|
 |
|
|
Using
Psychoanalytic Theory to Re-Conceptualize Management and
Organization Studies
Convenor:
Marianna Fotaki
MFotaki@mbs.ac.uk
Psychoanalysis occupies a unique position in social sciences.
By
introducing the concept of the unconscious as the repository
of meaning behind all manifest behaviours, it has explored and
illuminated individual, group and social phenomena that could
not be explained otherwise. More importantly, it has pointed
out the imaginary foundation of our social reality, and
therefore of science, of management, of organizations and
organizing. Whilst delimiting the possibility of the
unconscious ever becoming totally transparent to itself,
psychoanalysis has uncovered its emancipatory potential for
introspective consolidation of our subjective experience and
for holding onto issues of depth in our thinking.
Although psychoanalysis has altered the ways we
view ourselves and has influenced arts, philosophy and
virtually every discipline concerned with human nature, and
has also developed an elaborate body of knowledge, its
contribution to management and organization studies is
relatively minor.
It is also worth noting that
as critical management research has
questioned linear assumptions underpinning many management
constructs, the use of psychoanalytic thinking to challenge
the dominance of ‘formal rationality’ and
the totalising positivist wisdom in management discourse
has
been all but absent from this critical inquiry.
We would like to question and reject the
peripheral position assigned to psychoanalytic thinking in
critical management studies and organization theory more
generally. We believe that
psychoanalysis has an essential and distinctive role to play
in understanding contemporary organizations in their broader
societal context, by bringing about theoretical insights to
bear on managers and policy makers in business and public
organisations. By recognizing the conflicting psychic forces
in the subject we can analyze external reality; by studying
behaviors of people in groups, organizations and social
institutions we could re-think current issues of power,
otherness and post-rationality as
they present themselves in the field of organization studies
and beyond.
We propose a research workshop as a way of exploring,
acknowledging and challenging the relevance of psychoanalytic
thinking for re-conceptualizing the notions of management and
organization, and for re/defining the potential for future
research in these areas. The proposed workshop builds on the
successful joint symposium supported by Organization and
Management Theory Division and Critical Management Studies
Interest Group convened during the annual meeting of the
Academy of Management in Philadelphia 2007 on the theme of ‘Happiness
and Goodness in/of Organisations and Society? – Ideas and
Challenges from Psychoanalytic Thinking’. The symposium
generated a heated and stimulating debate about the past, and
mostly about the future of psychoanalytic theory in thinking
about contemporary organizations and issues such as market
‘ethos’ versus public value, work as play, the im/possibility
of authentic leadership and the illusory notion of identity.
This research workshop would offer a space for creative
elaboration and in-depth investigation of issues raised in the
symposium and other important debates which it did not address
including: gendered organizations, the meaning of
organizational practice and wider political issues of
corruption and legitimacy of power and how they affect both,
organizations and society. We would therefore like to invite
applications of psychoanalytic theory that specifically but
not exhaustively problematize the issues of:
 |
Linking the unconscious
and other key psychoanalytic tenets (e.g. transference,
counter-transference, narcissism and perversion) with
the realm of power and politics by employing critical social
and political theory and philosophy (such as in works of
Paul Hoggett, Slavoj Žižek and Yiannis Stavrakakis for
example). |
|
The relevance of
psychoanalytic frames to rethinking crucial organizational
and political issues of otherness, autonomy, desire, body,
power/lessness and their theorization by feminist scholars
including Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler,
and other theorists such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Ernesto
Laclau and Axel Honneth. |
|
Theoretical and methodological developments
in applications of
post-Freudian and post-Lacanian
notions of subjectivity to explore specific organizational
issues of corruption, corporate greed, executive hubris,
asymmetries of power and equality, the ‘abject’ of power
relations, violence in/of organizations and others.
|
|
A creative dialogue between the scholars
working from the tradition of object relation theory and
Lacanian or post-Lacanian schools, to further conceptual and
methodological questions
concerned with the potential contribution of psychoanalysis
to different/alternative theorizing in management and
organization studies. |
The
motivation for the workshop is simple: neither the PDW nor the
main program events at the AOM give us enough opportunity to
engage in in-depth discussion of papers in critical management
studies. So the workshop will be organized as a series of
parallel streams (working groups). Each stream will consist of
people who have contributed papers on a well-defined topic
(perhaps with some invited discussants), and the group will
work together over the course of the day-and-a-half, going
around the room discussing the papers in turn. In order to
maximize discussion, authors will not present their own
papers, but rather participants will be asked to present and
discuss each others' papers. We will also arrange a couple of
plenary sessions and some social time where all the
participants come together.
We are
yet to finalize the cost of the workshop, but based on present
estimates, we anticipate that the workshop will cost between
$400 and $550 for each participant, depending on whether they
choose to stay for two nights or three, and whether they
choose single or double rooms. The fee will include meals
(lunch and dinner on 7th and all 3 meals on 8th). We will
finalize the details quickly on this front.
If
you wish to be part of this stream, please submit a 250 word
abstract
to
MFotaki@mbs.ac.uk
by January 15th,
2008. Please note that submissions can be concurrently on
review at the regular AOM 2008 conference as well. The
submission of an abstract constitutes a good-faith agreement
to submit a full paper for the stream by June 1, 2008 if the
paper is accepted. The final paper should be less than 8000
words in length.
NEW
DATES (as of 30 December 2007)
Feb 20: Abstracts of papers submitted to stream conveners
March 10: Submissions accepted/rejected
June 15: Full papers submitted by this date for inclusion in
the Workshop.
|
|
