Psychodynamic Organisational Theory

Key Concepts and Case Studies

Jacob Alsted, Ditte Haslund

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429675492
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psicología
• Sous-sujet: Psicología industrial y organizacional

On the surface, people go to work and come home again. They sometimes manage people while most are managed themselves. But beneath the function and structures of the work itself, a whole range of emotions affects the success of the relationship between employee and manager and ultimately the organisation they both belong to.

Psychodynamic Organisational Theory: Key Concepts and Cases provides a comprehensive but accessible introduction to this fascinating field of study. Featuring case vignettes which bring the various concepts to life, the book is divided into four parts. PartI looks at how the individual relates to the organisation and the unconscious energies they bring, while Part II examines group dynamics and how they affect productivity, including a chapter on meetings. Part III explores the realm of leadership and what roles a manager can play in managing their staff, while PartIV introduces the idea of personality and describes how the manager's personality influences management dynamics as well as the wider organisational culture.

Central to the book, as well as the idea that organisational phenomena are often unconscious, is the understanding that relationships are always reciprocal. Through complex psychological dynamics manager and employee influence and change each other during the process of managing and being managed.

This text will be essential reading for students and scholars of leadership, HRM, and organizational psychology, as well as consultants and managers looking for practical insights into how human relationships affect the success of every organisation.

1
Management and employees

This book is about a special relationship between people, namely, the relationship between manager and employee. This relationship is defined by a formal structure in which the roles are attributed in advance, but it is fundamentally a human relationship that plays out under particular conditions. That the relationship takes place between people means that the whole human spectrum of emotions is involved. It is consciousness of this and the ability to manoeuvre in the field between structure and human dynamics that determines whether the relationship between manager and employee is successful.

The joy of creation and cooperation, the pride at good results, and the challenge of achieving new goals are among the driving forces when people work. But just as ordinarily and unavoidably, phenomena such as power and powerlessness, discomfort, doubt, anxiety, and wounded self-respect occur when people are to coordinate with and adapt to each other. If the latter types of emotion (those often called “negative” emotions) remain unspoken and partially unconscious to the participating parties, they are not recognised as the natural premise of “positive” emotions. Instead, they are shunted off to live a hidden life in the organisation. From this murky position, they can have a lasting destructive effect on cooperation. This book is based on the conviction that an understanding of the importance of structure and the integration of the whole spectrum of human emotions is the key to productivity and job satisfaction.

Since the relationship between manager and employee is by definition asymmetrical – because the manager has power over the working conditions of the employee and, ultimately, power to take away the employee’s job – the manager has a special ethical obligation to understand the processes at play in the relationship. Potentially, a manager has an enormous influence on the productivity and flourishing of his or her employees. Therefore, it is necessary for the manager to understand and recognise this influence and take responsibility for how she or he personally administers it. Managers who fail to do this far too often leave inefficient organisations and unhappy people in their wake.

But the relationship between manager and employee is at the same time a reciprocal relationship. People cannot not communicate, and both manager and employee influence and change each other through the way in which they interact. In this sense, both parties can be said to have a responsibility for each other and to have deserved each other. It can be provocative for employees to hear that they have the manager they deserve, but this view is to make employees aware of the reciprocity of the relationship because consciousness of this can liberate much positive energy. The reciprocity provides employees responsibility for their own part in the interplay with the manager; and in this responsibility there are many – and often unexploited – possibilities for employees to support and influence their manager.

The relationship between manager and employee includes, on the one hand, the employees who are provided security, recognition, transparency, and challenges at an appropriate level, and on the other hand, the manager, who gets emotional satisfaction, influence, and authority.

When the relationship is successful, the manager helps the individual member of the organisation to handle his or her relationship with the community and supports the individual to meet appropriate challenges. At the same time, the manager helps the group of employees to function as a coherent, productive collective. On the other hand, employees give the manager their acceptance, backing, and loyal work effort.

It is this dynamic people usually refer to as “personnel management”, which is in reality a somewhat misleading name because it does not describe the two-sided dynamic in the relationship.

Personnel management is an active relationship between two parties that plays out with a particular purpose, within a defined framework, and through the development of complicated, psychological processes. These processes are described and discussed more thoroughly in later chapters.

At the same time, it is important to remember that managers are also employees. Great demands are placed on today’s managers, and managers – like all other employees – have a need for support and guidance from their own manager in order to be able to carry out their job function in the best way possible. All too many managers work in a management vacuum in which they receive deficient or no support from their immediate supervisor. This creates a burdensome solitude in the job, and the manager is in danger of burnout. Therefore, it is important to maintain a dual gaze in a job as manager and to remember that every manager is at the same time an employee.

What is management?

Two people who do not know each other are washed up on a deserted island. After lying on the beach for a while, they get up. “Where to?” asks one. “Over there!” replies the other. They begin to walk in the direction indicated.

Will two people placed on a deserted island quickly develop a form of community in which one leads and the other is led? “Yes”, many would think, because the will and the ability to lead and to be led is a part of human nature and because leadership is necessary for human development. Some claim that the ability to lead is a special quality in special individuals, while others believe that all people are potentially leaders and that it is determined by the specific situation whether the individual acts as a leader or is led.

How might the division of roles in the preceding vignette arise? One explanation might be that the person doing the questioning is a child who, because of lack of experience, naturally lets the grown-up take the lead. This is a biological framework of understanding. Another might be that the person asking the question “Where to?” is an adult, but he sees the captain’s stripes on the other’s torn jacket and, therefore, recognises that the captain has command. That is a structural framework that sees management as necessary for the productivity of society. A third explanation might be that the person asking feels threatened by the other person and, therefore, submits himself to the other’s leadership. This is a political framework that focuses on management as what regulates power relations in society. A fourth explanation might be that the person asking sees the situation as difficult and therefore enters into a dialogue with the other person who, however, responds with a ready decision that the person asking accepts. This is a social constructivist framework that understands management as a social phenomenon that is created in an interplay between participants. A fifth explanation might be that the person asking feels afraid and is paralysed and therefore appeals to the other person to take a leadership position and that the other accepts it because he is flattered and feels obligated by the other person’s expectations. This is a psychological framework, which points out that management fulfils psychological needs in the individual and solves dilemmas and conflicts in human interaction. A sixth explanation might be that the person asking is a woman and that, for historical and cultural reasons, she lets the man take the lead, who for corresponding reasons takes it without reflecting more about it. This explanation emphasises that the theme of management has an additional historical and cultural dimension in which the view of what management is and who managers are changes over time and can be different from culture to culture.

The theme of management may be inscribed in many frameworks of understanding that must not be seen as mutually exclusive. To the contrary, one should try to maintain every dimension in an overall understanding of what management is. This book focuses on management understood as a social phenomenon that has psychological premises and psychological consequences for the people involved. The book will also examine problematics that are linked to the regulation of power relations.

Management is a relationship between people

Regardless of what framework or point of view one focuses on at a given moment, management always describes an interpersonal relationship between manager and employee. This relationship can play out in extremely different ways, all of which can be fruitful, but the purpose of management is fundamentally the same: to coordinate the efforts of the individual and the needs of the community (the organisation).

Thus, a manager’s most important function is to be a connector. The manager connects the organisation’s various components together: the manager binds employees into a unit, joins his or her own management with the rest of management, connects his or her group or department with other groups or departments, and links the efforts of his or her department to the purpose of the firm. The manager provides each individual employee the possibility of seeing him/herself as a singular individual and, at the same time, as a part of a greater whole. Since all this plays out in the relationships among the participants, the connection occurs among the participants and requires the active participation of everyone. The manager’s personality and understanding of his or her linking function, however, play a decisive role.

The fact that the manager’s job is to bind the organisation together does not mean, however, that management takes place in a power vacuum or a space free of conflict. In some situations, there may be objective conflicts of interest between management and employees; there may be a political power struggle in and around the organisation and between managers mutually; there may be disagreements about goals and means; there may be ethical or environmental dilemmas; there may be insoluble resource problems, and there may be crisscrossing personal conflicts. The manager must try to act in all these areas without being naive, but she/he must also avoid losing sight of the firm’s goal or his/her own fundamental function as a connector.

Most people spend a lot of their time at work, and many invest a significant portion of their physical, intellectual, and emotional resources in it because working is a basic human necessity. People work to put food in their mouths and a roof over their heads, but they also work for social reasons because work gives access to and recognition from the community. They work for individual psychological reasons because work provides personal development and satisfaction.

The modern organisation is characterised by the fact that production is knowledge-heavy and, therefore, specialised. At the same time, the various processes in production are closely connected and require a high degree of cooperation. Effective cooperation requires good mutual relations among the participants, borne by mutual trust and tolerance because daily work offers countless problems that must be solved with flexibility, creativity, and an understanding of the overall perspective. But most people have found that it can be difficult to be trusting, tolerant, and nuanced when the work tempo is intensified and the performance requirements are great, and people generally do not really have the foundation for understanding the problem from other points of view. Often, it feels reasonable to be self-protective, suspicious, and categorical. One does not need to exert oneself for that – in many situations, it comes as a spontaneous defensive reaction despite the firm’s core values, which typically talk about openness, confidence, and so forth. When people do not flourish in their job, it may threaten their daily bread and mean a lack of fulfilment of social and psychological needs. The individual’s resources, which could have been used constructively on the job, are now used instead to try to wait out the current conditions or to fume about them. It is often fruitless and wearying for the employee to use her/his energy in this way at the same time that it robs the firm of important resources.

The alternative to this unconstructive frustration is managers with solid knowledge about the special relationship that exists between themselves and their employees, managers who are in possession of skills that make them capable of functioning in this relationship with understanding, empathy, and perseverance. In order to do this, as a manager, you must be ready to work with yourself and get to know yourself better – both your well-functioning and less flattering sides – just as you must confront conscious and less conscious aspects of yourself. The same is true of employees. The following chapters describe in more detail how it is possible to establish collaborative relationships that are robust enough to function under the pressure characteristic of most modern businesses.

New view of reciprocity

Within our cultural circle, the view of the relationship between management and employees has changed significantly through the 20th century along with other social developments. This is reflected even in the words that are used to describe the relationship: the designation co-worker is itself a sign of this development. The word emphasises that there are common interests between the firm and those who work for it.

From the earlier view of management, which was primarily the same as control of resources (in which the employees were seen as management’s tools – along the same lines as money and materials), there has developed a more dynamic and – some believe – more equal view of the relationship between management and employees. It might be said that the two opposing groups always constitute the other’s precondition: no feudal lords without peasants, no managers without employees, but over time a greater consciousness has developed about this mutual presupposition and the reciprocal dependence of both parties. This mode of thinking about relationships has altered cooperative norms in the direction of openness, respect, and trust as a precondition for mutual, equal relationships. However, there can still be quite a bit of daylight between the norms expressed and the practice in everyday life. Today, an employee often has high expectations for management, which can be hard for management to live up to. In some cases, the expectations are unrealistic and focus too much on what management is supposed to deliver and not on the reciprocity between the two parties. In other cases, management does not live up to expectations simply because it is difficult to be a good manager in today’s businesses:

Our engagement with and joy in work is not something to be taken lightly – we are quite simply passionate about our work, […] but we want to be valued and recognized, we want peace and quiet to work, we want to have influence on our job, and we want the necessary resources!

(Annette Kahlke, district manager for home care, Politiken 26 August 2006)

This statement illustrates the expectation of reciprocity at the workplace very well. The expectation of reciprocity is not always fulfilled. One can still find examples of petty municipal officials, firms with terrible customer service, arrogant doctors, and managers who treat employees as they please. But such behaviour is meeting with a harder time now because of the increased individual self-consciousness of the participating parties.

This book deals with just such phenomena: for example, the individual and the individual group have greater expectations and make greater “selfish” demands at the same time that, both locally and globally, the necessity of common coordination and mutual recognition is increasing. Is it right that, when one talks about society becoming more individualised (i.e., more selfish), it is happening at the cost of and in opposition to the community? Or is it rather that the better the conditions are for the individual and the individual group to develop, the more willing they are to contribute to the community? In other words, that individuality and community are not only opposed to each other but are also the precondition for the other? We shall try to answer this question in the following chapters.

What is an organisation?

The manager/employee relationship takes place within the framework of an organisation. But what is an organisation? An example of one pre...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1 Management and employees
• Part I The employee in the community
• Part II Group processes
• Part III Management
• Part IV The manager’s personality
• Bibliography
• Index