Deep Roles: Twelve Primordial Roles of Mind and Organization

The thesis in this paper is that there are 12archetypal roles in groups and organizations. Thesedeep roles have their origin in the rolesof the essential family — father, mother, son, anddaughter. In groups and organizations, each of theseimages of family roles will — through the basicdefense mechanisms of splitting and projection —be polarized into a good and bad part: The father as Godor devil, the mother as queen or witch, the son as crownprince or black sheep, and the daughter as princess orwhore. In addition to these eight primary deep roles,there come two secondary ones: the helpers Shaman and Slave whose function are to help the familysurvive spiritually and materially, respectively. Thetwo last deep roles are of a transcendental nature: thehero (winner) and the clown (loser), i.e., the one who has won a good family role, and the onewho has lost it — or never gained it. These 12deep roles are well known from such cultural artifactsas fairy tales and mythology. In groups andorganizations, deep roles are attended with power andinterest. Those who are attributed a deep role in theirorganization will have a similar symbolic power ascharacters in fairy tales and mythology.     

Anxiety and organization: what I learned about anxiety in a psychiatric ward in the 70s that turned out to be useful for managers in daily practice

ABSTRACT

This essay is a contribution to ‘de-pathologizing’ anxiety, reaffirm it into organization studies, and cast light on some findings on anxiety among staff members in a psychiatric ward. I will endeavor to reveal how I as a young researcher examined anxiety influences that have proven helpful to managers, suggesting that (1) anxiety comes in cold and warm forms, (2) organization is a way to deal with primordial anxiety, (3) organization causes systems anxiety, and (4) a socio–psycho personality dimension mediates the relationship between anxiety and organization. Managers need both anxiety and security – feeling secure enough to dare venture, and anxious enough to have the energy to perform effectively. I hope the essay will be a contribution to the task of bringing the concept of anxiety more out and into the light, helping organizational members to become safer and more successful in their different roles as leaders and co-workers.     

Estimating customer utility of energy efficiency standards for refrigerators

A frequent argument against efficiency standards is that they prohibit products that represent optimal choices for customers and thus lead to reduced customer utility. In this paper we propose and test a method to estimate such losses. Conjoint analysis is used to estimate utility functions for individuals that have recently bought a refrigerator. The utility functions are used to calculate the individuals' utility of all the refrigerators available in the market. Revealed utility losses due to non-optimal choices by the customers seem consistent with other data on customer behaviour. The same utility estimates are used to find losses due to energy efficiency standards that remove products from the market. Contrary to previous claims, we find that efficiency standards can lead to increased utility for the average customer. This is possible because customers do not make perfect choices in the first place.