First genocide, now ecocide: an anti-life force in organisations?

Abstract

Most contributions to OSD have assumed that organisations are beset by various anxieties—some inherent to their work, some to the social context in which they operate—which threaten to blow them off course. If not managed effectively these anxieties generate various defences—splitting, denial, dissociation, etc.—which undermine the capacity to engage creatively with the organisation's internal and external reality. Many of the organisations studied, in healthcare, education, etc., ostensibly have a public purpose, but what of those organisations whose purpose is antisocial, where their business is primarily to destroy rather than create? The group relations tradition emerged from the aftermath of the Holocaust and genocide. Today the genocidal impulse has become conjoined with an ecocidal one; as a result we stand on the brink of disaster. This article explores the "structures of feeling" in organisations as our existential fears reach acute levels, and asks whether we need to extend our frame of analysis beyond the anxieties and defences provoked by our destructiveness in order to better understand humanity's apparent embrace of destructiveness.