{"title":"Is there a doctor in the house? Systems-psychodynamic research into general practitioners’ experiences of changes in healthcare delivery","authors":"Elisabeth Greenway","doi":"10.33212/osd.v22n1.2022.46","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v22n1.2022.46","url":null,"abstract":"My qualitative research uses a psychosocial approach to explore GPs’ experiences during changes in healthcare delivery prior to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The challenges of running everyday general practice under the neoliberal paradigm meant that GPs were retiring early, and that new GPs were hard to recruit. Even before March 2020, the biopsychosocial model of medicine was contending with many complexities, including workforce shortages, an ageing population, increas-ing incidence of chronic comorbidity, and the development of clinical technologies, to name but a few. General practice is also challenged by the requirements of com-missioning, bidding, and contracting in order to sustain income and viability. What defines GPs’ primary tasks, roles, and systems, and how are GPs’ motivations and identities affected by this situation of clinical complexity and financial challenge? My research reveals three types of GP and an ecosystem’s model of the organisation-in-the-mind, involving various social defences and valencies for individual and group functioning.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42893271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Why do I have to do this? And why not?” Institutions, integrity, and citizenship under threat","authors":"Joseph Triest","doi":"10.33212/osd.v22n1.2022.115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v22n1.2022.115","url":null,"abstract":"Ed Shapiro’s important and thought-provoking article deals with civic ethics and is organised around three critical points: a call (1) for taking personal authority in order to protect the group from (what is perceived as) its destructors (Why do I have to do this?); an offer for (2) doing it by being emphatic with the “enemy” (in what way is he right?); and (3) encouragement to reveal “active citizenship”.\u0000The discussion challenges those questions by asking: Do I have to do this?Always? And why me? Do I have to understand the other? Always? Under what conditions? And is it really possible, taking into account our unconscious attitudes towards “otherness”? The discussion refers to the timing and the sociopolitical con-text of Shapiro’s article—namely turbulent times and a deep disappointment of present-day leadership—and interprets his challenge as a call for the return of the individual almost as a “Nietzschean hero”—namely, to differentiate him/herself even from the group-as-a-whole. Some unconscious aspects of the challenge which Ed Shapiro puts before us are discussed, referring to the inherent tension between “what should be” and “what is actually happening”.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49396116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accessing the psychodynamics of organisations through applied organisational poetry","authors":"H. Stein, S. Allcorn","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.242","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the contribution applied poetry can make to psychodynamic-ally informed qualitative inquiry into the lived experience of workplaces. “What it is like to work here.” The authors propose that, as a different way of knowing, applied poetry complements traditional research methods. The authors explain what applied organisational poetry is, how it “works”, how it fosters self-reflection within the researcher/consultant, and how it functions as a metaphoric “tuning fork” that resonates with clients, interviewees, and group members who share an attuned awareness in their lives awakened in the poems. The authors offer three illustrations of the poet co-author’s applied organisational poems and how, as qualitative research data, they contribute to psychodynamically informed interpretation and intervention in workplaces. The article concludes with a story or “case example” of what the approach discussed here “looks like” in the lived world of an organisational intervention.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47733595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trust issues in the development of group relations in China, 2014 to 2018: analysis and interpretation of key events","authors":"Xiaohua Lu, Seth B Harkins","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.260","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores key events in the Beijing Group Relations Conferences 2014, 2016, and 2018 through key events regarding multiple leadership roles and lenses. This study analyses these key events utilising trust theory, and concludes that the development of group relations in China is based on the development of trust on multiple levels within a temporary experiential learning organisation in which the primary task is the study of authority, leadership, membership and covert/overt processes in groups and organisations. These events are described, analysed, and interpreted to illustrate how trust evolved in three group relations conferences and its implications for the development of group relations in China and other cultures unfamiliar with these in the Tavistock tradition.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43069293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Promoting mentalizing in organisations through learning operative groups","authors":"Giovanni Di Stefano","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.228","url":null,"abstract":"Current and pressing scientific and technological changes are producing drastic transformations within organisations, creating anxiety and uncertainty and inhibiting the reflective function of the workers who experience conditions of senselessness and estrangement from their work. This article presents a case study from learning operative group training sessions aimed to promote the identity work through the (re)activation of the reflective function towards the definition of new shared meanings. As part of a broader organisational development process, group training sessions based on learning operative groups were arranged in order to offer participants a group reflective space in which each of them could share her or his thoughts and feelings. Organisational changes require workers to face the challenge of constantly developing new professional skills, thereby threatening personal identity and separating it from the professional function and leading to a situation of “identity ambiguity” which becomes difficult to maintain. The learning operative group setting allowed a critical reflection within the organisational development process and promoted mutual trust, empathy, and perspective taking, that, in turn, fed reflective practices in support of individual identities.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47095590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I. O'Byrne-Maguire, Ulrike Beland, R. Stuart, Bryan R Maguire, K. Wujec, Dimitrios Vonofakos
{"title":"International Listening Posts global report summary: the world at the dawn of 2021","authors":"I. O'Byrne-Maguire, Ulrike Beland, R. Stuart, Bryan R Maguire, K. Wujec, Dimitrios Vonofakos","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.283","url":null,"abstract":"From 2019, the novel coronavirus or “Covid-19” spread around the globe, bringing death and disruption. On or around 8 January 2021 thirty-six Listening Posts were conducted in twenty-three countries: Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Germany, India (11 regions in one combined report), Ireland, Israel, Italy (4 LPs), Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America. This global report synthesises twenty-two local reports, extracts general themes and patterns, and offers connections and interpretations. For the first time International Listening Posts were conducted online.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44564173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Why do I have to do this?”: institutions, integrity, and citizenship","authors":"E. Shapiro","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.197","url":null,"abstract":"For any individual, to identify with the needs of society is a developmental accomplishment; it is a marker of active citizenship, the capacity to lead from below. In this article, Dr Shapiro outlines a pathway to the role of citizen, focusing on the impact of social systems—families and institutions—on identity.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47258252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributions of psychogeography to understanding unconscious dimensions of lived workplace experience","authors":"H. Stein, S. Allcorn","doi":"10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v21n2.2021.212","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the contribution that the concept of psychogeography can offer to organisational research, theory, consulting, leadership, management, and employees. Through several stories/storytelling coupled with psychodynamic interpretations, it examines and illustrates how people in workplace organisations invest space and artefacts with unconscious personal and group significance; how space and objects serve as powerful metaphors as well as utilitarian, task-based tools. Organisational space and objects are often used to serve as symbols of strong and powerful leaders. Ordinary workplace phenomena such as buildings, entrances, doors, desks, conference rooms and tables, and pictures turn out to possess enormous psychogeographic significance in what Michael Diamond calls the “unconscious life of organisations”. Projection-driven psychogeographic transference and its traps are discussed and illustrated. The article concludes with a discussion of the usefulness of a psychogeographic perspective in understanding and working with ordinary organisational leadership–management–employee relationships, task performance, research, and consulting.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41350096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Group relations, innovation, and the production of nostalgia","authors":"Carlos Sapochnik","doi":"10.33212/osd.v20n1.2020.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v20n1.2020.1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the concept of nostalgia from both phenomenal and interpreta-tive perspectives as experienced within and generated by group relations confer-ences and other group activities like sport, drama, or music. It posits that nostalgia inevitably emerges in group relations conferences to sustain primitive fantasies and the work of mourning necessary for psychic growth. The article then reflects on the dual purpose of conference titles as setting objectives to the exploration as well as protection from wild thoughts, enactments, and thus the unmitigated brutality of the experience of the unconscious in groups. It calls attention to how the intention to apply conference learning arises from (and contributes to) an overdetermined ambivalent relationship of group relations with psychoanalysis.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47529828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The unconscious won’t go away—especially in organisations","authors":"S. Long","doi":"10.33212/osd.v19n2.2019.218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33212/osd.v19n2.2019.218","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces some of the ways in which the idea of the unconscious has transformed and been adapted from its origins in the eighteenth century to the understanding of organisations in the twenty-first century. Throughout the twentieth century psychoanalysis captured the term through its work with the repressed or dynamic unconscious. While psychoanalysis has often been attacked and has waned in scientific circles, the idea of the unconscious does not seem to go away; it returns in different forms and has continued to evolve since its beginnings. For example, neuroscience talks of “unconscious bias” and has popularised this idea; organisational research looks to the ways in which groups develop cultures with unconscious assumptions; and social psychologists examine social factors that leave societies with blind spots. This article argues that to minimise destructivity and increase creativity, organisations need to be aware of unconscious social processes as they are evidenced nowadays. It ends with stressing some areas where organisations can do this.","PeriodicalId":41413,"journal":{"name":"Organisational and Social Dynamics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41588412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}