Kenwyn K. Smith

Exploring clinical methods for social research

Introduction - Kenwyn K Smith and David N Berg PART ONE: CLINICAL ISSUES The Clinical Demands of Research Methods - David N Berg and Kenwyn K Smith Taking Our Selves Seriously as Researchers - Clayton P Alderfer The Hermeneutic Turn and the Single Case Study in Psychoanalysis - Marshall Edelson Commentary PART TWO: CLINICAL UNDERSTANDING Action Usable Knowledge - Cortlandt Cammann Epistemological Problems in Researching Human Relationships - Kenwyn K Smith Looking at Research Ideas as Behavioral Data - Stewart E Perry Feminist Distrust - Shulamit Reinharz Problems of Context and Content in Sociological Work What Is Clinical Method? - Rodney L Lowman Commentary PART THREE: CLINICAL INVOLVEMENT On Seeking Ones Own Clinical Voice - J Richard Hackman A Personal Account Anxiety in Research Relationships - David N Berg Self-Full Research - Philip H Mirvis and Meryl Reis Louis Working Through the Self as Instrument in Organizational Research On the Researchers Group Memberships - Kathy E Kram Virtuous Subjectivity - Alan Peshkin In the Participant-Observers Is Commentary PART FOUR: CLINICAL METHODS Reconstructing an Organizations History - Valerie M Simmons Systematic Distortion in Retrospective Data History in the Here and Now - Jonathon H Gilette The Development of a Historical Perspective Using Participant-Observation to Construct a Life History - Helen Swick Perry On Studying Emotionally Hot Topics - Robert I Sutton and Susan J Schurman Lessons from an Investigation of Organizational Death Assessing Local Causality in Qualitative Research - A Michael Huberman and Matthew B Miles Commentary

A Rumpelstiltskin Organization: Metaphors on Metaphors in Field Research.

?) 1983 by Cornell University. 0001 -8392/83/2803-0377/

The Health of the Corporate Body: Illness and Organizational Dynamics

00.7 5 This paper describes the turbulent development of a new organization and the conditions that gave rise to members of one group describing their collective life in terms of Rumpelstiltskin, an old fairy tale. Theory is elaborated that explores how group-based ambivalence was transformed into deification of the leader, making him the repository of unrealistic fantasies and expectations that, as a result of his being caught in the middle between complex patterns of conflict that emerged from both those above and below him, eventually triggered his dismissal. It is argued that by paying attention to the symbols, tales, legends, and myths that organizational members use to describe their experience, the researcher can tune into operative dynamics that would otherwise remain very covert and inaccessible.

Group Membership Salience and the Movement of Conflict: Reconceptualizing The Interaction Among Race, Gender, And Hierarchy

The search for ways to cut health care costs in organizations has rarely considered the direct relationship between organizational variables and health. This article hypothesizes that health and illness within a particular organization may be related to the social dynamics of the work setting. Data was gathered from a survey of a corporation with 13,000 employees who work in 16 organizations. An index of reported health symptoms was correlated with scales developed from questions related to organizational issues. Using stepwise multiple regression, 20% of the variance of the aggregate health symptoms was accounted for by three organizational scales (organization-person balance, managerial treatment, and discrimination) after controlling for demographic variables. A second analysis, which focused on the collective dynamics of the 16 organizations, supported the findings of the first analysis. This study found that issues of support, balance, change, and inequity are crucial factors in fostering a healthy work environment.

Fix the Women: An Intervention into an Organizational Conflict Based on Parallel Process Thinking

Conflict in and among groups often erupts in surprising and unexpected ways. Building upon extant theory regarding the movement of conflict, the authors posit that conflict gets enacted in distinct ways when individuals and groups are heterogeneous. The relative impermeability of identity group boundaries fundamentally changes the patterns of interaction required to achieve a state of balance in three-party interactions. The authors present two cases that explore the movement and transformation of conflict among employees in a large financial institution. The intricate dynamics suggest that organization and identity group memberships spawn layers of interaction that generate, escalate, resolve, and/or conceal conflict among organizational participants.

Organizational Reflections Parallel Processes at Work in a Dual Consultation

This article discusses an intervention into an organizational conflict expressed by fighting between two women in a troubled unit of a state hospital. After gathering data through observations and interviews with the staff, the authors prepared a diagnosis and intervention based on parallel process thinking, which postulates that conflict in one part of a system may surface elsewhere, sometimes in a different form that disguises its source. The womens hostility was thought to be actually fueled by feelings of competitiveness among the three senior men in the unit. An intervention using a microcosm group methodology was conducted, which resulted in the womens repairing their relationship and other improvements in the units morale and performance. The authors conclude that parallel process thinking, and methods of diagnosis and intervention based on its tenets, have relevance for managing human behavior in all arenas.

A Role for Community Psychologists: As Participant-Conceptualizers

This article explores the lessons extracted from the parallel processes enacted in the relationship between two consultant groups hired by Eastern (a large financial institution) to kick off a major culture change initiative. The inevitable conflicts between these two consulting groups, selected because they had very different missions and modes of operating, mirrored deeply impacted systemic tensions within Eastern, such as the desire to change and the wish to remain fundamentally unaltered. The consultants’ public struggles to overcome the obstacles to their collaboration helped Eastern surface several latent and intractable tensions threatening its culture change initiative. The processes highlighted here are pertinent whenever multiple organizations or groups attempt to assist a third institution.

Notes from the Epistemological Corner: The Role of Projection in the Creation of Social Knowledge

Abstract There is a powerful body of theory and literature in the social and behavioral sciences that argues our organized communities evolve in ways well out of our control as humans and that we both individually and collectively have little capacity to actually create systems according to our blueprints. If this is correct, it could help explain why we seem so unable to generate the type of psychological sense of community we describe as essential for healthy contemporary living. In this paper I argue we need a whole other way of thinking about the role we might play as co-actors in the evolutionary processes of human systems, a role community psychology has described as participant-conceptualization. I focus on the fact that in human systems, the meanings, both individual and shared, that we attach to experience are all important. This paper discusses how meaning is generated, with a primary emphasis on the role of framing and argues that only as we develop capacities in our organized systems to “self-...

A World of Possibilities Implications for Applied Behavioral Science

Il est indispensable, pour la validite des resultats en sciences sociales, de prendre en compte le processus de projection dans la creation de la connaissance sociale

Corporate Health Revisited An Update on Illness and Organizational Dynamics

If applied behavioral science were to do a systemic reflection on itself there are three themes I think should be included on the list to be considered. (a) As the USA tries to promote democracy in the Middle East, is the cause of “freedom and equality” advanced or hindered by the unilateral use of military force, when the majority of the nations of the world are objecting? (b) When a new “ism” begins to emerge, can it be detected and addressed before it has worked its way into the bricks and mortar of our social infrastructures? (c) Why do contemporary organizations have to work so hard to survive, when they are surrounded by so much abundance? And why, given that there is so much wealth in the world, are so many people and communities living in extreme poverty? Is it possible for humanity to exit the paradigm of scarcity and operate according to the principles of abundance?