The Personality of the Organization: A Psycho-Dynamic Explanation of Culture and Change

Lionel Stapley believes that current theories about organisational culture fail because they concentrate on simple, surface issues. They make no attempt to deal with underlying, unconscious processes. Emotions run deep in organisations as much as they do in any other sphere of life. They run particularly deep when an organisation is going through a period of change. Taking concepts and tools from psychoanalysis, the author uses them to try to help us understand the collective feelings of members of organisations; to emphasise the role of unconscious processes in the creation of a culture and its importance to the management of change.
Through a progressive structure, the book gives a thorough grounding in both theory and insights. Section 1 begins with a close look at the 'problem' of organisational culture pointing up the deficiencies of current theory and methodology and providing a psychodynamic way forward. Section 2 takes the reader through a number of fundamental concepts, building to a fuller psychodynamic explanation of organisational culture. Section 3 is about application and features chapters on the management of change and a case study of change in which the author was involved.