An Introduction to the Social Psychology of Insults in Organizations

The author argues that insults are an importantsocial and organizational phenomenon, which causespowerful emotions and enters people's personalhistories. It is suggested that insults involve aperpetrator, a target and, often, an audience. The intentionto insult is not necessary, as some insults are theresult of misunderstanding or accident. However, theexperience of being gratuitously offended and the corresponding feelings of shame, guilt, andanger are fundamental to insults. Several types ofinsults are observed, such as exclusion, stereotyping,obliteration of significant identity details,ingratitude, scapegoating, rudeness, broken promises, beingignored or kept waiting. Even more potent insults resultfrom the defamation or despoiling of idealized objects,persons, or ideas. Different insult dynamics are noted; these include an apology, acommensurate retaliation, a disproportionate retaliationand possible escalation, a retaliation against asurrogate and weaker target than the perpetrator of theinitial insult, an affected indifference with apossible delayed retaliation, or more commonly aresigned tolerance which may fuel subsequent insults.Insults as well as retaliation and resistance to themare part of an organization's political process whichestablishes, first, lines of domination/subordination,second, finer gradations of status and power, i.e., apecking order, and third, opportunities for building coalitions and alliances. It is argued thatinsults allow for a certain mobility within a peckingorder, by offering 'matches' for contestants to pitchtheir wit, venom, and courage against each other. They also enable audiences to take sides, thusinfluencing and testing the operation of coalitions andalliances.     

Bridging the contradictions of social constructionism and psychoanalysis in a study of workplace emotions in India

This paper makes a contribution to the study of emotions in organizations by offering a systematic juxtaposition and cross-fertilization of psychoanalytic and social constructionist approaches. These two traditions have found it hard to communicate in the past when addressing organizational emotions. Points of similarity and tension between them are discussed in connection with two critical case studies of female Indian managers discussing their emotions at the workplace. These were obtained during field work in which emotions were studied through narratives generated by a free-association interview approach. Both the emotions described in the narratives themselves and the emotions of the interview encounter were analysed, as resources for a rapprochement of contrasting perspectives on emotion. This rapprochement acknowledges the psychoanalytic emphasis on unconscious dynamics shaping the emotional lives of individuals and groups, while also honouring the social constructionist emphasis on how emotions are influenced by social, cultural and discursive practices.     

Meeting God: When Organizational Members Come Face to Face with the Supreme Leader

This paper focuses on a theme which features innumerous organizational stories, in whichan ordinary member of of an organization comes face toface with the organization's top leader. This themeechoes not only the archetypical religious scene ofmeeting God as supreme judge, but also severalwell-known scenes in drama, opera, and literature.Through a psychoanalytic study of this theme, a set ofprimal phantasies projected by organizational membersonto their leaders are explored. The paper also throwsinto sharp relief the underlying asymmetry of therelationship between leader and follower: while the follower may shake the leader's hand once, theleader will shake innumerable hands. The paper is basedon a detailed interpretation of three narrativessupplied by students, drawn from 6-month industrial placements (internships) which they undertookas part of their studies. In the first narrative, astudent describes her encounter with the leader inalmost religious terms as a liminal moment in her life; the student idealizes the leader who serves asa role model. In the second narrative, the student feelsshunned by a leader who is inadequately briefed for hismeeting with her; she proceeds to demonize the leader as well as the entire organization.In the third narrative, a student loses his faith in hisdepartmental head, when he realizes that he is not trulyindependent bur merely follows directives from above. The three narratives are used toidentify four core fantasies about the lader: (1) theleader as someone who cares for his/her followers; (2)the leader as someone accessible; (3) the leader as someone who is omnipotent and omniscient;and (4) the leader as someone who has a legitimate claimto lead others. Two groups of follower fantasies arethen examined. The charismatic and the messianic. It is then suggested that the leader may beseen as a reincarnation of the primal mother, restoringthe members narcissism and rewarding them for who theyare rather than for what they have achieved.Alternatively, the leader may be envisioned more closely tothe Freudian image of father substitute, who rewards andpunishes, arousing at once fear, loyalty, jealousy, andsuspicion. It is suggested that the former is close to Kohut's account of charismaticleadership fantasy, while the latter is closer to hisaccount of messianic leadership fantasy.     

Witnessing absences: social media as archives and public spheres

The study inquires on the ways content-specific social media pages can function as alternative public spheres, by examining the photography-orientated Facebook and YouTube pages entitled ‘old photographs of Thessaloniki’. The study focuses on the online encountering of absences, notably events of socio-political importance with a traumatic impact, which were marginalized by historiography and erased from the city’s material form. In particular, it looks at the ways these absences are witnessed, remembered and negotiated online, through their formal and informal traces. Departing from Benjamin’s and Agamben’s theorizations of memory, media and witnessing, and Derrida’s work on specters, the study concludes that the pages form a highly informed digital archive in constant development that fosters narratives enhancing cultural toleration and understanding, while challenging official master frames. A class-orientated understanding of the city’s ‘ruinification’ and oblivion is, however, undermined, although it remains in a ‘spectral’ form.     

Beyond Happy Families: A Critical Reevaluation of the Control-Resistance-Identity Triangle

In this article, the author explores the natureof contemporary organizational controls, the extent towhich they can be said to colonize employeesubjectivity, and the types of resistance which theygenerate. Labor process, psychoanalytic, critical theory,and Foucauldian perspectives are juxtaposed and a numberof similarities and divergences are noted. It is arguedthat many of these perspectives prematurely lament the end of employee recalcitrance andexaggerate the magnitude and totality of organizationalcontrols, generating over-managed and overcontrolledimages of individuals, organizations, and societies. It is proposed that a rapprochement ofpsychoanalytic and labor theory approaches can lead toan appreciation of unmanaged and unmanageable terrainsin organizations, in which human agency may berediscovered, neither as a class-conscious proletariat nor asa transcendental subject, but as a struggling, feeling,thinking, suffering subject, one capable of obeying anddisobeying, controlling and being controlled, losing control and escaping control, definingand redefining control for itself and forothers.