to charity. And he has an earthly wisdom as well; he ‘‘fears God and ties his camel.’’ Suddenly one day, Job’s fortune changes. His flocks are raided, some of his sons and workers are killed. Others among the young men are sneaking off to the market, listening to the poets or attending primitive rituals and orgies.

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Figure 1. Job, family and flocks before his trials (illustration by William Blake)

Misfortunes continue to mount, and Job feels greatly troubled. It seems as though there is a plot against the great man. He thinks that perhaps by giving more alms things can change. He tries this, and, lo and behold, a great storm sweeps the land and levels the temple in his town – the place he reveres and finds his strength in. The storm brings down his barns, and the traveling tribes, along with some of his own workers, take advantage of the time to steal more of his flocks and all of his camels. His children begin to beg, drink, and stay out late, and some of them are killed in accidents. In all his grief, his

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friends desert him, and even family members stop talking with each other. Finally, to top it all off, Job gets very sick. For Job the illness is the last straw. Up to that time, he has been able to keep his cool, trying again and again to restore order through every possible means. He rebuilds his fences, seeks out wise counselors to advise him on his businesses, and tries to reinstill in his workers and family a sense of vision and optimism. As despair set in, Job’s counselors, all well paid and well meaning, continue to come to him overflowing with advice and words of consolation. They tell him he is doing everything right, that the problem is just one of cycles – what goes up, must come down. Just weather the storm, they say, have faith and everything will be all right. But Job does not accept the counsel. He no longer believes that acting the role of the good person spells a prosperous and happy life. Down, down the great man goes. The counselors come and continue to tell him that he is still a great man, a hero to his people. They tell him that if he despairs, perhaps everyone will. While he cannot pinpoint the problem, Job knows in his heart of hearts that these well-meaning counselors have not a clue about the present situation. As right as they have been about the past, there is something new here, discontinuous from all that has gone before. The whole playing field has been leveled, and the old rules might as well be thrown out. A significant encounter ensues, one that takes Job some time to assimilate. Besides the older advisors, Elihu, a young and enthusiastic counselor, appears. The youth admits that he has failed to speak previously because he was respecting the age and supposed wisdom of the older counselors. But the older counselors’ lack of understanding finally was too much to take, and Elihu has to speak up now. We can imagine that the youth, with a fresh perspective, agrees that things have changed and might go on changing forever. The youth warns Job to pay attention to his dreams, to literally ‘‘fear’’ that he may miss the whole point of his existence, and to put away any pride. Still, Job complains bitterly. God answers him in a whirlwind. ‘‘Who is this obscuring my designs by his empty headed words?’’ Then, suddenly, Job is raised above earthly life. He is given a glimpse of both the light and shadow of God. God’s response is to reveal to Job the nature of the divine, the fact that it does not neatly fit our human projections and expectations. Instead of containing only that which is just, good, and beautiful, it also contains the frightening, paradoxical, and illogical. Subsequent images by Blake depict the creation story. Following the violent whirlwind and Satan being cast out of heaven, it is as if Job and his world are created anew. Blake depicts Job and his wife being infused with light by God. Inscribed below this image are Christ’s words: ‘‘and in that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.’’ Here we can see a leap in consciousness that goes far beyond the moralistic and dualistic worldview that Job has held. Seeing things differently, Job is aware of his ‘‘oneness with the

Father’’ and the joining of divine and human nature. The reference to Christ Leading change: helps make it clear that this joining comes from a willingly sacrificial attitude. insights from Sacrifice here is not of goods and property: It is of having things on one’s own Jung terms, rather than having things in accord with the overall harmony of the Divine. The discovery represented here is that, by giving up one’s will to its universal counterpart, one’s deeper will, the Christ-nature or Buddha-nature, is 453 realized. In Job’s case, the universal will demanded a period of chaos, which brought a kind of clean sweep of his kingdom. Removed was anything sclerosed, stale, and lifeless. Life’s renewal demanded change, and finally, by opening to the chaotic conditions and completely letting go of all the order that he had come to expect, Job came to know more of his true nature. Seeing through the eyes of Christ, serving in the ‘‘work’’ of the Comforter, Job’s concern becomes the welfare of creation, particularly the human beings in his life. In Blake’s painting, both Job and his wife are being showered with light, representing the integration of the feminine the alchemical marriage by which heaven and earth are joined. Once again, the enterprises of Job flourish. His wealth increases and benevolence and goodwill prevail. It seems a new order is being attained, far different from the old one. Job rocks tradition by distributing his wealth evenly among sons and daughters, instead of giving all only to his sons. Restored to wholeness, Job also regains his health. Evidence of an opening to the feminine can be found in the way that Job turns his attention towards his daughters for counsel. Perhaps they can see and understand patterns, or vaster dimensions of, the situations which Job faces. In any case, their role is pivotal in bringing forth a new perspective and restoring the vibrancy of the kingdom. In Blake’s illustration (Figure 2) of this final aspect of the story, there is animation: animals move about, there is music and dance, and the youth who have previously departed for the cults return. Job’s story and self-discovery To understand Job’s story from a Jungian perspective, it is necessary to see it in terms of his discovery of and coming to terms with the greater or transpersonal ‘‘self.’’ Marie Louise von Franz wrote that individuation or the ‘‘conscious coming to terms with one’s own inner center (psychic nucleus) or self’’ often occurs after a ‘‘wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it’’ (von Franz, 1977, p. 169). She discussed the wounding in terms of its impact on an ego that feels ‘‘hampered in its will or its desire and usually projects the obstruction onto something external’’ (von Franz, 1977, p. 169). For many leaders, this might manifest itself as a penchant for blaming the boss, the customer, the systems, or the organization for everyday problems and failures that frustrate or poorly reflect on leaders. From the point of view of his ego, Job had done everything right – he had prayed in the right manner, he had followed the right traditions, and he had lived a righteous life. When the world around him fell apart and his life became chaotic and confused, he did not look within himself for an explanation but rather blamed God. If he had been good and

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Figure 2. Job, family and flocks after his trials (illustration by William Blake)

righteous all these years, he reasoned, how could the troubles he faced have anything to do with him? They were God’s fault. Of vital relevance in Job’s story to the leadership of change, is the ‘‘shadow’’ – that part of the unconscious personality that holds unknown or repressed attributes and qualities of the ego. This awareness emerges in us through seeming accident, through chaotic moments of conflict, through dreams and fantasies. Awareness of the shadow is vital because it contains those elements that make us fully human – fears, desires, and hatreds that are difficult to own.

It is only by coming to know and fully accept the shadow within the psyche Leading change: that a full and rich relationship with the self is possible, unencumbered by the insights from desires and fears of the ego. Without this deep awareness and acceptance, it is Jung not possible to understand that what is happening, however intense, is not meant as a personal attack by God, and is ultimately useful in attaining wholeness. Without the embrace of the shadow, we too readily dismiss that 455 which we fear, dislike, or cannot understand. With the broader perspective provided by the shadow, and the unconditional self-love provided by the ‘‘feminine,’’ our challenges can be seen as helpers that provide useful information. For example, consider the fear of failure or humiliation that arises within a leader during a change initiative. The fear is natural, and accepting its presence without resistance makes one more vulnerable, open, able to listen, and able to ask for and be receptive to help. On the other hand, resisting the fear, trying to push it away, makes one less able to listen, less responsive, both internally and externally. Without the depth of vulnerability, the individual cannot possibly have as keen an awareness of what a situation demands, what people need and require to be successful. Job’s story illustrates that by shining awareness on all those parts of ourselves that we do not like – in his terms by understanding the shadow – we become more human and responsive. His experience brought out the dark side of life. Part of Job’s ego had been a very rigid and patriarchal view of the world. To Job, God had been the father. Job’s view of reality had been hierarchical and transcendent, with eyes focused upward to the exclusion of the life around him. This is why Blake pictured Job’s life as barren, without music. Before the change, everyone in Job’s world had remained in his or her assigned places and obeyed the rules. A conscientious and beneficent leader, with a moralistic view of right and wrong, of good and bad , Job had neglected to honor and nurture the people and life around him. After disaster struck, however, and Job’s ego was defeated, life was renewed. Blake portrays Job and his kingdom as much more animated and alive; music, the counsel of his daughters, freedom of movement, and respect for nature characterized his new realm. Perhaps even more relevant to leadership and the management of change, Job’s transformation also calls forth awareness of the feminine, of the ‘‘anima.’’ von Franz describes the anima as ‘‘the personification of all feminine psychological tendencies . . . feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature and – last but not least – (one’s) relation to the unconscious . . . It is the inner feminine side of a person that allows them to connect to the ‘ghost land’’’ (von Franz, 1977, p. 186). The anima is often portrayed as a goddess or priestess who has links with primal forces of light or darkness. As a negative force, that is, when the shadow is repressed or denied, the anima can manifest itself as feelings of worthlessness, moodiness, compulsive erotic fantasies, and romantic fantasies of love and maternal warmth, later to be betrayed. As a positive force, that is, when accessible to the individual, the anima can help a person be receptive to valuable insights and information from the unconscious

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and thereby become more closely aligned to an inner sovereignty: wisdom and compassion. The anima is in this respect as Dante’s Beatrice, the guide of the soul to the higher mysteries of the self and the mediator between earth and heaven, between the ego and the self. According to Jung, it is by taking seriously one’s moods, fantasies, and images – the substance of the anima – that one gains full access to the unconscious and to the self. A Sufi poem points to this guiding wisdom and well expresses Jung’s reverence for the anima: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight (Rumi, 1995, p. 109).

Job began to question his old patterns and assumptions after everything had fallen apart and after his efforts to blame God had proven fruitless. Only then did the awareness of the feminine, and the symbolism of the marriage of feminine and masculine, dawn. Only then did Job begin to take the counsel of Elihu, which ultimately led Job to deeper realizations. Only through the intensity did he finally take the counsel of his daughters: by honoring feminine wisdom, his plight was resolved. The encounter with the self in organizational life The wonderful thing about these new forms of leadership is that they get easier as you practice them. Many of the most difficult things you have to face are the things that you fear because you have been taught to fear them in the old culture. Learning to expose your failures is one of the most liberating aspects of the whole journey. If one no longer is required to be perfect, then so many new things are possible. And stubbing your toe is not that painful, as long as you are willing to stand up and say, ‘‘I stubbed my toe. Now I am going to do something different’’ (Philip Carroll, CEO of Shell Oil Co., in Senge et al., 1999, p. 211).

The story of Job is everyone’s: at home; in everyday interactions with others; and at work. How do we recognize this encounter? Jung offers a clue: ‘‘God’’ is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse ( Jung, 1961).

From a Jungian perspective, chaos is the influx of the feminine into individual and organizational life. The feminine upsets the plans, stories, assumptions, and dogma that people adopt to maintain a sense of control, comfort, and rationality in the world. In Dancing in the Flames, Woodman and Dickson

(1997) describe the role of the feminine in managing amidst situations of radical Leading change: change, turbulence, and even chaos: insights from Science has very nearly grasped the paradox at the heart to reality – the paradox that mythology calls ‘‘goddess,’’ creating a momentum that has never existed at any other time in history . . . Ancient wisdom, in which chaos was recognized and preserved (particularly in gnosticism and alchemy) as the necessary element of transformation, has finally been restored . . . . It is within this chaos that a deeper, intrinsic order reveals itself. This is not the imposed order that we have become so accustomed to in a patriarchal, conceptualized world, an order that is not connected to the creative matrix. Rather, it is an order that emerges rather than being imposed (Woodman and Dickson, 1997, pp. 38-39).

Allowing order to ‘‘emerge’’ from the events of life, rather than attempting to imposing it on them from a state of mental abstraction (e.g. planning, modeling, strategizing, and so forth) is the challenge of modern organizational life. Being vulnerable, aligning to the feminine, and welcoming periods of apparent chaos all require us to become open to the uncomfortable aspects of our work. It can be difficult and painful, but immensely fruitful as well. The growth that results takes time and cannot be imposed through a quality program or culture change seminar. Given the forces of chaos and the profound evolution needed in each individual and organization, the changes necessary in modern work life are neither minor nor superficial. Present day consulting for ‘‘whole-systems’’ transformation that does not emphasize the importance of this deep, person-by-person change is often only window-dressing, what Zohar (1997) calls the ‘‘transformation lie’’. It is not intellectual knowledge that leads us to embrace of the shadow and our receptive side. It is crisis, the same Job-like conditions impinging on our own lives. An example is offered here by David Marsing, vice president and general manager of assembly test manufacturing at Intel. After a heart attack, Marsing was told by doctors that he was perhaps in the wrong profession, that maybe he should be a forester in a watchtower, or a librarian – anything but a leader under lethal pressure: When I went back to work, I felt like I could see and hear things in a way that I never could before, picking up signals from all the people who had a difficult time at work. They were grinding themselves up – in emotional, physical and spiritual pain. I had never realized the degree to which all around me were suffering. How, then, could we create an environment for breakthrough performance at every level – not just the traditional work indicators, but interpersonally, and in terms of the individual integration of work and personal life? I believed that part of the problem was our managerial approach. It was like trying to swim with a full set of weights. It represented a macho achievement, but it wasn’t efficient – and if you weren’t lucky, you would drown trying. Getting the weights off would require some departures from Intel’s traditional thinking and ways of doing things (Marsing in Senge et al., 1996, p. 216).

To explore further the implications of Jung’s Answer to Job ( Jung, 1958a) to organizational change, it is useful to understand the three central themes of the wisdom tradition from which Jung drew (Smith, 1995, p. 248): (1) Things are more integrated, more connected, than they appear. Our situation, Smith says, is akin to seeing a great tapestry from the back.

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While we see isolated threads, the beauty and harmony of the whole carpet is missed, only to be grasped when we see interconnections. Any human being, rather than being separate and disconnected, is integrally and intricately woven into life’s tapestry. (2) Things are often much better than they seem. Human life, rooted in nature and made in the image of perfection, is infinitely greater than everyday experience might suggest. Despite appearances and/or feelings of limitation, each human being is an ever-new, ever-unfolding ever-beloved child of the universe. In spite of the misunderstandings, injustices, tragedies, and violence that surround us, there is always possibility and hope for humanity. (3) Things are more mysterious than they appear. The wisdom schools suggest, for example, a profound synchronicity at work in life, which joins people, events and situations in order to bring out the greatest potential. This means, Smith urges, that we never get too comfortable with our understanding of things. Opening to mystery, we witness surprise and find our understanding stretched to the point of bewilderment. The wisdom schools suggest that the more we are willing to live with mystery, to give up our certainty and our commonplace interpretation of events, the more this mystery becomes apparent. Although Jung’s work seemingly stands in direct opposition to the postmodern perspective through its essentialism, epistemological claims, and ‘‘Pollyanna’’ optimism, the two paradigms share a deconstruction of the ontological status of boundaries. That is, Jung views Job’s story as exemplary in its dissolving of the boundaries between the ‘‘inner’’ and ‘‘outer’’ world. A thorough discussion of the two very different paradigms is beyond the scope of this paper; suffice it to say that a Jungian approach supports a movement toward more freedom and expansiveness, on an individual, organizational, and societal level, through the application of deeply suffered personal lessons of humility and compassion. In terms of meaning, we could postulate that the Jungian perspective corresponds to the systems view, in which the interconnection of events and situations with our ‘‘inner life’’ calls for a reflection upon and an appreciation of others. The Marriage of Heaven and Earth: ‘‘God’’ is the primordial experience of [the human], and from the remotest times humanity has taken inconceivable pains either to portray this baffling experience, to assimilate it by means of interpretation, speculation or dogma, or else to deny it ( Jung, 1958a, p. 480) .

As the words above attest, Jung was fierce in communicating the need to get beyond outworn God images in order to ground understanding in personal experience. An abstract ‘‘God in the heavens’’ conception that excludes human love and compassion for one’s neighbor serves no one. Bringing the self into everyday interactions and encounters, according to Jung, is essential to wholeness, at all levels.

Being fully human does not connote living in an abstraction; rather, it means Leading change: being open to the light and air and the constant changes within ordinary life. It insights from is only through this openness to heaven and earth that an alchemical marriage Jung becomes possible. To Jung, each individual, like Job, has to endure and hold the paradoxes of awakening consciousness and the moments when there seem to be no answers. For those willing to go through this state of unknowing and 459 paradox, a greater wholeness and connection with life becomes possible. In Edinger’s (1986, p. 9) words: At first, the encounter with the Self is indeed a defeat for the ego; but with perseverance, Deo volente, light is born from the darkness. One meets the ‘‘Immortal One’’ who wounds and heals, who casts down and raises up, who makes small and makes large – in a word, the One who makes one whole.

Ultimately, the ‘‘workability’’ of life was Job’s lesson. His problem disappeared when his point of view widened and when his focus shifted from personal suffering to connecting with and gaining the fullest appreciation of the circumstances and events around him. In the gaining of this wisdom, and in this sense of appreciation for ‘‘what is,’’ a dramatic shift in vision occurs. My daily activities are not different, Only I am naturally in harmony with them . . . In every circumstance, no hindrance, no conflict Drawing water, hewing wood, This is the supernatural power This the marvelous activity (Zen poem, in Smith, 1995, p. 91).

Jung offered clues to such an approach and vision of life, clues that help us in leading and managing within a turbulent world. By perceiving the ‘‘workability’’ of the seemingly worst of circumstances, it is possible to listen and act with wisdom and joy. Going a step further into the dimension of ‘‘mystery,’’ the perspective offered by Jung and by Job suggests that we might look very carefully at our moment-to-moment experience for the signposts of meaning and guidance that are offered. References and further reading Argyris, C. (1993), Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Barry, D. and Elmes, M. (1997), ‘‘Strategy retold: toward a narrative view of strategic discourse’’, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 22, pp. 429-52. Bohm, D. (1980), Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge, Kegan & Paul, London. Bohm, D. (1996), On Dialogue, Routledge, Kegan & Paul, London. Brown, A.D. (1997), ‘‘Narcissism, identity and legitimacy’’, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 643-86. Edinger, E. (1986), Encounter with the Self: A Jungian Commentary on William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, Inner City Books, Toronto. Frankl, V. (1968), Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, Washington Square Press, New York, NY. Gardner, H. (1995), Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, Basic Books, New York, NY.

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Goleman, D. (1998), ‘‘What makes a leader?’’, Harvard Business Review, November-December. Guinness, O. (1990), Character Counts: Leadership Qualities in Washington, Wilberforce, Lincoln, and Solzhenitsyn, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI. Hillesum, E. (1983), An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943, Pantheon Books, New York, NY. Isaacs, W. (1999), Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, Currency Doubleday, New York, NY. Jantsch, E. (1980), The Self-organizing Universe, Pergamon Press, Oxford. Jung, C.G. (1953), Psychology and Alchemy, Bollingen Series, No. 12, translated by Hull, R.F.C. (Ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1955), Mysterium Conjunctionis, Bollingen Series, No. 14, translated by Hull, R.F.C. (Ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1958a), Answer to Job, Bollingen Series, No. 11, translated by Hull, R.F.C. (Ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1958b), ‘‘Psychology and religion’’, Bollingen Series, No. 11, translated by Hull, R.F.C. (Ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1961), interview in Good Housekeeping, December. Jung, C.G. (1964), ‘‘The state of psychotherapy today’’, in Bollingen Series, No. 10, translated by Hull, R.F.C. (Ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1976), The Visions Seminars, Spring Publications, Zurich, p. 391. Morgan, G. (1986), Images of Organization, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA. Rumi, J. (1995), The Essential Rumi, translated by Barks, C., Harper Collins, San Francisco, CA. Safire, W. (1993), The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today’s Politics, Random House, New York, NY. Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., Roth, G. and Smith, B. (1999), The Dance of Change, Currency Doubleday, New York, NY. Smith, H. (1995), The Religions of Man, Harper, San Francisco, CA. Suzuki, S. (1970), Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Weatherhill, New York, NY. von Franz, M.L. (1977), ‘‘The process of individuation’’, in Jung, C., von Franz, M.L., Henderson, J., Jacobi, J. and Jaffe, A. (Eds), Man and His Symbols, Dell Publishing, New York, NY, pp. 157-254. Wheatley, M. (1992), Leadership and the New Science, Berrett Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Woodman, M. and Dickson, E. (1997), Dancing in the Flames, Shambala Publications, Boston, MA. Zohar, D. (1997), Rewiring the Corporate Brain, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Competition archetypes and creative imagination

Competition archetypes

Robin Matthews Kingston University Business School, London, UK and Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow

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Keywords Creativity, Competitive strategy, Jungian psychology, Capitalism Abstract Organizational studies have been deeply influenced by three separate streams of research: the soft sciences; the hard sciences; and economics. This paper makes a case for an interdisciplinary approach, one that includes not only the social and physical and life sciences, but also methodologies that have a long history in mysticism. It illustrates how the similarities and relationships between depth psychology, in Jung’s theory of archetypes, and the ‘‘hard science’’ notion of complexity theory can reveal critical aspects of competition as expressed through capitalism. It also suggests that a methodology for accessing information about archetypes in general and capitalist competition in particular is through creative imagination. All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy and ethics are no exception to this rule (C.G. Jung in CW 8:342[1]).

Introduction Organizational studies have been deeply influenced by three separate streams of research. The soft sciences, including psychology, have provided important content about human behavior; the hard sciences have provided theoretical and experimental methodologies, as well as deepened our understanding of the material world; and economics has informed our thinking about how the human behavior interacts with the material world in order to survive. Attention to interconnections among the three streams can illuminate ways in which change agents can make more informed choices about processes and resource allocations. This paper makes a case for an interdisciplinary approach, one that includes not only the social and physical and life sciences, but also methodologies that have a long history in mysticism. Specifically, this paper illustrates how the similarities and relationships between depth psychology, in Jung’s theory of archetypes, and the ‘‘hard science’’ notion of complexity theory can reveal critical aspects of competition as expressed through capitalism. Although implicit in the discourse of competition, the contention that competition is an archetype is new and gives Jungian analysis a central role in the understanding of organizations. Further, the paper suggests that a methodology for accessing information about archetypes in general and capitalist competition in particular is through application of the tool of creative imagination. Archetypes Jung saw archetypes as primordial patterns, common to all human beings, affecting the way we perceive, imagine and think, and by structuring psychic

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apprehension, influencing behaviour profoundly (Stevens, 1982). They are paradigms, rules or schema: ‘‘active living dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that perform and continually influence our thoughts feelings and actions’’ (CW 8:154)[1]. Jung imagined archetypes operating at the deepest level of the psyche, and originating in the collective unconscious. We cannot observe them directly; they are but general structures determining a probability field that encompasses a range of actual events, images and experiences ( Jacobi, 1974; von Franz, 1975; Edinger, 1972). From the archetypes arise archetypal images ( Jacobi, 1962) – universal symbols, myths and motifs – such as shadow, the anima, the animus, the wise man, the great mother, the hero, the father, the child, and the self ( Jung, 1968, 1963, 1964; Neumann, 1955; Samuels et al., 1986; Samuels, 1985; Hillman, 1975) (see Table I). Archetypes contain both light and dark aspects ( Jung, 1940, 1963, 1969; Neumann, 1954), the latter often referred to as the shadow side. They embody contradictions (positive and negative, light and dark, yin and yang) (CW 9i: 271)[1]. In this way, archetypes have an ambiguous quality. Further, by means of their contradictory nature, archetypes unite opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) within themselves (hero renegade, wise man trickster, mother witch), which contributes to their mysterious, or numinous, character (Edinger, 1972). Numinous (from Latin nuere, which means ‘‘to nod’’ or ‘‘to give a sign,’’ (Von Franz, 1992, p. 21)) bestows on something the quality of being a divine imperative. Numinosity describes the awe-inspiring effects of archetypes, their spiritual and emotional impact. Numinosity gives the archetypal image an allpowerful God or God-like divine character, seemingly a universal drive, whose actions are beyond the governance of mere laws or cultural norms. Given their numinous character, there is a risk that archetypal images can overwhelm individuals or entire collectivities (Hillman, 1975; Neumann, 1989). Jung points to the danger of: Succumbing to the fascinating influence of archetypes and that is most likely to happen when the archetypal images are not made conscious. If there is already a predisposition to psychosis, it may even happen that the archetypal figures, which are endowed with a certain amount of autonomy anyway on account of their natural numinosity, will escape from conscious control and become completely independent, thus producing the phenomenon of possession (CW 9i: 82)[1].

Archetypes are dynamic; they are capable of evolution through inner and outer dynamics (CW 9i: 50, 9ii: 279, 16:396)[1], through their diversity of forms (CW 8: 417)[1] and their interaction with one another in a network of relations (von Franz, 1975; Jung, 1968). Given that archetypes operate on different levels of being, to acknowledge archetypes is to affirm the proposition that an intermediate world exists between the sensory and the spiritual universes: archetypes occupy the intermediate realm between the conscious and the unconscious realms. Similarly, in the Sufi tradition of Ibn Arabi, archetypes have an intermediate ontological status between the spiritual plane, and the plane of the senses and sensory experience. Not do only religious traditions have common concepts with Jung’s theory of archetypes, there are also parallels with ‘‘hard’’ sciences (Wheatley, 1992).

Archetypes

Complex adaptive systems

Competition

An ordering system principle over the interaction of individuals or groups in a limited environment Varieties of capitalism and Archetypes are distinct from Complex systems include the archetypal image physical systems (the central socialism are expressions of nervous and immune systems, competition in the social sphere ecologies), social systems Diverse interpretations of Archetypal images are (global business, competition exist; negative diverse organizations), simulated feedback systems, selfsystems (genetic algorithms, reinforcing mechanisms, neural networks, pattern information systems, forming systems) periodic, point and strange attractors Archetypes are dynamic, Evolution and emergence take The evolutionary properties of competition long evolutionary and emergent place via outer dynamics recognised. Marx and (interaction with the Schumpeter saw capitalism environment) and inner as a self-adaptive system. dynamics (self-organization) New capitalism emerged in the late twentieth century Intepretations of competition Complex systems contain Archetypes contain and capitalism – its image ambiguity; possibilities of ambiguous contradictory includes equilibrium and order and disorder, elements disequilibrium, stability and randomness and chaos, instability, evolution and Archetypes contaminate and determinacy and catastrophe indeterminacy interact with one another Archetypes contain light and They contain non-linearities, Economics, organizations and dark (shadow) sides self-reinforcing mechanisms systems work as multilayered networks The planned economy is the dual (or shadow) of a market system Archetypes have a numinous, Systems may be NP complex. Markets have a compelling impact on policy makers who compelling and Adaptation is a mysterious often ignore the shadow awe-inspiring impact process. No underlying aspects algorithm or pattern may The notion of the invisible exist hand made theoretical social science possible

Archetypes are universal ordering principles. They define a probability field

Competition archetypes

The study of macroscopic collections of entities that are capable of evolution

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli believed that the psychologist and the physicist are on the same quest, and that archetypes are fundamental to understanding the laws of nature (Stevens, 1982). Archetypal fields share characteristics with complex

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Table I. Archetypes

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adaptive systems (Kauffman, 1993, 1995; Holland, 1995, 1998; Bak, 1997) in that they both describe dynamic ordering principles, characterized by non-linearity, the possibility of evolution or emergence of new forms or structures, and ambiguity. Archetypes are ordering principles, determining a probability field. Archetypal images are reflections of the archetype, and so are governed by them. The metaphor also clarifies the relationship of archetypes to complex adaptive systems. Archetypes interact with one another. They form networks of relationships. Usually many archetypes are present in a given situation, bringing in the possibilities of surprise, uncertainty, and the emergence of novelty. Each archetype contains its own inner dynamic, a capability of self-adaptation, and each is subject to an outer dynamic, being influenced or contaminated by other archetypes. Below, therefore, is a brief elaboration of these characteristics of nature as postulated by complexity theory. Complexity theory Complexity is the study of entities (atoms, neurons, molecules, ecologies, and central nervous systems) that have the potential for evolution (Coveney and Highfield, 1995; Kauffman, 1993, 1995; Pettersson, 1996; Marion, 1999). The evolution of systems takes two forms: (1) outer dynamics, variation in response to environmental pressures; and (2) inner dynamics or self-adaptation. The two processes taken together correspond to the dissipative systems (Prigorgine, 1980; Prigorgine and Stengers, 1984), systems that are held in a state that is far from equilibrium by interactions with the environment. Rather than descending into maximum entropy, such systems may demonstrate the emergence of order out of chaos: a steady state thus captures the idea of timelessness. Dissipative systems, like archetypes, also interact in networks of relationships (Prigorgine and Stengers, 1984) by receiving energy and matter from an external source. These are part of their ‘‘outer’’ dynamics. They can go through periods of instability, but as long as there is some external influence to keep the system out of equilibrium, then it will persist in a steady state rather than collapsing into randomness. Prigorgine is careful to stress that the dissipative processes are not deterministic in that any number of steady state outcomes are conceivable. Complex systems are adaptive in that the systems acquire information, identify regularities, and thereby compare intended with actual outcomes. The capacity to learn from experience is part of the adaptive process, especially in social systems (Holland, 1995, 1998; Simon, 1996). In addition to the outer dynamics, complex adaptive systems have inner dynamics as well. Non-linearity arises from the interdependence among elements of a system whose value (elements plus linkages) is greater than the value of the elements alone. This allows for emergence insofar as an interconnected system is qualitatively quite different its constituent elements. (Water, for example, is neither gaseous, nor flammable, properties of both of its

constituents.) In this way, ambiguity arises from the diversity of characteristics arising from different ‘‘levels’’ of the system and the emergent and unanticipated characteristics that flow from the interactions among them. A key element of complex adaptive systems is that of attractors, including equilibrium points, periodic orbits, and chaotic (strange) attractors (Kauffman, 1993, 1995; Devaney, 1988). Point attractors are the simplest form; in this case systems converge to a single point or equilibrium. A system with no dynamic (internal or external) will converge to maximum entropy or minimum capacity to perform useful work. Periodic orbits are the next level of complexity; here the attractor takes the form of a cycle and a system caught in a periodic attractor is confined to a particular pattern of repetitions. Possibilities of evolution are associated with chaotic attractors. Systems caught in such attractors are confined within a particular basin, which has evolutionary or emergent properties. In a strange attractor, points that originate arbitrarily close to one another become exponentially separated as time goes by. The system is sensitive to initial conditions. Complexity theory was designed to address many kinds of complex, adaptive systems – both material and social. It is therefore particularly well suited for the discourse of economics, whose focus is the interaction between social and material systems. In this way, many of the concepts of complex adaptive systems inform organizational studies about economics in general, and the competition-based system of capitalism in particular. Also, given the correspondence between complexity and archetype, the correspondence between complexity and competition increases the scope of archetypes, and explains why capitalism is self-adaptive. Before that claim is developed, a brief description the capitalist economic system as informed by complexity theory is presented. Competition and capitalism Competition describes the interaction of individuals who share a limited environment: it includes both co-operation and rivalry (Porter, 1985). The basic concepts of competition, value, cost, consumption and production, are shared by capitalist and socialist economies (Schumpeter, 1954). Competition encompasses many forms of social organization. It includes both co-operation and rivalry. The same principles, value, cost, production, consumption exist equally in a socialist as in a capitalist economy. Schumpeter (1952) defined capitalism as a private property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of borrowed money. The critical differences between capitalism and socialism are contained in the form of property ownership, and in the distribution of the surplus (the excess of value over cost in production) created by the system. Writers, by no means all sympathetic to socialism, defined analogous systems of equations describing equilibrium for centrally planned and market economies. Competition is, therefore, an ordering principle in society. For Adam Smith, it was a means of reconciling conflicting self-interest. In the neo-classical tradition that has influenced strategy and organization theory as well as economics, markets create basins of attraction via negative feedback

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systems (pictured by supply and demand diagrams in standard texts). In the tradition of Pareto it is a route to economic efficiency (Smith, 1759, 1776; Walsh and Gram, 1980). According to this view, firms seek competitive advantage and once this is achieved it creates a basin of attraction for rivals seeking to replicate the methods of their successful peers who, if they are to sustain their superior position, must innovate, or create core (unique, non-replicable) capabilities), or erect entry barriers. In the Austrian tradition, it provides the kind of distributed information system that, as Hayek forewarned, makes capitalism infinitely more durable than centrally planned economies (Hayek, 1945). The Austrian school (Hayek, 1945; Menger, 1883) diagnosed market systems as efficient attractors for the following three reasons: (1) they economize on information (no individual or group needs global information, only local information, relevant to a particular decision); (2) they provide appropriate signals (prices); and (3) they offer incentives (profits). In finance, stock prices are traditionally described as informationally efficient (embracing true information about firms) point attractors, or periodic attractors, in which downturns provide necessary corrections to misguided over investment, or over exuberance. Markets free of monopoly power are sometimes taken to be the normal case, covering most business situations. Deviations from competition, monopoly or imperfect competition are taken care of by occasional recognition, or as temporary structures required to accumulate profit for innovation (Schumpeter, 1952). Sometimes such deviations are significant dragons, attractors that threaten to trap economies in inefficiency (Smith, 1759, 1776). The tradition of Pigou (Walsh and Gram, 1980) recognizes the importance of market failures in relation to social cost and pollution, and recognizes the need for state intervention. Marshall’s analysis of externalities (network effects) can be seen as a rationale for protection rather than free markets. However, resurgence of interest in network externalities in analysis of the new economy (Shapiro and Varian, 1998), or in the explanation of competitive advantage (Porter, 1985) in terms of clusters of co-operative and rivalrous firms, is set firmly in the tradition that market systems are attracted to efficient solutions. In the late twentieth century, self-reinforcing mechanisms that are characteristic of complex adaptive systems set in. Interactions between shorter product cycles, resulting from faster technical change, and increases in investment cost, creating the need for financial capital, required large global markets, both to sell products and to cheapen resources. At a time when governments abandoned Keynesian or demand creation at the macro level, international firms espoused it, as a way of recouping costs and increasing profit. The robustness of capitalism also stems from its self-adaptive capabilities: inner dynamics. The idea of inner dynamics is captured by the network metaphor. Generally capitalism is defined by private property and financial

capital. New capitalism emerging in the late twentieth century has the same structure as previous evolutions, resulting from the interaction between international finance, rapid technological change (especially in the information, communication and telecommunications and biotechnology industries) and private ownership. But certain features distinguish new capitalism qualitatively from earlier evolutions: emphasis upon networks, information, interdependence, and disorganization. In a Schumpeterian world, competition and technological change are dynamics of capitalism (Schumpeter, 1939, 1952). Schumpeter was in no doubt about capitalism’s capacity for evolution, and the same point was emphasized by Marx (Schumpeter, 1952; Marx, 1969). The process they describe is outer dynamics. Chance variation in organizational capabilities, and natural selection driven by technological change, result in the evolution of the system, through the creation of new products, new markets and new production techniques. Thus competition, as an organizing principle, contains mechanisms (inner and outer dynamics) for the emergence of new forms of capitalism. Modern writers stress the disorderliness of new capitalism. In contrast to earlier industrial societies, that were organized and national, new capitalism is disorganized, global, and chaotic. The feedback systems in the chaotic attractor are capable of upward or downward trajectories. In new capitalism productivity and competitiveness depend on networks of relationships between firms that cross national boundaries. Interdependence, intensified by fast information flow, brings risks of disorganization and chaos. Actions in any one part of the system cannot be isolated and produce wildly divergent trajectories. Thus in Schumpeterian terms, order emerges within disorder – creative destruction. In his analysis, capitalist growth, stimulated by technical change, takes the form of periodic attractors, business cycles, and building cycles (Schumpeter, 1939). Considering a long period of economic growth, Schumpeter adopted Kondratieff’s (Dujen, 1983) analysis of capitalism as evolution interrupted by violent crises. This is akin to the notion of punctuated equilibrium (Gould, 1994); long periods of relative stability, interrupted by periods of violent change. That is, at times competition creates chaotic attractors. Sensitivity to initial conditions in the form of sudden swings between optimism and pessimism, sabotage by disillusioned intellectuals, and internal contradictions bring about crisis. As self-reinforcing mechanisms (or positive feedback systems), capitalism has the potential for prodigious growth: the self-reinforcing process is one of positive feedback: global markets intensify competitive pressures on firms, speeding up technological change and intensifying the need for financial capital, which is also needed to support global consumption, and foreign direct investment. However, at the same time, evolutionary progress includes the possibility or even the high probability of self-destruction. Complexity theory thus explains the ‘‘what’’ of capitalism, and a certain amount of the ‘‘how.’’ It shows us how capitalism yields these periods of disruption that threaten human societies and human welfare. Complexity theory is very concerned with information, which has always been the ultimate

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resource: technology uses knowledge or information as the basic input. In an economic context, nature’s laws become software, means of producing goods and services, using mechanisms such as hydraulics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, gravitation, and leverage. However, a distinctive feature of new capitalism is that the information content is more explicit, not only in production and consumption, but in the concentration of information in the form of images, symbols, and brands. That is, the new capitalism is increasingly concerned with issues of meaning. These two immediate and critical concerns of capitalism – its underbelly or shadow side and the need for meaning – severely challenge the complex adaptive system of today’s economy. The current globalization process has contradictions, including regionalism, nationalism and ethnicity. Few states in new capitalism do not pay at least lip service to free elections, and free markets and democracy are often connected, but neither South Korea or Chile in the 1970s and 1980s suggest that there is any necessary connection between democracy and new capitalism. The world economy has grown by more than 40 percent over the last ten years, but the World Bank estimates that the number of people living in poverty (less than $1 per day) grew by 1.2 billion between 1987 and 1998. In the developing world, 32 percent of the population lives in poverty: the proportion of poor living in Latin America and Eastern Europe has increased over the last 12 years and in some nations of sub-Saharan Africa the proportion of poor exceeds 50 percent. Thus, the contradictions, ambiguity, multiple levels of operation, and link to complexity theory of modern capitalism make it very difficult to understand, and make managing for meaningful change nearly impossible with traditional methods. Because both competition and archetypes are ordering principles, an application of Jung’s description of archetypes to the capitalist system of competition is appropriate. Further, archetypal analysis is particularly apt for the issues of disruption and meaning, the two critical concerns of today’s capitalist system. The following section applies archetypal theory to organizations, thereby extending the scope of Jung’s claim for their power. The archetype of competition In applying the Jungian notion of archetypes to competition, this paper is employing a symbolic trope, also in the domain of Jung. Symbolizing competition as an archetype is merely: . . . a helpful means of comprehending and making use of the non-rational and intuitive realms of functioning. In analytical psychology, Jung’s development of new scientific categories can be compared with a similar approach initiated by the modern physicist. In both cases the subject matter defies comprehension in accustomed rational categories; hence symbolic ‘‘working models’’ or working hypotheses, such as the archetype or the atom, had to be set up in order to describe as adequately as possible the way an otherwise indescribable acts in the world of matter . . . We cannot speak of [such matters] as a thing that is or does this or that. At best we can speak of it indirectly by describing human behavior as if it expressed aspects of a hypothetical pattern of meaning, as if a potential, encompassing wholeness were ordering the action of the parts . . . The most basic hypothesis about the [matters] with which we deal here is, then, that of a pattern of wholeness that can only be described symbolically (Whitmont, 1969, p. 15).

This section therefore uses the language and concepts of archetypes to get a better understanding of economic change in order to develop new thinking about how to manage it. Consider, then, that competition is the originating archetype and capitalism is one of its images in the social sphere. Archetypes contain their opposites. In the case of competition sometimes we have the possibility of a reconciliation of opposites; individual selfishness resulting in the welfare of the community, inflation being overcome only by depression and unemployment. Sometimes perpetual conflict results, as in the struggle for competitive advantage. Numinous aspects of archetypes are apparent in writings on competition. The invisible hand, the metaphor of a beneficial social order emerging as an unintended consequence of individual human action, is so important that some consider it made theoretical social science possible (Vaughn, 1989). Religion has been seen as a dominant factor in the evolution of capitalism. The discourse of pro-market politicians contains quasi-religious metaphors and a certain righteousness. Sometimes the compelling aspects of competition are expressed in the sense that governments are powerless in the face of global competitive pressures. The interdependence of new capitalism has given rise to a convergence of economic cycles worldwide as manifest in the current global recession. The rise of new capitalism has been accompanied by a reaction, a coincidentia oppositorum, in the form of a rise in religious fundamentalism. Many archetypal figures are present in narrative of competition; not only the hero and the dragon, but the trickster (the financier, the trader, the take-over artist), the wise man (the analyst, the scholar, the expert), the shadow (the monopolist, the tycoon, the black marketer and socialism, the shadow system). In organizations, the hero archetype may be projected onto mechanisms; the corporate plan, privatization, business process engineering, the brand. The hero, in many guises (the innovating entrepreneur, the inspired leader the consumer, the government, the Fed.), may be capable of slaying the dragon (depression, unemployment, social instability, debt) that threatens the images of competition system. The proletarian hero may transform the capitalist dragon into something different from itself. Hermes, god of markets, expresses many aspects of the archetype of competition through his own character and through his network of relationships with other archetypes. Hermes (Mercurius) is at once hero, trickster, inventor, and criminal, associated with markets, trade, property rights, cultivation (Samuels, 1993; Matthews, 1999), the patron of good fortune, merchants, thieves, athletics, and cultivation. He is also is the son of Zeus, and brother of Apollo. Because it is complexity theory that draws attention to the contradictions of capitalism, then applying the three discourses simultaneously can give us a way to talk about the current problems, in order to more adequately develop a methodology that can address them. By linking archetypal psychology, complexity and the elements of mystical, especially Sufi methodology (Ibn Arabi, AH 1302), to the study of organizations, the ‘‘common background of microphysics and depth psychology’’ that Jung spoke of, is extended (CW 14: 768)[1].

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Archetypes can be compared to basins of attraction that have a magnetic effect, in the sense that they delineate a set of possibilities. Distinguishing competition as an archetype from its diverse reflections is akin to using Adam Smith’s concept of the invisible hand to link the spiritual and material worlds. The concept is restated by Menger (1883) as an organic understanding of social phenomena and re-emerges as spontaneous order (Hayek, 1945, 1973). The invisible hand forms a basin of attraction in the equation systems (or fixedpoint theorems) of Walrasian economics (Arrow and Hahn, 1971). Archetypes are universal concepts determining a probability field. As attractors they function rather like loosely defined rules of a game, that encompass perhaps an uncountable set of possible moves – rules that vary according to circumstances of time and place. In the language of statistical mechanics, the competitive archetype prevents a system from wandering ergodically through all possible states. Instead they confine it to a subset of states. It is the shadow aspects of competition are suppressed currently; this is especially apparent when competition is seen as a phenomenon possessing archetypal power. Competition is considered to have the archetypal characteristic of timelessness, as in the discourse of myth and particularly fairy tales when the familiar ending, ‘‘they lived happily for evermore’’, is the counterpart of the steady state. The possibility that archetypal images may take a chaotic form strengthens their affinity with complex adaptive systems. Their numinous aspect links archetypes to the narratives of science, myth and mysticism. Consider, for example, the fervor that accompanies much of the rhetoric about the value of capitalism. This is evidence for the numinosity of the archetype, which puts blind adherents at risk for a predisposition to psychosis. Policy makers have fallen under the spell of competition, advocating market solutions irrespective of their appropriateness; for example, in transition economies, and in the provision of public goods such as health, education, and social insurance. This was referred to in the introduction. Stockholder interests are too prominent in the prescriptions that scholars and politicians advocate for organizations. Issues of efficiency are artificially separated from those of distribution. Working conditions and security of employment are subordinated. Briefly, the numinosum of the competitive archetype has brought about neglect of the dark side of competition, and so the archetype needs to be reinterpreted. As an archetype, competition is dynamic in that its images change through time, and have potential for evolution. The erratic behavior of the recent past suggests that attractors may be chaotic, and that the financial system may itself be the kind of trickster capable of luring the capitalist system into an abyss. Writers as widely dispersed ideologically as Malthus, Ricardo, Marx, Schumpeter, and Keynes point out, in different ways, that competition can lead to disorder and crisis, slump, and mass unemployment (Keynes, 1936; Walsh and Gram, 1980). Archetypal thinking, suggests the possibility of averting a catastrophe. In setting out a field of perhaps vast numbers of possible outcomes, complex adaptive system of competition share characteristics with

archetypes: especially non-linearity, possibilities of emergence, and ambiguity. So, for example, if an organization or society is in a strange or chaotic attractor, a decision – that in the context of other attractors would be insignificant – can transform it completely, in the same way that the hero archetype can transform a situation. Archetypes express the potential that stems from the source of their numinosity: they are active with respect to the lower, in that they exercise a determining power over all possible things in the sensory world. In Ibn Arabi’s metaphor, ‘‘I was the hidden Treasure, I yearned to be known. That is why I produced creatures, in order to be known in them’’ (Corbin, 1969). How can we creatures know the treasure and guide ourselves, individually and collectively, into wholeness and shared welfare within our economic system? How can a change agent know what decisions might make all the difference in a chaotic situation? It is here, especially, that Jungian ideas can help individuals and collectivities become meaningful change agents amidst a chaotic situation. In particular, valuing the image and the imagination can lead to a methodology for understanding and participating in world making. There is a traditional rationalistic bias toward asserting the concept as the basis for thought, subjugating the image to either a distortion or an assistant to the more important concept. We have a negative view of imagination, except in relation to works of art, which are seen as gratuitous in the face of solider technological achievements. However, given the limitations of the concept to adequately represent systems characterized by non-linearity, possibilities of emergence, and ambiguity, Jungian and other mystical traditions suggest that the power of the image could offer a methodology for interpreting and responding to the complexity of our current economic system. So to speak, although it is manifest in a particular form or image, the source of the treasure is hidden in an archetypal world but a process of creative imagination may reveal it. Creative imagination, a notion that spans Jungian and mystical traditions (CW, 9i: 59, 53, 351, 352[1]; Hanna, 1981; Johnson, 1986; Neumann 1989; Spiegelman, 1991) is a methodology that offers wider perspectives ( Jung, 1933, 1940)[2]. The final section of the paper, therefore, introduces this methodology. Competition and imagination: a methodology In contemporary competitive discourse, strategic analysis amounts to figuring out alternative scenarios (strategies, competitor responses, reactions to the business environment and so on), assessing their probabilities, evaluating likely outcomes, and making recommendations. The capability of machines in solving complex combinatorial problems of this kind is immense. The implication is that strategic analysis is increasingly an issue in which simulation techniques are used to identify alternative scenarios. There is no longer a scheme of reality that admits an intermediate universe between the realm of sensory data (empirically verifiable) and the spiritual universe (accessible only by faith). Archetypes occupy that space, and are accessible to creative imagination (Corbin, 1969, 1995; Izutsu, 1983; Chittick, 1989). Archetypes and archetypal

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images occupy different levels of being. Archetypes affect the sensory world but are not part of it. They stem from the collective unconscious. The worlds of the unconscious, of myths, dreams, and fantasy are more unitary than the ordinary world in that there are no longer polar opposites. The extent of unavoidable ambiguity and loss of distinctiveness increases as we approach the (deeper) level of the archetypal world. By linking archetypal psychology, complexity and the elements of mystical, especially Sufi methodology (Ibn Arabi, AH 1302), to the study of organizations, the ‘‘common background of microphysics and depth psychology’’ of which Jung spoke is extended (CW 14: 768)[1]. The negative connotation of imagination and its association with delusion has been noted earlier. The view of imagination taken here is quite different. Creative and active imagination are sometimes treated as equivalent, but it is useful to separate them. Active imagination ( Johnson, 1986) has specifically Jungian undertones, whereas creative imagination (Corbin, 1993, 1995; Izutsu, 1983) embodies a mystical, particularly Sufi, methodology (Spiegelman et al., 1991). Jung’s discovery of active imagination arose from his early work with patients. He noticed universal religious and mythological symbols arising in their dreams and fantasies, which he took as evidence for the spontaneous eruption of archetypal images from the unconscious. Archetypes themselves, he believed, were inaccessible to direct observation, so he began examining the images that arose in his own dreams and fantasies. Using active imagination, he induced a flow of dreamlike material in a waking state, material that he linked to religious symbolism, mythology, tribal lore, and alchemy. Using the process of active imagination for accessing information regarding universal archetypal structures, Jung had, in fact, rediscovered a technique with a long history in mysticism. Creative imagination involves the same contemplative processes as active imagination. Both see the archetypes as accessible to imagination. Creative imagination has the deeper methodology, founded on three fundamental notions: (1) Creation itself is the act of divine imagination, and everything that exists is an expression of the act of divine imagination. (2) Archetypes are passive in the sense that they are reflections of higher levels of being (the creator, the absolute, the unconscious – whatever is the preferred expression). They are active in that everything that exists in the phenomenal (sensory, empirical, conscious) worlds is a reflection of them. (3) It follows that everything existing in the phenomenal world is a reflection of the spiritual world. This is the meaning of Jung’s unus mundus. Archetypes are to their images as mirrors are to their images. Roughly speaking, archetypes act like a compendium of rules of a game; for example a complex game of chess, which is subject, not to a single law, but a set of laws, interacting with one another, so there is always a degree of ambiguity.

It is helpful to see them in relation to a metaphor of landscapes. Consider a landscape that is rugged and uneven, with peaks and troughs, mountains and valleys, a creation of infinite possibilities, under continuous transformation over time. Travellers explore the landscape, having (more or less) common purposes. They have inherited rules (archetypes) that determine loosely which routes are possible, and which not. The landscape sets out the potential, containing all possible journeys: the rules or archetypes separate what is feasible from what is impossible. The rules themselves are unobservable, but are recorded in maps or patterns in the form of myths, stories, rituals, norms and other archetypal images. Travellers cannot wander (ergodically) over the whole landscape. They are restricted, but because there is a network of laws (archetypes), new routes can always be revealed. Imagine further that there is not one landscape, but a set of parallel landscapes, corresponding to different levels of being (or consciousness), all part of the same world ( Jung’s unus mundus). Suppose each traveller possesses, to a varying extent, the ability to visualize the terrain as it is (and the archetypes as they are): visualisation here is creative imagination. The mystical understanding of the metaphor is the sense that the landscapes are themselves acts of creative imagination. Creative imagination brings them into consciousness: rescues them from the darkness – another way of understanding the proposition, ‘‘I was the hidden treasure, I yearned to be known. That is why I produced creatures, in order to be known in them.’’ The surprising thing is that even with vast numbers of reiterations of simulation models (defined according to specific rules or control mechanisms) just a few patterns emerge. This is an important assertion, which I leave for discussion elsewhere[3]. Suppose, however, that strategy (in practice and in scholarship) converts to such a methodology. What is the role of human beings? What can they bring to the problem? What can human beings contribute qua human beings? Programme and software designers? I think not just that. Their real purpose may come into play. Freedom from calculation, from purely rational approaches opens up all kinds of possibilities. Let us focus on one optimistic scenario. Questions of feeling, ethics, intuition, creativity may come to the forefront in the study and practices of organizations. Should we also say, questions of soul? Notes 1. References in the text to Jung are mainly taken from The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, edited by H. Read, M. Fordam and G. Adler and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, (1953-1978) (CW). Quotations are indicated by the volume number followed by the number of the paragraph from which it is taken (e.g. CW 8 para., 154). 2. The methodology of creative imagination is the subject of the paper, not techniques, which are part of many traditions, including the Sufi wary. 3. See, for example, Holland (1995, 1998) and Kauffman (1993, 1995). Also Matthews (1998) and work of International Business Centre at Kingston University.

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Matthews, R. (1999), ‘‘Complexity and strategic planning: a statistical mechanics approach’’, Proceedings of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies Conference, IFORS 1999, Beijing.

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Menger, C. (1883), Problems of Economics and Sociology, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. (1963 ed.). Neumann, E. (1954), The Origins and History of Consciousness, Pantheon, New York, NY. Neumann, E. (1955), The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Neumann, E. (1989), The Place of Creation, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Pettersson (1996), Complexity and Evolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Porte, M.E. (1985), Competitive Advantage Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Collier Macmillan, London. Prigorgine, I. (1980), From Being to Becoming, Freeman, New York, NY. Prigorgine, I. and Stengers, I. (1984), Order out of Chaos, Bantam, New York, NY. Read, H., Fordam, M. and Adler, G. (Eds) (2000), The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1953-1978), 21 volumes. Samuels, A. (1985), Jung and the Post-Jungians, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Samuels, A. (1993), The Political Psyche, Routledge, London. Samuels, A., Shorter, B. and Plaut, F. (1986), A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Simon, H.A. (1996), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, London. Schumpeter, J.A. (1939), Business Cycles, McGraw-Hill, London and New York, NY. Schumpeter, J.A. (1952), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, McGraw-Hill, London, and New York, NY. Schumpeter, J.A. (1954), History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Shapiro, C. and Varian, H.R. (1998), Information Rules, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Smith, A. (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Liberty Classics, New York, NY (1969 ed.). Smith, A. (1776), An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in Campbell, R.H and Skinner A.S. (Eds), Liberty Press, New York, NY (1981 ed.). Spiegelman, E., Pir Vilayat, I.K. and Fernandez, T. (Eds) (1991), Sufism, Islam and Jungian Psychology, New Falcon Publications, Scottsdale, AZ. Stevens, A. (1982), Archetype: A Natural History of the Self, Routledge, London. van Dujen, J.J. (1983), The Long Wave in Economic Life, George Allen & Unwin, London. Vaughn, K.I. (1989), ‘‘Invisible hand in John Eatwell’’, in Murrey, M. and Newman, P. (Eds), The Invisible Hand, Macmillan, London. Von Franz, M.L. (1975), C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Hodder & Stoughton, London. Von Franz, M.L. (1992), Psyche and Matter, Shambala, Boston, MA. von Hayek, F. (1945), ‘‘The use of knowledge in society’’, American Economic Review, Vol. 35. von Hayek, F. (1973), Law Legislation and Liberty,Vol. 1, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Walsh, V. and Gram, H. (1980), Classical and Neoclassical Theories of General Equilibrium, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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Wheatley, M. (1992), Leadership and the New Science: Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Whitmont, E.C. (1969), The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Further reading Arthur, W.B. (1994), Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Barone, E. (1908), The Ministry of Production in the Socialist State, reprinted in Nove, A. and Nuti, D., Socialist Economics, Penguin Books, London (1972). Campbell, J. (1982), The Masks of God, three volumes, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Coase, R.A. (1937), ‘‘The nature of the firm’’, Economica, IV.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Jung, archetypes and mirroring in organizational change management Lessons from a longitudinal case study

Jung, archetypes and mirroring: a case study 477

Adrian Carr University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia Keywords Jungian psychology, Organizational change, Change management Abstract Jung’s discussion of archetypes and the psychodynamics of mirroring is applied to the results of a ten-year longitudinal case study. Empirical evidence of such psychodynamics and insights into how these psychodynamics are related to the management of change are presented. Directions for further research are also discussed.

Introduction The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is a person perhaps best remembered for his ideas about a collective unconscious and those ancestral experiences he believed were registered in the brain as archetypes. Perhaps, equally, he is remembered for being what many viewed as the son in a lovehate relationship with the father-figure[1] – Sigmund Freud. Jung had been a disciple of Freud from 1906 to 1914, when the two parted company over professional and personal differences. One of the tragedies, and legacies, of the split between Freud and Jung was the creation of separate ‘‘camps’’ of followers who were, and continue to be, reluctant to acknowledge any parallels between Freudian and Jungian concepts. The intellectual standoff between these two groups of thought has resulted in a ‘‘them’’ and ‘‘us’’ mentality. While there are significant differences between these groups of thought, they do, however, and somewhat ironically, fail to acknowledge the psychodynamics that are also at work in this intellectual standoff. In psychoanalytic terms, there has been a good measure of the process called splitting. Briefly stated, this is a regressive reactive process where, as a form of primitive, unconscious, psychological defense, individuals dichotomize the world into ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ objects – idealizing the good and, through projection, demonizing the bad. The world gets divided into ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’. For example, Breger (2000) has suggested that after the two parted company, the Freudian camp ‘‘demonized’’ the Jungians, and ‘‘anything associated with Jung or his ideas was branded as mystical and taboo’’ (Breger, 2000, p. 232)[2]. It is in the face of unpleasant and fundamentally different views that the hallmarks of splitting are displayed: generalization, dichotomizing, distortion, concealment, manipulation, exaggeration of differences, and domonization of the ‘‘other.’’

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 477-489. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440388

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In this paper an outline of Jung’s ideas of archetypes and the process of mirroring will be briefly outlined. It will then be shown how these ideas have a resonance with some of the ideas of both Freud and Erich Fromm. In the case of Freud, his description of the psychodynamics involved in the development of an ego-ideal is particularly significant. It is from this analysis that the concepts of archetypes, mirroring, and the ego-ideal are revealed as being significant psychodynamic processes that occur in the workplace. To illustrate the relevance of these psychodynamic processes in the workplace and, in particular, the relevance to the issue of organization change, the results of a tenyear longitudinal case study will be discussed. Let us first direct our attention to the Jungian notions of archetypes and mirroring. Archetypes and mirroring The word archetype, now part of our everyday vocabulary, is central to the work of Jung. Indeed, it is so much so that many in the arena of psychology prefer the terminology ‘‘archetypal psychology’’ as a more apt description of the Jungian school of psychology than the terminology of ‘‘analytical psychology’’ – which was coined by Jung to both capture the intent of his approach and differentiate it from Freud’s psychoanalysis. To use the term ‘‘archetype’’ in the true Jungian sense is to invoke, at one and the same time, his theory of the collective unconscious, for it is archetypes that comprise the collective unconscious. The notion of the unconscious was one developed by Freud. He suggested that the realm of the unconscious was one inhabited by previous experiences, memories, feelings and urges, of which the individual was not actively aware due to defensive mechanisms or processes – the major defensive mechanism being that of repression. This subterranean stratum of the psyche, that was not open to the direct conscious scrutiny of the individual, was responsible for a broad range of dynamic effects on conscious processes. For Freud (1905/1977 ed., p. 107) it was the ‘‘tools’’ of psychoanalysis, such as free association and dream analysis, that rendered conscious that which was previously unconscious and in so doing could potentially ‘‘free’’ the patient from a compulsion or behavior that had arisen from the unconscious psychical material. Jung suggested that Freud’s conception of the unconscious refers to the personal part or ‘‘layer’’ of the unconscious and that there is a ‘‘deeper’’ layer, which Jung called the collective unconscious: that which is shared and in common with all humans. The collective unconscious, Jung claimed, contains primordial images and ideas that have emotions and symbolism ‘‘attached’’. These images and ideas become manifest in fantasies, dreams, myths, and emotional responses to the world around us. It is these common patterns of psychic perception that Jung called archetypes. Unfortunately, his view of archetype is often thought of as merely a common image. This very reductionist view does a disservice to the subtlety of Jung’s conception.

Jung (1935/1969 ed.) argued that the archetypes are ‘‘categories analogous to Jung, archetypes the logical categories which are always and everywhere present as the basic and mirroring: postulates of reason’’, akin to Plato’s ideal forms, except they are ‘‘categories of a case study the imagination’’ (pp. 517-18). Archetypes are neither inherited (or innate) ideas nor common images, but rather are typical modes of apprehension ( Jung, 1916/ 1969 ed.). An archetype ‘‘is determined as to its content only when it has 479 become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious experience’’ ( Jung, 1938/1968 ed., p. 79). This ‘‘content’’ is an image: archetypes merely hold the possibility of an image. Confusion between the archetype itself and the content of the archetype is in many ways understandable as specific archetypes are often referred to by their symbolic or imaginal manifestations. For example, Jung (1912/1969 ed., p. 419) talks of the ‘‘Jonah-and-the-whale’’ image and says it has ‘‘any number of variants, for instance the witch who eats children, the wolf, the ogre, the dragon, and so on’’. These images are all variants on the theme of being psychologically engulfed: an experience of being devoured or swallowed. Thus, as one writer notes, ‘‘the archetype is an abstract theme (engulfment), and the archetypal images (whale, witch, ogre, dragon, etc.) are concrete variations on that theme’’ (Adams, 1997, pp. 102-3). Jung described a number of archetypes whose content was anthropomorphic: for example, the anima, the divine child, the great mother, the wise old man, the trickster, and the kore or maiden. The personification was seen as necessary to bring the theme or pattern into our consciousness and thereby enhance our awareness of the existence of the theme of the archetype. There are other archetypes whose content is not so personalized, for example the archetype of rebirth and of wholeness, which Jung called archetypes of transformation in that they are ‘‘typical situations, places, ways and means, that symbolize the kind of transformation in question’’ ( Jung, 1959/1969 ed., p. 38). Additionally, it should be noted that as early as 1914 Freud (1918/1990 ed.) also recognized the existence of archetypes, calling them phylogenetic ‘‘schemata’’ and ‘‘phylogenetic experience’’ (p. 317), although earlier still in the Interpretation of Dreams he took seriously Nietzsche’s view that dreams were a ‘‘primeval relic of humanity’’ and suggested that ‘‘dreams and neuroses seem to have preserved more mental antiquities than we could have imagined possible’’ (Freud, 1900/1988 ed., p. 700). Although Freud seems to allude to the existence of archetypes, Jung (1976/1977 ed.) says of Freud that the Oedipus complex ‘‘was the first archetype Freud discovered, the first and only one’’ (p. 288). Freud (1918/1990 ed.) himself states that the Oedipus complex is one of the phylogenetic schemata, specifically: . . . the phylogenetically inherited schemata . . . I am inclined to take the view that they are precipitates from the history of human civilization. The Oedipus complex . . . is one of them – is, in fact, the best known member of the class (p. 363).

Both Freud and Jung were very Lamarckian and neo-Kantian in the manner in which they perceived the architecture of the unconscious. Both these forms of depth psychology envisage aspects of the psyche operating within Kantian

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categories of time, space, and causality. In the history of philosophy, these categories bring into focus what is referred to as the transcendental ego, the reasoned notion that we adhere to and participate in a communal realm of an ego. Kant argued that the nature and function of understanding is such that it comes equipped with a priori concepts or categories that relate to both substance and causality. The built-in-machinery for interpreting experience is presumed, in order that we make sense of the perceptual excitations to which we are exposed on an everyday basis. It is not that they are innate in the Platonic or Cartesian sense, but that we have organizing principles that help order and recognize cause and effect. They are transcendental in the sense that they correspond to no object in our experience, but are the product of pure reason alone that is prompted by our experience. It was Jung, however, who placed particular emphasis upon these ‘‘logical categories’’ and the collective unconscious. In contrast, Freud continued to assert the prime importance of the personal unconscious. Jung held the conviction that personal growth was significantly a matter of bringing the content of the archetypes into conscious awareness and being in touch with this level of human existence. The archetypes themselves are, in many senses, neither positive nor negative, good nor evil, for they represent ways of organizing and understanding human experience, which, when read through specific experiences, all have a ‘‘light’’ and ‘‘dark’’ side. Jung and Freud both developed a fairly complex view of human nature and the development of personality. Some have argued, incorrectly in my view, that ‘‘according to Freudian theory the character of a person was more or less completely formed at the age of seven or eight and hence fundamental changes in later years were supposed to be virtually impossible’’ (Fromm, 1982, p. 66). Jungian thinking, on the other hand, suggests that character and identity are in a process of continual development, in part through the process of ‘‘mirroring’’, in which figures (such as the mother) reflect back to the infant the appropriateness of the infant’s own identity and actions and, in so doing, provide an emotional basis for the infant’s identity and development ( Jung, 1940/1969 ed.). This process of mirroring is not merely confined to the early period of development, but is an ongoing dynamic of seeking out others and environments that confirm this self-identity. The unfolding awareness of the unconscious dimensions of oneself can be anxiety producing. The concept of mirroring as an ongoing process has been further elaborated and developed by others – perhaps most notably Heinz Kohut (1971; see also Jacoby, 1993),who viewed mirroring as one of two narcissistically invested transference reactions (the other was idealizing transference). On the one hand, the infant seeks the approval of the parent in an act of both recognition and confirmation. On the other hand, the infant seeks to be like the parent in a sense of the parent being the perfect and omnipotent ‘‘other’’. Thus, development of self involves these entwined dynamics. Freud’s views, too, are not far away from these dynamics. In his second theory of the mind, Freud (1926/1983 ed., 1933/1988 ed., 1940/ 1986 ed.) posited a topography of the now famous realms or provinces he .

dubbed the id, ego, and superego. This topography, presented in his Jung, archetypes ‘‘unassuming sketch’’ (Freud, 1933/1988 ed., p. 11), was not meant to be taken as and mirroring: a literal pictorial representation, as he insisted that psychical processes have an a case study intangible quality (Freud, 1933/1988 ed., p. 112). The metaphorical fiction called the mind, and its fictive constructs, gave Freud an imagery to capture what he believed to be specific and interactive processes. The ego is, according to Freud, 481 that realm of the mind that uses logic, memory, and judgment to appropriately seek to satisfy the unconscious biological urges, drives, or instincts of the id. The ego must resolve whether to satisfy the demands of the id, postpone satisfaction, or suppress the demands. In making such a decision one aspect that needs to be considered by the ego is the social acceptability and constraints involved in carrying through the demands of the id. These societal ‘‘rules’’ are part of the realm of the superego. The superego takes on the rules of conduct that are demanded by parents (through the Oedipus or Electra complex) and other significant authority figures. Through the process of identification the superego gains its script, which guides the ego in its functioning in both a positive and negative manner. Badcock captures this important dynamic when he says: The superego provides a sense of moral and aesthetic self-judgement (conscience and values, in other words), both in a positive sense as acting as an ego-ideal and in the negative one in performing the role of censor of the ego’s wishes . . . Failure to meet the demands of the superego creates feelings of moral anxiety (Badcock, 1988, p. 122, original emphasis).

(See also Carr, 1994, p. 211; English and English, 1958, p. 535; Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988, p. 145.) Freud viewed the ego-ideal as being generated in an individual to try to recover some of the narcissistic perfection enjoyed in childhood. ‘‘What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal’’ (Freud, 1914/1984 ed., p. 88). It is by a process of identification that this ego-ideal is formed and re-formed. Laplanche and Pontalis define the term identification as a ‘‘psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified’’ (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988, p. 205, emphasis added). The individual’s identity emerges from the integration of such identifications in what is, largely, an unconscious process. The notion of the ego-ideal being continually reformed is somewhat parallel to Jung’s ongoing dynamic of mirroring and its purposes. The dynamics of idealization are also apparent in this model of identity development. The ‘‘engine’’ in these approaches is virtually the same: the search for recognition/ affirmation from ‘‘powerful’’ others. Capable of occurring in virtually any setting, these psychological processes are particularly relevant in contexts where power dynamics are played out. In this way, we should expect to see identification, mirroring, and splitting in organizational settings. It will be from this discussion of the work setting that the results of a ten-year longitudinal

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case study of organization change will then be discussed and, again, the relevance of these psychodynamic processes will be highlighted. Archetypes, character types and mirroring processes in the work setting The work organization is an important setting in the psychodynamics of identity formation and development. Western cultures have, in large measure, encouraged individuals to gauge their self-worth, and view their identity, in terms of their employment status. The leaders in work organizations, through their command of symbolic and material rewards, encourage organizational members to adopt behaviors, attitudes and values that mirror those of the organisation. A degree of compliance ensues, in part, in order to receive narcissistic gratification and, in part, to avoid punative behavior for noncompliance. This mirroring behavior substitutes the ego-ideal with an organization ideal (Carr, 1994, 1998; Schwartz, 1987). The ideal that the organisation wishes the employees to mirror can be thought of as encouraging a character type (Maccoby, 1976). In a pioneering study of organization-related character types, Michael Maccoby (1976) looked at managers in high technology organizations. In his book, The Gamesman (1976, p. 173), he describes the different character types that seem to be required at different levels of these organizations: Any organization of work . . . can be described as a psychostructure that selects and moulds character . . . those traits that are useful to the work are stimulated and reinforced while others that are unnecessary or that impede work are frustrated, suppressed, or unused and gradually weaken.

Maccoby identified four main psychological types in the corporate structure that were ‘‘distinct from one another in terms of the individual member’s overall orientation to work, values and self-identity’’ (Maccoby, 1976, p. 45). These character types he dubbed: the craftsman; the jungle fighter; the company man; and, the most successful in the organizations he studied, the gamesman, to whom work was seen as a game. This gamesman used ‘‘head’’ qualities (intelligence, systems thinking, etc.), thrived on competition, and gained pleasure in controlling the play. The ‘‘heart’’ qualities (feelings, generosity, compassion, idealism, capacity to love) were not encouraged in these corporations and, accordingly, these qualities were not well developed in this major character type. In this way, individuals assimilate their identity such that they mirror that which the organisation seeks as an ideal-type, or perhaps even an ‘‘archetypal’’ image within the organization. One is left to speculate whether what Maccoby has described as character types are in fact imaginal manifestations of what Jung originally described as ‘‘categories of the imagination’’, i.e. archetypes (1935/1969 ed., pp. 517-18). A meta-analysis to explore to what degree these character types do indeed reflect archetypal images has yet to be undertaken. The field of organizational studies, and those under this umbrella such as organizational behavior and organizational psychology, have yet to embrace

the pioneering work of Maccoby to the degree that it becomes part of the Jung, archetypes conventional wisdom. There has been no critical analysis of Maccoby’s work and mirroring: that calls into question his findings, possibly due to the neglect of and a case study resistance to psychodynamic theory in organizational studies discourse. A recently completed longitudinal research study, by the author of this paper, provides evidence of these psychodynamics as well as a deeper appreciation of 483 the management of change. It is to the results of this study I now wish to now direct our attention. A longitudinal case study of mirroring in the context of organizational change In the year 2000, the last part of a ten-year research study was completed. The initial aim of the study was to understand the nature and extent of work-related stress amongst school principals, employed in state government schools in Australia, during a period of organizational change. The school principal was called on to become responsible for managing the total financial aspects of the school, as well as engaging in greater levels of management of the school, in general. Thus the role of the principal would have a greater emphasis upon management than educational/pedagogical leadership. The results of this case study, of organizational change, provide very clear evidence of the psychodynamics that have been discussed in this paper. The case study also provide some valuable clues as to how, by appreciating these psychodynamics, the management of the change process could be more effective. In early 1990, from a stratified sample of 100 principals employed in public schools in South Australia, 94 completed a clinical analysis questionnaire (CAQ). Psychologists administer the CAQ to their clients in order to gain information about some 28 personality and clinical traits. The CAQ responses are ‘‘scored’’ and placed on a scale ranging from zero to ten. Scored against the general population, a score of 4.5 to 6.5 is considered average. ‘‘Normal’’ personality traits, clinical factors and ‘‘second order’’ factors, including depression and anxiety, are scaled accordingly. This scale has a mean of 5.5, with scores of 4.5 to 6.5 considered average, and scores that are above and below this average are considered significant in the manner depicted in Table I. Of the 94 (i.e. 37 percent), who completed a valid CAQ, 35 appeared to have a high level of anxiety and/or depression Although the intention was to use the CAQ clinical scales to reveal those who were experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression, the personality profiles for individuals in this cohort proved to be more interesting. It was expected that the personality profiles would be different for each individual as there are for any general population. What the results of this study found was that the personality profile of the overall sample of principals was clustered in the ‘‘average’’ range. The immediate conclusion might be that this was a simple artifact of people of a certain personality type being attracted to this form of employment. To investigate this further, a CAQ was administered to a sample of 100 teachers employed in the same schools. The profiles of these teachers

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Factor Warmth Intelligence Emotional stability Dominance Boldness Sensitivity Imagination Insecurity Radicalism

Description Low score High score Reserved, detached, aloof Concrete thinking Easily upset Submissive, accommodating Shy, timid Tough minded, insensitive Practical, down-to-earth Confident, self-satisfied Conservative, traditional

Warm, personable, engaging Abstract thinking Emotionally stable, calm Dominant, assertive, competitive Bold, venturesome Sensitive, tender minded Imaginative, absent minded Insecure, apprehensive Experimenting, innovative

Source: Adapted from Krug and Catell (1980)

also revealed a clustering or common profile. However, the teachers’ profile was different to that of the principals. Teachers revealed high levels of caring and nurturing, abstract thinking, boldness, sensitivity and imagination – the common stereotypical images we might have of teachers. The problem here is to explain how the profiles of the principals, who had been teachers in this same system, came to change. Thus, the fact that there was a common profile required explanation, as did the nature of the profile itself. In the progressive process of mirroring, principals suppressed the warmth, sensitivity, imagination and innovative characteristics of teachers and came to identify with an ideal that was differently specified, implicitly and explicitly, by the employing state government authority. The ideal that the state education department was seeking to impart to school principals was one that cast them into the role of managers. At the same time, the authorities discouraged principals from seeing themselves as professional educators. The paradox in the culture that the state authority sought to impart was that these principals had been promoted through the system on the basis of their teaching expertise and pedagogical criteria. The role of manager, which has concern for technical efficiency and managerial issues (as defined by the education department), was perceived to often conflict with their core values as educational leaders. A different ideal, one which suppressed the traditional caring and nurturing traits of the principals’ former roles, was being imposed by the employer. Principals were thus torn between the values and behaviors associated with the role of providing educational leadership and those associated with the need to strive for efficiency gains. Anxiety and depression were found to be the resulting emotional fall-out. Ten years on The psychodynamics that we have outlined in this paper – the process of mirroring and the identification with an organization ideal – seem to explain the anxiety and depression. Confirming evidence arises from the most recent

tracking of the initial respondents. In October/November of 1999, successful Jung, archetypes contact was made with 20 of the original group of 35 respondents. Each was and mirroring: asked to retake the CAQ and to participate in a one-on-one interview. The CAQ a case study component was completed in late 1999 or early 2000. Two major findings emerged from those data. The first finding was that, with two exceptions, the level of anxiety and/or depression had abated to now be in the normal range or 485 below. The second major finding was that the clustering of personality traits that was noted back in 1990 was no longer present in either the individual or the group as a whole. The previously detected profile (or in Maccoby terminology, ‘‘psychostructure’’) was no more and in its place was an array of distribution that would be expected in any generalized population. Why the change? The answer to this was to be found in the second component of the study that involved a semi-structured, taped interview. The semi-structured interview targeted changes in the lives of these individuals in the last ten years. Questions included the following: . What action did you take over the diagnosis of the high level of personal stress back in 1990? . If you reported your stress to the education department, what was their response? . What has changed in your life since 1990, particularly in relation to your work situation? . Under what circumstances did you cease employment with the education department? . In a word or phrase, how would you describe your feelings toward to education department? . What kind of dreams do you now have? Could you recount three dreams you have had in the last week or so? Almost half of the principals reported that, as a result of that initial diagnosis, they consulted their medical practitioner and, in many cases, proceeded on workers’ compensation or some other form of leave. Those principals who reported their stress to the department generally found them less than helpful, not sympathetic. The initiative for some therapeutic action seemed to rest with the stressed individual. One of the principals reported speaking to the superintendent who responded by saying: ‘‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!’’ Many of the principals in this study reported accepting a retirement ‘‘package’’ in 1994, or soon thereafter. The early retirement package represented quite a large sum of money at the time. In addition, most had access to a pension that was for the rest of their lives. One might have thought that those in this study who received these packages would be grateful for the gesture. They were not. Their lack of ‘‘gratitude’’ is significant and critical to the process of mirroring. Most of the principals in the study reported feeling, as one

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principal put it, ‘‘abandoned, and at the convenience of the department’’. All who took the packages viewed themselves as being prematurely retired. During the interview some of their feelings became clearer. When asked to describe feelings toward the education department, the most positive response was from the principal who replied: ‘‘I have no complaints’’. Other comments were much less positive: I was glad to go (c.f. sad to go); cynical; they crucified me; anger for their lack of support; disappointed; department acted toward me like a disinterested parent; the buggers do not care a damn about people; disappointed in their lack of integrity; acted toward me in a manner best described as bestiality or brutality; I had served my master and father well, but it seemed I was to be railroaded out of the ED; they abandoned me; discarded me; disillusioned; treated me like a brick in the wall; I have been treated like a naughty child for getting sick – an illness that they induced; and, made to feel that I was troublesome.

Comments about the department acting like a disinterested parent resonated with other metaphors in the stories of these principals. It was as though many of them had ‘‘grown-up’’ in the department for the whole of their working lives and thought the department, like a parent, would look after their welfare. The package represented a severance of that relationship in addition to a perceived lack of care and loss of the organization ideal. Discussion This paper commenced with a discussion of Jung’s notion of archetypes and mirroring and then proceeded to show how the psychodynamics of mirroring, in particular, have a parallel in the work of Freud. It is clear that the workplace is a potent influence in the ongoing processes of people seeking to gain recognition and confirmation, as ‘‘good’’ employees, wanting to become like the idealized ‘‘other’’ in a process of being encouraged to mirror certain behavior and values. The results of the longitudinal study reported in this paper provide evidence of mirroring. From this evidence, a number of issues arise. The work organization, through its reward and punitive systems, may encourage a mirroring and strong identification with certain behaviors and values – an organization ideal. It is clear from the case study that organizational norms supporting certain character types leave a psychological fingerprint on individuals in the organization. By becoming aware of the psychological import of various work practices, the organization might gain an understanding of the symbols and practices that have contributed to the cultural messages that are being given to employees. If through its reward ‘‘schemes’’, for example, the organization encourages identification with individualism, competitiveness, ambition, power seeking, etc., the shadow side might be lack of team work, lack of information sharing, politicking, subversion of others, psychological withdrawal, stress, etc. The evidence of these extremes is found in the psychological profile that is produced. Further, these profiles also reveal the neglected and underdeveloped aspects of the individual’s personality. A psychological audit of an organization would thus appear to have considerable merit.

The advocacy of psychological audits must not be construed as merely Jung, archetypes another battery of psychological tests for the employee. Notions of mirroring and mirroring: and identification inherently conceive of the employee in an interactive a case study relationship with the leadership and organization structures and processes. In this context, a psychological audit needs to include a psychological appraisal of the leaders of the organization, for, in another facet of the identification 487 dynamic, there is a significant amount of accumulated evidence that organization structure and processes may be simply an extension of the ‘‘self’’ of the leader(s) (see Kets de Vries and Miller (1991) for an appraisal of this literature). The leaders themselves maybe engaged in a pathological or exaggerated form of narcissism that is really an over compensation for neglect earlier in life and a lack of being valued as a person in their own right rather than as a surrogate for their parents’ (or significant others’) ambitions. Leadership positions may afford an individual the very opportunity to over self-indulge and self-aggrandize. Bearing in mind the age of many CEOs, it should also be stated that this earlier-in-life-neglect, when coupled with mid-life crises, is a particularly potent mixture. In this context we may find the individual trying to cope with feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and mortality while exuding self-confidence – surely a recipe for character instability. In a work environment the display of charm by a leader may be wrapped in a motivation for self, but in private a certain emptiness is evident – i.e. a schizoid character that is an outcome of pathological narcissism (see Kohut, 1971: also Alford, 1988). It is in this context that an audit of work practices linked to subordinate-superordinate relationships would appear desirable. We are all too familiar with the battery of psychological tests used for recruitment and selection. We are also all too familiar with the notion of industrial inspectors and alike to ensure that a workplace is ergonomically and physically a safe place to work and punitive measures that can be taken at law if the workplace is ‘‘unsafe’’ or has contributed to an ‘‘injury’’ to a worker. In a similar vein, one might also suggest that organizations have an ethical obligation to undertake psychological audits and make the results public and available to potential employees, for it is not only the individual employees but also wider society who bear the burden of the consequences of psychological illhealth that comes from inappropriate values promoted in the workplace. The other psychological process described in the beginning of this article is that of splitting. Just as some of the loyal followers of Jung and those of Freud have been prone to projecting all negative qualities onto the other, so, too, did the principals and the state blame the other for all their troubles. This is not (in the author’s view, particularly in the case of the principals) to suggest that the blame was not justified in part, or in full. However, the lack of empathy on the part of the state toward its former employees, and the general hostility between groups show that splitting, too, is an important psychodynamic process in the workplace, even today, and needs to be recognized in any organizational analysis.

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Concluding comments The psychodynamics described in this paper have many other implications for work organizations and the management of change. However, there is one further issue that should be highlighted. There are certain character types that seem to be able to be coined in a term or phrase and have some resonance, or they seem instantly recognizable. To this point, there has been very little effort in the organization discourse to explore the degree to which such character types are, as was noted earlier, imaginal manifestations (of what Jung originally described as ‘‘categories of the imagination’’), i.e. archetypes (1935/ 1969 ed., pp. 517-18). The work of Jung, on the notion of the collective unconscious, does demonstrate that myths and tales show a remarkable pattern of similarity irrespective of the culture. The degree to which the archetypal images are manifest in work-related character types might be a useful area of research in a context of understanding and predicting behavior in a period of change. Examining under what conditions certain archetypal images emerge and their relationship to other images will surely help to enhance understanding of behavior in work organizations. Notes 1. On 16 April 1909 Freud wrote a letter to Jung in which in the opening paragraphs he says: It is strange that on the very same evening when I adopted you as eldest son and anointed you – in partibus infidelium (‘‘in the lands of the unbelievers’’) – as my successor and crown prince, you should have divested me of my paternal dignity, which divesting seems to have given you as much pleasure as I, on the contrary, derived from the investiture of your person. Now I am afraid of falling back into the father role with you if I tell you how I feel about the poltergeist business (McGuire, 1979, p. 144).

The father-son language is apparent in their correspondence, but the extent of father-son relationship remains a point of some dispute (for example, see McGuire, 1979, pp. 8-35). 2. To ensure that the public and his followers did not misunderstand the ‘‘secessionist’’ movements founded by both Jung and Adler, Freud wrote a fairly polemical work entitled On the History of the Psycho-analytic Movement, in which he insisted that both the ‘‘heretics . . . cease to describe their theories as ‘psychoanalysis’ ’’ (Freud, 1914/1984 ed., p. 237; see also Noland, 1999, pp. 39-98). References Adams, M. (1997), ‘‘The archetypal school’’, in Young-Eisendrath, P. and Dawson, T. (Eds), The Cambridge Companion to Jung, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 101-18. Alford, C. (1988), Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt School, and Psychoanalytic Theory, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Badcock, C. (1988), Essential Freud, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Breger, L. (2000), Freud, Darkness in the Midst of Vision, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Carr, A. (1994), ‘‘For self or others? The quest for narcissism and the ego-ideal in work organisations’’, Administrative Theory & Praxis, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 208-22. Carr, A. (1998), ‘‘Identity, compliance and dissent in organizations: a psychoanalytic perspective’’, Organization, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 81-99. English, H. and English, A. (1958), A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms, David McKay, New York, NY.

Freud, S. (1977), ‘‘Three essays on the theory of sexuality’’, On Sexuality, Vol. 7, pp. 33-169, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1905). Freud, S. (1983), ‘‘Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety’’, On Psychopathology, Vol. 10, pp. 229-333, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1926). Freud, S. (1984), Historical and Expository Works on Psychoanalysis, Vol. 15, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1914). Freud, S. (1986), ‘‘An outline of psychoanalysis’’, Historical and Expository Works on Psychoanalysis, Vol. 15, pp. 371-443, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1940). Freud, S. (1988), Interpretation of Dreams, Vol. 4, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1900). Freud, S. (1988), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Vol. 2, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1933). Freud, S. (1990), ‘‘From the history of an infantile neurosis (the ‘wolf man’)’’, Case Histories II, Vol. 9, pp. 227-366, Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth (original work published 1918). Fromm, E. (1982), Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought, Abacus/Sphere, London. Jacoby, M. (1993), Individuation and Narcissism: The Psychology of the Self in Jung and Kohut, Routledge, London. Jung, C. (1968), ‘‘Psychological aspects of the mother archetype’’, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., Vol. 9 Part 1, pp. 75-110, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1938). Jung, C. (1969), The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, 2nd ed., Vol. 5, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1912). Jung, C. (1969), ‘‘The transcendent function’’, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 2nd ed., Vol. 8, pp. 67-91, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1916). Jung, C. (1969), ‘‘Psychological commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead’’, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, West and East, 2nd ed., Vol. 11, pp. 509-26, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1935). Jung, C. (1969), ‘‘The psychology of the child archetype’’, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., Vol. 9 Part 1, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1940) Jung, C. (1969), The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (2nd ed., Vol. 9, Parts 1 & 11), Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1959). Jung, C. (1977), ‘‘The Houston films’’, in McGuire, W. and Hull, R. (Eds), C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (original work published 1976). Kets de Vries, M. and Miller, D. (1991), ‘‘Leadership styles and organizational cultures: the shaping of neurotic organizations’’, in Kets de Vries, M. (Ed.), Organizations on the Couch, pp. 243-63, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Kohut, H. (1971), The Analysis of the Self, International Universities, New York, NY. Krug, S. and Cattell, R. (1980), Clinical Analysis Questionnaire Manual, Institute for Personality and Ability Testing Inc., Champaign, IL. McGuire, W. (Ed.) (1979), The Freud/Jung Letters, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Maccoby, M. (1976), The Gamesman, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY. Noland, R. (1999), Sigmund Freud Revisited, Twanyne, New York, NY. Schwartz, H. (1987), ‘‘Anti-social actions of committed organizational participants: an existential psychoanalytic perspective’’, Organization Studies, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 327-40.

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Rita Durant

Received June, 2001 Revised January 2002 Accepted January 2002

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA Keywords Jungian psychology, Creativity, Organizational change Abstract Synchronicity was coined by Jung in 1955 to refer to the meaningful and acausal, or chance, correlation between an inner and outer event. Insofar as creativity is dependent upon chance for novelty, then creativity and synchronicity may have a supportive relationship. This paper uses narrative to explore the role of paradox in meaning, in chance, and in creativity. The nature of synchronicity, the relationship between synchronicity and creativity, and the implications of this relationship for management are discussed. Such implications include encouraging multiple points of view, understanding the role of emotion in creativity, allowing for movement across metaphorical and physical boundaries, honoring the body, and maintaining a lightness (with humor zand joy) with which to adapt to inevitable ‘‘accidents’’.

Introduction In this invitation to contribute our thoughts, theories, and observations on the ideas of C.G. Jung, I am emboldened to discuss synchronicity, a termed coined by Jung to refer to the meaningful and acausal correlation between an inner and outer event, or a meaningful coincidence ( Jung, 1955). Jung (1955) himself resisted writing about synchronicity for years, due to the ‘‘difficulties of the problem and its presentation,’’ finally doing so after his ‘‘experiences of the phenomenon of synchronicity multiplied themselves over the decades’’ ( Jung, 1955, p. 5). One of these experiences was with a bug: One of my patients has a dream in which someone had given her a beautiful scarab, a costly piece of jewelry. While she is telling me this dream, a large insect starts tapping on the window, in an obvious effort to get into the dark room. I open the window and catch the bug: it is a gold-green bug that closely resembles the scarab in the woman’s dream. I hand the beetle to the patient, saying, ‘‘Here is your scarab.’’ She opens to the arational, and becomes open to change and healing.

Another is with a fox: I am walking with a woman patient in the wood, when she starts to tell me about an important dream about a fox coming downstairs in her parents’ home. At this moment, a real fox comes out of the trees not forty yards away and walks quietly on the path ahead of us for several minutes, as if a partner in the situation.

A third is with a dream and a research project: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 490-501. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440351

I am investigating the non-linear psychological development of the self, and I have a dream about a well-fortified golden castle. I am painting this image in the center of a mandala when I receive The Secret of the Golden Flower from Richard Wilhelm with a request to write a Acknowledgements are extended to Jim Cashman, a true leader who listens.

commentary on it. This text confirms my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center. Also, Richard Wilhelm’s book describes the picture I am drawing: the yellow castle is the germ of the immortal body. This is a great synchronicity for me.

I, too, developed an interest in synchronicity as my experiences with coincidences grew more numerous and meaningful. Synchronicity is narrative; it grows out of the paradox of our own life story: changing and timeless, unique and mythic, subject and object, inner and outer, part and whole (Hopke, 1997): Each of our lives is a story, and synchronistic events call our attention to the structure of the story . . . Those unique coincidences which we call synchronistic make us aware, again and again, of the beauty, order, and connectedness of the tales we are living (pp. 13-14).

Synchronicity is paradoxical. Related to the word ‘‘synchronize,’’ there is an element of meaningful coordination of events in time: synchronized swimming, for example, indicates planning and implies a creative or choreographic act. On the other hand, related to ‘‘synchronic,’’ synchronistic events exist at one point in time without reference to history. Synchronicity points up the paradox of time, and therefore of change: it is both continuous and discontinuous. This paper explores the nature of synchronicity and the ways in which synchronicity may play a part in meaningful change. In particular, the relationship between synchronicity and creativity is highlighted. Synchronicity supports creative interactions between self and world. It highlights the unique and the mythic. With synchronicity, meaning is more than a cognition; it is a physical and emotional charge resulting from an experience of the force uniting inner and outer reality. Beyond understanding in causal terms, synchronicity is an archetypal experience of meaning, and meaningfulness, from the ‘‘inside out.’’ The synchronicities in my own life and in the life of my loved ones have been very meaningful. In this paper I use my own life to address the following three questions: What is synchronicity? How are synchronicity and creativity related? What are synchronicity’s lessons for change management? Interweaving my own story with that of this text is metaphorical for the lessons of synchronicity: the joining together of self and world. Q1: what is synchronicity? What synchronicity means has been the subject of speculation for some time, its acausal nature makes it a challenge for traditional research methods, and its phenomenological roots (individual meaning) make adequate sample sizes problematic. Still, in my life, synchronicity has contributed to a sense of hope, of appropriateness, of being ‘‘in the right place at the right time,’’ and of unity with a larger wholeness. These feelings fuel my interest in understanding the phenomenon and my hope to share it with those at the heart of modern culture, people at work. Synchronicity is a connecting principle (when cause and effect are eliminated by the impossibility of any rational explanation) between our psyches and an external event, in which we feel an uncanny sense of inner and outer being linked. In the experience of a synchronistic event, instead of feeling ourselves to be separated and isolated entities in a vast

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world we feel the connection to others and the universe at a deep and meaningful level (Bolen, 1979, pp. 23-4).

At the heart of any investigation into synchronicity is the nature of chance, in counterpoint to the dominant paradigm of causality ( Jung, 1955). One cannot predict the occurrence of chance (Hyde, 1998); it embodies uncertainty, which is of serious concern to change managers (Milliken, 1987; Thompson, 1977) as they consider the environment (Fry, 1982; Hrebiniak and Joyce, 1985; Nightengale and Toulouse, 1977; Van de Ven and Drazin, 1985) and prefer change initiatives that guarantee results. Contingency, too, falls under the domain of chance. Organizations, like cultures, ‘‘regularly suffer from contingency; they bump into things they do not expect and cannot control’’ (Hyde, 1998, p. 105). Because synchronicity is, by definition, meaningful, interpretation of those contingencies is an important variable. An important part of synchronicity, therefore, is a willingness to imagine that the events in our life may not be separate from us. Synchronistic experiences give us a clue that the environment may not be totally ‘‘other.’’ Our perception of the environment in turn affects the decisions we make (Sawyer, 1990; Jackson and Dutton, 1988). Cameron’s (1992, p. 3) book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, posits ‘‘an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves’’. Cameron argues that dedicating oneself to creativity leads to synchronicity, which she equates with answered prayers. However, answered prayers can be scary; they may require that we follow up on our creative urges. Editing dissertations and raising three children, I still find a little time to do workbook and journal exercises in The Artist’s Way and so I begin to imagine what creative path my life could take. One of my clients tells me that I need to meet his management professor – that the guy is a guru. Then I get a phone call from another management professor asking me to edit some journal articles. I tell this professor that I am thinking about going into management, and the next thing I know I am talking to the graduate coordinator, who offers me a position and a thousand dollars a month.

Synchronicity has two qualities or direction of interpretation: outward and inward. The outward direction is better known as serendipity, discussed by McCall and Bobko (1990) in Volume I of Dunnette and Hough’s (1990) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: the making of fortunate discoveries by accident. Serendipity, or ‘‘happy accidents’’ led to such diverse creations as penicillin, electro-magnetism, and medications for diabetes (McCall and Bobko, 1990; Goswami, 1999). However, serendipity is related to synchronicity through more than just its accidental character, more than the intrusion of an empirical ‘‘outer’’ event onto another, such as the landing of the penicillin mold onto a petri dish in Fleming’s laboratory while he was on vacation. Like synchronicity, serendipity involves the mind, through ‘‘sagacity’’ or preparedness of mind (McCall and Bobko, 1990): a prepared mind ‘‘has a kind of openness, holding its ideas lightly, and willing to have them exposed to impurity and the unintended’’ (Hyde, 1998, p. 140). Synchronicity is the

meaningful and acausal coincidence of two events, one inner and one outer. Synchronicity: a Fleming’s ability to interpret the implications, the meaning of the presence of post-structuralist bacteria on all surfaces except the petri dish, did not cause the wind to blow guide bacteria in, nor vice-versa. It was the co-occurrence in proximal time of the two incidents that led to the discovery of penicillin. I’m in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua, and one of my friends invites me to join him on his trip to visit our friends who are in Honduras because they got evacuated from their northern Nicaragua sites when the fighting got too rough there. I tell him I’m not coming, but the next day I go anyway. We arrive in Tegucigalpa, wondering where our friends are. Hungry, we stop in a restaurant, and there are the friends. Also, the next morning we learn that a rebel attack in Nicaragua closed the borders just behind us.

The other aspect of synchronicity, in addition to its outer-oriented serendipity, is symbolic: the meaning of the event. Symbols bridge the inside to the outside and hold the key to creativity (Deri, 1984). The inner-directed dimension of synchronicity emphasizes the meaningfulness of the co-occurrence. What is in one’s mind is reflected in outer events, though neither causes the other. Synchronistic events take place in time, and have a different temporal ‘‘directionality’’ from ‘‘normal’’ occurrences. As causality refers from the past to the present, so synchronicity seems to refer from the present to the future. The experience of synchronicity is numinous: a ‘‘nod from the Gods’’ (Von Franz, 1992, p. 21) that we are on the right path. It is hopeful and deeply personal. In the above story of my exodus from Nicaragua, I had the strong sense that I was ‘‘meant to be’’ out of harm’s way. A common theme to synchronicity narratives is this sense of receiving support and guidance. For example, Jaworski (1996) made the commitment to quit his lucrative law practice and create a leadership institute: ‘‘Things began falling into place almost effortlessly – unforeseen incidents and meetings with the most remarkable people who were to provide crucial assistance to me’’ (p. 135). At such times it feels as if hidden hands are helping you, as if you are living the life that you ought to be ( Joseph Campbell, cited in Jaworski, 1996). Synchronicity has an effect without a cause. It is located in time, but it is discontinuous. Being alert to synchronicity means being open to paradox. Rather than believing that the role of research is to eliminate paradox in order to assure control, Handy (1994, p. 13) now sees paradox as inevitable and perfection as ‘‘neither possible nor, perhaps, desirable’’ (p. 13). Similarly, Wolf (1989, p. 205), in Taking the Quantum Leap, claims that ‘‘the world is already paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain’’. Also paradoxical is the meaningful link between the inner and outer world. Usually, person (or organization) and environment are assumed to be distinct. Synchronicity feels like a unity between them. The boundary areas between two distinct categories are often ‘‘ambiguous in implication and a source of conflict and anxiety’’ (Leach, 1976, p. 34). The paradoxical structure of the world as suggested by synchronicity can be imagined as two circles, each containing exclusive contents, such as my thoughts and the world (see Figure 1).

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When one experiences a synchronistic event, it is as if the normal categories that make up ‘‘reality’’ are challenged. Synchronicity is, therefore, not only acausal but also post-structural; it is the meaningful experience of the deconstruction of the essentialism of the categories of inner and outer. In this way, the previously firm categories become blurry, ambiguous, even threatened. And given the fundamental assumptions about ‘‘in-ness’’ and ‘‘outness’’ in our culture, challenging those categories is a destabilizing maneuver to other cultural categories as well. Taking coincidence seriously is a way of altering, of creative changing, of the world: Cultural categories shape this world, and whoever manages to change the categories thus changes the shape. One kind of creative perception is always willing to take coincidence seriously and weave it into the design of things (Hyde, 1998, p. 99).

Synchronicity, then, is located in the ambiguous boundary zone, and is therefore sacred, taboo, or both (Leach, 1976). This feeling of the presence of the sacred is a powerful emotion, and thus an important aid to the solving of impossible dilemmas, because emotionality draws energy away from established rational patterns and allows creative contents from the unconscious realm to seep into awareness ( Jung, 1955). Setting paradoxical goals, such as the union of opposites or the resolution of opposing forces, has ‘‘an emotional effect right from the start, since [such goals] postulate something unknowable as being potentially knowable and in that way take the possibility of a miracle seriously into account’’ ( Jung, 1955, p. 35). Creativity is paradoxical, and therefore often sacred or taboo; many aspects of creativity challenge either/or thinking. Origin stories are located in sacred myths worldwide. ‘‘The Creator’’ means the divine, eternal being or phenomena. In Newtonian science, in which for every effect there had to be a known cause (and vice-versa), the ‘hand of God’ had set the machine in motion eons ago, and no one could stop it’’ (Wolf, 1989, p. 44); therefore, it was off-limits for scientists to question the deterministic assumption. Doing so would challenge the sacred limits within which all phenomena exist. I was introduced to the overlapping circles in a critical theory class. The teacher explained how the area of overlap was, according to Leach, either sacred or taboo, and he gave examples of the culturally taboo mixing of categories – racial, sexual, class. I wondered what an example of the sacred would be. Within a few days, I found an answer to my question in a book I’d inherited from my dad, entitled Owning Your Own Shadow. In it, Johnson (1991) explained that in addition to the mandala, a sacred circle figure, there is a spiritual tradition of

Figure 1. Discrete categories: inner (my thoughts) and outer (the world)

the mandorla, an almond shaped segment at the intersection of two circles: ‘‘Generally, the mandorla is described as the overlap of heaven and earth’’ ( Johnson, 1991, p. 99).

Change is a sacred event; it creates a new kind of self (see Figure 2). Q2: how are synchronicity and creativity related? May (1959, p. 3) defines creativity as ‘‘the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world’’ and ‘‘the process of bringing something new into being’’ (p. 37), and does not restrict creativity to artists, but includes scientists, thinkers, and ‘‘captains of modern technology’’ (p. 38) among those who create. It ‘‘entails a holistic involvement in a process that is highly complex, deeply meaningful to the person, usually prolonged, and demanding’’ (Policastro and Gardner, 1999, p. 214). Woodman et al. (1993) define creativity for individuals and organizations as ‘‘doing something for the first time anywhere or creating new knowledge’’ (p. 293). Most definitions of creativity have the components of being novel and useful, and often involve the synthesis or merging of previously separate concepts (Ward et al., 1999). The usefulness implies a continuity, a fit of some kind, with the surrounding domain. ‘‘Creativity occurs when a person makes a change in a domain, a change that will be transmitted through time’’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999, p. 315). Creativity is not only part of ‘‘outer’’ domains, such as the arts or sciences or industry; it is also at play in the ‘‘inner’’ dimensions. Creativity plays various roles in thought and speech formation (Ward et al., 1999), and in stories (Murphy, 1997). Creativity, like synchronicity, is both/and. Both formal art and everyday efforts (such as home improvement projects on a tiny budget, publicity campaigns, and/or nurturing a child) ‘‘include glimmers of pleasure, progress, and achievement along the way, as well as a sense of fitness, elegance, or beauty’’ (Richards, 1999, p. 202). Creativity, like synchronicity, is surprising, dependent on chance. Only in the accidental convergence of two previously unrelated phenomena can true novelty emerge: ‘‘absolute chance produces absolute newness’’ (Hyde, 1998, p. 120). Further, combining cunning and skill yields ‘‘smart luck,’’ the combining of inner and outer events. Synchronicity and creativity both require humility, an acknowledgment that the world is ‘‘always larger and more complicated than our cosmologies’’ (Hyde, 1998, p. 140), and both flourish with and support a sense of humor. Mental and emotional levity, an appreciation for the tragicomedic, open-mindedness and a playful disposition, all of these support the paradoxes of synchronicity and

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Figure 2. Problematic constructs

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creativity. Synchronicity and creativity are artistic; the artist is expressive of and impressionable by (Neumann, 1989) a sense of the deep connectedness of our human existence with the totality of the world. This is akin to love (Collins and Amabile, 1999, p. 297) and to the experience of relationship (Neumann, 1989). While involved in the creative process, the creator experiences a deep involvement with, or absorption into, the world (May, 1959). Creativity, as is synchronicity, is holistic, complex, deeply meaningful, and intensely involving (Policastro and Gardner, 1999). Both are hopeful; without hope what would be the point of investing the necessary time and energy to bring forth a creation to completion (Deri, 1984). Both synchronicity and creativity require preparation and surrender: for example, a jazz musician needs to have ‘‘prior knowledge, performance traditions, and music theory,’’ in order to spontaneously improvise (Hatch, 1997, p. 185). ‘‘Creative achievement is always at once individual and anonymous; it involves a high degree of alertness and the capacity to be overwhelmed’’ (Neumann, 1989, p. 115). Creation requires destruction (Hyde, 1998): it builds on familiar phenomena (Weisberg, 1999), but it also negates what was known and familiar, and makes its appearance as something unfamiliar (Hausman, 1984). The creative individual needs to have the knowledge, skills, and abilities that come with time sensitive training and experience, but also benefits from the playful open-mindedness of a child (Amabile, 1983, cited in Policastro and Gardner, 1999). Creativity is empirical, and it is symbolic (Deri, 1984). Creativity gives birth to something from something, where previously there was nothing (May, 1959). To finish this suggestive list of the paradox of creativity, let me propose that a key paradox is the embodiment of the a historical, by this I mean the abstract and timeless, into time. A finite bit of mind/body stuff (such as paint and canvas, ink on paper, movement on a stage, color on a billboard, flowchart on a diagram, etc.) points to something beyond itself – to the timeless. Both synchronicity and creativity indicate a union of the timeless with the empirical stuff of life; both hint at the presence of eternity in a single moment. I want to study synchronicity and so I go to the library looking for a measure for the meaningfulness. I read mention of one, but I can’t find it. On a whim, I decide to look up a certain citation, and finding it, I flip back to the previous article, which has the measure I’m looking for. I later heard this kind of synchronicity is called the Library Angel.

An important aspect of it is the role of the body, of embodiment, in the generative process. The metaphor of ‘‘birth’’ proposed by May (1959) is not simply abstract – it reflects the fundamental relationship of matter – from the Latin mater for ‘‘mother’’ to the creative process. If our minds and our emotions are involved, and if creativity, like synchronicity, is a paradoxical, boundarycrossing process, then it is likely that the body, mind, and emotions interact in creativity. Not only physiological arousal of heartbeat and breath (May, 1959), an indicator of a creative life is the subjective experience of ‘‘feeling at home in one’s skin,’’ as well as in the world (Deri, 1984, p. 4). Hyde (1998) refers to the central role of ‘‘appetite’’ in creativity: it is our physical impulses and instincts

that lead us into unpredictable situations, and to opportunities for creativity. Synchronicity: a Sandford (1977) explains that the dog, which is largely guided by senses and post-structuralist instincts, can be a useful symbol for our own infra-rational urges that come guide from the body’s intelligence. I am studying in a carrel on the second floor of the library. I never study there. On impulse, I stand up. Wondering whether I’m thirsty, I walk toward and then past the water fountain, and on into the stacks. There I find a friend I’ve been wondering about, since I knew she’d moved and I didn’t have her new phone number.

Or, a more dramatic story of body wisdom: Just at dismissal time, hail and blustery winds blow in. The two younger boys run in from their carpool ride. We need to go pick up the oldest from a friend’s house. But first I need to lie down for a very little while. Pretty soon, I jump up, hurry Luke and Will into the car, and drive down the street. Just a few hundred yards away, I see an emergency vehicle driving slowly in the opposite direction, and I see the two guys in there looking at me weird. Then I see leaves and limbs on the road. ‘‘Looks like a tornado came through here’’ I joke to myself. Less than a mile further, just as we are pulling into our friends’ driveway, the tornado sirens go off. There was a tornado that crossed that road just before we got there, and we got to the neighbors and joined our oldest son just before we’d have been required to take cover.

Q3: how can management benefit from synchronicity? Synchronicity, trickster-like, crosses boundaries, as does the innovation process (Kanter, cited in Williams and Yang, 1999). It equally acknowledges and unites differences: ‘‘The greater the intensity of the opposition, the richer the possibilities of the enframed range of meaning’’ (Hausman, 1984, p. 109). Consider the following examples of paradoxical combinations, innovative products and processes, from the management literature: knowledge navigator, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, controlled chaos (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995); planning as learning, leader as steward (Senge, 1990); Honda’s theory of automobile evolution, and Matsushita’s human electronics (Nonaka, 1991); external leadership of self-managed teams (Manz and Sims, 1987); even organizational learning (Weick and Westley, 1996). In this way, looking at something as if it is what it is not can lead to insight, or at least can prepare the mind to be ready for the accidents that intrude on the ways that things are. Some suggestions for playing with paradox would be to not only define what something is, but also to be clear about what something is not, and then to take steps to encourage both. That is, if you want self-managed teams, externally manage them (Manz and Sims, 1987). If you want income, be philanthropic. If you want material goods, encourage a spiritual orientation; if you want spirituality, appreciate the material world. A second implication for management that comes from synchronicity is the value of narrative. Voice and participation include an appreciation for the stories that individuals can bring. To story our lives with an emphasis on the synchronistic events in them is to open those lives to the power of the self, the archetype beyond paradox. Reflecting on one’s own story is an act of creation: ‘‘In the wide sense, each individual biography is the sum total of a person’s creative activities; it is his or her personal ‘work of art’’’ (Deri, 1984, p. 4). The

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‘‘meaning’’ that organizational change managers look for may be found in the lives, in the unexpected coincidences, of organizational members. In a workplace setting, meaningfulness is not only motivational (Hackman and Oldham, 1975) but also central to interpretation and strategy. Creative adaptations to the environment may be cued by synchronistic events. What we observe is largely guided by what we look for (Cameron, 1992; Wolf, 1989). Inviting synchronicity stories encourages a sense of support and thus of hope, a necessary ingredient for the investment of time and energy into creativity (Deri, 1984). Telling our stories, especially those where we relay our chance or accidental experiences, may challenge the ‘‘powers that be’’ if there is preference for control. However, paradoxically, true control may rely on the admission of alternative points of view. As Johnson (1991, p. 115) suggests, ‘‘If one has a statement to make, it is good to invite another statement – [generally one from the opposing point of view] – and thus make a mandorla that is greater than either point of view alone’’. Similarly, management change agents reconsider their role, shifting from attempts to factor out chance occurrences to the encouragement of ‘‘unexpected and presumably unrelated effects’’ (McCall and Bobko, 1990, p. 385). Crawford (1964, pp. 39, 88) observed that ‘‘great fortunes are made in the financial world by seeing significance’’; ‘‘thousands of discoveries might be made if people would take the trouble to sense what is going on before them’’. I would be remiss if I did not mention the dangers of the misuse of synchronicity. Overreliance on chance risks fatalism, and the sense of being supported, if overdone, can lead to self-aggrandizement or hubris. A belief in the theoretical holism of totality risks totalitarianism. Even synchronicity is subject to the principle of paradox; it both is and is not. This paper takes the hopeful stance that playing with the possibility of synchronicity, by inviting stories about meaningful coincidences, organizations can support creativity, including creative management of change and creative changing of management. When, in fields as diverse as physics and the biological sciences, it finds hints that the existence of a true chance is more and more likely, although it is veiled behind the appearances that are the only things to which we have access, science asks us to take this perspective into account . . . It is for me to choose whether I can live with it in stoicism, in despair, or in joy, knowing that no power in the world can dictate this choice. To those who choose joy, however, science offers this important comfort: that insofar as chance has an intrinsic creative power, their choice perhaps not only is dictated by instinct or the principle of pleasure but corresponds to a coherent vision of the world (Lestienne, 1998, p. 161).

To gain the greatest benefit of the prepared mind it is, paradoxically perhaps, important to honor the body. Spacious, safe, comfortable environments, containing resources with which to play and to interact with one another and with the world, are likely to be conducive to creativity and to happy coincidences. Synchronicity, by definition, is a meaningful coincidence, so creating an environment that supports the body can increase the meaningfulness of work. Freedom to explore or to rest, support for following

one’s physical instincts, opportunities for recreation, all can facilitate Synchronicity: a synchronicity and creativity. Synchronistic ‘‘gifts’’ occur ‘‘when we ourselves post-structuralist are at or near boundaries or are experiencing transition states’’ (Combs and guide Holland, 1996, p. 84). Such transition states can occur during meditation; perhaps having places for employees to rest or to meditate can increase synchronicity and creativity. Other boundary-crossing activities include 499 ‘‘traveling, especially by public transportation,’’ which increases the opportunities for chance encounters with others, or with books or articles, etc. (Combs and Holland, 1996). It may be useful to have organizational members move about freely, to conferences or even to public spaces such as libraries or museums. Major life transitions are often the occasion for synchronistic events (Combs and Holland, 1996; Hopcke, 1997); there may be a way to honor personal passages, such as midlife or widowhood or becoming a parent or grandparent. Rituals, too, can enact passages and so can create an environment where synchronicity and creativity are supported. In conclusion, this paper explored the creative implications of noticing and narrating experiences that challenge the traditional notions of meaning. Acausal, meaningful coincidences have the potential to transform accepted boundaries between what is and what is not, and therefore to guide the passage of changing from one state to the other. Bridging the boundary between inner self (including at the organizational level) and outer world (the environment) allows for creative, meaningful changes in products and processes. Paradox and accidents, while inevitably fraught with tension and uncertainty, can be approached with joy and acceptance. In this way, it is proposed, organizations and individuals can learn from one another and from the environment how to consciously co-create our world. References Bolen, J.S. (1979), The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self, Harper and Collins, New York, NY. Cameron, J. (1992), The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Jeremy P. Tarcher, New York, NY. Colllins, M.A. and Amabile, T.M. (1999), ‘‘Motivation and creativity’’, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.) Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 297-312. Combs, A. and Holland, M. (1996), Synchronicity: Science, Myth, and the Trickster, Marlowe & Company, New York, NY. Crawford, R.P. (1964), Direct Creativity with Attribute Listing, Fraser Publishing Company, Wells, VT. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999), ‘‘Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 313-35. Deri, S.K. (1984), Symbolization and Creativity, International Universities Press, New York, NY. Fry, L. (1982), ‘‘Technology-structure research: three critical issues’’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 532-52. Goswami, A.G. (1999), Quantum Creativity: Waking up to Our Creative Potential, Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ.

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Hackman, R. and Oldham, G.R. (1975), ‘‘The job diagnostic survey’’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 60, pp. 159-70. Handy, C. (1994), The Age of Paradox, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Hatch, M.J. (1997), ‘‘Jazzing up the theory of organizational improvisation’’, Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 14, pp. 181-91. Hausman, C. (1984), A Discourse on Novelty and Creation, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Hill, R.C. and Levenhagen, M. (1995), ‘‘Metaphors and mental models: sensemaking and sensegiving in innovative and entrepreneurial activities’’, Journal of Management, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 1057-74. Hopcke, R. (1997), There Are no Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives, Riverhead Books, New York, NY. Hrebiniak, W.G. and Joyce, W.F. (1985), ‘‘Organizational adaptation: strategic choice and environmental determinism’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 30, pp. 334-91. Hyde, L. (1998), Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, Farrar, Straus and Girous, New York, NY. Jackson, S. and Dutton, J.E. (1988), ‘‘Discerning threats and opportunities’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 33, pp. 370-87. Jaworski, J. (1996), Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA. Johnson, R.A. (1991, 1993), Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, Harper Collins, New York, NY. Jung, C.G. (1955), ‘‘Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle’’, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, Pantheon Books, New York, NY. Leach, E. (1976), Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lestienne, R. (1998), The Creative Power of Chance, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. McCall, M.W. and Bobko, P. (1990), ‘‘Research methods in the service of discovery’’, in Dunette, M.D. and Hough, L.M. (Eds), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 381-418. Manz, C. and Sims, H. (1987), ‘‘Leading workers to lead themselves: the external leadership of self-managing work teams’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, pp. 106-28. May, R. (1959), The Nature of Creativity, Harper & Brothers, New York, NY. Milliken, F.J. (1987), ‘‘Three types of perceived uncertainty about the environment: state, effect, and response uncertainty’’, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 133-43. Murphy, G.L. (1997), ‘‘Polysemy and the creation of novel word meanings’’, in Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M. and Vaid, J. (Eds), Creative Thought: An Investigation of Conceptual Structures and Processes, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 235-66. Neumann, E. (1989), The Place of Creation: Six Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Nightengale, D. and Toulouse, J. (1977), ‘‘Toward a multilevel congruence theory of organization’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 22, pp. 264-80. Nonaka, I. (1991), ‘‘The knowledge-creating company’’, Harvard Business Review, NovemberDecember, pp. 96-104. Policastro, E. and Gardner, H. (1999), ‘‘From case studies to robust generalizations: an approach to the study of creativity’’, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 213-25.

Richards, R. (1999), ‘‘The subtle attraction: beauty as a force in awareness, creativity, and survival’’, Affect, Creative Experience, and Psychological Adjustment, S.W. Russ, Brunner/ Mazel, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 195-220. Sanford, J.A. (1977), Healing and Wholeness, Paulist Press, New York, NY. Sawyer, J.E. (1990), ‘‘Effects of risk and ambiguity on judgments of contingency relations and behavioral resource allocation decisions’’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 45, pp. 85-110. Senge, P.M. (1990), ‘‘The leader’s new work: building learning organizations’’, Sloan Management Review, Fall, pp. 7-23. Thompson, J. (1977), Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Van de Ven, A.H. and Drazin, R. (1985), ‘‘The concept of fit in contingency theory’’, Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 7, pp. 333-65. von Franz, M.L. (1992), Psyche and Matter, Shambala, Boston, MA. Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M. and Finke, R.A. (1999), ‘‘Creative cognition’’, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Weick, K.E. and Westley, F. (1996), ‘‘Organizational learning: affirming an oxymoron’’, in Clegg, S., Hardy, C. and Nord, W.R. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 440-58. Weisberg, R.W. (1999), ‘‘Creativity and knowledge: a challenge to theories’’, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 226-50. Williams, W.M. and Yang, L.T. (1999), ‘‘Organizational creativity’’, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 373-91. Wolf, F.A. (1989), Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E. and Griffin, Ri.W. (1993), ‘‘Toward a theory of organizational creativity’’, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 293-321.

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Carol M. Jessup

University of Illinois at Springfield, Springfield, Illinois, USA Received February 2002 Revised March 2002 Keywords Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs type indicator, Individual behaviour, Accepted April 2002 Organizational change Abstract This paper applies concepts from the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) to the context of organizational change. A brief history and explanation of type theory and the MBTI is provided. Psychological type is measured using four bipolar scales, each dealing with individual preferences (extroversion-introversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judgement-perception). A total of 16 possible type combinations are derived from the results; subsequent arrangement of the type combinations within standard type tables facilitates recognition of patterns. Knowledge related to the four mental functions is specifically linked to organizational change issues, including implications related to both the dominant and inferior functions, and a recommended problem-solving model. Opposite preferences are highlighted as ‘‘gifts differing’’ for their relevance to communication, conflict management, and teambuilding issues. Finally, type concepts are integrated with topics related to organizational change interventions.

Introduction This paper discusses Jung’s theory of psychological type, which deals with opposite personality preferences, that was further refined by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers. The overriding insight that knowledge of psychological type yields in a context of organizational change is inherent in recognition of the preferences as ‘‘gifts differing’’. The opposite preferences both inhibit and enable organizational change processes. A description of the eight preferences is provided, with a special focus on the role of the four mental functions, emphasizing applications of the dominant and inferior functions. Relevant type concepts are linked to various change issues, teambuilding initiatives, and interventions.

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 502-511. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440405

History of MBTI In the early years of the twentieth century, Katharine Briggs undertook the development of a typology instrument that furthered Jung’s theoretical formulation of psychological types. This work originated because of her desire to understand the young man that her only daughter, Isabel, had brought home from college who was unlike anyone in her family. During the 1940s, Katharine’s work was continued by her daughter, largely because Isabel desired to make sense of the conflict of the Second World War. Isabel desired a means for people to understand rather than destroy one another. Jung developed his typology to find ‘‘some kind of order among the chaotic multiplicity of points of view’’ ( Jung, 1971, xiv). In a letter he wrote in 1960 he acknowledged his disinterest in the classification of individuals:

I was always mostly concerned with individuals needing explanation of themselves and knowledge of their fellow beings. My entirely empirical concepts were meant to form a sort of language by which such explanations could be communicated (McCaulley, 1998, p. 18).

The work of the mother-daughter team in implementing Jung’s psychological type yielded the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). It is a tool with intent not to stereotype, but to allow understanding of individual preferences to facilitate all aspects of life: differences in learning and communication styles, conflict management, and relationships. Annually three million people in the world take this instrument, using one of its copyrighted versions, available in self-scored or computer formats. While the language shorthand associated with the instrument appears to put people in boxes, the shorthand merely facilitates the kinds of communication Jung acknowledged as important in the above quote. The preferences of the indicator refer to mental processes of human beings. The indicator is intended for mentally healthy adults without pathological symptoms. Value judgements and type biases are inappropriate as none of the eight preferences is perceived as superior to another. Isabel stressed this with continued reference to the preferences as ‘‘gifts’’ and the choice of her book title Gifts Differing, which was taken from the words from the book Romans, Chapter 12, verses 4-8: For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body . . . and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing. . .(Myers and Myers, 1980, p. v).

Theoretical background of psychological type The MBTI differs from typical trait approaches to personality that measure variation or strength of traits along a continuum. The MBTI test construction focuses instead on sorting respondents into one or the other of the four theoretical bipolar categories; measurement of the strength of preferences is subordinate to sorting into ‘‘true’’ type categories. It is common practice in the type community to refer to the polarities with a single letter; the letters in standard use are not necessarily the first letter of the polar name. The first dichotomy, extroversion-introversion, pertains to focus of attention, reflecting fundamental attitudes toward internal and external aspects of the world. In extroversion (E), individuals obtain energy from the outer environment; conversely introverts (I) gather energy from their inner world of ideas. The second dichotomy (sensing and intuition) deals with methods of perception or acquisition of information. The sensing (S) process relies on facts obtained from the five senses; intuition (N) is defined as perception beyond the immediate sensory inputs, and instead having a tendency to grasp patterns of a bigger picture. The third dichotomy relates to the judgement process or decision making, with polar opposites of thinking and feeling. Thinking (T) is a method of deciding that uses logic to determine consequences, while feeling (F)

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Table I. A type table showing the customary placement of the 16 MBTI types

decisions are made on the basis of values; feeling as defined within the type community does not mean emotions. Jung’s work originally posited only the preceding six personality traits. Isabel modified Jung’s theory to include a final dichotomy that clarified some prior ambiguity related to interactions among preferences in the mental functions. The final scale ( judgement and perception) pertains to an attitude or orientation for dealing with the external world and involves two previous scales. The attitude of judgement ( J) relates to the decision making scale of either thinking or feeling. Individuals with a J propensity prefer to live in a planned, organized fashion; for such individuals, decisions are relatively easy to make. The perception process refers back to the second scale of acquiring information (either sensing or intuition). A preference for perception (P) involves a tendency to seek information, rather than control or act on the information. This individual may be more likely to postpone decisions. By definition, an individual tends to prefer one pole for each of the four dimensions to the other pole, and the intent is to sort individuals into types, rather than to measure traits. Jung and Myers believed that type does not change, although the self-report of it might change, as individuals focus on developing different mental processes at various stages in life. Preferences are viewed as inborn, but one’s environment at any point throughout life can change, supporting or negating one’s preference. The four preferences combine and interact to yield 16 possible combinations of type, each denoted by the preferred letter of each dichotomy. Acknowledging the difficulty of remembering 16 types, Isabel Myers developed a ‘‘type table’’ device to view types in relation to one another (see Table I). The table format is a four-by-four matrix of 16 cells; this standard framework is the preferred method of reproducing sample results for groups. One advantage of a type table is that the arrangement enables viewers to observe predefined patterns. For example, the rows of the type table enable ‘‘decisive’’ ( J) introverts and extroverts on the top and bottom rows to be easily distinguished from ‘‘adaptable’’ (P) introverts and extroverts in the middle rows (Myers and McCaulley, 1985). Another interesting pattern is the assemblage of preferences of the four TJ types (the four corners of Table I) and the FP types (the center four cells of Table I) yields instant recognition and implications of the different groups. Juxtapose the ‘‘tough minded executives’’ (TJ) so typically found in business next to ‘‘gentle types’’ (FP) who seek harmony (Myers and McCaulley, 1985). For team initiatives, this contrast suggests these types should purposely be blended in order to create a strong team. The four quadrants of the type table distinguish the innovators (thoughtful – IN and ISTJ ISTP ESTP ESTJ

ISFJ ISFP ESFP ESFJ

INFJ INFP ENFP ENFJ

INTJ INTP ENTP ENTJ

action-oriented – EN) from the realists (thoughtful – IS and action-oriented – ES). Identification of patterns using a type table is beneficial for observing group interactions. Temperament is a personality typing structure that yields a psychological type similar to the MBTI, but is only indirectly related to Jung’s work (Keirsey, 1998). The four temperament patterns are easily recognized groupings on a type table, which allows researchers and trainers to draw insights from the separate stream of temperament literature. Type theory is so rich with insights that using just parts of the total type results can be a beneficial lens for an organization. The actual four-letter type (example ENTP) is most useful to the individual for the self-knowledge that it can provide. Research over the years has yielded strong evidence that individuals often self-select into certain occupations that correspond with their psychological type. Self-selection is observable in sample distributions when larger than typical percentages are present in a given cell within the matrix, as specified earlier with the dominance of TJ types in business settings. However, type is not deterministic and has no implications for competence or capabilities in a chosen career path, but is useful instead to examine career interest tendencies. It is considered unethical to use MBTI results for hiring an employee or considering an employee for a promotion. For individuals already within established careers, type has job design implications. Individuals with increased awareness of their preferences may choose to restructure schedules, tasks, methods of communication, and work interactions in meaningful ways. For example, if an introverted individual has an upcoming speech before a large audience, the individual knows in advance the energy this will take and can plan accordingly. Relating the four mental functions to organizational change The term ‘‘function’’ is used to describe two of the bipolar scales of the MBTI. One scale relates to perception and information gathering (sensing and intuition); the other scale pertains to the subsequent judging process of coming to conclusion (thinking and feeling). Knowledge of the four functions, a small part of the results provided by the MBTI, yields several applications in integrating type with organizational change. One of the four functions is dominant within an individual profile, revealing the individual’s favored process; the dominant function leads and the second preferred function (known as the auxiliary) helps out. Individuals enjoy using their dominant function, becoming experienced and developed in its use. Because of the polarity inherent in each dichotomy and the need for balance, the ‘‘helping’’ auxiliary is always formed in the dichotomy that the dominant is not in. For example, if the dominant process is a judging one (i.e. T or F), the auxiliary will be perceptive (i.e. S or N), as either sensing or intuition can supply sound material for judgement. If the dominant process is perceiving, the judging functions of thinking or feeling ‘‘give continuity of aim’’ (Myers, 1980, p. 13). Consequently, the dominant and auxiliary functions allow perception and judgement to complement one

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another. Although Jung specified the role of the auxiliary, he showed the dominant and auxiliary processes only, with a sharp emphasis on extroverted and introverted forms, and he provided eight descriptions of theoretically pure types. Myers clarified that the dominant and auxiliary processes are used differently by introverts and extroverts, with the dominant function being used in the preferred world (for extroverts the preferred world is the outer, for introverts the preferred world is the inner). For extroverts, their dominant process is visible to the outside world; for introverts their dominant process is saved for the inner world. Accordingly, introverts are more likely underestimated in casual contact situations as they are exhibiting primarily their auxiliary function. Myers split each of Jung’s eight types into two, which yielded 16 types: instead of Jung’s introverted thinker, she proposed an introverted thinker with sensing and an introverted thinker with feeling. The auxiliary function provides the necessary balance enabling the individual to adapt to both inner and outer worlds. The two remaining functions are referred to as tertiary and inferior functions. Knowledge about the dominant mental functions has several relevant implications to change efforts. Ideally employees should be allowed to work from their point of strength, or dominant function. In addition, for change efforts relying on teams, composition of team membership should reflect a balance including all four dominant functions, if feasible. Finally, recognition of the special value of the intuitive function in times of change is merited; this is attributable to the intuitive individual’s strong preference for vision, orientation to the future, and imagination of endless possibilities. Dominant intuitive types are the individuals who are most likely to enjoy brainstorming sessions. A second application of knowledge of the mental function to organizational change issues relates to understanding the inferior function or shadow. Jung used the term shadow as an archetype that covered more than the inferior function, although he directly addressed the inferior function as the ‘‘Achilles’ heel of even the most heroic consciousness’’ ( Jung, 1959, p. 237). The inferior function is the least used and trusted of the functions; it is largely unconscious, and is triggered by fatigue, illness, stress, and alcohol or mind-altering drugs (Quenk, 1996). Each type has a different experience of stress: often stress is associated with lack of balance related to the overuse of the dominant preference (for example a dominant intuitive type so engrossed with possibilities to the detriment of handling their physical needs associated with their inferior sensing function). Because it is not developed, when the inferior function appears, it is typically very childish. It is reported to appear in important transitional periods in life, such as graduation or changes in marital status. With respect to issues relating to organizational change, the inferior is especially relevant as the inexperience and innocence associated with this function, if managed, can hold the key to innovative solutions to work or life problems, when all

the more orthodox solutions have failed (Quenk, 1993). An inferior function experience can generate appreciation for parts of the self previously taken for granted. The inferior function is attached to our less preferred attitude; i.e. for introverts, the inferior function is extroverted and vice versa. The inferior function is sometimes referred to as a blind spot for an individual; the individual is unconscious of being under its influence; now couple this blind spot with the activation of the less preferred attitude. While the experience of being ‘‘in the grip’’ of the inferior function is uncomfortable, it aids the psyche in achieving self-regulation; Jung saw it as a link to unconscious knowledge providing transformative capability (Quenk, 1996). People do not typically understand their own or others’ inferior function episodes, and the alarm associated with the strangeness can force reexamination of the self in an attempt to return to equilibrium. An ‘‘in the grip’’ episode ranges from minutes to weeks, but when it has run its course, a process of self-regulation utilizes the other functions in attempting to reachieve balance. The tertiary function is activated first, and increased energy is provided to the auxiliary function which helps as a bridge to link back to the more centered dominant function (Quenk, 1993, p. 59). As individuals mature and learn from such powerful experiences, they are more likely in daily life to strive for balance of all the functions. A final integration of the knowledge of mental functions and organizational change relates to the zigzag model originally developed in conjunction with type in educational settings (Lawrence, 1982), that was subsequently adapted to use for general problem solving issues (see Figure 1). The zigzag model uses the four functions, with each bipolar pair arranged in the framework of the letter Z. The information gathering pair (sensing and intuition) is arranged at the top extreme ends of the Z and judging process pair (thinking and feeling) at the bottom. Each person has a preference for two of these functions, which are used when solving problems or making decisions. The idea is that rather than being limited to only two functions, a focused zigzag process along the Z will force thinking about the problem with a purposeful balance. Each of the functions adds beneficial elements to problem solving. Sensing is about fact gathering, intuition allows the brainstorming of possibilities, thinking weighs the pros and cons, while feeling looks at the impact on individuals involved. Without awareness of the purposeful zigzag, individuals may identify and cope with a problem using only their dominant and auxiliary function. Organizations in the midst of change are advised to instruct members to attempt to use this model consciously to ensure that representation of the four functions is encouraged, not silenced.

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Figure 1. The zig-zag model

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Implications of opposites for organizational change Jung offered his explanation of psychological type primarily for the selfdevelopment of individuals. Isabel Myers is said to have ‘‘democratized psychological type’’ by making Jung’s work understandable and accessible in the aim of achieving ‘‘constructive use of differences’’ (Myers, 2001). One area that type knowledge can aid in organizations undergoing change is related to individuals’ increased needs for communication. Differences inherent in opposite preferences yield insight that all types do not desire communication of a uniform sort. Extroverts, for example, typically prefer to listen and talk about forthcoming changes while introverts prefer written communications that can be studied in privacy. Thinking types prefer logical analysis, while feeling types desire information about the impact on people. Sensing types want the facts and tend to relate to past practicalities; intuitives desire an emphasis on future vision. Judging types have little room for flexibility and desire closure, while perceiving types prefer communication before any final decisions are made Isabel’s understanding of the use of opposites in managing conflict was expressed in her writing: ‘‘When good will is in short supply, the conflict of opposites can be serious’’ (Myers and Myers, 1980, p. 217). Her continued discussion of acknowledging differences by using an analogy of two characters, Smith and Jones, remains appropriate in today’s time of organizational change. ‘‘Disagreement suddenly becomes less irritating when Smith recognizes that it would hardly be normal for Jones to agree . . . Smith needs to keep one hard fact in mind. Jones is not merely weak where Smith is strong: Jones is also strong where Smith is weak’’ (Myers and Myers, 1980, p. 217). This case exhibits her theme of the ‘‘constructive use of differences’’. The following example of tension arising from opposite preferences in organizations pertains to the judging and perceiving preferences. Judging types are seen by perceiving types as rushing too quickly to conclude a decision involving changes within an organization, even before the information has been fully gathered, analyzed, and discussed. In turn, perceiving types are often a source of frustration for judging types during meetings, as judging types resent bringing up issues for further discussion that they had assumed were closed matters. These opposites can benefit from a reminder of Myers’ lesson of Smith and Jones. Type research indicates an educated guess can be made about those individuals who will embrace or be most resistant to change. One lens of type patterns is the four temperaments, which have been identified over 25 centuries: guardians (SJ), idealists (NF), artisans (SP), and rationals (NT) (Keirsey, 1998). Temperament theory, measured with a different instrument, builds on theory that recognizes these four patterns; temperament also yields 16 types labeled in the same manner as the MBTI. The temperament that usually resists change is the guardian. Guardians are loyal individuals to organizations, with a strong desire to preserve the status quo. Guardians will work within change processes, but prefer a structured approach. Each

temperament brings a strength to the change process in the workplace: NF – with promoting and training individuals, NT – with designing and planning, SJ – with administering and servicing, and SP – with producing and performing (Berens, 2000). Temperament is not the only lens with which to view resistance to change, as any individual is likely to resist change, if not informed and included in the processes. A relevant insight from temperament theory pertains to the four core needs that underlie the 16 types. These needs include the following for each temperament: membership and belonging for guardians (SJ), meaning and significance for idealists (NF), freedom to act on impulse for artisans (SP), and competence and mastery for rationals (NT) (Berens, 2000). Individuals are energized and functioning when these core needs are met, and when the core needs are not met, it is like ‘‘psychological death’’ (Berens, 2000, p. 6). Unattended and unrecognized needs are a source of stress for individuals attempting to respond to changing situations; awareness is a first step toward understanding individuals of another temperament. To combat resistance to change, managers should consider the basic needs inherent in the members represented; type and temperament can lend insight in attempting to meet member needs, and eliminating unnecessary dysfunctional behavior. Type-related organizational change initiatives Years ago, a random survey of MBTI practitioners indicated the highest interest among 15 workshop topic areas in applying type concepts to the areas of management training/staff development and organizational development (Sample and Hoffman, 1986). These results indicate a natural extension of existing type knowledge into the area of organizational change as respondents noted their training had previously emphasized communication style, group dynamics and process, learning styles, and career choices. When asked what each preference needs during organizational change, over 2,000 participants of type workshops indicated their opinions. The responses indicate polarities such as ‘‘completion – get the change in place’’ ( J) compared to ‘‘an open-ended plan’’ (P) and ‘‘time to talk about what is going on’’ (E) compared to ‘‘time alone to reflect on what is going on’’ (I) (Kirby et al., 1998). Derived from this work is a useful checklist for leaders in organizations, with at least five categorized responses for each of the eight preferences. Not only has type knowledge been applied beyond Jung’s intended use for self-discovery to teams, the use of type in organizational development has yielded an instrument to assess an organization’s type in a similar way that the MBTI assesses the individual’s (Bridges, 1992). The personality of an organization is referred to as organizational character, and related interventions make extended use of type jargon and metaphors. Three contributions derived from an understanding of organizational character include understanding what specific help an organization needs to capitalize on and compensate for, looking for development insights in the organization’s

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particular point of the life cycle, and understanding the sources of resistance (Bridges, 1992). No discussion of change in organizations is complete without acknowledging the implications of planned and unplanned change. For unplanned change, the preceding discussion of type concepts relevant to resistance and stress management can be helpful. With planned change, interventions typically use parts of the action research model: preliminary diagnosis, data gathering, data feedback, data exploration, action planning, and action (French and Bell, 1990). One lesson is that individuals well-versed in type will be able to align within the action research process in a way that their strengths can be used. Examples include using the STJ preferences to keep a watch on the clock, relying on thinking types to analyze the data, and benefiting from feeling types’ adeptness at building trust in interviews of organizational members. The potential list is endless, with a corresponding flip side of possible type bias inherent in each part of the process (Huszczo, 1997). When working with a change agent, the agent and leaders are advised to be aware of type bias inherent in the leadership and agent, as well as the organization. Lewin’s force-field diagnostic model of dynamic balancing forces (French and Bell, 1990) working in opposite directions is an appropriate vehicle to summarize the ‘‘gifts differing’’ concepts. The opposites inherent in psychological type can be viewed as restraining and driving forces for change, depending on initial conditions of the situation. In change initiatives, linkage of organizational conditions and aforementioned type concepts is appropriate. Type concepts, seen as driving and restraining forces, include the dominant function, inferior function, opposing type preferences, expected resistors, organizational character, communication preferences, members’ awareness of type, and distribution of type within teams and throughout the organization. One prescription related to Jung’s legacy of psychological type for change managers in organizations includes two options in the quest for a balance of opposites. ‘‘For maximum effectiveness, all types must add to their natural endowment the appropriate use of the opposites, either by using them in other people or by developing a controlled use of them within themselves (Myers and Myers, 1980, p. 120). It is not too late for organizations to undertake either option; Isabel conceded after setting her work aside for years how type development does not proceed according to a timetable as she had previously thought. Instead she acknowledged an ongoing process of type development that ‘‘can be achieved at any age by anyone who cares to understand his or her own gifts and the appropriate use of those gifts’’ (Myers and Myers, 1980, p. 199). The title of her concluding chapter, ‘‘Going on from wherever you are’’ in Gifts Differing, while originally directed to individuals, has the following message appropriate for organizations in the face of unparalleled change: ‘‘. . . a clear understanding of the basics of type development will help them go on from there’’ (Myers and Myers, 1980, p. 199).

References and further reading Berens, L.V. (2000), Understanding Yourself and Others: An Introduction to Temperament, Telos Publications, Huntington Beach, CA. Bridges, W. (1992), The Character of Organizations: Using Jungian Type in Organizational Development, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA. French, W.L. and Bell, C.H. Jr (1990), Organizational Development: Behavioral Science Interventions for Organization Improvement, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Hammer, A.L. and Huszczo, G.E. (1996), ‘‘Teams’’, in Hammer, A.L. (Ed.), MBTI Applications: A Decade of Research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 81-103. Huszczo, G.E. (1997), ‘‘MBTI type preferences and approaches to OD’’, APT XII 1997 International Conference Proceedings, Boston, MA, 7-12 July 1997, Association for Psychological Type, Kansas City, MO, pp. 87-90. Jung, C.G. (1959), ‘‘The archetypes and the collective unconscious’’, in Hull, R.F.C. (translator), The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9i, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Jung, C.G. (1971), Psychological Types, 3rd Printing, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Keirsey, D. (1998), Please Understand Me II, Temperament, Character, Intelligence, Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, Del Mar, CA. Kirby, L.K., Barger, N.J. and Pearman, R.R. (1998), ‘‘Uses of type in organizations’’, in Myers, I.B. and McCaulley, M.H., Quenk, N.L. and Hammer, A.L. (Eds), Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 3rd ed., Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 325-65. Lawrence, G. (1982), People Types and Tiger Stripes: A Practical Guide to Learning Styles, Center for Applications of Psychological Type, Inc., Gainesville, FL. McCaulley, M.H. (1998), ‘‘Why did C.G. Jung create his typology?’’, Bulletin of Psychological Type, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 18-20. Myers, I.B. and McCaulley, M.H. (1985), Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA. Myers, I.B. and Myers, P.B. (1980), Gifts Differing, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA. Myers, K.D. (2001), ‘‘Isabel Myers, Carl Jung, and their vision for the family of man’’, Bulletin of Psychological Type, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 1-6. Quenk, N. (1993), Beside Ourselves: Our Hidden Personality in Everyday Life, Davies Black Publishing, Palo Alto, CA. Quenk, N. (1996), In the Grip: Our Hidden Personality, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA. Sample, J.A. and Hoffman, J.L. (1986), ‘‘The MBTI as a management and organizational development tool’’, Journal of Psychological Type, Vol. 11, pp. 47-50.

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David Starr-Glass Associate Professor in Management Studies, Touro College, Israel

Received September 2001 Revised October 2001 Keywords Corporate culture, Psychology, Myths, Narratives, Organizational change Accepted January 2002 Abstract While the literature has emphasized the literal and the narrative within organizations, this article will consider the visual and the imaginal. Organizations are known and experienced through images, and these images must be considered if organizational culture is to be understood or changed. We look at the imaginal inventory provided by classical mythology, with special reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and explore the potency and persistence of myth in imaginal terms and introduce the concept of the ‘‘voice of the shuttle’’, which imprints events within the metaphorical weave of the mythical narrative. This ‘‘voice’’, always present in organizations, leaves significant and revealing images on the cultural fabric. We try to understand these images through the experiences of an organizational participant and of students trying to make sense of their college culture. If metaphors as well as plots or myths could be archetypal, I would nominate Sophocles’ [phrase] ‘‘the voice of the shuttle’’ for that distinction (Hartman, 1970).

This paper developed out of a series of discussions with Y, a manager who had a long and successful career in an ivy-league university. Y, a US citizen, emmigrated to Israel two years ago and was hired by a software development company in Jerusalem. He soon found himself confronted by what at first seemed to be a severe and dysfunctional clash of culture. Initially, Y found it difficult to determine the exact cause of the conflict, but as time went by he concluded that his core problems stemmed from his micro-culture of the organization that he worked in, not from the culture of his new country. Troubled landscapes Y describes his work environment as constantly abrasive and potentially explosive. While senior management demands unwavering loyalty from employees, the employees recognize that this position is contrived and hollow: management is perceived as treacherous and is inconsistent in rewarding loyalty. Y feels unsupported by senior management, describing the CEO as having a leadership style that is aggressive and transactional. As with many larger Israeli corporations, the CEO is a former high-ranking military officer and Y has little confidence in the transferability of military skills to the Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 512-522. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440414

The author wishes to express his appreciation for the insightful and constructive suggestions made by the Editor, Professor Alexis Downs, and several anonymous reviewers. The final draft was written while the author was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Strathclyde (Scotland), and he wishes to thank his sponsor, Professor Susan Hart, for her gracious invitation and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for their financial support.

workplace. Y does not really regard himself as a soldier even although he refers The voice of the to his workday as ‘‘entering a war zone’’. shuttle When Y enters his workplace, he reports seeing a landscape that is dark and treacherous. He waits for the next skirmish. Research, production, and sales are falling behind target and there is a palpable anger in the air. There is also confusion, frustration, mistrust, and a sense of pain. According to the 513 organization team efforts are expected and favored but there is a high degree of cynicism, opportunism and suspicion. Y and many of his co-workers are looking for alternative employment. He characterizes his workplace as unpleasant and tense. He does not regard these as simply thoughts or observations about his workplace; they can more correctly be considered part of his experience of organizational reality. When we suggested the vocabulary and imagery of mythical transformations, Y thought that his work organization was similar to the myth of Arachne, the spider. He has a deep loathing for spiders: they frighten, repulse and unsettle him. Y reveals a surface image beneath which are multiple realities, meanings and ways of understanding. The spider is an image that Y has neither fully considered nor consciously created. By looking at the deeper stillness of the organization, in particular the deep stillness that is shared with all other participants, we believe that Y might come to see a richer and more complex series of images associated with and connected to his spontaneous surface image. These images are not simply personal fantasies. Instead, they represent a way of knowing the organization and of translating its cultural past and present. For Y and his colleagues, the reflection and consideration of these revealed images may provide a way of reconsidering the organizational environment and perhaps even a way of imagining organizational transformation. In this paper we explore some of the elements of an imaginal psychology from a perspective that considers reality, and experiences of reality, in terms of images – images that are essentially archetypal. We consider that these powerful images are preserved and perpetuated through a shared mythology. In attempting to consider such images we evoke a wider mythology – that of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – to demonstrate that the pictures held captive in these narratives have the power to shape the experience of the present. We suggest that change and transformation inevitably produce, metaphorically that is, images within the very fabric of the organization and that these images can be made accessible to participants through the shared culture and mythology of the workplace. In the final section, we look at images accessed and reported by an individual working in a troubled organization and look for imaginal indicators that might suggest organizational transmutations. Imagined events We experience the world through a perpetual flow of images and attempt to make sense of a world that apparently lies beyond them. When we sleep, many of the images that we have encountered and stored are recovered and

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represented in dreams. The ways in which we experience and reconstitute reality are bound up with the innumerable images that we encounter, retain and recall. From such a perspective, sensemaking can be regarded as fundamentally and crucially ‘‘imaginal’’ rather than verbal. Within the Jungian and post-Jungian psychological traditions, the images used to make sense of reality have often been understood as archetypal, being both elemental and recurring. Henry Corbin adopted the expression ‘‘imaginal psychology’’ and developed this concept convincingly through studies of Sufi mysticism (Corbin, 1998). Similarly, James Hillman (1997) argued that individuals endow archetypal images with personal value and significance, and by so doing they provide new insights and revisions of what may have been predominately understood as a literal and literalized reality. Imaginal psychology argues that a preoccupation with the literal has often reduced a ‘‘multiple ambiguity of meanings to one definition’’ (Hillman, 1975). Mythology has been characterized as a literalized reality: it is regarded primarily as narrative. Thus myth has been defined: A dramatic narrative of imagined events, usually used to explain origins or transformations of something. Also, an unquestioned belief about the practical benefits of certain techniques and behaviors that are not supported by facts (Trice and Beyer, 1984).

This definition contains several points of interest. First, the seemingly intuitively inclusion of the word ‘‘imagined’’ in the definition highlights that myth is the presentation of a sequence of images. Imagined events are not flimsy, idiosyncratic fabrications but rather the recollection and reconstruction of significant experiences with the world. Second, the cited definition points to the constant possibility that myth is susceptible to trivialization in a world that prefers logic, literalism, and a ‘‘factual’’ realism (Casey, 1976). From such a worldview, myth lacks substance and objective verification, and therefore lacks legitimacy. However, from a perspective that sees reality as a negotiated construction, myth is not susceptible to a ‘‘questioning belief’’ any more than it requires the ‘‘support of facts’’. Just as it has been asserted that ‘‘imagination is reality’’ (Avens, 1991), so we suggest that myth is equally real. Seen in this way, myths persist and exert their potency precisely because they operate at otherthan-logical and other-than-literal levels. In order to explore these levels of meaning, we will next examine the mythological world of Ovid and develop a tentative theory of myth. A picture held us captive In his Metamorphoses, Ovid set out to construct a universal history of change and transformation, starting with the creation of the universe and stretching to the edge of his own contemporary world. His transformations represent changes that are initiated by the gods, changes that often seem as whimsical and capricious as they do extraordinary. For example, consider the mulberry tree that grows in the garden in front of my office. This tree can be described in

physical, aesthetic, and botanical terms; however, Ovid’s mythology provides The voice of the an alternative way of understanding it. shuttle Pyramus and Thisbe (Ovid, Book IV) are engaged in a love affair that is doomed from the outset. Despite parental censure, they arrange an assignation behind a mausoleum, not perhaps the most propitious place for such a meeting. Pyramus is late, and while waiting for him Thisbe sees a lion and flees, dropping her shawl. 515 The lion finds the garment and rips it with bloodied claws. Pyramus arrives and cannot find his lover. He discovers her bloodstained shawl and, believing that the lion has fatally savaged Thisbe, falls on his sword. His blood splashes on a nearby tree that is laden with ‘‘snow-white fruit’’. Thisbe, finding her lover dead beside her bloody shawl, realizes with horror what must have happened and uses his sword to take her own life (Ovid, Book IV, pp. 125-7): The berries of the tree, spattered with blood, Assumed a sable hue; the blood-soaked roots Tinged with a purple dye the hanging fruits.

Reconciled, the grieving parents symbolically mix the cremated remains of the lovers in the same funereal urn. But this is not the end of the story. The tragic events (later to be parodied by Shakespeare) are imbued with such a degree of traumatic anguish that they persist in our individual and collective consciousness. To imagine the fated lovers is to bring to mind a series of images that, while personal and unique, contain archetypal elements that can be verbally labeled as ‘‘irrational love’’, ‘‘fatal error’’, ‘‘profundity of personal loss’’, ‘‘suicidal despair’’, etc. These persistent images remain with us and change the way in which we now ‘‘understand’’ the mulberry. The mulberry tree, which originally produced exclusively snow-white fruits, had its fruit color permanently changed by the passion of these fated lovers. Their love and despair are, in a metaphoric and imaginal way, permanently fixed in the altered fruit color of the tree. The archetypal pain and despair of these events – whether historically validated or imaginally shared – alter the world, and these changes are preserved in the actual objects of the world, their associated mythologies, and our contemporary reflection. Does this myth tell us why mulberries have dark fruits? Is the purpose of myth to explain present forms? Is myth designed to suggest that what is presently recognized with certainty has its origins in a much deeper, equivocal past? Rather than provide superficial explanations, mythical metamorphoses allow us to retain levels of awareness and reconstitute experienced realities that are hauntingly present. We are not provided with a reason but with an insight into a lingering set of archetypal images: the pain of loss, the wrench of distress, the flurry of rashness, the commitment of faithfulness, and the inevitability of fate. Mythical transformations provided us with a narrative, which unfolds from a series of images. Wittgenstein (1958, p. 115) considers imagery, not narrative, to be primal: ‘‘A picture held us captive. It lay in our language and our language repeated it to us inexorably’’. It is not words that conjure up pictures; rather, it is that words are formed, sustained, and given life by images. The myth has a narrative pattern but it is not verbal; that is simply the way in which it has been

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transcribed. Myth remains essentially in the mind – or perhaps more correctly in the mind’s eye – not on the page. Stamped with new design While mythological narratives can capture time within their constantly accessible imagery, what types of images do they offer and of what use are these images in a consideration of the present? We now examine the structure of transformation myths and the dynamics of their formation. Having done this we will be in a better position to appreciate mythical contributions to organizational development and transformations. . First, while mythical metamorphoses seem at first sight to indicate change, they are better seen as the arrestment rather than conclusion of a change process. It is because of this arrestment that the original object is still present: captured, as it were, like a fly in a block of amber. . Second, transmutations are normally associated with overpowering passions that have ripped through the superficial fabric that equally binds people together socially and obscures the actions of the ‘‘gods’’. In our mythological world ‘‘gods’’ are not deities so much as the personification of elemental forces, passions and all too human characteristics. Metamorphoses are not tame affairs, but are instead centered on events and feelings that are passionate, willful, precocious, and violent. . Third, Ovid’s characters live in a world where the presence of the gods is more evident and predictable. It is a magical world, where transformation is possible, even inevitable. Yet, while this world is close to the gods, it is not particularly helpful to see the metamorphoses as divine rewards and punishments. Transformations are more a product of consternation, concern, and celestial confusion: a godlike solution that freezes the disruptive tangle that threatens to rip the web of status quo. The gods can obliterate memory of the object but the associated human emotions cannot be so easily erased. This emotional residue belongs to men and not the gods, and this residue is an essential element in mythology. The death of Pyramus and Thisbe suspends the fiery, passionate and familial conflict of the rebellious lovers. The emotions arising from these passions are not eliminated: they still survive in the dark color of the mulberry. These primordial passions have been cooled, but still remain embedded in, and accessible through, the mythology and in the objects identified. Captured in their metamorphosed states, the original actors present us with a dangerous set of images that are still charged with emotions which, if released, might bring about a wider disruption and breakdown in the sustaining presumption of stability. Ovid’s metamorphoses are quintessentially changes of shapes and form of the actors, not of their intentions. The form is new but the old tension remains, indeed it remains in a more heightened and explosive way because of the inherent trauma that always accompanied metamorphosis. It is this

unchanged electrifying core, rather than the altered peripheral form, which The voice of the constitutes the magic, potency and persistency of mythical metamorphoses. As shuttle Ovid makes clear (Book XV, pp. 170-74): As yielding wax is stamped with new designs And changes shape and seems not still the same But is indeed the same, even so our souls Are still the same for ever but adopt, In their migration, ever changing forms.

Philomela’s fabric and the voice of the shuttle We have suggested that Ovid’s Metamorphoses capture a rich imaginal repertoire and allow us to access these perpetually preserved states. The transformations depicted retain the enduring remnants and resonance of primordial emotional engagement. The centrality of the imaginal aspect of mythical transformation is particularly transparent and immediate in the events that surrounded Procne and Philomela. We consider this myth because it provides a clear and unambiguous demonstration of the traces of emotional turmoil and trauma that are left as residual images. King Tereus (Ovid, Book VI, pp. 412-677) marries Procne but has a lustful infatuation with her sister Philomela. After arranging for Philomela to be isolated from her father and sister, he subjects her to a sadistic and violent rape. Distraught, she tries to escape and expose the outrage but is overpowered and her tongue severed. Tereus leaves her imprisoned in his villa and tells Procne that she has died. Philomela, voiceless but driven to communicate her horrific experiences, weaves a roll of cloth. Through subtle and ingenious craft, she is able to weave a subliminal story of her rape, maiming, and imprisonment into the fabric. It is unclear how she accomplishes this: Ovid considered it to be in a written form, Sophecles thought that the story was portrayed as an image. The artfully woven fabric is sent to Procne, who is able to decipher the message. She liberates her sister, and plots a suitable revenge for her husband. She murders her own son and serves his flesh to his unsuspecting father. When he eventually realizes what has happened, Tereus draws his sword and rushes at the sisters. They flee but he catches up with them and, as he is about to strike, they are transformed into birds by the watchful and concerned gods. Again there are variants in the myth, with the Greeks recognizing Philomela as the nightingale and Procne as the swallow, while the Romans saw it the other way round. Everyone recognizes Tereus was transformed to a hoopoe, with his crown-like crest and bloodstained breast. The series of images that constitute this myth are complex, intense, painful and disturbing. The myth contains two levels of transformation. The first, deals with the metamorphosis of the king and the two sisters into birds. The second, deals with the transformation of an intense personal experience into a woven cloth. Aristotle (Poetics, 16.4) refers to a non-extant play of Sophecles that deals with the drama of Tereus and Philomela. In that play, Sophecles coined the phrase ‘‘the voice of the shuttle’’. The shuttle is voiceless, as is

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Philomela, and yet in her hands the shuttle can be used to give her a powerful way of expressing and recording her agony and shame. Her trauma and history are accessible through and within this voiceless stillness of the fabric, when that stillness is considered and reflected upon. Within the weave is recorded not simply a visual image but an emotional experience that we can enter into as we spread out the fabric and examine it (Hartman, 1970). In a sense, all myths are like Philomela’s fabric. To engage in myth is to look for the latent images that have been placed there by the silent and artful shuttle. Language is limited in conveying the emotional richness and vibrancy in these events, and so mythology is perpetuated through images that are as voiceless, but nevertheless as potent, as potent as Philomela’s woven cloth. Within the image – or perhaps through and beyond that image – there is the possibility of reaching a meaning that is different from the one that we presently possess. To endure, and to still maintain its power, myth must be a ‘‘clever fabric’’ that holds within it an ancient imaginal record and yet still leaves room for contemporary re-imagination. Myth is a silence in which there is always perpetual movement; in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, where ‘‘all is always now’’. David Miller (1999) has asked us whether we presently live in a world where myth and gods are too much with us, or whether we inhabit a mythless and godless sphere. Provocatively, he concludes that we move in and out of both realms. While there is no shortage of mythological journeys to engage in, many of these journeys are superficial, skimming the surface of experience and offering no opportunity for revision. In order to be sustaining and therapeutic, the myth must be allowed to connect with a deeper unconscious level, beyond the self and beyond the ego. Myths, simply seen as narratives and fictions, cannot provide even superficial reasons for present states and future changes. The psychology, image and myth that survives and continues to provide engagement, must be ‘‘rhetorical and poetic, its reasoning not critical’’ (Hilman, 1997). Myth is not an ultimate end or solution in its self; rather, as Miller (1999) acknowledges, myth inevitably challenges us ‘‘to see everything mythologically, and to learn a different way of thinking, a mythopoetic way, a different insight of the present world’’. Beyond the spider, beyond the shimmering sea Since the seminal work of Gareth Morgan (1986, 1993), images and ways of imagining have provided significant direction in understanding and changing organizational contexts. At times, organizational reality (ontology) has been considered as separate and distinct from the knowledge that we can have of the organization (epistemology). Similarly, we have come to think of organizational process and content as separate and distinct. However, Morgan’s work has drawn attention to the usefulness of images in the construction of organizational reality. For instance, metaphor has emerged as a powerful tool because it confronts us with parallel images of the organization, through which we can explore and

recognize aspects in ways that were neither obvious nor possible ( Judge, 1991). The voice of the Metaphor changes what we see and how we see; in doing so, as Arthur shuttle Rimbaud reminds us, it can literally ‘‘change the world’’. Similarly other linguistic turns such as metonym, paradox, totemic systems, symbolism, and mythology give us the possibility of using different, contrasting, and often disturbing images to test the structures and linkages in organizational 519 ontology and epistemology. Michael Lissack (1997) suggests that if organizational change is to be influenced and guided then ‘‘word choice and language interventions may be a fruitful strategy’’. To this we would add that, at a fundamental level of analysis, image choice and imaginative intervention underpin and sustain word- and language-based strategies. Returning to our unhappy organizational participant Y, we recall that when asked to assign a mythical symbol to his company he thought of a spider. Since his organization is not in actuality a spider, we must consider what prompted him to make such a comparison. At a superficial level, he may have associated the fear, panic, and anxiety that the creature induces in him as equivalent to the unpleasantness that he finds within the organization. However, at a deep level, Y might be able to re-imagine his workplace by re-imaging the association. Spiders also have their mythical transformations. Ovid (Book VI) tells us that the spider is the metamorphosed Arachne, an exceptionally gifted weaver who creates exquisite fabrics that capture every detail of scenes and legends. Her artistry is unrivalled and she is told that her gifts must come from the goddess Athene. However Arachne, as well as being exceptionally talented, is outrageously conceited and she rejects this idea outright, claiming that her talents have nothing to do with the gods. Angered, Athene appears in the form of an old woman, questions Arachne about her presumptuousness, and assures her that the gods will be forgiving if she only acknowledges their gift. Arachne, who persists in viewing her talent as a uniquely personal skill, rejects the idea. Infuriated, Athene reveals herself. They set up their looms and begin to weave. The resulting fabrics are magnificent although they differ in content. While Athene’s depicts conventional pastoral imagery, Arachne has pointedly depicted the ‘‘crimes of heaven’’, the indiscretions committed by the pantheon of gods. Outraged at the offense that has been given to the gods, and perhaps just as infuriated by the obviously superior weaving that Arachne has produced, Athene rips up her rival’s weaving, delivers a series of near-fatal blows with her shuttle and then suspends the broken Arachne from a branch. As her passion subsides, Athene transforms Arachne into a spider that will perpetually hang in the air and spin webs that will in no way rival the woven mysteries of the gods. Myth takes us beyond the object in search of the images that lie deep within it. It is at this deep level that Y might find a way of re-imaging his organizational context. We are not suggesting that he translate mythology into corporate reality in some point-to-point fashion. Rather, he might find within the imagery of the myth deeper levels of sense that correspond to the shallower experiences and discomfort that he is experiencing:

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Can he see beyond his panic and terror of the dreaded spider? Can he discover an organizational history running parallel to the mythological presentation of Arachne? Rather than focus on the black, dangling fear of the presence, might he be able to see the brilliant, flamboyant and fatally arrogant Arachne? How might this image match with the presentation and performance of Y’s CEO and associates? Can he imagine what Arachne’s original weaving may have been like? What constituted the ‘‘crime of heaven’’, and which gods have been violated or offended? Who, within his organizational context, is Athene and why is that person so angry?

Y’s efforts to make sense of his organizational context might also compare with the attempts of students in a recent strategic management course to understand something of their own college culture. We provided students with images taken from mythology, giving them a series of brief synopses of metamorphoses presented by Ovid. Then we asked them to decide which one of these myths most closely resembled their college culture. More than half of the course participants independently selected the myth of Icarus (Ovid, Book VIII, pp. 182-239). In this myth, Daedalus and his son Icarus have been exiled on Crete. The father tries to set his son free by constructing for him a pair of wings made from feathers set in wax. Icarus practices and is able to fly. His father gives him instructions on how to navigate and warns him to fly midway between waves and heaven, neither too low nor too high. Icarus ignores the warning, flies too high. The wax of his wings melts, and he falls to his death. The broad and shining sea into which he fell is named for him. We asked students collectively for reactions on the Icarus imagery and its parallel with institutional culture in the college. It seems that this imagery, which was neither self-evident nor previously considered by students, was clearly associated with the cultural context of the college. In our terms, students looking at the cultural fabric created by their school were able to see clear, imprinted images that had been fixed there by a voice-less shuttle. But what did they see? Was it the image of a dynamic and energetic founder, who had tried to build a learning environment that placed value on personal integrity, entrepreneurial behavior, and individuals flying high? Was it a picture of daring, courage and impetuousness? Was there also the melting of the institutional and administrative wax, and the subsequent fall? As a group, they were undecided as to exactly what the parallels were between recognized image and contemporary operations. However, they agreed that these imaginal elements, while not an overt history of the school, were imprinted as residual visions, frustrations, disappointments and ambiguities in the academic and administrative culture.

When the Icarus myth is laid out beside the organizational history, points of The voice of the similarity and metaphorical correspondence may be revealed. When the myth of shuttle Arachne is compared with the organizational context that Y finds himself in, there may also be a parallel. However, these correspondences and similarities extend well beyond the surface; they point to a deep culture, rather than a superficial one. As we have noted, the enterprise is not to describe the organization in novel terms 521 but to look beyond the spider and the shining sea to a new, re-imaged organization. The object is not to fit a pre-existing narrative to a pre-existing organizational map but to use the imaginal inventory provided by the myth to develop a new vision of organizational past, present, and possibility. Conclusion Edgar Schein (1990) has pointed out that a flaw of studying organizational symbols, stories, myths, and other artifacts is that we may make incorrect inferences if we do not connect them to underlying assumptions. Certainly, for those not immersed in the culture of the organization, it is likely that organizational artifacts might be given values, significance, and importance that are not supported by the ‘‘reality’’ of the organization. However, we believe that the demarcation between organizational epistemology and ontology has been over-stressed. Rather than an objective reality built on equally real assumptions, perhaps the organization might be more productively viewed as an ongoing construction of notions of what the organization is and how participants understand it. While participants in the organization may have a deeper insight into the fundamental assumptions that shape the enterprise, it may well turn out that this insight is actually shallow and superficial. Indeed, familiarity undoubtedly limits and restricts the vision that participants can have. In order to obtain a deeper insight, and certainly in order to facilitate change and measure change within the organization, participants must be willing to re-imagine their involvement and context. Thus re-visioned, specific patterns of organizational change might be indicated. In this task, archetypal imagery has a significant place. Indeed, imagery from science fiction has permitted organizational revision (Parker et al., 1999; Case, 1999). Imagined encounters with robots and androids (Srinivas, 1999) and monsters (Bloomfield and Vurdubakis, 1999) have been put forward as ways in which participants can come to see organizations and organizational theory in different ways. Mythological stories persist because of the intensity of their imagery. Myth allows us to access these images and to incorporate them into our constructions of reality. As a corollary we suggest that powerful experiences, emotions, and trauma – through the stillness and voice of the inevitable shuttle – leave imaginal traces on the organizational fabric that surrounds them. This fabric is accessible to all organizational participants, and a fuller, more imagined reading of that fabric may produce new understandings and suggest possible change. The mythological formulations that we have considered have their origin in a specific time, place, and world-view. Yet, these formulations have captured images that transcend

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these restraints and reach back into a distant pool of collective thought, feeling, and awareness. These images hint to an archetypal and trans-cultural residue. As formulated, classical mythologies undoubtedly have a place in examining organizational culture and measuring change management; however, it is likely that the emerging mythologies of the organizations themselves will be the more valuable locus of investigation. The appreciation and imaginative changing of organizational culture may be guided by exemplars from sources such as Ovid. As previously noted (Miller, 1999), the study of mythology is not to recognize mythology but to see events in a mythological way and thereby gain a different insight of the present, possibilities, and change. References Avens, R. (1991), Imagination is Reality: Western Nirvana in Jung, Hillman, Barfield, and Cassirer, Spring Publications Inc., Dallas, TX. Bloomfield, B.P. and Vurdubakis, T. (1999), ‘‘The outer limit: monsters, actor networks and writing of displacement’’, Organization, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 625-47. Case, P. (1999), ‘‘Organizational studies in space: Stanislaw Lem and the writing of social fiction’’, Organization, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 649-71. Casey, E. (1976), Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Corbin, H. (1998), Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ’Arabi, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Hartman, G. (1970), Beyond Formalism: Literary Essays 1958-1970, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Hillman, J. (1975), Re-visioning Psychology, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Hillman, J. (1997), Archetypal Psychology, Spring Publishing Inc., Dallas, TX. Judge, A. (1991), ‘‘Metaphors as transdisciplinary vehicles of the future’’, Union of International Associations, paper presented at the Conference on Science and Tradition: Transdispiplinary Perspectives on the Way to the 21st century, Paris, December, available at: www.uia.org/uiadocs/transveh.htm Lissack, M.R. (1997), ‘‘Metaphor and art – organizational sensemaking and Yasmina Reza’s play’’, paper presented to the SCOS: 15th International Conference, Warsaw, July 9-12, available at: http://lissack.com/writings/warsaw1.htm Miller, D. (1999), The Salt Journal, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 64, paper presented at the Pacifica Graduate Institute Conference on Archetypal Activism, Santa Barbara, CA, June 12, available at: web.syr.edu/6dlmiller/ArchActText.html Morgan, G. (1986), Images of Organizations, Sage Publications, London. Morgan, G. (1993), Imagination: The Art of Creative Management, Sage Publications, London. Ovid (1986), Metamorphoses (translated by Melville, A.D.), Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Parker, M., Higgins, M., Lighfoot, G. and Smith, W. (1999), ‘‘Amazing tales: organizational studies as science fiction’’, Organization, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 579-90. Schein, E. (1990), ‘‘Organizational culture’’, American Psychologist, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 109-19. Srinivas, N. (1999), ‘‘Managers as androids: reading moral agency in Philip Dick’’, Organization, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 609-24. Trice, H.M. and Beyer, J.M. (1984), ‘‘Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonials’’, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 653-69. Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, (translated by Anscobe), Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Leaving our fathers’ house Micrologies, archetypes, and barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts Lisa A. Zanetti Assistant Professor, Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, USA

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523 Received April 2001 Revised April 2002 Accepted April 2002

Keywords Organizational culture, Occupational psychology, Feminism, Assertiveness Abstract What does it mean to leave one’s father’s house? Archetypally, the father’s house represents the dominant content of a culture’s collective consciousness, as well as dominance in the form of tyranny and fear. There is little question that contemporary organizations remain edifices constructed in the image of the father’s house. This article is about articulating barriers to conscious femininity in organizational contexts, drawing on psychoanalytic theory and personal experience to explore some of the social and psychological structures that contribute to the repression of feminine attributes. It is time we considered leaving our fathers’ house.

This is a statement that may, at first glance, seem rather out of context in a journal of management change. In the course of writing this article, when I repeated the phrase to management and administration students and asked for their interpretation, they often associated the meaning with growing up, being on one’s own, taking on adult responsibilities. Occasionally a student took a more human resource management approach, making a connection with being treated as an adult in the workplace, with a commensurate level of autonomy. This article is about articulating some of the barriers to a conscious femininity; that is, I wish to explore what I see as the social and psychological structures that contribute to the repression of feminine attributes, and the outcomes of such repression, in organizational settings. What do I mean by the phrase ‘‘our fathers’ house’’? Who is the father? I have borrowed this phrase from the work of Marion Woodman, who suggests that the phrase offers us meaning on multiple levels. As my students suggested, the phrase refers to a coming of age, in which we become recognized for our capacity to make mature and responsible decisions. Following this motif, the phrase suggests an ability to evaluate information according to our own values, not simply following rote teaching or instruction. This ability requires critical and reflective thinking, and perhaps some courage I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Janet Jones Zanetti, whose own work and creativity inspired my explorations in this direction. Further thanks go to Alexis Downs and Adrian Carr, whose encouragement at a difficult time was priceless. The constructive criticisms of two anonymous reviewers were gratefully received and implemented. A version of this article was first presented at the Critical Postmodern Organization Theory Track of the International Academy of Business Disciplines in 2001.

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 523-537. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810210440423

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as well. Fathers typically occupy positions of remote awe. Challenging such a person is sure to cause a degree of trepidation. On another level, our fathers’ house is the house of patriarchy, with its values of rational thinking, domination, discipline, and control. We are all children of this culture, and all trained as professionals and intellectuals in this culture. Our work emphasizes the work in our heads (logos), and scorns manual, embodied labor. We become trapped in our intellectualized defenses, unable to connect to the dark, erotic, earthy shadows of our bodies (Woodman, 1992). Archetypally, ‘‘father’’ has still another meaning. Outwardly, the father-king personifies the dominant content of a culture’s collective consciousness. Internally, he usually possesses a godlike wholeness, solar brilliance, and spiritual insight (Woodman, 1992, p. 11). The father’s house is also the house of tyranny and fear. Hollis (1994) suggests that we, as a culture, live in Saturn’s shadow. Saturn was the Roman god of agriculture and as such was associated with generativity (productivity). Astrologically, the influence of Saturn is thought to produce a demanding, judgmental, uncompromising, joyless nature; possibly even making one selfish, narrow-minded, and cruel. According to mythology, Cronus, the earlier Greek incarnation of this entity, was the son of Uranus and Gaia. Uranus was born of Gaia and later became her sexual partner. From this incestuous union came all living things. Uranus feared the potential of his children to destroy him and devoured them at birth as a preventative measure. Gaia, however, persuaded Cronus to attack his father, and he did so, castrating Uranus (from whose severed phallus Aphrodite was later born). But Cronus/Saturn did not overturn his father’s tyranny; he simply replaced his father in the position of tyrant. When Cronus and his consort Rhea produced children, Cronus devoured them. Only Zeus survived – to become equally fierce and tyrannical. There is little question that contemporary organizations remain edifices constructed in the image of the father’s house. Rao et al. (1999), building on the work of Acker (1990), argue that there is a ‘‘gendered substructure’’ within organizations that buttresses this edifice. In the first place, a ‘‘monoculture of instrumentality’’ prevails in most organizational contexts. This monoculture focuses on narrow, often quantitative targets at the expense of broader needs and goals. The implementation of performance- or results-based management and evaluation systems precludes an appropriate appreciation of the qualitative, relational, ‘‘invisible’’ activities of organizational success. Second, Rao and co-authors note that in most organizations, power is viewed as a limited resource. Consequently, power – whether derived from one’s position, one’s agenda-setting capabilities, or a more hidden form[1] – is used for exclusionary purposes. One of the purposes to which this power is put is in perpetuating the split between work and family (i.e. between the public and private spheres). The socialization in organizational settings supports and reinforces the assumption that work is separate from the rest of life, and that work has the primary claim on the worker. From these expectations, the image of the ‘‘ideal’’ employee is

formed – and that employee is not encumbered by family obligations. Needless to say, women, who continue to be responsible for home and family needs even when they are employed full-time outside the home, tend not to be these ideal workers (Rao et al., 1999). Finally, the identity of this ‘‘ideal’’ employee is fueled by the myth of the heroic individual. Consider the images of traveling ‘‘road warriors,’’ of traders with ‘‘killer instincts,’’ and of salesmen who ‘‘penetrate’’ markets. Much of business and organizational ‘‘folklore’’ abounds with stories of the crusader who battles against tremendous odds to resolve a crisis – while the worker who manages her work smoothly, thereby avoiding crises, is relatively invisible and taken for granted (Rao et al., 1999). Furthermore, the ‘‘hero’s quest’’ is a journey that is an integral aspect of a male’s psychological journey. Men must ‘‘undertake the heroic task of leaving the mother and becoming masters of their own destiny’’ (Hollis, 1994, p. 105). I want to emphasize, however, that masculinity is not synonymous with patriarchy. Nor is a patriarchal ontology the sole province of men; women are quite capable of being equally patriarchal, and this article is not about overturning the hierarchy (women on top) or extolling feminine ways of knowing at the expense of the masculine. Micrologies: the interplay between the analytic and the subjective-personal My interest in pursuing this line of inquiry is unapologetically personal. I wanted to understand how and why my way of being and interacting in organizational contexts seemed at times to trigger certain types of hostile emotional outbursts from male colleagues. Echoing Wolff’s (1995, 2000) admiration of the work of Walter Benjamin, I note that the interplay between autobiography and critique is a particularly powerful form of analysis. Contra statisticians and social scientists who dismiss ‘‘small N’’ studies (a fixation on size, perhaps?), there is an explicit acknowledgement in multiple discourses of the need for a counterbalance to abstracted, aggregated, generalized data. In this regard, Wolff (1995) cites Barthes’ punctum, Bakhtin’s chronotope, Derrida’s concept of the trace, and Adorno’s focus on the concrete particular as examples of this concern (Wolff, 1995, p. 51). Self-reflexivity in this manner is part of the feminist critique against objectivity and distance. Furthermore, feminist theory has made a case for the importance of detail, historically associated with the ‘‘feminine’’ (Miller, 1991; Caws, 1990; Schor, 1987; Bryson, 1990, cited in Wolff, 1995, pp. 49-51). In this regard, choosing certain texts, details, or situations is a political act in that it declares not only that these elements are worth studying, but openly declares one’s commitment to them. Such a declaration of solidarity is part of the ethic of critical theory as well, to which I also subscribe (Carr and Zanetti, 1999; Zanetti, 2001). So, what are these micrologies? There are several that figure most prominently in my mind, two that occurred when I was a young woman, still in

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my 20s, and one that occurred over a decade later. In the first episode (chronologically speaking), I was working in a position somewhat misleadingly labeled ‘‘executive director’’ of a small trade association in Washington, DC. I say ‘‘misleadingly’’ because, although I assumed I had the authority that one might read into such a position (‘‘executive’’ implying a certain level of autonomy and discretion, and ‘‘director’’ suggesting some degree of leadership responsibility), it became increasingly clear during my tenure that in the mind of the immediate past chairman (sic) of the board of directors, ‘‘executive director’’ was simply a more politically-correct title for the traditional type of subordinate position in which intelligent and resourceful women are employed to make their male bosses look good. The past chairman, who had founded the association some dozen or so years earlier, was clearly accustomed to having things done in a certain eccentric manner. The current chairman, who had hired me (and who signed my paychecks), had specified that he had wanted the association to move in a different and more independent direction. Unfortunately for me, the past chairman was resident in Washington, DC while the current chairman was based in Chicago. This meant that the opportunities for the past chairman to participate in the day-to-day activities of the association were much greater. In many instances his guidance, perspective, and willingness to call on his personal network were quite helpful. Inevitably, however, the agendas of the past and current chairmen clashed. Drawing on my perceived authority, I made ‘‘executive’’ decisions that ran counter to the wishes of the former chairman. At one point, his wrath at having been ‘‘undermined’’ was enormous: he leaned across my desk, clearly intending his considerable physical stature to appear intimidating, while he screamed at me about my insubordination, his face cartoonishly red, veins standing rigid on his neck, and spittle flying from his mouth. His rage was overwhelming, clearly out of proportion to my ‘‘crime’’. Although I stood up to him at the time, the sheer force of his hostility was traumatizing. While I can easily attribute the episode to my obvious youth, inexperience, and naivete regarding organizational politics, I do believe there were other, more subtle (and not so subtle) gender psychodynamics taking place. These psychodynamics reappeared several years later, after I had left the trade association and was working for a federal agency as an international trade analyst/investigator. One case I led was particularly contentious. These preliminary analyses were always exhausting because they were conducted on a very short timeline; in this instance the intensity was exacerbated by the advanced state of my first pregnancy. As we neared the statutory deadline for submitting our preliminary findings (a deadline that preceded my due date by only a few weeks), a senior male attorney for one of the respondents became increasingly confrontational and hostile. In addition to the ‘‘normal’’ tension of a preliminary investigation, this individual was clearly discomforted by my visibly reproductive personal status and was unsure how to handle his discomfort. He alternately addressed me as Miss (presumably a reference to my

youth), ‘‘Ms’’ (my preference), and ‘‘Mrs’’ (clearly unsuitable, since I had retained my birth name after marriage). He tried avoiding me by communicating with other members of the team, who, to his frustration, consistently referred him back to me. He lectured me on how to interpret the law. He insisted that I run the investigation differently. As in the previous situation, I held my ground (and my authority); finally, he retaliated by seeking to have me removed from the investigation altogether, citing an alleged release of confidential information on my part. A third episode occurred nearly a decade later. I was a newly-minted PhD in my first academic appointment, participating in a symposium hosted by my department. The topic of the symposium was the psychodynamics of organizations; I was challenging the presentation of a senior academician who had argued against women in the military on the grounds that men find women’s auto-eroticism threatening. In response to my challenge, this individual became highly agitated, raising his voice and shaking his finger at me as he defended his argument. Others around the table were stunned into silence at the intensity of his response; it was clearly out of proportion to my intellectual challenge, not to mention laden with Freudian overtones in the finger-wagging. At the same symposium the following year, this individual refused to let me finish my presentation, jumping in with hostile criticism before I had barely introduced the first paragraph, and continuing to behave disrespectfully for the remainder of the symposium. All three of these interchanges had strong patterns in common. In each, I was a junior colleague. In each, the individual with whom I disagreed was a male considerably older than myself. In each situation, dynamics of authority, power, resistance, and gender were present. I suggest that each of these encounters was so incendiary because of the archetypal representations playing out beneath the surface, a claim I explicate further in the following section. Archetypes Jung contended that life is enacted on three levels simultaneously: (1) consciousness; (2) the personal unconscious; and (3) the archetypal or collective unconscious. The ego, our center of consciousness, is like a thin wafer floating on an immense ocean. Beneath that fragile consciousness swirls the personal unconscious, which is also the realm of personal complexes. Complexes are emotionally charged experiences whose intensity derives from the intensity of the original encounter (Hollis, 1994). Archetypes are universal although our individual responses to them are entirely unique. We unconsciously introject (internalize) the power of these archetypal figures. In the absence of individuation (discussed below), these

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patterns and images remain intact at an infantile level (Woodman, 1990, p. 18). When archetypes are activated, they manifest themselves in behaviors and emotions (Samuels, 1997). Four archetypes play significant roles in every individual’s psychological development. These are the persona, the self, the anima/animus, and the shadow. The word persona originally referred to the mask worn by an actor in a play to portray a particular role. In analytical psychology, the persona fills a similar function, representing the mask or fac¸ade that we present to the public (this might also be called the conformity archetype). The persona is necessary for humans to function in social and community life. An individual may have more than one mask, wearing different masks for different situations – in this case, all the masks collectively constitute the persona (Hall and Nordby, 1973). When an individual begins to identify too closely with the role being played, the ego may begin to identify solely with this role and other aspects of the personality will be pushed aside. This phenomenon is known as inflation. Often a person derives so much satisfaction from the role that s/he tries to project this role onto others, demanding that they assume the same mask. The longer an inflated persona exists, the harder it becomes to deflate that persona and allow other sides of the individual to receive more balanced attention (Hall and Nordby, 1973). The anima and animus represent Jung’s conception of our relationships with the opposite sex. If the persona represents the outward face, the anima and animus represent the inward face. The anima represents the feminine side of males, and the animus is the masculine side of females. A fully developed personality allows these complementary aspects to be expressed in consciousness and behavior. When these complementary aspects are repressed into the unconscious, they often surface unexpectedly as part of one’s shadow (discussed momentarily) (Hall and Nordby, 1973). Because one’s anima or animus colors one’s relationships with the opposite sex, in choosing partners we tend to be attracted to someone who portrays (or accepts our projections of) the characteristics of our inner face. An important point to remember is that in western culture, the anima and animus are often repressed or underdeveloped. Males in particular are not encouraged to reveal their feminine aspects. In the workplace, as was noted in the previous section, feminine attributes in women are often not valued; therefore, women who wish to be successful professionals tend to allow their animus (their masculine attributes) to dominate. As a consequence, both interpersonal and societal relationships are skewed. While the anima or animus represents the opposite sex to us, the shadow often represents our own gender and relationships with persons of our own sex. The shadow also contains our baser, uglier instincts. Individuals often seek to repress the shadow, but it is persistent and often emerges unexpectedly and destructively in stressful or emotional situations. However, a harmonious relationship between ego and shadow creates a full-bodied, three-dimensional quality in persons, conveying vitality, creativity, and vigor in one’s personality.

Rejection of the shadow tends to distort and flatten personality, as well as render an individual susceptible to ‘‘irrational’’ emotional reactions (Hall and Nordby, 1973). The self is the organizing principle of personality, the central archetype in the collective unconscious. It is quite different from the outer conscious ego. Jung used the word ‘‘self’’ to indicate several distinct phenomena: the totality of the psyche; the tendency of the psyche to function in an orderly and patterned manner; and the tendency of the psyche to create images ‘‘beyond’’ the ego; and the psychological unity of human infants at birth (Samuels, 1997). A person who is not aware of his unconscious self will project the repressed elements onto others, accusing them of his own unrecognized faults. For Jung, the primary task of life was to learn to recognize, and come to terms with, those aspects of ourselves that contaminate our perceptions of others. Recognizing our weak or dark traits (those we often try to project onto others) helps us develop a fuller understanding of our interpersonal relations. This cyclical process, called synchronic individuation, requires us continually to mediate between our conscious and unconscious, appreciating the paradox and, especially, appreciating the discomfort it produces. Most people are not ready to begin the individuation process until some time in midlife. Until then, we are usually too enmeshed in our parental complexes, and our psyches are too influenced by the dominant culture around us (Young-Eisendrath, 1995). An essential component of individuation is the process of coming to terms with one’s contrasexuality – that is, our unconscious opposite-sexed personality. The contrasexual other both constrains and defines the self. As Young-Eisendrath says: ‘‘The way I act and imagine myself as a woman carries with it a tandem meaning of what I imagine to be male and masculine, what I see as human but ‘not-woman’ . . . The same is true for the feminine other in the male psyche’’ (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p. 24). Each sex carries envy, jealousy, idealization and fear of the other sex, emotions that form intrapsychic barriers, especially when the two sexes interact. The Cronus-Saturn story, recounted earlier, reverberates with power, jealousy, and insecurity. While all humans have endured this scenario for millenia, Hollis argues, men in particular have grown up in the shadow of this legacy, suffering from the corruption of empowerment, driven by fear (particularly fear of the feminine), and wounding themselves and others (Hollis, 1994, p. 11). Hollis (1994, p. 25) writes: The power complex is the central force in the lives of men. It drives them and wounds them. Out of their rage they wound others, and out of their sorrow and shame they grow more and more distant from each other. The cost of this mutual wounding is enormous, repetitive, and cyclic. Whatever is unconscious is internalized in debilitating ways or projected onto others and acted out destructively.

In the following sections, I address the consequences of these intrapsychic barriers, particularly with regard to repression, by both men and women, of the feminine in an organizational context.

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Repressing the feminine: survival of the fittest? Considering that we must live and function in the cultural context of patriarchy, it may seem surprising that the archetype that causes most anxiety and fear is that of the mother, not the father. Biologically, we all experience our primal relationship with a woman. When this relationship is warm and nurturing, we are more comfortable with life. Wounding in the primal relationship can, of course, affect women and men alike. But because men also face the need to separate from the mother and transcend the mother complex, additional wounding is both necessary and inevitable. Hollis confirms: ‘‘The power of the feminine is immense in the psychic economy of men’’ (Hollis, 1994, p. 30). Yet throughout their lives, a man must continue to confront the feminine on three levels (Hollis, 1994): (1) with an outer woman (or the feminine side of a gay partner); (2) in his relationship to his own anima; and (3) in his relationship to the archetypal world. Contemporaneous with the evolution of the modern organization was a notion of social Darwinism. Many of us are at least passingly familiar with the invocation of social Darwinism, or the idea of survival of the fittest, to justify market forces and a capitalist society. A less familiar aspect of social Darwinist thought, however, addressed the roles of the sexes. The invocations of social Darwinism went beyond the well-explored idea of public and private spheres, specifying the functions of both sex and abstinence in the perpetuation of the social order. Such a sociological view of the world colored organizational evolution in ways that have gone largely unrecognized[2]. Of particular relevance here is the fascination of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century scientists (and social scientists) with anthropomorphizing the mating rituals of the animal and insect kingdoms, and the correlations these scientists drew between sexual abstinence and economic success. It was believed that every individual entered life with a certain store of ‘‘vital essence.’’ In men, this vital essence was contained in the semen, having been distilled from the blood. Men of a certain class were counseled to refrain from frequent emissions, since each ejaculation drained a bit more of a man’s vital essence – essence that would otherwise be retained as an internal secretion and used to build a stronger mind and body. The brain in particular was viewed as the repository of such concentrated essence (Dijkstra, 1996). The man who did not ‘‘waste’’ his vital essence in frequent and/or indiscriminate ejaculations (either through ‘‘self-abuse’’ or with a partner), therefore, could expect greater intellectual acumen, which would contribute to financial success, which would ensure his place in the ruling plutocracy. ‘‘The man who held on to his semen could expect to see his capital grow – and capital, as [William] Sumner[3] never tired of pointing out, was the lifeblood of the evolutionary elite’’ (Dijkstra, 1996, p. 59). Loss of semen, by contrast, led to loss of money, loss of manhood, and loss of self.

Bearing these beliefs in mind, it is little surprise that, around this time, women began to be portrayed in both scholarly and popular culture as deadly: capable, through the means of seduction and wile, of draining a man of his vital essence and leaving him a mere dry husk of his former self. Women, of course, also contained vital essence, which was distilled in the womb rather than in the testes. But women did not have the same ability to retain concentrated essence in the brain, because so much was unavoidably lost in the monthly menstrual flow. Drawing on examples observed in the insect world, these seminal (sic) philosophers and scientists perpetuated the belief that sexual women preyed upon men in the same manner as mantises and spiders. Graphic descriptions of sexual cannibalism revealed a deep-seated gynephobia: Like the cephalopoda, his contemporaries, he [the white-fronted dectic, a type of grasshopper] has recourse to the spermatophore; yet there is mating, there is embracing; there are even play and caresses. Here are the couple face to face, they caress each other with long antennae. . . . The male disentangles himself and escapes, but a new assault masters him, he lies flat on his back. This time the female, lifted on her high legs, holds him belly to belly; she bends back the extremity of her abdomen; the victim does likewise; there is junction, and soon one sees something enormous issue from the convulsive flanks of the male, as if the animal were pushing out its entrails. . . . The female receives this leather bottle, or spermatophore, and carries it off glued to her belly . . . She breaks off little pieces, chews them carefully, and swallows them . . . The male has begun to sing again, during this meal, but it is not a love-song, he is about to die; he dies. Passing near him at this moment, the female looks at him, smells him, and takes a bite of his thigh (Gourmont, in Dijkstra, 1996, p. 67).

Prominent sociologist Lester Ward also took the view that, in the lower orders of nature, the primary function of the male was sperm-bearer, a ‘‘mere afterthought of nature’’ (Ward, in Dijkstra, 1996, p. 68). Evolutionarily speaking, human males had been able to overcome the accessory roles played by their insect counterparts, but Ward’s description of mantis love left little doubt about how slippery the slope toward reabsorption was: A few days since I brought a male of mantis carolina to a friend who had been keeping a solitary female as a pet. Placing them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavored to escape. In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She first bit off his left front tarsus, and consumed the tibia and femur. Next she gnawed out his left eye. At this the male seemed to realize his proximity to one of the opposite sex, and began vain endeavors to mate. The female next ate up his right front leg, and then entirely decapitated him, devouring his head and gnawing into his thorax. Not until she had eaten all of his thorax except about three millimeters did she stop to rest. All this while the male had continued his vain attempts to obtain entrance at the valvules, and he now succeeded, as she voluntarily spread the parts open, and union took place. She remained quiet for four hours, and the remnant of the male gave occasional signs of life by a movement of one of his remaining tarsi for three hours. The next morning she had entirely rid herself of her spouse, and nothing but his wings remained (Ward, in Dijkstra, 1996, p. 69).

The primary drive of females was reproduction, pure and simple; after survival of the species was ensured, males were superfluous. Thus feminine principles came to be viewed as fatal (the ‘‘vagina dentata of primal instinct’’ (Dijkstra,

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1996, p. 71)); masculinity was regarded as the triumph of cunning and intellect over nature. This ontological belief was reflected in much of the art, literature, film, and popular culture of the era. Women were often portrayed as frighteningly seductive vampires, spiders, ferocious bears, and skeletons – death personified, in other words. The work of Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was particularly graphic in this regard. The early films of Theda Bara and Louise Brooks capitalized on the vampire/vamp theme, with great success. Misogynist and gynephobic themes were also reflected in the work of many of the surrealists as they dismembered the female body or turned it into an object. The self-consciously sexual woman was dangerous – a threat not only to an individual male, but to the survival of the species, as well. Writing as a contemporary of Sumner and Ward, the feminist theorist Charlotte Perkins Gilman observed that the effect of patriarchal authority was to remove women from most of the energizing (i.e. public sphere) effects of natural selection, reinforcing only their sexual attractiveness. This sets up a vicious cycle. ‘‘[W]oman’s economic profit comes through the power of sexattraction’’ (Gilman, in Hollinger and Capper, 1989, p. 44); in a situation of perverse irony, women must be sexually attractive in order to survive economically, yet this sexual ‘‘success’’ is experienced as predatory by the men who control the economic resources. This perversity is mirrored in the organizational context. If women were considered dangerous in the relatively narrow confines of the home, imagine the thought of such women moving into the workforce. Now men faced a double threat: women who sought to drain their vital essence in the bedroom, and women who wanted to drain their lifeblood in the board room as well. Archetypally speaking, the image being constellated was terrible and frightening – picture the cannibal witch of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, or the awesome dark destructive power of the Hindu goddess Shiva. As Hollis (1994, p. 35) points out: ‘‘one oppresses what one fears’’ (assuming, of course, that one has the power to oppress in the first place). A deeply-rooted mysogyny thus persists in our culture (Woodman, 1990, p. 9). The feminine, representing the forces of darkness and matter, stands in opposition to the masculine forces of light, reason, and spirit. Patriarchy is, at its essence, a cultural contrivance designed to compensate for the fear and perceived powerlessness of men (Hollis, 1994, p. 48). Organizational effects of repressing the feminine The battle of the sexes and the effects of gender bias in the workplace are well documented in numerous sources, from academic journals and textbooks to the popular press, movies, television, and cartoons. The point of this article is not that the battle/bias exists, but that for many men and women, it arises from the same source: repression of the feminine. While both oppression and repression can easily co-exist, the repression to which I refer is quite distinct from oppression of women, as I will discuss below[4].

First, we must again consider the conjunction of the social climate that prevailed as current organizational forms, as we know and experienced them, first began to evolve. Carolyn Heilbrun, reviewing a biography of Virginia Woolf, observes that women were (are) trained to be silent. ‘‘[T]he unlovable woman was always the woman who used words to [great] effect. She was caricatured as a tattle, a scold, a shrew, a witch . . . [there was] pressure to relinquish language, and ‘nice’ women [were quiet]’’ (quoted in Woodman, 1985, p. 9). ‘‘Successful’’ women in organizational settings are often those who have embraced and/or absorbed the masculine way of doing things. They may often be ‘‘daddy’s girls’’ who mirrored their fathers and sought their father’s approval. They are often called ‘‘anima women’’ because they take on their father’s anima projection. She has learned how to ‘‘perform’’ in order to win a man’s approval – professionally and personally (Woodman, 1985, 1990). When women stand up for themselves, however, they often constellate their male colleagues’ devouring mother complexes. Men unconsciously apply the mathematical rule of transitivity in a rather crude fashion: you have breasts – you are a woman; my mother was a woman – my mother had breasts; therefore, you are like my mother (Hollis, 1994). Men trapped in a mother complex are captive to powers of archetypal images. Anima women in particular are good hooks for men’s unconscious projections. These women have become proficient in becoming whatever the male is projecting onto them. At first, this arrangement seems highly satisfactory to both partners, because she, of course, is also projecting her ideal onto him (Woodman, 1985). But when the image he projects onto her becomes disrupted or threatened by her expression of her own needs, he may fly into a rage and go off to look for someone who is as unconscious as his own inner feminine (Woodman, 1992). The irony is that while these women appear to be some kind of solitary tower of strength (‘‘iron women’’), they may feel utterly abandoned when the male partner/colleague/mentor withdraws. Yet, because they are so strongly identified with the animus (that is, so adept at operating out of a male psychology), they may persist in looking at the situation with rational understanding: ‘‘It was my own fault; I must not have been good enough/ worked hard enough/been deserving enough’’). They ignore their feelings and instead seek to ‘‘take it like a man,’’ playing the role of ‘‘perfect gentleman’’ (Woodman, 1985, p. 44). As Woodman (1985, p. 51) writes: ‘‘A woman who has devoted her life to examinations and scholarship, or politics or the business world, knows how to organize her mind in obedience to the laws of unity, coherence, and emphasis’’. When we try to overcome this mythic constellation, we often rocket too far in the other direction, resulting in explosive ‘‘battles of the sexes’’. In terms of analytical psychology, there is little difference between the ego of an unconscious woman and the anima of an unconscious man. Likewise, there is a similar analogy between an unconscious man and the animus of a woman. In any intimate relationship, including work relationships, the positive and

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negative dynamics among these four ‘‘identities’’ are going to interact. While the positive aspects may constellate first, resulting in the initial good feelings of an effective working relationship, eventually the shadow projections make their way to the fore. The feminine feels it is being violated, while the masculine struggles against being sucked dry. Enormous hostility built up in the unconscious (of both sexes, and toward both sexes) eventually erupts (Woodman, 1985). Masculine consciousness analyzes, discriminates, defines, cuts and clarifies. Feminine consciousness – not women, but feminine consciousness – is concerned with process and being. The goal is the journey itself. So, then, the question remains: how do we leave our father’s house? Leaving our fathers’ house As I stated earlier, the point of my argument in this article is not to invert the balance of power in the extant patriarchy. Militant/separatist feminists, I would argue, are ironically being patriarchal in their emphasis on rage and hostility. Instead, I would hold, with Woodman (1992), that projecting women’s rage onto men does little to resolve the victim/tyrant constellation. Leaving our father’s house involves an acceptance of consciously feminine principles in order to bring human interactions into some sort of balance, and to bring to the fore the masculine energy that is creative rather than destructive and punitive. Individuation is an important process of psychological development for both women and men. But it is also the process of recognizing and understanding one’s own contradictory nature, identifying and balancing the conscious and unconscious impulses. An individual must first learn to develop meta-cognitive abilities – the ability to think about one’s thoughts, feelings, and states of being, looking at oneself from a third person perspective, and engaging in a dialectical relationship with one’s self. The personal awareness that comes through individuation permits disidentification with childhood complexes and a withdrawal of projections (Young-Eisendrath, 1995). Leaving our father’s house will require us, collectively and as individuals, to learn to think dialectically and, furthermore, withstand the temptation to side with one aspect of the dialectic or the other. Holding that tension is not an easy task, western logic has been dominated by the principle of noncontradiction. Though not a depth psychologist, Adorno (1998) reflected on the relationship between self and other (subject and object) in a manner that is useful for the argument here. In Adorno’s view, the separation of subject and object was both real and semblance. This separation was the result of a coercive historical process in which the contradiction between subject and object, once postulated, became transformed into an invariant ‘‘truth’’. Unmediated (unchallenged), such an assumption then becomes fixed into an ideology in which mind (self) arrogates to itself the status of absolute independence (Carr and Zanetti, 1999).

Jung called resolving these conflicts transcendence. Furthermore, he acknowledged that collective dynamics can mimic interpersonal ones. He writes: Western civilization has for some time been developing its extraverted thinking and sensation one-sidedly in its technology and its introverted thinking and sensation one-sidedly in its theoretical research. Intuition has not been entirely suppressed, because it has been used for the discovery of new creative ideas. Feeling, however, and the whole world of Eros, love, is in a truly pitiable state.

This pitiable state is a direct result of repressing the feminine. When individuals are able to access and honor their feminine characteristics, remarkable transformations can occur. A man’s anima, viewed positively, is the source of empathy, sensitivity, eros, artistic tendencies, and appreciation of natural beauty. But, when repressed, the anima surfaces through moodiness, hypochondria, or subjective judgment. Similarly, a woman who has a balanced relationship with her animus finds she possesses initiative, depth of thought, consistency, and courage. A woman whose animus controls her will exhibit rigid opinionatedness, brutality, and combative behavior. She maintains her pseudo-masculinity through willpower. Often at this point she breaks down, both emotionally and physically (Woodman, 1992). What might be the effects in organizational settings of honoring the feminine? Regretfully, I cannot speak from personal experience since I am still building a positive, balanced relationship with my own animus and am sure I am not always able to escape the negative characteristics of animus control. However, I believe that some useful observations can be drawn from feminist organizational literature. First, it is important that we resist imagining an idealized utopia. Male or female, masculine or feminine, we are all flawed individuals, and, unfortunately, we carry our flaws into our organizational settings. Second, I believe we must also avoid simply replacing one elitist, hierarchical system with another. The articulation and acceptance of multiple perspectives is critical. ‘‘Invisible work’’ – work traditionally associated with ‘‘the feminine’’ – must be recognized and honored. In order to do this, we may have to ‘‘hold up the mirror’’ (Rao et al., 1999, p. 18) – reflect actual conditions back onto an organization as a way of breaking through collective denial. To return to the first paragraphs of this article, leaving our father’s house will require a collective act of courage. This postmodern epoch is destabilizing on a multitude of levels, giving the appearance of anarchy and chaos. Many people find this situation profoundly alienating and anxiety-laden, and seek to counter their vertigo by exerting ever more pressure for control. Enormous archetypal energies are being released, and they terrify us at our most primal levels. We demonstrate courage not through flamboyant demonstrations of vanquishing scapegoats, but far more quietly and humbly: by facing and embracing the dark places we fear most. When we learn to do that, we will have left our father’s house.

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Notes 1. Hidden power in this context corresponds with Lukes’ (1974) ‘‘third dimension of power’’ in which subjects are unaware that their wants and desires are being manipulated. Power is exercised to ensure that only certain ideas are accepted as ‘‘normal’’, these ideas become entrenched in the form of self-evident truths and therefore are seldom, if ever, questioned. Those who do question these ‘‘truths’’ are often labeled deviant and anti-social, among other things (Rao et al., 1999; Lukes, 1974; Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999). 2. Unrecognized, that is, in US organizational literature. Scholarship from the UK and Australia tends to acknowledge a much stronger interaction between the social milieu and the evolution of organizational structures and expectations. 3. William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), an economist, political and social scientist, and minister, held the first established chair of political and social science at Yale. He took a distinctly conservative view of the political implications of Darwinian science, arguing that only hard work and self denial would bring about human progress, and that one’s chief mission in life was to accumulate capital. Opposite Sumner on the political spectrum was Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913), who stressed the role of intelligence and education in human progress, and argued that cooperation and systematic planning, not raw competition, would enhance the human condition. For additional reading on the intellectual debates of the era, see Hollinger and Capper (1989); Bannister (1979); Bellomy (1984). 4. Of course, rejection of the feminine and rejection of a particular woman are often confused, as well. 5. Adorno particularly faulted the empiricist philosophers for this reification (Adorno, 1963, 1969/1998). References and further reading Acker, J. (1990), ‘‘Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations’’, Gender & Society, Vol. 4, pp. 139-58. Ackerman, D. (1994/1995), A Natural History of Love, Vintage Books, New York, NY. Ackroyd, S. and Thompson, P. (1999), Organizational Misbehavior, Sage, London. Adorno, T. (1998), Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, translated and preface by H. Pickford), Columbia University, New York, NY (original works 1963 and 1969). Angier, N. (1999), Woman: An Intimate Biography, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. Bannister, R.C. (1979), Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought, Philadelphia, PA. Bellomy, D.C. (1984), ‘‘Social Darwinism revisited’’, Perspectives in American History, pp. 1-129. Bryson, N. (1990), Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Carr, A. and Zanetti, L. (1999), ‘‘Metatheorising the dialectic of self and other: the psychodynamics in work organizations’’, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 324-42. Caws, M.A. (1990), ‘‘Personal criticism: a matter of choice’’, Women of Bloomsbury, Routledge. Davis, K. (1995), Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery, Routledge, New York, NY. Dijkstra, B. (1996), Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-century Culture, Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY. Hall, C. and Nordby, V. (1973/1999), A Primer of Jungian Psychology, Meridian, New York, NY.

Hollinger, D.A. and Capper, C. (Eds) (1989), The American Intellectual Tradition, Vol. II, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Hollis, J. (1994), Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men, Inner City Books, Toronto. Lukes, S. (1974), Power: A Radical View, Macmillan, London. Miller, N.K. (1991), Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts, Routledge, New York, NY. Morris, R.D. (Ed.) (1965), Encyclopedia of American History, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Rao, A., Reiky, S. and Kelleher, D. (1999), Gender at Work: Organizational Change for Equality, Kumarian Press, West Hartford, CT. Samuels, A. (1997), ‘‘Introduction: Jung and the post-Jungians’’, in Young-Eisendrath, P. and Dawson, T. (Eds), The Cambridge Companion to Jung, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Shor, N. (1987), Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine, Methuen, London. Stevens, A. (1983), Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self, Quill, New York, NY. Van Eenwyk, J.R. (1997), Archetypes and Strange Attractors: The Chaotic World of Symbols, Inner City Books, Toronto. Wolff, J. (1995), Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism, Polity Press, Cambridge. Wolff, J. (2000), ‘‘The feminine in modern art: Benjamin, Simmel and the gender of modernity’’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 33-53. Woodman, M. (1985), The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation, Inner City Books, Toronto. Woodman, M. (1990), The Ravaged Bridegroom: Masculinity in Women, Inner City Books, Toronto. Woodman, M. (1992), Leaving My Father’s House: A Journey to Conscious Femininity, Shambhala, Boston, MA. Woodman, M. and Dickson, E. (1997), Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, Shambhala, Boston, MA. Young-Eisendrath, P. (1995), ‘‘Gender and individuation: relating to self and other’’, in Brien, D.E. (Ed.), Mirrors of Transformation: The Self in Relationships, The Round Table Press, Berwyn, PA. Zanetti, L. (2001), ‘‘Recht’’, unpublished manuscript.

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DRIVEN: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria Jossey-Bass San Francisco 2002 pp. 289 $28.00 Keywords Motivation, Personality, Individual behaviour

Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, 2002, pp. 538-546. # MCB UP Limited, 0953-4814

What drives people as human beings? This is the basic question that Lawrence and Nohria seek to answer in their book Driven. The answer, according to these two Harvard business school professors, can only be found in combining the traditionally separate scientific disciplines of biology, sociology, psychology and anthropology with economics. Inspired by E.O. Wilson’s Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which recommended a unification of knowledge, and intrigued by the failure of capitalism in post-communist Russia, Lawrence and Nohria became convinced that humans are not rational maximizers of selfinterest as traditional economics has always taught. Humans are far more complex but, fortunately, their motivations can be distilled into four basic groups or drives: the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to learn and the drive to defend. These four drives are rooted in evolutionary biology. The human mind, and more basically the biology of the brain, provides the initiation of the drive analysis. A quick overview of the division of brain function and some anecdotal and fascinating stories around the resulting personality impacts of brain injury establishes some data for the theory that personality is centred in certain biological areas of the brain and therefore has evolved along with the rest of the human being over time. Lawrence and Nohria hypothesize that the four drives have evolved to act as a set of decision guides. These guides partially steer human reasoning and decision making as well as perceiving and remembering. The theory is intriguing and creative and, although it is hard to imagine the complexity of humanity broken into four innate motivations, I admire the audacity of combining so many frames into a single view. The drive to acquire is defined as the drive to seek, take, control and retain objects and personal experiences that humans value. This drive is rooted in the basic need to survive and to acquire goods such as food, fluid, shelter and sex. Humans always want more. Dismissing a Freudian basis for the drive to acquire, Lawrence and Nohria weave a link between the rational maximizer of Adam Smith’s economics and data that suggest that humans will sometimes act in other than their rational self-interest. They suggest that these innate motivations are rooted in biological evolution. Stretching the credibility of the theory, they cite Robert Frank’s example of obese US citizens who eat in a fashion which is not in their self-interest. Frank says this is genetically rooted in the starving tribes of our ancestors. However, the link between the drive to

acquire and organizational short-term thinking bears further thought. Despite the weakness of genetic arguments, this drive’s role in competition is a compelling and interesting read. The drive to bond is defined as a drive to form social relationships and develop mutual caring commitments with other humans that, in fact, is fulfilled only when the attachment is mutual. This drive tempers rational self-interest with such sentiments as fairness, generosity, compassion and caring. The genetic root of this drive is natural selection and mate selection. Quoting a number of evolutionary biologist theorists, the authors create a plausible argument for the genetic basis of bonding for survival. The drive to bond is a prerequisite for human development. The drive to bond operating with the drive to acquire creates the mix of competition and cooperation. The drives working together can fuel competition (i.e. growth and acquisition) and conflict. In addition morality is rooted in this drive, and a number of credible sources are quoted to support the theory of a universal morality across cultures which would seem to indicate a genetic basis. The discussion of the dark side of the drive to bond as genocide seems more of a leap of faith than a scientific discourse, but overall the drive to bond is well identified as genetically based and a basic motivator. The last two drives discussed are the drive to learn, defined as an innate drive to satisfy curiosity, to know, to comprehend, to believe, to appreciate. The drive to defend, on the other hand, is a negative and very old, but overwhelming, need to defend accomplishments and territory. Following the pattern established with the first two drives, this book outlines a genetic basis for these drives; the drive to learn, for instance, is supported by the universality of religion. The theory continues to develop the source of the drives and the independence of the drives since the goals they seek are not interchangeable although they are interactive. Lawrence and Nohria conclude their outline of the four drives by stating that although the base of this view of humanity is genetic, the drives’ independence has served to increase the influence of culture in determining what drives people select as they make choices. Once the drives are described, the book discusses the sources of diversity despite the universality of these four drives, which links a number of different sciences. The discussion is a fascinating, if somewhat confusing, one as the reader moves through various views of the world through history to modern times, weaving social sciences through biology to a basic discussion about what human beings see as beauty. At the conclusion of this section, I was left looking for more data and more stories and intrigued as to where this theory could take a student of humanity. The last chapter attempts to describe an organization which is aware of the four drives and how it might operate to engage the drives at the most appropriate time. This discussion lacks the passion and conviction of the earlier chapters, and I was left wishing it had been left to another book since it was not as well documented or thought out.

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Lawrence and Nohria have created a very intriguing theory, which is well documented and eminently readable. It opens the door for more thinking on what part of human nature is derived and what is created. It goes beyond the rational maximizer theories into tribal jungles, through historical settings into modern organizations. In addition, the weaving of a number of scientific frames tugs at the imagination with the potential to achieve great insights if only there was a little deeper discussion. I am left wanting more yet unsure whether I will be convinced. That is compelling. Marie MacDonald Vice President, Enterprise Systems and Consulting Services Conseillers en gestion et informatique Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Identity, Learning, and Decision Making in Changing Organizations Charles Ransom Schwenk Quorum Books 2002 201 pp. US$55.00 Article type: review Keywords Organizational learning, Organizational change, Knowledge management Schwenk analyzes organizational knowledge structures and decision-making processes from a psychological perspective, and shows how personal and organizational identity affect decision making, learning, and adapting to change within organizations. He explains how our personal identities are central to our self-schemas, the models we have of ourselves, and how selfschema impoverishment can occur when a single organizational identity comes to dominate an individual. He describes an important process by which people attempt to make their identities appear enduring – autobiographical memory construction and how it affects decision making. Further, he talks about the role of polarizing conflict in solidifying identities and making them more distinctive. He discusses the ways the identity-based conflicts can promote groupthink, escalating commitment, and the destruction of common resources. He explains organization knowledge structures and how individual identities relate to them. He describes how impoverished knowledge structures have the most negative effects. To deal with these problems, he describes methods for using dialogue and structured conflict within organizations as a way of broadening organizational knowledge structures, and techniques that promote wise use of self-schema for crucial decision making.

Schwenk advocates that individual and organizational decisions are shaped by individual and organizational identities. By reflecting mindfully on their identities, those making crucial decisions can view them from multiple perspectives. Schwenk argues that our ‘‘selves’’ and ‘‘the organizations we identify with’’ are cognitive constructions. Our self-schema and knowledge structure enrichment may be vital to the survival of individuals and organizations coping with change. By understanding that our selves are not fixed but changeable, it may be possible to use multiple identities in productive ways. The key to using multiple identities wisely is mindful integration of identities in decision making. Self and organizational enrichment through integration of identities will lead to better decisions for individuals, groups, and organizations. The value of the book lies in the fact that it looks at the decision-making process from the perspective of relationships among self-concepts, identities, and decision making. It deals with a fundamental dilemma that has faced every individual, group, organization, and society throughout human history: how to conceptualize the self and manage individuals to achieve collective action in a changing environment. Due to fixed individual and organizational identities, we are not able to promote constructive conflicts. Using the methods and techniques proposed in this book, organizations might be able to enrich their knowledge structures by using the diversity of views that exist within them. By encouraging dialogue and conflict among those holding different views, organizations can avoid the problems associated with simplistic knowledge structures. How can we apply Schwenk’s lessons on identities in evoking changes in organizations? By understanding the relationships among self-concepts, identities, and decision making, we can use internal conflicts productively and expand our identities productively to adapt to change in the environment. Identity, Learning, and Decision Making in Changing Organizations holds important implications for executive decision makers and management consultants. Instead of helping the organization solve the problem at hand, we need to act as facilitators to facilitate the organization’s learning, so that members of our organizations can obtain skills in communication and conflict management. And we also need to act as coaches to inspire confidence in all members of our organizations and ensure diverse voices are heard in crucial decision making. Last but not least, we also need to be leaders to set examples for members of being open and creative in mindful integration of identities in decision making. Identity, Learning, and Decision Making in Changing Organizations is an enlightening book for executive decision makers and other managers in the workplace to adapt to the radical changes sweeping through the entire world of today’s business. This book is very well written, with strong theoretical foundations, and includes a brilliant imaginary dialogue Schwenk constructed between the thirteenth Dalai Lama and Sherlock Holmes. Schwenk draws on research in management decision making and

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cognitive and social psychology such as identities, self-schemas, autobiographical memory construction, and organizational knowledge structures, etc., which provided a solid academic foundation for this book. The methods and techniques discussed in the book are practical. Li Xiao Management Science Department, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA

Conquering Organizational Change: How to Succeed Where Most Companies Fail Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith CEP Press Atlanta 2001

Keywords Consultancy, Experience, Surveys, Strategy, Organizational change Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith are consultants associated with a small consulting firm. Their book is not an academic discussion of change theory, nor does it provide many references to support their approaches. It appears to be based upon their own consulting experiences and a survey they conducted about why change efforts fail or succeed. Their survey is summarized in nine propositions, which they treat as ‘‘working hypotheses’’. These propositions form a foundation for ten key tactical strategies for successful change. The authors then provide a formulaic approach to matching the appropriate tactical strategies (which they call tactics) to the significant positive or negative factors, which may influence a change effort. The formulaic approach has its limitations. However, it does provide a model for embarking on a change effort along with an understanding of the many complexities that could affect the outcome of the change. General books continue to appear on change management. Some focus on corporate heroes, others explore the various theories, best practices, and still others try to oversimplify the issues surrounding change in organizations. Recent titles ranges from Change Monsters, through The Change Management Toolkit, to Managing Business Change for Dummies. It almost seems like we are dealing with a fragile product, constantly needing to sell new products to build or repair. When I initially saw this book, I had to chuckle over the title, Conquering Organizational Change. I thought, can we really ‘‘conquer’’ change? Do we really need another book to tell us how to manage change? We do, until we get it right.

In 236 pages, Conquering Organizational Change provides a concise perspective of the magnitude of issues that must be addressed during a change initiative, along with high level (strategic) approaches. I consider this book to be a good high level summary guide geared toward informing a leader who is considering a significant change initiative. An informed executive can then assign knowledgeable resources to the initiative and can be in a better position to continuously evaluate and support progress on the initiative. As an organizational consultant, I found this book to be a good process summary. The authors point out that up to 75 percent of change efforts may end in failure. Appendix C provides a useful chart of the supporting literature with type of change, success rate, sample (size), and source. I found this to be an important step in ‘‘waking up’’ a leader contemplating serious change. Chapter one, ‘‘Organizational change: a risky proposition’’, is a brief one and provides a summary of each chapter. It also addresses the potential for failure in various change efforts. Chapter two, ‘‘Why change fails or succeeds’’, summarizes what they consider to be ‘‘propositions’’ which are the ‘‘drivers’’ necessary to maximize the chances of ‘‘conquering organizational change.’’ They arrive at these propositions through a 15question survey, included in an appendix. There were very few specifics on their methodology. For example, there were no details on the number of respondents other than: ‘‘We asked 210 North American managers to complete a questionnaire . . . about why change efforts fail or succeed’’. I would have liked more details on their methodology as they progressed from survey to proposition to tactics. This could have been included in an appendix. Two significant outcomes of their research survey were lists of 17 positive and 19 negative factors that accounted for the success or failure of change efforts. These positive and negative factors become a basis for tactics planning, and are used throughout the book. Chapter three, ‘‘Planning the tactical aspects of change’’, builds on the propositions from Chapter two and provides a summary of ten key tactics for a successful change effort. A partly successful attempt is made to provide a formulaic approach to assessing the change effort in order to determine which of the tactics should be emphasized more than others. It provides a starting point. Chapter four, the largest chapter in the book, ‘‘Tactics for successful change’’, provides more contextual detail for each of the ten tactics in the previous chapter. I applaud the authors’ use of questions, rather than statements, in the many checklists. I believe questions provide a greater potential for meaningful evaluation and learning. Chapter five, ‘‘What to do: planning guides’’, briefly addresses the players involved in a change initiative (sponsors or executive team members, project team members, and change agents) and five suggested phases (assessment, planning, design, implementation and internalization). The first four phases are fairly standard project phases. The fifth phase,

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internalization, appears to be a form of performance measurement and feedback. I believe the authors could have said and done more with the internalization phase. Two well known Scandinavian researchers, Ingeman Arbnor and Bjo¨ rn Bjerke (1997), in their book, Methodology for Creating Business Knowledge, say: ‘‘Internalization stands for the element with which we accept a world in which others already live’’. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines internalization: ‘‘incorporate within the self as guiding principles’’. I believe it can be something that goes beyond an extension of the implementation phase. Could that be a learning organization? Chapter six, ‘‘Case studies’’, presents two very brief case studies: a bank merger and sales process improvement, and uses information from the prior chapters. The case studies had the potential to help tie the chapters together. There were numerous figures; however, the narratives were short and I did not get a good feel for how the processes in the book contributed to the change efforts. The authors also attempted to discuss what could have been done differently to improve the results in each of the cases; with both cases appearing to have problems during the change effort. This chapter would have been better placed as the last chapter in the book, or at least after the next chapter. Chapter seven, ‘‘Reviving a stalled change effort’’, describes ten recovery tactics with critical actions for each tactic. The authors introduce a simple, three-step model: (1) Ascertain status and examine reasons for failure. (2) Evaluate options and select recovery tactics. (3) Monitor and adjust. The most valuable part of this chapter are the ten recovery tactics with critical actions. However, choosing which tactics to use can be a challenge. The description of the process for ascertaining status and examining reasons for failure is brief, but adequate for a quick assessment. The weak point of this chapter is the absence of a process for evaluating options and selecting the recovery tactics. The directions for this step are, ‘‘If the completed analysis indicates that the change effort should be put on track, a group of executives and other stakeholders should meet and, from the list presented below, agree on the recovery tactics that are most appropriate for your situation’’. The list contains the ten recovery tactics ‘‘originated in the research that we presented earlier, as well as our experience as management consultants’’. No ‘‘formulas’’ are provided. Chapter eight, ‘‘The first steps to conquering change’’, is appropriately the last chapter and is about getting started. Three important strategies are briefly covered:

Book reviews

(1) a compelling rationale for the change; (2) a committed sponsor; and (3) a broad plan of action. I viewed this chapter as an important marketing and buy-in ‘‘plan’’ for the change initiative. I found the ‘‘compelling rationale for the change’’ to be most intriguing. It is a method for capturing problems or opportunities to be addressed by the change, along with the corresponding consequences or benefits of change for the different stakeholders. I recently used the compelling rationale during a planning session for a proposed reorganization directed by a new executive. The functional statements were consistent with the mission envisioned by a new executive. However, the planning team (comprised of the managers below the executive) was struggling with how to get started in successfully changing the organization. They said they did not understand what the new executive wanted. After some visioning and discussion of obstacles, I engaged them in a process to elicit the problems to be solved and the opportunities to be addressed by the new organization. The team found this to be a powerful exercise. They exhibited a renewed confidence that there were good reasons and benefits to be gained with the reorganization; and it gave them a document to provide to the new executive for support and feedback. Ultimately, it would provide them with a ‘‘compelling rationale’’ to share with the entire staff. I believe it supported ‘‘buy-in’’, a necessary prerequisite for effective action. The book does not adequately address cultural/behavioral issues that can affect change initiatives. It is essential for organizations to understand, acknowledge and prepare people for the losses they will encounter as part of a change initiative; and the organization must be able to deal with problems that arise as a result. William Bridges (1991), in the book Managing Transitions, stresses the importance of allowing for endings, and the losses and mourning associated with endings. The ending is separated from the new beginning by a ‘‘neutral zone’’. I believe it is essential to create effective human bridges in moving from an ending through the neutral zone to the new beginning. The reasons for organizational change are usually associated with the need for performance improvement (financial and other). With all these failures, I wonder what we have learned? We are in a rapidly changing world and I believe performance improvement must go hand in hand with the notion of a learning organization. A learning organization embraces more of the cultural/behavioral elements. I recall one of my professors at George Mason University encouraging us to not only question all norms, as

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in double-loop learning, but to also reexamine the very ways and predispositions for how we think and learn. In summary, the book provides a structure for starting effective planning in organizational change. The notion of a complete ‘‘how to’’ book on dealing with organizational change is wishful thinking. However, the book helps to make a daunting change initiative look more manageable and provides many good ideas for supporting successful outcomes. The authors appear to share much of their process knowledge and experience about change initiatives, and they attempt to provide real answers. They are successful in attempting to simplify a complex series of processes while providing an appreciation of how complex change really is. References Arbnor, I. and Bjerke, B. (1997), Methodolgy for Creating Business Knowledge, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA. Bridges, W. (1991), Managing Transitions: Making the most of Change, Perseus Books, Boulder, CO.

Ray Biegun George Mason University, Virginia, USA