Description
Book SynopsisWhy do our organizations so often seem to be less than the sum of their parts? What undermines effectiveness and morale, and gets in the way of achieving what we set out to do?
The Unconscious at Work, Second Edition draws on a body of thinking and practice which has developed over the past 70 years, often referred to as ''the Tavistock approach'' or ''systems-psychodynamics''. All the contributors are practising consultants who draw on this framework, bringing it alive and making it useful to any reader manager, leader or consultant, regardless of whether they have any prior familiarity with the underlying concepts who is curious about what might be driving the puzzling or stressful situations they find in their workplace.
The First Edition was addressed to people working in ''the human services'': health, social care and education. Since it was published in 1994, there has been growing interest in the business world, and in understanding more
Trade Review
"Setting out the basis for the understanding of work in human service organizations, the publication of the original ‘Unconscious at Work’ in 1994 was a landmark event in the field. In this excellent, updated volume, Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts have extended the scope of the book to the corporate sector and have produced a volume of outstanding quality. Drawing on a range of experts who take a psychoanalytic view, this volume comprises a series of superb chapters on a wide range of topics. I cannot recommend it too highly."-Mark Stein, Chair in Leadership and Management, School of Business, University of Leicester, UK
"An invaluable book in developing my leadership of complex organizations and systems. The book really helped me to build my understanding of the impact of the nature of work and context on people’s performance. The book also enhanced my understanding of how basic human experience outside of work define people and teams’ reactions to leaders and each other. The research and examples across a range of settings and sectors really help you build change and performance improvement programmes which will have a lasting positive impact."-Fiona Edwards, CEO Surrey and Borders NHS Foundation Trust, UK
"We have used this classic and exceptional text to inform the design and delivery of our programmes with managers and leaders in health and social care. It is essential that public service leaders recognize powerful emotional states and work with them. A 2ndedition of this book is timely as organizations struggle to cope, adapt and thrive in complex, ambiguous and uncertain contexts. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about unconscious processes at work and how understanding these can enhance awareness, effectiveness and performance."Ann Mahon, Professor of Health Leadership, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK
Reviews for the first edition of The Unconscious at Work:
"What makes this book excellent? ...the writing is direct and clear, presenting complex subjects effectively. The abundance of examples is accompanied by intellectual rigor... highly recommended to workers, managers, students and teachers in the human services."-Professional Social Work
"As a reminder of the processes that can bring individual work, teams and corporate planning to a grinding halt this book is invaluable."-Probation Journal
Table of ContentsList of figures
About the authors
Foreword by Jonathan Gosling
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgements
A note on confidentiality
A note about ‘a Tavistock approach’
Introduction: Making sense of organizations – the institutional roots of the Tavistock approach
James Mosse
PART I
Conceptual framework
1 Some unconscious aspects of organizational life: contributions from psychoanalysis
William Halton
2 The dangers of contagion
Deirdre Moylan
3 The unconscious at work in groups and teams: contributions from the work of Wilfred Bion
Jon Stokes
4 The organization of work: contributions from open systems theory
Vega Zagier Roberts
5 Authority, power and leadership: contributions from group relations training
Anton Obholzer
6 Changing the stories we are ‘in’: power, purpose and organization-in-the-mind
Vega Zagier Roberts
PART II
The unconscious at work in human service organizations
Part IIa Working with people in distress
7 Attending to emotional issues on a special care baby unit
Nancy Cohn
8 Containing anxiety in work with damaged children
Chris Mawson
9 Fragmentation and integration in a school for children with physical disabilities
Anton Obholzer
10 Where angels fear to tread: idealism, despondency and inhibition of thought in hospital nursing
Anna Dartington
11 Till death us do part: caring and uncaring in work with older people
Vega Zagier Roberts
12 Working with dying people: on being good enough
Peter Speck
Part IIb Challenges, crises and change
13 The self-assigned impossible task
Vega Zagier Roberts
14 Institutional chaos and personal stress
Jon Stokes
15 The troublesome individual and the troubled institution
Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts
16 Finding a voice: differentiation, representation and empowerment in organizations under threat
James Mosse and Vega Zagier Roberts
17 Confl ict and collaboration: managing intergroup relations
Vega Zagier Roberts
18 Managing social anxieties in public sector organizations
Anton Obholzer
PART III
The unconscious at work in business organizations
Kay Trainor (guest editor)
19 Family patterns at work: how casting light on the shadows of the past can enhance leadership in the present
Francesca Cardona and Sheila Damon
20 Feelings as data
Kay Trainor
21 The myth of rationality: why change efforts so often fail
James Krantz and Kay Trainor
22 Navigating roles in complex systems
Vega Zagier Roberts
23 Beyond the individual: reframing blame and responsibility for ‘rogue’ behaviour in the fi nancial services industry
Ajit Menon
24 From managing to leading organizations in their contexts
Matthieu Daum
Afterword: Consulting to oneself
Appendix: The genealogy of systems psychodynamics
Bibliography
Index
