social policy and planning in the field of drug addiction lecture 2: organisational stuckness...

Social Policy and Planning in the Field of drug Addiction

Lecture 2: Organisational stuckness

Athens- Thessaloniki 2014


STUCKNESS:

A person, a family, or a wider social system enmeshed in a problem in persistent and repetitive ways, despite desire and effort to alter the situation.

-Watzlawick, 1974Individuals,families and organisations get stuck because an

impasse develops between a conscious desire for change and an unconscious desire to avoid change.


Holding Environment

Groupishness

Systems Orientation

Organisational Culture

Normalisation


HOLDING ENVIRONMENT


Holding Environment

• Originally came from idea of the womb – provides support for basic survival and growth of the human fetus.

• In addition to basic biological requirements, research indicates that even before birth the human child needs a receptive environment, one that is willing to accept what he/she offers (Kaplan, 1978).

• Winnicott extended concept beyond mother and child relationship to identify the conditions for playing and creativity vital to child and adult development.

An organisational Holding EnvironmentThe external environment uncontrollable and challenging

Communication systems

Governance structures

Leadership

Boundary managementWorking

groups

Relationship management

Play and Creativity

Innovation and new ideas


The unknown and defensive routinesThe external environment becomes more turbulent and unpredictable, resources/funds are depleted. The organisation feels and behaves as if it is under attack.

Communication systems (break down)

Governance structures (are attacked or split off and become isolated)

Leadership (is attacked, perceived as out of touch, blamed, scapegoated)

Boundary management

Work groups lose focus

Those working outside retreat back into the organisation.

Defensive routines emerge

(Tightens or loosens)



How our early development experiences affect our psychic selves and systemic interactions

• The baby and mother - first significant relationship • Processes by which the baby achieves affect how it gets what it wants and needs. • Feelings get translated into results - this is integral to the development of the child. • Experience of the mother’s response becomes the basis for moving from the internal

life into external reality. • Child’s early experience is based upon what Klein refers to as phantasy: the ability to

conjure a response from internal feelings and what is got in return • The ‘good breast’ or the ‘bad breast’.• Klein related these early stages with our capacity to cope with uncertainty and the

unknown and how our internal life becomes a mediator with the external environment

I feel hungry

Sounds like babyneeds a feed.....

The Unknown


Defensive Routines In Organisational theory

Organisations deploy two defensive positions or stances which people use that interfere with the expression of their inner experience

• The first one – the defensive position – is driven by fear of total indifference. Members of the work group are afraid of opening up their inner experience to support change for fear that no-one in the organisation will respond.

• The second one – the paranoid position – is driven by fear of retaliation. It is difficult to risk expressing vulnerable inner experiences (i.e., to tell the truth in a controversial situation) when faced with the possibility of being attacked or punished).


GROUPISHNESS


Wilfrid Bion’s theory of groups

• The role of authority• How authority represents task• The basic assumptions• Tension between basic assumptions and work

group


Behaviour in groups results from

• Emotions driving the task at the expense of thinking

• Thinking at the expense of the emotions• Losing sight of the task• Trying to control change rather than manage

it• Loss of other critical boundaries


BA: Dependency

The group behaves as if it is there to be taken care of and given direction by one omnipotent individual.

Basic Assumption (BA) behaviours

The group behaves as if it is there to avoid the anxiety of the task by either aggression or withdrawal. This often takes the form of bickering or absence.

BA: Fight/FlightBA: PairingThe group behaves as if it is there to be saved from its irrational feelings by the coming together (bonding) of any two individuals or even sectors, which in turn will create something or someone that will take things in a new direction and provide hope.


BA: ONE-NessGroup members come together as one, for the purpose of joining in a powerful union with an omnipotent force. They surrender themselves for passive participation and thereby feel well – being and wholeness. Members lose their thinking capacity and instead get filled up with a sense of being merged with each other. (Turquet, 1974)

Two other (BA) behaviours

The group behaves as if it is there to be saved from its irrational feelings by being a non-group. The fear of engulfment leads members to behave as if the only reality to be taken in is that of the individual. (Lawrence Bain Gould, 1996)

BA: ME-Ness


Basic Assumptions in the service of work or task (dependency, fight/flight, pairing)

Is sometimes appropriate in a learning situation, or in emergency situations where the costs of error are high and the person is new or inexperienced.

WORK OR

TASK

BA: Dependency

Is frequently used to help individuals gather the strength to overcome obstacles such as a handicap, as well as to motivate groups in competitive situations.

BA: Flight or Fight

Is a critical assumption in negotiations where the goal is to find common ground and solve problems, as opposed to bargain.

BA: Pairing


Basic Assumptions in the service of work or task

Is essential in work situation where autonomy and creativity are not required (e.g., working on a factory conveyor belt).

WORK OR

TASK

BA: ONE-ness

Is essential in work situations where individual creativity and autonomy is required (e.g., in designing a prototype).

BA: ME-ness


Valency is a predisposition to take up a particular role

Individuals within work groups will have a valency towards the different basic assumptions. Some towards a dependency on the leader, some to pairing, some to conflict, some to escape.

BA: Dependency

BA: Pairing

BA: Fight/Flight

Assumed leader


What does this mean in practice?

We need to understand our own and others behaviour in groups by:• Learning how to distinguish ourselves from the

system or the behaviour of the groups• Becoming more aware of our and others’

valencies• Getting involved, taking action without getting

lost• By paying attention to what happens at the

boundaries


SYSTEMS ORIENTATION


What do we mean by Systems Orientation?

Systems orientation is seeing and understanding what is happening in a group, department, organisation or even a community as having a relationship to the wider environment (also known as field). It means understanding that what we do, how we act and behave often has a lot to do with these external factors and the nature of the intra and inter organisational relationships between the organisation and environment.


Open systems theory

The origin of open systems was in biological theory: that organisations had similar qualities to organisms such as the human body. The process of importing, converting and exporting material being the work any system has to do to live and survive.

EnvironmentInput Output

Process


This raises questions on how the processing happens: • In the design, division of labour, levels of authority,

and reporting relationships;• In the nature of work tasks, processes and activities;• In understanding the organisation’s mission or

‘primary task’. Of special note are: • The interconnections between different parts• The concept of boundaries between subsystems and

between the whole and the environment/ecology/social field

Open systems theory


The first level Primary Task Type of organisation Primary Task/Mission Other versions of the Primary

TaskSchool, college or university To teach the tools needed to

survive in societyTo serve party politics by providing results in particular work areas e.g a focus on numeracy over life skills

Manufacturing The transformation of raw goods into new products

To serve the employment needs of the local community. To advance technologically.

Health The treatment of illness To prevent death i.e quality of life is neglected.

The Primary Task – is what an organisation needs to do to survive and this involves the organisation’s different departments/units as subsystems contributing to the overall organisational task. As organisations become more complicated the Primary Task can shift in response to external factors e.g in drugs services the Primary Task of the service can shift from harm minimization to education.


Open Systems and change

Survival and success for organisations calls for constant adaptation with the environment, creating new patterns of interaction internally and continuous engagement with the external environment.

External threats or proposed changes will surface anxieties, disagreements and conflicts as ‘System Psychodynamics’. Understanding how these manifest themselves as defensive behaviours in organisational life is an essential skill in working with a Systems Orientation including developing a repertoire of interventions and practices to support change.


Theories around Organisational Defences

Underbounded and Overbounded Systems (Alderfer)The quality of boundaries affects the way an organisation behaves or works in relation to a set of variables. The degree of boundedness is crucial to the survival and development of the organisation.

Social Defences against anxiety (Menzies Lyth, Klein)Faced with uncertainty individuals, groups and systems find themselves facing unbearable feelings, which causes what is known as ‘splitting ‘.

Group theory (Bion)Bion’s theory of groups (see Groupishness) offers explanations for how individuals in groups respond to environmental factors.

The Unconscious at WorkPsychoanalytical theory refers to deeply embedded patterns in our psyches that are triggered by events and cause unconscious behaviours both individually and organisationally.

Underbounded and Overbounded Systems

Diffuse, exhaustingHuman EnergyConstrained, blocked

Difficulties in determining who can and should meet

Communication Patterns

Difficulties with openness when people meet

Impending economic crisis

Economic ConditionsMinimal, short-term stress

Multiple &competing,Unclear & conflicting

Authority Relations and Role Definitions

Monolithic,Detailed & restrictive

Goals unclear; priorities equivocal

GoalsGoals clear, priorities unequivocal

UnderboundedVariableOverbounded

NORMALISATION


What is normalisation?

Normalisation is about how organisations ensure their members comply with the organisation’s vision, norms and rules. By doing this, organisations play an important wider role in how societies at large ensure that citizens comply with society’s rules and norms.

Is Normalisation good or bad? The answer is … both. On the one hand, without rules there is chaos. On the other, without rule-breaking, there is stagnation. The trick is to find a balance between stability and innovation.


Four explanations of how compliance works

Weber: forms of domination

Goffman:symbolic interaction

Emery & Trist: Organisations as defences against anxiety

Foucault: Governmentality


Max Weber: forms of domination

• Traditional domination• longstanding customs, sacred traditions

• Charismatic domination• personal leadership, unstable form of

domination

• Legal domination• legitimacy & rationality of rules and laws

Athens/Thessaloniki Dec 2012 30

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Symbols and meanings

• Goffman (1968)• Presentation of self in everyday life• Behaviour as ‘performance’• Stage and backstage behaviour • People co-operate in performance to achieve

goals sanctioned by group• Pressure to conform to the ‘frontstage’

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Organisations as defences against anxiety

• Individuals take psychodynamic tensions; unresolved infantile anxieties into the organisation and work group

• These tensions are most evident in interactions with ‘authority figures’• They shape responses to hierarchies and authority - trust; resistance;

compliance; dependency• The organisation both replicates these childhood dynamics but acts as a

defence against them by providing security• This leads members of the organisation to comply with its rules in order to

avoid anxiety • But dysfunctional organisations use defences that are destructive• E.g Mirroring – Cherry House and Harbour Centre (Cardona, 1999)

06/03/2014

Governmentality

• Foucault (1997) argues that all governments strive to achieve total control over people – ‘totalisation’

• They do this through ‘techniques of disciplinarity’, i.e.: dividing practices, subjectification and scientific classification

• In recent years, the dominance of neo-liberalism has enabled governments to delegate the processes and techniques of control to intermediaries – globalised companies; local government; educational institutions – and to people themselves

• People are now increasingly ‘auto-regulated’ through ‘responsibilisation’ techniques


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Some new ideas in thinking about normalisation

06/03/2014

Mirror Neurons

Memes

Mirror Neurons

Mirror neuron research

• Mirror neuron research suggests we learn by copying and repetition

• Individuals get stuck in same repetitive patterns. They also learn from people like them and who they like – stigmatising and scapegoating tendency

• So do civilisations (Diamond, 2005) • This suggests:

– We don’t make decisions on the basis of evidence; – We don’t act rationally, – our accumulated learning does not inevitably lead to progress – Learning does not create an ethical, just society

10 billion social-networking and online-world accounts in 2014

4.5 billion of these are active.Source: InStat

World population 2013:6.8 billionSource: UN



Viral Dance Party at Black Eyed Peas Oprah Winfrey Show Chicago 2009


Black Eyed Peas v Lord ByronI gotta feelingI gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good nightThat tonight’s gonna be a good nightThat tonight’s gonna be a good good night (x3)Tonight’s the night nightLet’s live it upI got my moneyLet’s spend it upGo out and smash itLike Oh My GodJump off that sofaLet’s get get OFFI know that we’ll have a ballIf we get downAnd go outAnd just loose it all

She walks in beautyShe walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress Or softly lightens o'er her face, Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent,— A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent.


Black Eyed Peas v Lord Byron

I gotta feeling She walks in beauty0

10,000,000

20,000,000

30,000,000

40,000,000

50,000,000

60,000,000

70,000,000

80,000,000

You-tube downloads over 1 year

76 mil-lion

3,000

gonna gotta tonight/night

Lets0

2

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I gotta feeling%

word repetitions

light/lightens day/days0

0.5

1

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word repetit

Memetic theory• Memes are the cultural equivalent of genes• They are selfish, replicants • Knowledge is not solely derived from thought and reflection – its

partly memetic• Successful memes achieve dominance through ‘cultural

embedding’ – they become part of the hegemony• ICTs and social media are powerful players in these hegemonic

forces• They are becoming more embedded in societal, community and

organisational systems – Facebook; NMLs; the cult of personalisation’

• They reinforce ‘tribalism’ and stuckness

social policy and planning in the field of drug addiction lecture 2: organisational stuckness...

Documents

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