About the Book
One way of conceptualizing the relationship of individuals, through their roles, to their various groupings (such as families, communities, and business and industrial enterprises) is to consider their political relatedness. This includes an exploration of organizational structures, management, and issues of responsibility, leadership, and authority. Beyond this, the Tavistock open systems approach has always held that unconscious social processes are of central importance in such explorations. The methodology of the approach, therefore, is one that encourages people to consider the unconscious in relation to the political dimensions of institutions, This involves people in examine a range of boundaries, such as those between the inner and outer worlds of the individual, between person and role, and between enterprise and environment. Also involved are less obvious boundaries - or limits, or distinctions - such as those between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos, innovation and destructiveness, reality and fantasy, and relationship and relatedness.This volume, with a new foreword by Mannie Sher, describes the educational approach of the Tavistock open systems mode of group relations training for exploring and interpreting such boundary issues and problems. Examples of its application include family systems, rural developments, and organizational development. This volume should be of value to students and teachers of organizational analysis, training, and development, as well as to students and teachers of organizational psychology and sociology.This volume is one of a series being reissued by Karnac Books representing the theory and practice of organizational development used over many years at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
Table of Contents:
Editorial Foreword to the Series , Preface , Foreword to this edition , Introductory Essay: Exploring Boundaries , Boundary Management in Psychological Work with Groups , The A. K. Rice Group Relations Conferences as a Reflection of Society , The Pseudomutual Small Group or Institution , Another Source of Conservatism in Groups , Manifestations of Transference in Small Training Groups , A Manager’s View of the Institutional Event , Men and Women at Work: A Group Relations Conference on Person and Role , By Women, for Women: A Group Relations Conference , A Model for Distinguishing Supportive from Insight-oriented Psychotherapy Groups , The Adolescent, the Family, and the Group: Boundary Considerations , Learning and the Group Experience , Darkness , The Psychology of Innovation in an Industrial Setting , Open Systems Revisited: A Proposition about Development and Change , A Concept for Today: The Management of Oneself in Role
About the Author :
Gordon Lawrence was a managing partner of Social Dreaming Ltd, London, and a visiting professor at the University of Northumberland, Newcastle, the New Bulgarian University, Sofia, and at La Sapienza, the University of Rome. Formerly, he held a visiting professorship at Cranfield University, Bedford. He was on the editorial board of Free Associations (UK), Freie Assoziation (Germany) and Organizational and Social Dynamics (UK). He was a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Socio-Analysis and a Distinguished Member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.
Review :
One way of conceptualizing the relationship of individuals, through their roles, to their various groupings (such as families, communities, and business and industrial enterprises) is to consider their political relatedness. This includes an exploration of organizational structures, management, and issues of responsibility, leadership, and authority. Beyond this, the Tavistock open systems approach has always held that unconscious social processes are of central importance in such explorations. The methodology of the approach, therefore, is one that encourages people to consider the unconscious in relation to the political dimensions of institutions, This involves people in examine a range of boundaries, such as those between the inner and outer worlds of the individual, between person and role, and between enterprise and environment. Also involved are less obvious boundaries - or limits, or distinctions - such as those between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos, innovation and destructiveness, reality and fantasy, and relationship and relatedness.This volume describes the educational approach of the Tavistock open systems mode of group relations training for exploring and interpreting such boundary issues and problems. Examples of its application include family systems, rural developments, and organizational development. This volume should be of value to students and teachers of organizational analysis, training, and development, as well as to students and teachers of organizational psychology and sociology.This volume is one of a series being reissued by Karnac Books representing the theory and practice of organizational development used over many years at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
