Can the Organizations Be Psychic Prisons?

Greek philosopher Plato, in his work “The Republic”, discusses the social organization of that time, as can be seen in the text below, adapted from the book “Images of Organization” by Gareth Morgan (1996):

“In an imaginary scenario, there is an underground cave with its mouth open toward the light of a blazing fire. Within the cave are people chained so that they cannot move. They can see only the cave wall directly in front of them. This is illuminated by the light of the fire, which throws shadows of people and objects onto the wall. The cave dwellers equate the shadows with reality, naming them, talking about them, and even linking sounds from outside the cave with the movements on the wall. Truth and reality for the prisoners rest in this shadowy world, because they have no knowledge of any other.

However, if one of the inhabitants were allowed to leave the cave, he would realize that the shadows are but dark reflections of a more complex reality, and that the knowledge and perceptions of his fellow cave dwellers are distorted and flawed. If he were then to return to the cave, he would never be able to live in the old way again, since for him the world would be a very different place. Undoubtedly, it would be hard for him to accept his confinement and would feel pity for his fellow cave dwellers. if he were to try and share this new knowledge with them, he would probably be ridiculed for his views. For the cave prisoners, the familiar images of the cave would be much more meaningful than any story about the world they had never seen. Besides, since the person bearing this new knowledge would no longer be capable of acting with conviction regarding the shadows, his fellow prison dwellers would start to see the outside world as a dangerous place, something that should be avoided. The experience could actually lead the prisoners to get even more stuck with their customary way of facing reality”.

It is clear that the text above is related to much broader contexts, such as the currently known universe of form and even with the physical and material reality of existence. However, by bringing that scope down to something stricter, the text also relates to the 30 or 40 years of the life span that each individual spends working and learning in a corporate environment. Nowadays, the Y generation is questioned because it spends only 3 to 5 years in a company and, with no apparent reason, wishes to change to a different environment, to some other organization, sometimes to another market segment. A considerable amount of time living inside the same cave (organizational culture) might throw the professional into the pitfall of the “approved way of thinking”. This sort of trap has prompted the American car industry, back in the 80’s, to lose ground to its Japanese competitors because it was stuck with the American way of manufacturing cars.

Some common types of shadows that a corporate cave might generate include the following:

Group Blindness: People are guided by group illusions of perceptions that bear a self-isolating character;
The Corporate Stockholm Syndrome: In an attempt to integrate to and conquer the sympathy of the company, the individual adopts practices that he/she finds (and actually are) undesirable and advocates them outside the organization;
Group Defense Mechanisms (Closed Cave): Information, practices and successful cases from other business segments are not welcome with the argument that “they do not apply to our reality”; often, not even the practices of supplier and competitors are studied; groups often revert to childish behavior standards to defend themselves from the uncomfortable aspects of the real world;
Illusion of Control: Performance indicators are not used to measure and improve the productive and business processes of the organization, but are used in a distorted manner to the defense and assurance of individual perpetuity in the position; thus, such indicators indicate nothing; nothing is actually controlled;
Unconscious Blocking to Innovation and Change: Such expressions as “one should not mess with a winning formula” or “this has always been done and worked out fine this way” are blockers to continuous improvement, to new work methods, to new products, to blue oceans, and, ultimately, to the survival of the organization.

According to Freudian psychology, in any social environment, corporate organizations included, people defend themselves against such pitfalls by banning to the unconscious mind their impulses and desires to react to them in several ways (MORGAN, 2002):

a) Repression: Pushing undesired impulses and ideas to the unconscious;
b) Negation: Refusing to admit a fact;
c) Transference: Guiding their impulses toward something safer;
d) Attachment: Adhering strictly to a given attitude or behavior;
e) Projection: Assigning their own feelings or impulses to other people;
f) Introjection: Internalizing aspects from the outside world into the psyche;
g) Rationalization: Creating justification schemes that disguise the actual intentions;
h) Reaction: Converting of an attitude or feeling into its opposite;
i) Regression: Adopting childish standards to reduce the demands of the ego;
j) Sublimation: Channeling the basic impulses to socially acceptable forms;
k) Idealization: Valuing the positive aspects of a given situation to protect oneself from the negative aspects;
l) Disintegration: Isolating different elements of experience to protect the good from the bad.

The solution to prevent the mechanisms used to defend the individual against the psychic pitfalls generated by the operation of organizations from being harmful to the health and well-being of the individual stems from a combination of two practices: self-knowledge, which is knowing the mental state of oneself, including one’s beliefs, desires, and sensations; and consciousness (= knowing + admitting) that these psychic schemes do exist and can imprison the human being in an organizational cave. Yoga; Zen-Buddhism; somatic-based psychotherapy (such as Biosynthesis); and the Avatar techniques are all practices many people know of and adopt. Education in these and other self-knowledge techniques and practices should be part of the array of occupational training of T&D (Training & Development) areas in organizations.

References:

MORGAN, Gareth. Imagens da Organização. Trad.: Cecília Whitaker Bergamini, Roberto Coda. São Paulo: Editora Atlas, 1996.

GASSENFERTH, Walter. Blog Gestão Empresarial em Gotas. Disponível em http://www.quanticaconsultoria.com