What Can Psychoanalysis Offer Organization Studies Today? Taking Stock of Current Developments and Thinking about Future Directions
By M. Fotaki, S. Long, H. Schwartz. 2012
127 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The introductory paper to the Special Issue discusses psychoanalytic contributions to the study of contemporary organizations. The aim is to draw attention to psychoanalysis as a critical theory with wide explanatory power and a potential for thinking about organizational practice in new ways. It does so firstly, by reviewing the impact it had so far on illuminating group dynamics, leadership dysfunctions and the sanctioned socially institutional defences. Secondly, it contests the limited impact of psychoanalysis on mainstream organization and management theory as an unfortunate outcome since it represents arguably the most advanced and compelling conception of human subjectivity that any theoretical approach has to offer. By way of example, seven papers comprising this Special Issue are introduced. Lastly the paper outlines future developments in the psychoanalytic studies of organizations that might be about: (i) greater conceptual inclusivity and crossing the boundaries between the humanities and science; (ii) the study of affect and emotion in organizations (iii) an integration of psychoanalytical insights with social theory via psychosocial approaches and ‘systems psychoanalysis’ and (iv) linking psychoanalysis to discourses of power and the politics of life.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Information Systems and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fb1b446dff9548c444938c00bc23da293fd73047
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In Clinical Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Narrative identity construction in times of career change: Taking note of unconscious desires (2015, background): “As a result, many approaches to management and organization in the 21st century have been transformed by intersecting with psychoanalysis (Fotaki et al., 2012).”
- Thinking critically about affect in organization studies: Why it matters (2017, unknown): “…upon a small but burgeoning body of work in which authors have engaged with these ideas in order to better understand organizational life (Beyes and Steyaert, 2013; Borch, 2010; Fotaki et al., 2012; Iedema et al., 2006; Kenny, 2012; Kenny et al., 2011; Vachhani, 2013; Thompson and Willmott, 2015).”
- Unravelling the antecedents of loneliness in the workplace (2020, background): “Erlich, 1998; Mijuskovic, 2012) but much more work needs to be done, for example in the psychoanalytical aspects of loneliness in organisations (e.g. Freudian concepts of mourning and melancholia, professional identities and the unwanted aspects of the self; Fotaki et al., 2012).”