The Psychodynamics of Bureaucratic Work Experience

There are two important aspects of this discussion. The first are the psychodynamic origins of the bureaucratic hierarchy and the second the circular reinforcing quality of the interaction of this organization design with human nature.

The Psychodynamics of Bureaucratic Hierarchy

Czander (1993) and Diamond (1993) point out a discomforting but important perspective of organizational life. They and others describe an organizational context where unconscious and most often undiscussible human motivations exercise their influence in the adoption of an organization’s design and subsequent operation. Bureaucratic hierarchies, they point out, contain many elements that arise out of individual and socially defensive psychodynamics. In particular, organizational membership raises control and dominance and submission issues that first arise in infancy and continue throughout life. It is, therefore, not much of a leap of faith to understand that how organizations are conceived and operated is heavily influenced by the kinds of individual propensities that we all share, thereby creating a shared but unconscious socially defensive response. The form, substance and operation of our organizations may then be seen to be in large part the long shadow cast by human needs.

Reinforcing Circularity

The bureaucratic solution to workplace anxiety encourages psychological defensiveness that may be observed to help maintain it. It is the underlying defensive nature of bureaucracy that introduces the dysfunctions associated with bureaucracy, such as organizational rigidity and compromised adaptiveness, as well as heavy reliance upon policies and procedures to maintain control that stifle work and creativity.

The bureaucratic solution to workplace anxiety that arises out of threats to self serves to, in turn, create shared social defenses in response to the demand for obedience and submission to impersonal authority, and for the finely tuned structuring of work. Fear of interpersonal and group aggression and personal annihilation are, in contrast to chaotic experience, not coped with by withdrawal, unilateral interpersonal defenses and resignation. Rather the response is more proactive where depersonalization and the creation of a controlling social structure are relied upon to regulate self and other experience to sustain personal identity (Diamond, 1993 and Kernberg, 1979). Self-effacing personal submission becomes the norm (Horney, 1950). This reliance on control is closely related to Freud’s anal stage of human development. Work becomes ritualized and leadership institutionalized and routinized. Paranoia arising from membership and accompanying persecutory anxiety is sufficiently mediated so as to sustain individual, group and organizational functionality. Interpersonal fears of aggression and being taken over or consumed by others or the leader is sufficiently allayed. However, when stresses and strains arise in the workplace, the pursuit of control of these fears and anxieties can lead to obsessive focus on their socially defensive nature, stifling creativity and adaptiveness that may paradoxically provide the way out of the stressful situation. Shame, guilt and losses of personal responsibility may emerge as features of organizational control as may splitting and projection that frequently serves to locate an enemy without (Baum, 1987, 1990). In this regard there develops a destructive feedback loop that introduces and perpetuates distressing workplace experience, as was the case for chaotic work experience. It is, therefore, not hard to see that the bureaucratic socially defensive system carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Undeniable problems that threaten personal, group and organizational survival may exist. These threats, when acknowledged, can lead to the development of a fight/flight culture that energizes change to one of the other types of groups. Chapter 4 discusses this potential for change.

In Sum

The bureaucratic hierarchy is so commonplace as to be taken for granted as the only meaningful organization form. At the same time it contains within it horizontal and vertical fragmentation and socially defensive reliance upon control that introduces potentially serious losses of organizational performance that may, like the chaotic group experience, be perceived as threatening individual, group and organizational survival. The group or organization may not fail, but it may fail to succeed, especially in those cases where competing organizations do not present much of a threat, as is the case for governmental entities and large public and private universities. However, when the sense of collective threat is sufficient and enough group or organization members feel that change is necessary, the door is opened to change and the acquisition of another type of workplace experience such as one led by a charismatic leader.