Psychological Perspectives on Organisation - Coursework Example

Introduction In the age of globalization, an in-depth study and understanding of the organization’s behaviour has become important as its people comprise of different race, colour and culture. Organizational behaviour basically defines the interaction of human beings in a given organization and analysis of individuals and groups characteristics facilitates better understanding, prediction and improvisation in work place, leading to improved performance. The good leadership ensures effective communication with the employees with shared vision of the new strategy thus promoting better understanding among the employees for easy adaptability to change. Hence, the knowledge of core psycho analytical concepts becomes important tools to the leadership for understanding the organizational behavior. The understanding of psychoanalytical concepts provides invaluable information regarding the socio-psychological factors that adversely affect the performance outcome of the workforce. Unconscious and repression, transference, envy and rivalry are few major concepts that considerably influence the human nature and consequently the behavior of the organization. Freud, the eminent socio-psychologist has contributed extensively towards understanding of these core psychoanalytical ingredients so that the one is better able to analyze human behavior within the prescribed social norms. Social scientists have corroborated that the psycho-analytical perspectives are important tools for understanding the hidden dynamics of human relationship, especially with regard to corporate culture, social defenses, leadership imperatives, motivation and other paradigms associated with organizational behavior (Levinson, 1972, 2002; DeBoard, 1978; Czander, 1993; Gabriel, 1999). The understanding equips the leadership with the necessary knowledge to promote confidence building and strengthen interpersonal understanding with the group, within the organization. Unconscious and repression The theory of cognition tries to explain why and how the events take place and subsequent pattern of behaviour of man under certain condition involving emotional and metaphysical reaction. The role of brain and conscious and unconscious activities of the mind are seen to be the responsible for the general behaviour of man. The conscious and unconscious working of our mind is strongly co-related with our experience of the object reality. The conscious mind understands and interprets the sensations according to the partial or total recall of the events. On the other hand, sub conscious mind may or may not interpret the event with the same degree of accuracy but may have significant influence on other activities. Freud stated that people tend to repress certain emotionally painful memories in the deep recess of their unconscious mind (Freud, 1905). While the person may not be aware of those memories buried inside his sub-conscious mind, his actions, nevertheless, may reflect the affects of those memories. The psycho-analysis of these buried memories is important for organizational leadership because they may be the major factors for the motivating and conflicting behaviour of the individuals, within the organization. The anomalies of our unconscious mind still need to be researched and probed so as to explain the intangible reactions of our perceptions and memories. It is found that emotions of the individuals directly co-relates with the organizational functioning. The illogical and irrational behaviour of individuals become detrimental for the organizational goals and objectives. It is for this reason psycho-analysis of the behaviour of the individuals, within the organization, become vital as they tend to provide the leadership with clues to effectively meet the challenges and promote proactive participation of the individuals to diffuse workplace conflicts. A well developed leadership within the organizational structure understands that whatever is actively repressed from the conscious thought processes results in illogical behavior and conflicts. Emotional intelligence is an important attribute of leadership. According to Mayer et al., it is the “ability to recognize the meanings of emotions and their relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on that basis” (2000, p. 267). It therefore, makes efforts to analyze and understand the individual’s behavior and facilitates integration of diverse ideologies and personal conflicts. It help inspire and motivate each of them to work together to produce a cohesive output representing the organization’s unique objectives and goals. Arnold et al. have defined motivation as ‘an intervening process or an individual state of an organism that impels it or drives it to action. In this sense motivation is an energizer of behaviour’ (Arnold et al. 2005). In the rapidly changing environment of globalization, change is essential for development and organizations tend to adapt to the constantly evolving business environment. “Organizations must change because their environments change” (Bateman, 1990). But it is true that people tend to resist any kind of change and organizations therefore, it is important that changes are implemented in a manner that mitigates the resistance of the employees and instils confidence in them. Doyle asserts that organizational change primarily examines the relations between dispositional attributes and change reactions. She says the intervening effect of skills is an important issue in implementing the change within the organization (Doyle, 2003). Transference Transference is another very important contribution of Sigmund Freud in the area of psycho therapy. Transference can broadly be defined as the therapeutic interaction between the psychologist and the individual, where the unconscious desires and demands seem to manifest in reality and are transferred to the persona of the analyst or therapist. The process of transference is repetitive and complex that is designed to bring out the repressed desires of the unconscious. The desires and events are then interpreted by the analyst who makes the individual rationalize the events from a new perspective and thereby help eliminate the element of irrational behaviour in the wider context of the organizational decision making process. Organization behaviour is intrinsically linked to human relationship and therefore, interpersonal communication is vital to the development of the organization. While the conflicts are normally part and parcel of everyone’s life, workplace conflicts need to be resolved at the earliest because if left long to fester, the situation can become explosive and critical for the organization. Psychologists have asserted that conflicts and resistance can be broadly described as imagined threats to the personal security and peace of the individuals. The individuals perceive the conflicts as the re-enactment of previous events that might have been associated with anxiety and pain. Through effective communication technique and application of psycho-analytic concept of transference, leaders are able to overcome their resistance and resolve the conflict to promote mutual trust and confidence building. Ashkanasy et al. assert that leaders have “the ability to read emotions in one’s self and in others, and to be able to use this information to guide decision-making” (2002, p.317). The wider implications of the process are vital to the organizational behaviour and development of leadership that is empathetic to the emotions of the co-workers. The leaders, when acting as agents of change, become the catalyst that provokes and promotes the participatory behaviour amongst the workforce who strives for common goals and collective vision of the organization. The psycho-analytical concept of transference is highly relevant for leadership because it helps facilitates personal growth of individuals within the organization and develop new outlook towards leadership approach and performance outcome of the individuals and consequently organization as a whole. Various researchers have agreed that change is part and parcel of life and is intrinsically linked to the reality. The organizational leadership tries to bring about the changes by highlighting the ‘pain’ of the system and links the past transition to the present with new vision and better understanding (McCullough Vaillant, 1997; Kets de Vries, 2002). Envy and rivalry Emotions like anger, frustration, envy and rivalry and reluctant acceptance make non-congenial atmosphere for work. The incorporation of technology within the organization creates a complex set of social system that needs to be understood on a wider context of organizational goals and objectives. The human factor that considerably impacts the inter-personal relationship within the work environment is hugely important for the organizational leadership. Since the human relations and organizational behaviour are complementary, it is important that emotions that hinder the smooth operation must be understood and analyzed. Of the various emotions that adversely affect the performance of the group and organization, envy and rivalry are the most damaging, both on personal level and professional growth. Envy and rivalry are one of those emotional states that at all level of expressions, from minor to intense, adversely affects the physical and mental well-being of the person. Envy is often perceived as an act of defense against an imagined or actual threat or it may be an expression of frustration for one’s own inability to face certain situations of life in a manner that would effectively alleviate one’s inferiority complex. The diversity of reasons may be attributed to the acts of envy that may result in harming others or oneself because a person loses his ability of objectivity and rationale when he or she is envious. Hence, jealousy is not good for our welfare and needs to be rationalized to find its root cause and thereby find best measures to control it. Envy and rivalry play significant role in the group dynamics. Envy can be described as resentment of other’s possessions and an inherent desire for its possession. Klein says that man is endowed with conflicting emotions that tend to project themselves according to the perception of reality as seen. Hence, envy and rivalry become part of the individual and may cause conflicts of ideology and perception (Klein, 1975). One can therefore conclude that understanding of psycho-analytical concepts are intrinsically linked to organizational leadership that has become extremely significant because the fast changing socio political environment has necessitated the incorporation of rapid improvisation in the cutting edge business environment. One needs to accept the challenge of creating a cohesive and encouraging atmosphere and leaders, within and outside the organization, facilitate the acceptance of the changes in a smooth manner. Reference Arnold, J., Silvester, J., Patterson, F., Robertson, I., Cooper, C. & Burnes, B. (2005). Work Psychology Understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace. (4th Edn.). Harlow: Prentice Hall. ASHKANASY, N. HARTEL, C. AND DAUS, C. (2002). Diversity and emotion: The new frontiers in organizational behavior research. Journal of management, 28 (3), 307-338. Bateman, Thomas S., and Carl P. Zeithaml. Management: Function and Strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1990. Czander, W.M. (1993) The Psychodynamics of Work and Organizations. Guilford Press, New York. DeBoard, R. (1978) The Psychoanalysis of Organisations. Routledge. Doyle, C.E. (2003). Work and Organizational Psychology: An introduction with attitude. Hove, Sussex: Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis. Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. J. Strachey. The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. Gabriel, Y. (1999) Organizations in Depth. Sage, London. Kets de Vries, M.F.R. (2002) Can CEOs Change? Yes But Only if they Want to. INSEAD Working Papers Series, Fontainebleau. Klein, M. (1975c). The writings of Melanie Klein III: Envy and gratitude and other works 1946-1963.London: Hogarth. Levinson, H. (1972) Organizational Diagnosis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Levinson, H. (2002) Organizational Assessment. American Psychological Association. Washington DC. McCullough Vaillant, L. (1997) Changing Character. Basic Books, New York. Mayer, J., Caruso, D., and Salovey, P. (2000). Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for intelligence. Intelligence, 27 (4), 267-298. Read More