The Psychoanalysis of Organizations

A psychoanalytic approach to behaviour in groups and organizations

Robert De Board

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317618829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión

One of the most pressing needs of modern society is to understand and construct organizations that are not only effective in terms of carrying out work but that also allow and encourage people to develop their full human potential. Psychoanalytic theory describes those primary processes that lie at the heart of human activity and provides new insights for understanding group and organizational behaviour.

With a new introduction written by Vega Roberts, this Classic Edition of The Psychoanalysis of Organizations presents the theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Elizabeth Lewin and Eric Menzies in plain language and shows their relevance to normal working life. First published in 1978, Robert De Board takes a wide-ranging overview of the major psychoanalytic theorists and organizational researchers, and analyses how the two groups can work together. Written in a very accessible style, it makes sophisticated psychoanalytic and management concepts comprehensible and usable for anyone.

1 Early studies of group behaviour

A study of human behaviour in groups and organizations has its origins in many separate and distinct pieces of work. Certainly before the 1930s, this was not a generally recognized field of study and different countries produced a variety of people who, reflecting their own cultures and social climates, looked at groups and organizations from a number of different standpoints. This chapter gives a brief survey of this early work and then examines in more detail four contributions which can now be seen to be of particular importance.

A. Max Weber (1864–1920)

At Berlin University, with its strict formality and academic discipline, Max Weber studied the historical development of civilizations through the sociology of their religious and economic life. His book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1930), remains a classic study of the impact of Protestant beliefs on the development of capitalism in Western Europe and the United States. But he also made a major contribution to the study of organizations, classifying them as: ‘charismatic’, ‘traditional’, and ‘rational-legal’ depending on the way in which authority is used and legitimized within them. He analysed the bureaucratic type of organization in particular, and did not regard it as an inefficient, ponderous structure (as the word is usually understood today) but as a form of organization that technically is the most efficient system possible. Weber used the word ‘bureaucracy’ because central to this form of organization is a ‘bureau’ where all written records and files are stored for safe keeping. The work and ideas of Weber, and especially his categories of organizations, have greatly influenced the formal studies of organization structure.

B. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947)

Between 1924 and 1926, work of a very different nature was being carried out in the Psychological Institute of Weber’s university at Berlin. A young psychologist, Kurt Lewin, was working with a small and enthusiastic team of scientists who were all influenced by the new ideas of ‘Gestalt’ psychology. Their empirical studies were concerned with the role of goal achievement in the release of tensions.* One particular study (by Bluma Zeigarnick) found that when people were interrupted in the middle of a task, they could remember the unfinished parts of the task at a later period much better than they could recall the parts they had completed. Lewin explained this by saying that there was a psychological ‘tension’ associated with the unfinished tasks which caused them to be recalled in preference to the finished tasks. As Chapter 6 will show, these ideas of psychological forces and tensions were to be developed by Lewin and would greatly influence the study of group dynamics.

C. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

The powerful and unique influence of Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis increasingly became known by the beginning of this century. The concept of the unconscious, as a factor affecting behaviour, and especially the centrality of sex in all human actions, was to affect every aspect of human psychology. Freud, although mainly concentrating on individual behaviour and the therapeutic affect of psychoanalysis, sought to extend the application of his ideas and theories to groups, organizations, and society. In 1912 he published Totem and Taboo in which he analysed anthropological material in terms of psychoanalytic theory. In the first human group, which he called the ‘primal horde’, the most significant action occurred when the group overthrew and killed the despotic leader and this generated the beginning of religion, morality, and social organization.

In 1922 Freud published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, which attempted to explain the nature of the bonding in a group—what made a group into a group—and the role and influence of the leader. This book, which will be analysed in detail in Chapter 2, shows the breadth of Freud’s thinking, including examples which range from a group of two to such large organizations as the army and the church.

D. F.W.Taylor (1856–1917)

Not all the thinking and writing about organizations and groups was being carried out by academics. In terms of influence, the work and writings of Frederick Winslow Taylor have had a profound and lasting effect on the management of organizations. Taylor developed what he called ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ which was also the title of his book published in 1911. For Taylor: ‘What the workmen want from their employers beyond anything else is high wages’, and he believed that ‘scientific management’ could overcome any obstacle to the workmen achieving this. Underlying all Taylor’s writings is the assumption that the desire to maximize earnings is the only motivating factor which induces man to work.

Taylor’s ideas were always controversial. He was sacked from the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1901 and his methods were investigated by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations in 1914. Few, if any, managers would agree with Taylor’s principles today, but many organizations reveal his influence through their continuing use of ‘Work Study’ methods.

E. Henri Fayol (1841–1925)

Fayol was a French mining engineer who was Managing Director of a large mining and metallurgical combine for thirty years. Drawing on his experience, he analysed the nature of organizations, especially the nature of management (Fayol 1949). He defined management as comprising five elements, which were: (a) to forecast and plan, (b) to organize, (c) to command, (d) to co-ordinate, and (e) to control. Fayol is the earliest known proponent of a theoretical analysis of managerial work and his five elements are still able to help managers clarify their thinking in an organization today.

These examples of Weber, Lewin, Freud, Taylor, and Fayol show some of the origins of work in the area of groups, organizations, and the way people behave in them. However, in the period between 1920 and 1939, four separate pieces of work were carried out, which, because of the empirical nature of the experiments, provided a foundation of fact which continues to be relevant to the present situation.

1 Elton Mayo and the experiments at Hawthorne

In 1924 a number of engineers carried out an enquiry at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in the United States that studied the relationship between illumination and efficiency. These experiments involved varying the intensity of the electric lighting and measuring the effect this had on the output of groups of workers. Control groups were used, where no changes in lighting were made, and their output was compared with that of the experimental groups. The results were odd and inconclusive. Quoting from the original report: ‘The output bobbed up and down without direct relation to the amount of illumination’ (Roethlisberger and Dickson 1946:15). It also produced very appreciable and almost identical production increases in both the control and test groups. But although the results were inconclusive they contributed to the steadily growing realization that more knowledge concerning problems involving human factors was essential.

At this point, Mayo took over the enquiry and brought in the Industrial Research team from Harvard University, where he was Professor of Industrial Research. His original enquiry sought to answer six questions:

(a) Do employees actually get tired out?

(b) Are rest pauses desirable?

(c) Is a shorter working day possible?

(d) What are the attitudes of employees towards their work and towards the
company?

(e) What is the effect of changing the type of working equipment?

(f) Why does production fall off in the afternoon?

The first stage of Mayo’s work commenced in 1927 and is known as the ‘Relay Assembly Test Room’ experiment. In this experiment six female operators, aged between nineteen and twenty-nine (average age twenty-two) were put into a room in which each individual’s output of assembled telephone relays could be measured. For a period of just over two years, from April 1927 to June 1929, this group worked together in a variety of planned ‘changed’ situations, designed to discover the effect of fatigue on performance.*

During the two years, thirteen changes were made concerning frequency of rest pauses, length of working hours, and the nature of wage incentives, each change lasting from four to twelve weeks, excepting the final period, which lasted for thirty-one weeks. The results made history. Significant increases in production were obtained progressively in periods that had nominally the same working conditions. Most surprisingly, output continued to increase even when the working conditions reverted to the original situation of a long working day without rest pauses. Mayo explains it in this way:

‘What actually happened was that six individuals became a team and the team gave itself whole-heartedly and spontaneously to co-operation in the experiment. The consequence was that they felt themselves to be participating freely and without afterthought, and were happy in the knowledge that they were working without coercion from above or limitation from below.’

(Mayo 1945:72)

The results of this research led Mayo to place major emphasis on the social organization of the work group and the informal standards governing the behaviour of the work group members. This latter point emerged again in the ‘Bank Wiring Room’ experiment, where fourteen men were selected to work together on wiring and soldering banks of telephone terminals. For approximately eighteen months, from 1930 to 1932, an observer sat in with them and observed their working behaviour. One of the facts which emerged was that the group, although on an incentive bonus, restricted its output to its own agreed level. Strong group pressures ensured that individuals were aware of breaking these group norms, either by acting as ‘rate-busters’ or as ‘chiselers’.

Mayo’s work has not been without its critics, who have concentrated, probably fairly, on its bias towards management, and the exaltation of empiricism and observation, and its corresponding neglect of theory. A more recent criticism by Parsons challenges the whole basis of the Hawthorne studies, arguing that the ‘Hawthorne effect’ resulted from operant conditioning which was revealed in the way in which production results were constantly fed back to the operators (Parsons 1974).

Nevertheless, the impact of Mayo’s work can scarcely be exaggerated and it is generally regarded as among the most important in the whole field of the social sciences. As Haire points out:

‘It was no longer possible to see a decrement in productivity simply as changes in illumination, physical fatigue and the like. It was no longer possible to look for explanation of turnover simply in terms of an economic man maximising dollar income. The incentive to work was no longer seen as simple and unitary but rather infinitely varied, complex and changing.’

(Haire 1954:376)

2 Sherif and the formation of group norms

By the middle of the 1930s a burst of activity took place in the United States concerning empirical research on groups. Moving away from simply accumulating data, researchers began to experiment in areas which, until then, were often treated as ‘mystical’ and outside the range of legitimate scientific study. In 1936, Sherif published a book containing a systematic theoretical analysis of the concept of ‘social norms’ which referred to the customs, traditions, standards, and other criteria of conduct (Sherif 1936). He related social norms to the psychology of perception, seeing the former as the frame of reference which a person brings to a situation and influencing the way in which he perceives it. In an experimental situation he employed the ‘autokinetic effect’ which describes the phenomenon which occurs in complete darkness, when a point of light appears to move even though it is, in fact, stationary.

In the first part of the experiment, individuals in a dark room observed a point of light and they had to estimate the distance of perceived movement. Nineteen subjects each made 100 judgements and it was discovered that ‘the subjects subjectively established a range and a point within that range which is peculiar to the individual.’ (Sherif 1972:324). Further experiments showed that over a period of time, once a range was established, it tended to be preserved. Sherif concluded that in the absence of an external point of reference, each individual builds up an internal subjective reference point and each successive judgement is given in relation to that reference point. But what would happen if the experiment was carried out by people in a group? In the second part of the experimen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction to the Classic Edition
• Introduction
• 1 Early studies of group behaviour
• 2 The leader—the influence of Sigmund Freud
• 3 Transference and projection—the influence of Ferenczi
• 4 The child's world of the adult—the contribution of Melanie Klein
• 5 Groups and their basic assumptions—the influence of Wilfred Bion
• 6 The life and work of Kurt Lewin
• 7 T-groups and the laboratory method of learning
• 8 Human behaviour and general systems theory
• 9 Organization as a defence against anxiety
• 10 Mental energy, anxiety, and effectiveness
• Appendix
• References
• Name index
• Subject index