Yiannis Gabriel

The Unmanaged Organization: Stories, Fantasies and Subjectivity

This paper argues that within every organization there is a terrain which is not and cannot be managed, in which people, both individually and in groups, can engage in unsupervised, spontaneous activity. This is referred to as the unmanaged organization, a kind of organizational dreamworld in which desires, anxieties and emotions find expressions in highly irrational construc tions. The chief force in this terrain is fantasy and its landmarks include stories, myths, jokes, gossip, nicknames, graffiti and cartoons. In the organizational dreamworld, emotions prevail over rationality and pleasure over reality. The paper argues that fantasy offers a third possibility to organizational members, which amounts to neither conformity nor rebellion, but to a grudging material acceptance accompanied by a symbolic refashioning of events and official stor ies. Far from being a marginal terrain, it is suggested that the unmanaged organisation is rich, multidimensional and the natural habitat of subjectivity. Four different modes of subjectivity are identified and discussed in connection with different types of organizational narratives: (1) the subject as hero; (2) the subject as heroic survivor; (3) the subject as victim; (4) the subject as object of love.

Beyond Happy Families: A Critical Reevaluation of the Control-Resistance-Identity Triangle

In this article, the author explores the nature of contemporary organizational controls, the extent to which they can be said to colonize employee subjectivity, and the types of resistance which they generate. Labor process, psychoanalytic, critical theory, and Foucauldian perspectives are juxtaposed and a number of similarities and divergences are noted. It is argued that many of these perspectives prematurely lament the end of employee recalcitrance and exaggerate the magnitude and totality of organizational controls, generating over-managed and overcontrolled images of individuals, organizations, and societies. It is proposed that a rapprochement of psychoanalytic and labor theory approaches can lead to an appreciation of unmanaged and unmanageable terrains in organizations, in which human agency may be rediscovered, neither as a class-conscious proletariat nor as a transcendental subject, but as a struggling, feeling, thinking, suffering subject, one capable of obeying and disobeying, controlling and being controlled, losing control and escaping control, defining and redefining control for itself and for others.

Emotion, learning and organizational change

Develops an understanding of the complex interface between emotion and learning and highlights the special contribution of psychoanalytic insights in understanding individuals’ reactions to organizational changes. Explores the extent to which emotions are products of learning, the ways in which emotions facilitate or inhibit learning, and the ways in which learning redefines and re‐organizes emotions at both an individual and an organizational level. The analysis shows the interdependence between emotion and learning and highlights many of the subtleties of individuals’ reactions to change that current research into individuals’ adaptability to organizational change tends to neglect. Reviews some of the implications of the psychodynamic explication of emotion and learning to our understanding of individuals’ reactions to organizational change.

Turning Facts into Stories and Stories into Facts: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Organizational Folklore

This paper analyzes three organizational stories which the author encountered in different work and military organizations. Each story reveals a dual structure, a recital, which varies in different accounts, and a common core, referred to here as the myth. These myths are seen as collective fantasies, fulfilling shared desires and offering either opportunities for cathartic discharge or a partial inoculation against misfortune. It is argued that the meanings of organizational myths are neither transparent nor unambiguous, often expressing ambivalent and contradictory wishes and permitting different or competing interpretations. The three myths discussed in this paper were all found to be symbolic means of turning passivity into activity, powerlessness into control, and of offering consolations against pain and suffering.

Storytelling and Change: An Unfolding Story

Change spawns stories and stories can trigger change. Stories can also block change and can define what constitutes change. In this Introduction to the special issue, the special issue editors explore some of the current debates on stories and organizational change, introduce the articles that are included in the issue, identify some prominent themes (power, identity construction and defence, plurivocality, knowledge transfer, boundary unfreezing, sense-making and sense-destroying) and some possible blind spots (authenticity, narrative structure). In this way, they offer a conspectus on the current state of play in this field, signalling some challenges and directions for the future.

Glass Cages and Glass Palaces: Images of Organization in Image-Conscious Times

Max Weber’s metaphor of ‘the iron cage’ has provided an abiding image of organizations during the high noon of modernity. But these organizations—rigid, rational and bureaucratic—may no longer be sustainable in our times. Instead of a preoccupation with efficient production and rational administration, management today is increasingly turning to the consumer as the measure of all things, a consumer who seeks not merely the useful and the functional, but the magical, the fantastic and the alluring. Management of organizations thus finds itself increasingly preoccupied with the orchestration of collective fantasies and the venting of collective emotions through the power of image, in what Ritzer has named the cathedrals of consumption, such as shopping malls, tourist attractions and holiday resorts. The core thesis of this paper is that decline of Weber’s iron cage of rationality has exposed us neither to the freedom of a garden of earthly delights nor to the desolation of the law of the jungle. Instead, I propose that the new experiences of work and consumption allow for greater ambivalence and nuance, for which I offer the twin metaphors of glass cages and glass palaces. As a material that generates, distorts and disseminates images, glass seems uniquely able to evoke both the glitter and the fragility of organizations in late modernity. The metaphor of the glass cage suggests certain constraints, discontents and consolations quite distinct from those we encounter at the high noon of modernity. Shared features of the glass cage of work and the glass cage of consumption are an emphasis on display, an invisibility of constraints, a powerful illusion of choice, a glamorization of image and an ironic questionmark over whether freedom lies inside or outside the glass. Above all, there is an ambiguity about whether the glass is a medium of entrapment or a beautifying frame.

Emotion, learning and organizing

Far from being emotional deserts, organizations are full of emotion and passion. Increasingly, management has sought to harness emotion to increase work motivation, enhance customer service and work performance and the “emotional intelligence” advocates have sought to develop a toolkit for the smarter deployment of emotions in organizations. Using social constructionist and psychoanalytic ideas, the author argues that the management of emotions is problematic and precarious. Some emotions may be contained or re‐directed, but many arise from deeper unconscious sources and are impervious to learning. Two specific emotions, anxiety and love, are discussed.

Learning shock:the trauma of return to formal learning

This article develops a theory for a phenomenon we have termed ‘learning shock’. This refers to experiences of acute frustration, confusion and anxiety experienced by some students, who find themselves exposed to unfamiliar learning and teaching methods, bombarded by unexpected and disorienting cues, and subjected to ambiguous and conflicting expectations. The article examines the incidence of learning shock among a group of full-time students studying towards a Masters in Business Administration and aims to identify some of the causes of learning shock as well as some of its principal manifestations. It further examines some of the coping strategies used by these students and the relative effectiveness of such strategies. Our findings suggest that one of the foremost factors contributing to learning shock can be the experience of working and learning as part of a multi-cultural syndicate group, something that is a regular feature of MBA degrees. We examine some of the reasons why such syndicate groups can become dysfunctional to learning. The article concludes with some recommendations on the management of learning shock.

Organizations, management and psychoanalysis: an overview

An overview is presented of some basic psychoanalytic insights into organisations that collectively reinforce the reasons why management studies should concern itself with psychoanalysis. The paper highlights the different psychoanalytically informed approaches that have been adopted thus far in the organisation literature and then raises some issues related to those who seek to use psychoanalytically informed insight to make interventions and manage organisation dynamics.

Psychoanalytic Contributions to the Study of the Emotional Life of Organizations

In light of increasing interest in organizational emotions, this article argues for a reintegration of psychoanalytic scholarship into the study of organizations. A brief presentation of social constructionist approaches to emotions in organizations is followed by a presentation of major psychoanalytic contributions to the study of emotions at individual, group, and organizational levels. The author argues for a rapprochement between constructionist views which emphasize the cultural character of emotional displays, and psychoanalytic views which explore the origins, vicissitudes, and communication of emotional experiences within individual or group biographies.