Work, Death, and Life Itself: Essays on Management and Organization [Reprint 2017 ed.] 9783110885422, 9783110138696

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de Gruyter Studies in Organization 51 Work, Death, and Life Itself

de Gruyter Studies in Organization Organizational Theory and Research

This de Gruyter Series aims at publishing theoretical and methodological studies of organizations as well as research findings, which yield insight in and knowledge about organizations. The whole spectrum of perspectives will be considered: organizational analyses rooted in the sociological as well as the economic tradition, from a sociopsychological or a political science angle, mainstream as well as critical or ethnomethodological contributions. Equally, all kinds of organizations will be considered: firms, public agencies, non-profit institutions, voluntary associations, inter-organizational networks, supra-national organizations etc. Emphasis is on publication of new contributions, or significant revisions of existing approaches. However, summaries or critical reflections on current thinking and research will also be considered. This series represents an effort to advance the social scientific study of organizations across national boundaries and academic disciplines. An Advisory Board consisting of representatives of a variety of perspectives and from different cultural areas is responsible for achieving this task. This series addresses organization researchers within and outside universities, but also practitioners 'who have an interest in grounding their work on recent social scientific knowledge and insights. Editors: Prof. Dr. Alfred Kieser, Universität Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany Advisory Board: Prof. Anna Grandori, CRORA, Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milano, Italy Prof. Dr. Cornelis Lammers, FSW Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands Prof. Dr. Marshall W. Meyer, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Prof. Jean-Claude Thoenig, Université de Paris I, Paris, France Prof. Dr. Barry A. Turner, Middlesex Business School, London, GB Prof. Mayer F. Zald, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

Burkard Sievers

Work, Death, and Life Itself Essays on Management and Organization

W DE

_G Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York 1994

Prof. Dr. Burkard Sievers, Bergische Universität — Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Sievers, Burkard, 1 9 4 2 Work, death, and life itself : essays on management and organization / Burkard Sievers. — (De Gruyter studies in organization : organizational theory and research ; 51) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Corporate culture. 2. Employee motivation. 3. Management—Employee participation. 4. Leadership. I. Title. II. Series: De Gruyter studies in organization : 51. HD58.7.S555 1993 658—dc20 93-35003 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Sievers, Burkard: Work, death and life itself : essays on management and organization / Burkard Sievers. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1994 (De Gruyter studies in organization ; 51) ISBN 3-11-013869-7 NE: GT

© Copyright 1993 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting: Converted by Knipp Satz und Bild digital, Dortmund — Printing: RatzlowDruck, Berlin. — Binding: D. Mikolai, Berlin. — Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

To W. Gordon Lawrence

"And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance. For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death, But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you." T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

Contents

Introduction I.

Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

XI 1

Motivation as Invention Beyond Motivation Fragmentation and Splitting The Fragmentation of the Organization of Work The Fragmentation of Work The Fragmentation of Life Work and the Loss of Meaning The Meaning of Meaning Work and its Reference to Meaning Meaning beyond Surrogates

3 8 12 13 16 21 26 29 33 39

II. Participation as a Collusive Quarrel about Immortality

47

Participation as a Quarrel Participation as a Process of Mutual Collusion The Infantilization of the Worker The Discrimination of Responsibility Contempt and Mistrust Management as a Myth Participation as a Collusive Quarrel Participation as a Quarrel about Immortality The Immortality of the Soul The Immortality of the Firm Immortality Limited: Greek Mythology as a Metaphor for Participation The Iconography of Immortality in Work Enterprises The Works Council: Tantalus or Sisyphus? Beyond Collusion: Participation among Mortals Equality through Death

49 59 64 68 74 82 91 99 100 116 126 132 136 144 146

X

Contents Liberty towards Death Fraternity among Mortals

149 151

III. Leadership as a Perpetuation of Immaturity

157

Introduction: Discontent with Contemporary Leadership Research Leadership Between Reification and Deification Towards a De-reification and De-deification of Leadership Towards a Homification of Leadership The Homification of Man (and Woman) Leadership as a Myth The Mythology of Leadership The Divine King The Hero Career as a Myth Leadership as a Perpetuation of Immaturity Maturity and Immaturity De-objectification and the Integration of the External and the Internal World The Theory of Object-Relations The Theory of Object-Relations and the Social Construction of Reality Maturity and our Adult Roots in Immaturity Maturity, Meaning, and Mortality Mortality as a Missing Quality of Working Life Management and Mortality Towards a New Myth of Management Leadership as the Management of Meaning The Democratization of Work and Life

159 166 173 176 179 181 185 186 190 194 198 201 202 204 209 213 218 224 225 228 246 252

IV. The Management of Wisdom

257

Excursus on the Category of Wisdom Wisdom as a Modality of Experience The Dialectical Function of Wisdom The Experience of Nothingness From Leadership Style to a Culture of Wisdom The Range of Wisdom and its Impact on Management D e v e l o p m e n t . . . .

260 279 282 286 292 303

References

313

Author Index

341

Introduction

This book is the outcome of the main questions and issues I have been increasingly occupied with for almost a decade now; it is the attempt to find my own voice in relation to the experience, emotions, and thoughts I have had in my various roles both professional and private. As a university student I was still convinced that theory was a matter of thought found mainly in literature, and practice had to do with action and reality, but these boundaries have now become vague and woolly. The more I got involved with the outer world, the more I was confronted with the discrepancy that thoughts first learnt and later adopted as my own did not match my experience in a double sense: my 'theories' neither fitted in with what I experienced nor were there theories for some experience. This discrepancy between theories and experience often made me feel incompetent and inadequate. I felt I was deviating from useful pursuit, got angry, and occasionally even burst out in rage. Particularly at the beginning of this new phase, it was often difficult to disentangle or to discriminate these feelings, and it was almost impossible to 'understand' them. These early years were also accompanied by the experience of loneliness, the elan of the adventurer and the depression of the procrastinator surrounded by meaninglessness. As this obviously is not the occasion to provide anything more than a sketch of my own psychic and intellectual development over the last decade, I would like instead to emphasize some more general points: although issues such as motivation, participation and leadership had frequently been the subject of my own teaching, consulting and writing before, this book actually began in October 1983 when I was stranded at Heathrow Airport waiting for a delayed plane to Dublin. As I sat there, still preoccupied with the outline of a university course on leadership and motivation which I had just finished before my departure, I suddenly saw myself writing. 'Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning' was the title I had chosen; and the first paragraph was an expression of the frustration and rage I felt about the concepts and ideas presented and perpetuated by the leading literature on the subject. Despite the almost endless litanies on the utility of motivation and leadership theories, it seemed to me that the question was never raised as to why these concepts have become so popular in the context of work and organization. Funnily enough, I almost felt forced to write the outline of what was later to become a working paper in English, and thus was to be the first

XII

Introduction

substantial piece of work I had written after a long silence during which I was preoccupied with managing my own midlife transition. When in the summer of the following year I presented my thoughts for the first time in public at a SCOS-Conference in Lund/Sweden, I was fascinated and astonished at the response I received. It was a great encouragement for me and gave me a real boost to expand two other manuscripts, one I had just finished as a draft titled 'Leadership as a Perpetuation of Immaturity' and one I was just getting started on at around the same time titled 'Participation as a Collusive Quarrel about Immortality'. The idea to publish them together as a book with the title 'Work, Death, and Life Itself goes back to this time, too. Fortunately, I did not realize at that time how long and difficult the process of developing this idea would be. Before I give a more detailed outline of what this book and its respective parts are about, I would like to sketch some of my own central learning in the long process during which the book took shape. Most important for me when I actually started writing again after several 'unproductive' years was the experience that in a professional paper I was able to express my own deepest discontent with much of the literature in social science and the truth it takes so much for granted. It was also the truly liberating insight that by expressing my own anger, frustration and rage I did not get lost in my own criticism but could rather be creative, could allow myself a kind of thinking I had not been capable of before. Only later, when I began reading W. R. Bion (1962a) again, did I suddenly realize the transition my views on epistemology had undergone since finishing my formal university education. Learning from experience (cf. Bion (1962b)) had increasingly become a central element of my own learning, teaching and consultation since I first took part in 1972 in a Leicester Conference of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (cf. Lawrence (1979c); Miller (1989); Sievers (1973)) and in NTL's 'Specialists of Organization Development Program' in the U. S.. But it was really only later that I was able to reframe my own theory of thinking. By linking my own experience of liberation from traditional thinking to Bion's (1962a) theory of thinking I began to appreciate how affections and thoughts might be related and that thinking is far more than just having thoughts. From my own experience I knew to what an extent "a capacity for tolerating frustration ... enables the psyche to develop thoughts as a means by which the frustration that is tolerated is itself made more tolerable" (ibid., 307) and that in order to cope with thoughts "thinking has to be called in existence" (ibid., 306). The more I got involved in the kind of thinking which resulted in these essays, the more I realized that in order to think as a social scientist one has to accept the fact that some of the standard definitions of a particular scientific discipline no longer fit one's own way of thinking. This book is not primarily concerned with sociology, nor business administration, nor philosophy, nor psychoanalysis though I would not have been able to write it without a deeper 'knowledge' and

Introduction

XIII

experience of many aspects of what these and other disciplines are traditionally about. But not to accept for oneself the narrow framework of any one of these disciplines often causes confusion and unease in the academic world, which in my case includes colleagues, students, clients and readers. Referring to the subject matter of this book as psychology resembles the folly of a man who treated everything like a nail simply because his only tool was a hammer. Besides, the label attempts to incorporate into the academic discipline of psychology what is as strange and contradictory to it as holy water is to the Devil. What to a certain extent may be true for most of the social sciences appears to me to be particularly true of what passes for psychology at most universities today: it seems to have lost any relation to questions of death and life, and thus of the soul, spirit and meaning. Sociology distances the student more and more from the outer world of surrrounding 'society'; and psychology takes the student farther and farther away from his or her own inner world, i.e. from the experience of being a person, of being human and of being mortal. These essays are, therefore, a result of my attempts to find my own voice and authority in the process of managing myself in various professional roles. This process of self-authorization has to an enormous degree been accompanied and enforced by my greater interest in encouraging others through teaching and consulting to find their own authority. I have increasingly demanded of them what I could no longer deny myself, i.e. to think against the lines of predominant thinking, to discover their own truth against the grain of instant knowledge and prefabricated theories. This was for me, and indeed still is, a developmental process in which strong relatedness to important others grew and were intensified or were attenuated and, in some instances, even destroyed. The following essays would not have been possible without an ongoing exchange and working relationship with people in organizations whose primary task is very different to that of producing knowledge and truth. Without these working contacts I probably would never have been able to leave the Elysium of mainstream organization behaviour and development literature. Neither would I have been capable of thinking through the ideas presented here nor of checking them in face of managerial and organizational reality - and against the truth set out in most key sources on the subject. Many of these ideas have been developed in an ongoing process of encouragement and disapproval emanating from a variety of different sources, some of them sharing, some rather more the result of confrontation. The following essays are thus the outcome of an action-research approach in the sense that both the central working hypotheses and their elaborations were derived from a continuing dialog and cooperation with various clients and client systems. Although the experience as a consultant both in working conferences and in enterprises was often frustrating, it became more encouraging the more the people in the client systems and I, both collectively and individually, were able to have and "to develop thoughts as a means by which the frustration"

XIV

Introduction

(Bion (1962a), 307) became more 'communicable' in a mutual attempt with clients to give meaning to common experience. In addition to the help or problem solution they provide for a client system, classical action-research approaches are primarily, or even exclusively, concerned with the generation of new and otherwise inaccessible knowledge and the development of theories. Working from an extended frame of work, death, and life, as I did in enterprises and in other settings, added a further quality, or dimension, to action-research; mediated by the experienced action-researcher it increased the possibility of allowing more substantial and meaningful issues and to be addressed and explored. Whereas at the beginning of my work as an organization development consultant I often had the experience that, particularly during the first diagnostic interviews, I was inundated with the banalities organization consultants were supposed to be told, I now feel that both personal and organizational matters of death and life as well as their interrelatedness can be included and looked at in the discourse and mutual exploration with a client from quite an early stage in the consultation process. This additional dimension of the action-researcher can be circumscribed as his or her capacity to provide 'containment' (cf. Bion (1970), 72 ff.), by which frustration and tragedy can be tolerated, put into thoughts and as such, via thinking, can again be related to the usual everyday business. This capacity is linked to experience in a double sense. The first is that it grows out of the consultant's experience - or rather the lessons learned from experience. The capacity for perceiving and containing a reality which surmounts the narrow frame of everyday experience and its usual defences is itself derived from the freedom the consultant has already taken in his or her life to experience and think beyond the obvious. The second link with experience is that this capacity of the consultant is reconfirmed by the client's sometimes unconscious knowledge, which often reveals itself almost instantaneously in the interactive experience with the consultant. When this capacity of the consultant can be 'utilized' in the client system, the same capacity increases in the organization or enterprise. More than ever before, this is an essential prerequisite for developing a capacity for holistic awareness in client systems. Elaborating and conceptualizing the thoughts and the thinking in this book led to the fascinating experience of meeting and getting to know other thinkers and authors of whom I had not previously heard. When I began writing this book I occasionally asked myself how I should dare to disturb the universe (cf. Grotstein (1983)), but as I became more familiar with those who through their own thinking had already disturbed the universe, my own loneliness as a thinker and a writer gained another quality. This may sometimes have contributed to a feeling of no longer being alone, and of being among like-minded companions, but knowing that others are alone and that their experience of being alone obviously was an important precondition for their capacity to think as they did added a new dimension to my own experience of loneliness. My belief became firmer that,

Introduction

XV

in order to go farther into the unknown and deeper into the 'heart of darkness' (Joseph Conrad; cf. Broadbent (1979)), one ultimately would have to be alone. In the process of writing this book it also became more and more obvious to me that thinking and writing are not primarily solipsistic activities somehow performed in splendid isolation. Like any other work, it is based upon the work others have done, often generations before. My writing is not only literally dependent on the work of those who produced the pen and the paper I use. I saw repeatedly how my thinking and writing was (and indeed still is) related to the thinking of relevant others, many of whom are either no longer alive or were not even contemporaries in the first place. That I am in my own thinking enormously indebted to others has become very obvious to me in relation to the possibility of thinking the unconscious, particularly with respect to the unconscious dimension of the psycho-social dynamics in organizations. I probably never would have been capable of putting work, the organization of work, management and organization into the context of death and life if I did not have the thoughts of others to console me and relieve the almost intolerable frustration resulting from the realization that I, like every other human being, and despite our desperate longing for immortality, am inevitably mortal. To imagine (like John Lennon) that there is no heaven and to think (and believe) that there is no life after death is so frustrating, embarrassing and humiliating that one has to be thankful for allies against the myriads of those who - whether in business or in universities - appear to be beyond these banalities of life. As far as management and organization are concerned, it is no coincidence that the 'producers' and 'consumers' of the various theories and knowledge available all seem to be allies cought in the conviction that, despite occasional bankruptcies and heart attacks, business itself will go on beyond the little deaths, which only go to prove that some agents in the market are just not able to make it. Because business is preoccupied with economic growth, survival and extension it appears that business administration and its protagonists have lost sight of the fact that, although work enterprises are supposed to survive and go on forever, the people working in and for them will be supplanted by their successors and will inevitably die. The apparent non-existence of death and mortality both in contemporary work enterprises and in most theoretical works would seem to require managers to identify themselves and to be identified with the immortality of their firm. Workers, on the other hand, are damned to non-mortality in so far as their identification is related to the thinghood of either the machine they work on or the product they manufacture. It seems that the reality of death in industrial enterprises has been reduced to something which is either accomplished through products such as weapons or, since it cannot be avoided, is simply accepted in much the same way as the thousands of daily deaths caused by road accidents or drug abuse. Since death has become a commodity on the market, it is not surprising that the theories which refer to the contributions men and women make to maintain the

XVI

Introduction

competitiveness of their employing institution tend to refer to work as a behavior contributed by human factors or resources (cf. Sievers (1988)). Because work in contemporary enterprises is almost exclusively related to company success, growth and survival, the potential meaning of work is reduced to a very narrow frame defined only in terms of the enterprise, and it is thus almost completely dissociated from the meaning people otherwise give their lives in the context of the surrounding society. The reduction of the range of meaning in our work enterprises goes hand in hand with the prevailing image of man, according to which an organizational culture of dependency is reproduced and sustained. More often than ever people tend to be regarded as not mature and competent enough to manage themselves in their respective organizational roles and therefore are presumed to need others, leaders and managers, to reach the given objectives and to induce, entice and force them to work more efficiently. The narrowness of the frame in which work is seen in the majority of contemporary work enterprises, is, in short, the main focus of this collection of essays. I have attempted to illustrate and explore the implications this reduced view of work has and to re-open the frame of work to allow its potentially wider meaning to appear in the broader context of life and death. 'Motivation as a surrogate for meaning' is the title of the first part. In it, the particular image of how people 'function' in organizations that seems to underly most current theories about motivation within organizations is contradicted by my own experience of working with people in various organizational settings. This dissonance has moved me to criticize both the concept of motivation and its theoretically unsatisfactory basis as being contrary to reality. The main argument of the essay stems, however, from a meta-critical perspective according to which the notion of motivation and its referrant theories can be regarded as scientific inventions. The hypothesis is offered and elaborated that motivation is a surrogate for meaning, i.e., for the meaning of work and life which is increasingly lost through the high degree of fragmentation and splitting in contemporary work enterprises. Any attempt at discovering existential dimensions of meaning can only be accomplished if social scientists, managers and workers alike, both individually and collectively, can again become aware of death as a fact of life; it is only through an acknowledgement of mortality that humanization will become possible. The second essay - 'Participation as a collusive quarrel about immortality' looks at the working hypothesis that the attempt to increase and extend participation in contemporary work enterprises can more often than ever before be understood as a collusive quarrel among managers and workers about immortality. It starts from the widespread experience of the discrepancy between the vigour with which participation in organizations is demanded and offered on the one side and the inadequacy and limitations of its actual realization on the other side. Attempts to increase participation in a work enterprise are often confronted at an early stage with insoluble difficulties which too often lead to termination of the participation

Introduction

XVII

project. Although participation in general, and in work enterprises in particular, is generally seen as a paradigm (or metaphor) for integration, cooperation and democratization among more or less equal partners, I suggest the hypothesis that any attempt to practice participation has a high probability that management and workers get entangled in a collusive quarrel about the preconditions, the content and the range of participation. Sustained by the predominant myth that management means the management of people, workers tend to be infantilized; the deep contempt and mistrust that so often characterize the relations between managers and workers and/or their respective representatives thus poisons the simultaneous desire for trust and cooperation. In an analogy to ancient Greek mythology and its inherent quarrel between the immortal gods and the mortal ephemerals, the collusion between management and workers in contemporary work enterprises can be understood as a quarrel about taking part in immortality. Since immortality is a limited resource, it is only available to the happy few. The collusive quarrel and the underlying split between managers and workers can only be overcome if both parties recognize that as human beings they can neither escape mortality nor relieve the other of it. 'Leadership as a perpetuation of immaturity', the third part, is an attempt to question the notion of leadership as it predominates in modern theory and practice. The hypothesis is offered and extensively elaborated upon that instead of encouraging the adult and mature individual, leadership often serves the function of perpetuating the immaturity of the employees by sustaining a culture of dependency. The predominant myth of leadership is that a leader is someone who leads the way for others - often regardless of whether the leader himself has any influence over or commitment to the direction in which he leads. This concept of leadership is questioned and compared with more ancient mythologies of leadership, i.e. the divine king and the hero. Based on the notion of a 'management of oneself in roles' (Lawrence (1979a)), I suggest a new and more promising myth of management in which leadership can be regarded as a special dimension of management, i.e. the management of meaning. Leadership thus refers to the basic capacity of the mature individual to relate his actions as well as his life to the actions and lives of others, thus searching, constituing and maintaining meaning in a range which can, for example, extend far beyond the financial profit an individual and/or his employer might gain from his work. Leadership in the systemic context of an organization or an enterprise can thus be regarded as a managerial function through which people are invited, encouraged and/or required to establish for themselves and with others a meaningful relationship between that which is relevant to them and that which the enterprise and its subsystems require in order to fulfill their primary tasks. This collection of essays on management and organization ends with some thoughts on the possibility of managing wisdom in contemporary work enterprises. Although at first sight any attempt at managing wisdom may appear to be a contradiction in itself, I offer a notion of wisdom that basically entails a modality

XVIII

Introduction

of experience which allows us to discriminate between enterprises which, through their organizational culture and collective management, make it at least potentially possible for their members to experience wisdom, and those which do not. Referring to Campbell (1973), wisdom is circumscribed as the individual and collective capacity of people in a system to bear the dialectical reality that man is, on the one hand, inevitably mortal and that, on the other hand, the institution and its social order, i.e. the work enterprise or the company, will endure. Management can be regarded as wise if and to the extent that a critical number of an enterprise's members perceive themselves and others as mortal agents of immortality.

"Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

Motivation as Invention

The so-called scientific data and knowledge which have been accumulated during the last fifty years on the issue of motivation and leadership in organizations disturb me more and more. These theories, I find, are not in accord with my experience of working with people in organizations. The majority of these approaches seems to me to be based mainly or exclusively on mechanistic models and paradigms which - even if they pretend to overcome these pitfalls - are based primarily on stick-and-carrot or candy-andwhip metaphors. Even their most sophisticated versions seem to me to repeat a variation on the phenomenon of the monkey lured out of the tropical forest by a banana. The illustrator of the book jacket of Victor H. Vroom's and Edward L. Deci's Penguin edition on 'Management and Motivation' (1970) depicts a luscious carrot. This does not seem to me to be a joke, but an accurate expression of the hidden truth behind the predominant thoughts about management and its functions vis-a-vis the worker. Motivation theories very well represent what Novak ((1968), 9) identifies as "the overriding myth of American society" which "appears to be the myth of the machine - the mechanical model of human relationships, of human identity, of human interchange. Where this myth is absorbed into the processes of conscious life, men become alienated from themselves: mere objects subject to prediction and control, whether by themselves (each man now devided into controller and controlled) or by others."

The more I have tried over the years to acknowledge my own disappointment, depression and annoyance about these theoretical approaches to motivation in particular, the more I have become convinced that I cannot overcome my own frustration by attempting to improve on any of these approaches - however sophisticated they may be. Therefore, instead of reviewing and classifying the existing theories on motivation in organizations either into 'process and content theories' (Campbell et al. (1970)), 'scientific management, paternalistic and participative management theories' (Vroom and Deci (1970)), or 'expectancy, goal setting and equity theories' (Schneider (1985); cf. Wiswede (1980); Shamir (1991); Turner (1987); Locke and Henne (1986); Landy and Becker (1987)), my concern is more of a meta-

4

I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

critical kind. What strikes me repeatedly are the essentially limited and one-sided images and conceptualizations by which most of the predominant motivation theories reduce men and organizations as well as their interrelatedness into reified derivatives. Most of the motivational theorists seem to favor the motivation of employees as the predominant problem and use this concept to approach the management of organizations. As Leavitt ((1966), 21) stated some twenty-five years ago: "Motivation is so much in the spotlight these days that some of us have come to believe motivation is management". Motivation theories, therefore, regard the influence of the employees' motivation as crucial for the effective management of organizations (Lawler (1973), 198). They also seem to support unquestionably this concern "with understanding why workers failed to behave the way management said it wanted them to behave" (Schneider (1985), 576) in order to influence employees' behavior, as well as their needs, towards more effective individual performance (Lawler (1973), 6, 38). Managers often use motivation "in talking about the tactics, strategies, and inducements they can use in 'motivating' a subordinate in directions they see important to their organization's program" (Culbert and McDonough (1985), 126). Although this predominant orientation occasionally seems to be mitigated by referring to Maslow (1970) or Alderfer (1972), it appears to me that Maslow's notion of self-actualization, in particular, and his use of the concept of motivation really have never been admitted to management and organization theory. His thoughts are primarily used as an alibi (Miner (1981), Miner and Dachler (1973), 389; Pym (1980), 227; Schwartz (1983)) to reduce the guilt feelings of those who have committed their work (and life) to scientific explanations and applications of the predominant approaches. The main reservations I share about motivation theories in the context of contemporary work enterprises can be summarized in the following five assumptions: - The concept of motivation is limited to a micro-perspective and favours causal explanations. Both in their commonplace and their scientific use, the concepts of motive and motivation appear to refer to certain psychic or biological assumptions. As such, motives are not only part of the inner world of a man or woman, but in the outer world they are also related only to part of an individual's totality, i.e. his or her behavior. Motivation then - regardless of whether it includes the expected outcome or not - can be seen as the scientific attempt to establish a causal relationship between motives and behavior in the sense that the latter is determined by the former. Although over the last decades the content of the motives has changed more from 'instinct' and 'drives' towards 'needs' or 'achievements', motivation theorists still seem to be much more preoccupied with the search for scientific explanations than with further leading images, analogies or metaphors which would allow a better conceptualization and understanding of people and their actions (Miner and Dachler (1973), 380). Motivation thus is regarded as "one critical variable which determines behavior in organizations" (Rosenstiel (1975), 223). "The word motivation has an archaic ring, reminiscent of the days

Motivation as Invention

5

when minds seeking an explanation for a happening were wont to seek first for a 'mover' and ultimately for a 'prime mover'" (Vickers (1968), 147 f.). Motivation theories seem to support a certain 'schizophrenia' in the sense that they are based exclusively on the metaphor of a life without metaphors (Johns (1982), 179). - Motivation as an issue has been converted from a scientific concept to help understand man and his individual constitution into a pragmatic instrument to influence human behavior. Especially with Freud, who is very often regarded as one of the first psychologists to address the idea of motivation, it is evident that his scientific attempts to explain human beings were directed towards a more conscious understanding of the person, in particular for those persons who underwent psychoanalysis. In comparison to such an increased self-exploration, motivation at present in the context of management and organization theory has been primarily converted into a tool of intrusion, manipulation and control through which those who are either the entrepreneurs or who are legitimized by them can enforce certain desired behavior from their employees. A better understanding of the employees' motivation is then supposed to enable management to cause their subordinates to act in a particular way. As such, motivation as an apparently scientific achievement has been used to quite a large extent as a substitute for power and coercion which previously were the predominant means of influence (cf. Herbst (1974), 13 ff.; Leavitt et al. (1973), 128 ff.). To the same extent as motivation is regarded to be one (if not the only) essential element of any management approach, motivation theorists reinforce the conviction that it is the management of people which is the object of management and management theories (cf. Turk (1988a); Ansari (1990)). Quite the opposite assumption that people can only motivate themselves and that others, only in a very indirect and limited way, can facilitate such self-motivation through the management of tasks, boundaries and other resources of an enterprise seems to be totally untenable. - Because of their predominant behavioral orientation, motivation theorists have lost sight of a broader concern for people and organizations. The search for objectivity and rationality on which the attempts of motivational theorists are primarily built not only goes hand in hand with psychic and organizational reductionism, but also further reduces the relationship between people and their work enterprises to the exclusive concern of how the fit between individuals and the organization could be optimized. Motivation theories which nowadays find their climax in what is called 'Organization Behavior' (Mitchell (1979); Cummings (1982); Staw (1984); Schneider (1985)) have lost any broader image of man through the construct of the individual and so conceptualize organizations primarily through their anatomy (Schneider (1985), 578). This search for objectivity is accomplished via objectification in the sense that the concrete, i.e. people and work enterprises, have to be turned into abstracts which then again have to be concretized: individuals behave in organizations and organizations have to motivate these individuals in order to receive the expected outcome (Berger and Pullberg (1966)). To the extent

6

I.

Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

that behavior is thus substituted for action it is easily forgotten that "action, unlike behavior, is an ethical mode of conduct" (Symons (1990), 419); in comparison to behavior, "action arises out of meanings which define social reality" (Silverman (1970), 127); cf. Luckmann (1989)). The conceptualization of the relatedness between men and their work organizations, as well as between men themselves, is, despite occasional references to a 'complex man' (Schein (1965)), limited to a frame which Maslow ((1977), 257) in comparison to a more universal psychology, once described as 'cripple psychology', or which Holbrook ((1971), 15) stated as 'homunculism'. "The vocabulary of force, vector, functions, reflexes, and behavior, exudes a comforting sense of the knowableness of human actions as determinate objects of scientific investigation. The price has been the gradual loss of a vocabulary which pertains to personal responsibility" (Stanley (1973), 225).

In so far as broader notions of life, wisdom, maturity, meaning or death are excluded from the predominant notion of the individual in motivation theory, the rather naive assumption is made that employees are inevitably immature (Argyris (1958); Bramel and Friend (1981); Lawrence (1985); Pederson-Krag (1951)). The psychological motivation theory is based upon "values, models, and theories about humans that carry the shadow of social engineering: control and dominance" (Bleakley (1989), 6). "Motivation has deterministic overtones and augurs more positively for the possibility of control in human affairs" (Hodgkinson (1983), 49). We lack an underlying concept of behavior that would exhibit a broader understanding of what work itself is and could be about (Marcuse (1933/1965); Kappler (1984)). - Motivation theories reduce the complexity of social reality into the exclusive concerns of satisfaction and effectiveness. The psychic and organizational reductionism mentioned above is further enforced by the underlying assumption that the primary and predominant target of our contemporary work enterprises consists of continuously increasing effectiveness (as compared to the status quo and competitors), a goal which can best be reached when high-performing individuals receive optimal satisfaction for their contribution. The assumption of organizational effectiveness finds one expression in the fact that motivation approaches in particular and organization behavior in general are "bounded by concern for behavior primarily in profit-making work organizations", without knowledge of the work contents in other institutions (Schneider (1985), 574). It further reduces the role of the individual in enterprises to a reified factor of the economic and business processes, which can then be easily referred to as 'human resources' and can ultimately even be handled by 'portfolio management' (Odiorne (1984)). The assumption of individual satisfaction is, because of its underlying hedonism, based on a form of psychological determinism (Locke (1975), 459 - 463). It also seems to neglect any concern for what Maslow ((1977), 123) once described

Motivation as Invention

7

as 'metapathology', a pathology caused by satisfaction which lacks any values, meaning, and fulfillment of life. - Despite their concern for universal truth, motivation theories, with their underlying assumptions, are based on a non-political, non-historical and society-less bias. By comparing different national cultures, Hofstede (1980), among others (e.g. Cox and Cooper (1985)) made the point that the motivation approaches in management theories, which were developed almost exclusively in the United States, are an expression of the extreme individualism, self-interest and masculinity that are characteristics of American culture. Furthermore, it seems to be an expression of U.S. culture that the relationship between individuals and organization is exclusively seen as a matter of fit and order. Aspects of disorder (Cooper (1986)) or conflict are not taken into account as they exist, for example, between the representatives of capital and labour. Mainly because of the inherent reductionism and the fictitious quality of their central concepts, motivation theories are totally silent about any perspective of how individual and societal constructions of reality can be perceived. Guided by the concern "to study the effective management of organizations", organizational psychologists do not deeply question "what such organizations seek to do and the wider effects they have within society" (Blackler and Brown (1978), 343). Also, insofar as leadership (in the context of management theories) is primarily seen as a part of the motivation of employees, motivation theories further reify the split between managers and employees in the sense that the latter are almost exclusively seen as having to be led and motivated by the former. To the extent that motivation theories are, on the one side, primarily concerned with contemporary profit-oriented organizations (with a high preference for large size enterprises) and that they, on the other side, do not acknowledge a lifetime as the time horizon of the individual, these theories feign a timeless universality. If a historic dimension is included, it is exclusively that of the future. Although one can suppose that the protagonists of motivation theories are searching for some kind of scientific truth or validity, it appears nevertheless that the most valid currency on the market for these theories is not only reputation (Luhmann (1968); cf. Fromm (1990), 42) but also money (Miner (1984), 303). As in other markets, it is hardly surprising to note that the marketing of motivation theories includes the creation of the respective needs and demands on the side of scientists and managers. A final explanation for the high appeal which still surrounds motivation theories in the context of management and organization, therefore, could be that the reduction, over-simplification, and fragmentation which these theories obviously do include very accurately mirror the kind and quality of experience the majority of people in industrial cultures seem, or are supposed, to share.

Beyond Motivation

Despite Campbell's and Pritchard's ((1976), 64) earlier remark that "organization motivation theory is anything but depressing", the images of man, life, work, and fulfillment that these theories portend to confirm depress me. In comparison to the 'mainstream' orientation, the conviction that motivation itself is a scientific invention (and not a discovery), is obviously not very broadly shared (Kelly (1958); Lenk (1978)). Instead of arguing for or against any of the now existing approaches to explain human motivation in order to improve it, it becomes more and more evident to me that the whole notion of motivation itself has to be questioned. I assume that the question itself, to which motivation and motivation theory pretend to provide an answer, has actually been lost over the last fifty years of accumulated scientific evidence (cf. e.g. Parsons (1940)). What also strikes me in this regard is the boldness with which either scientists present, or allow their publishers to sell, their ideas and research results as truth. To choose only one example, David C. McClelland's paperback edition of "The Achieving Society' (1961) carries on its cover: "Applying the methods of the behavioral sciences, this book provides a factual basis for evaluating theories - economic, historical, and sociological - that explain the rise and fall of civilizations."

The suspicion that generations of scientists have lost sight of the underlying problem and question to which the notion of motivation and motivation theories present solutions and answers cannot, in my view, be dealt with as it is in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's (1779/1962) parable of 'Nathan der Weise' ('Nathan the Wise'). In this parable the question is posed, "Which of all of the religious doctrines is the only true one?" The answer is that the only original and true one got lost and will never be found again. Instead of increasing the number of motivation theories (cf. Jahoda (1981), 184 f.; Peters (1958), 154) I am convinced that the underlying but real problem which motivation theories continuously attempt to address and solve - not only can be, but has to be rediscovered periodically in order to find fresh ways of approaching it. Though I have no doubts that this search for the underlying question can ultimately be accomplished only as a common enterprise, I shall

Beyond Motivation

9

nevertheless attempt to scrutinize the problem which underlies all contemporary answers. I would like to offer the following hypothesis: motivation only became an issue - for management and organization theories as well as for the organization of work itself - when meaning disappeared or was lost from work; that the loss of meaning of work is immediately connected with the increasing amount of fragmentation and splitting in the way work has been and still is organized in the majority of our western enterprises. In consequence, motivation theories have become surrogates for the search for meaning. Before I try to elaborate on this hypothesis any further I have to admit that the notion of meaning seems to be a rather heavy one. I am not as ambitious as to offer any detailed solutions to the problem of meaning or to contribute any further to the argument as to whether meaning itself is an answer or solution to the question which once again got lost. What I am more concerned about is whether the meaning of work can be seen as the underlying problem which either was not taken into account or already had been lost when social scientists invented the concept of motivation and started arguing around it. One may object that the notion of meaning itself is neither a traditionally used nor a common concept for the social sciences and, although frequently used by theologians and philosophers, cannot be regarded as a scientific concept at all because of its insuperable lack of accuracy. Because of my own understanding of science, and especially the social sciences, I am not concerned about the latter argument. The former seems to me to be shared by those disciplines and scientists who more or less exclusively conceptualize the human being as an isolated individual. Such scientists are well represented through the predominant literature on motivation and its applications to management and organizational aspects. Motivation psychology in particular seems to be the reincarnation of the reification that our institutions and society itself are unknowable. "The notion of motivation is based on the one central myth of contemporary industrial cultures ... that it is believed that society is unknowable" (Lawrence (1979a), 238) and, I would add, institutions too. The notion of motivation itself as well as motivation theories not only represent but also explain "a fatal split between man and the institutions of society" (ibid). And therefore the split itself no longer seems to carry the quality of a myth. By ignoring man's ability to link himself and to relate to the institutions and the society he is living in, the split itself seems to disappear but also man's capability to struggle to find the truth. The underlying assumption on motivation and its theoretical explanations seems to be that individuals are unable to perceive, understand and to relate to the social systems in which they live. This can also be seen as a reification of the apparently wilful ignorance and inability of social scientists (and psychologists in particular) to understand institutions and to relate to them. This rather gloomy perspective on individuals also includes the assumption that their very relationships with their

10

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

institutions have to be managed for them. The scientific assumptions about the individual, therefore, no longer can take his/her own subjectivity into account. They explain man or woman in rather mechanical terms as an entity disconnected from meaning and society with no larger concerns than the satisfaction of primary individual needs - which sometimes might include the need for self-realization (cf. Schneider (1981)). Instead of allowing the individual his own approaches and attempts to define himself and his world, scientific models have to be invented, developed and offered in order to fit the individual into the requirements of mass society with its production and consumption systems. Through motivation theory, man himself becomes reduced to a homunculus of what historically was regarded as the creation of God in His image. Instead of relating the image of man to his own sources - be they a personalized God or not - the seemingly dominant and dominating scientific approaches relate man to the machine. He comes to see himself as one of his more sophisticated products by explaining himself like a machine and a product. "Nothing is expected of the workers but their machine-like functioning" (Bar-On (1990), 46; cf. Kocka (1969), 337, 368; Volpert (1990), 24 f.; Geek (1931), 141). As Lukacs ((1968), 262) wrote as early as in 1923: "Together with the modern, 'psychological' dissection of the working process this rational mechanization reaches into the 'soul' of the worker: even his psychological qualities are cut off from his personality, objectified against it, in order to make them fit into rational special systems and to the respective calculationable concept."

Important evidence for this argument lies in the terminology, or rather the jargon, motivation theory uses. It is primarily built on notions of 'needs' and 'satisfactions'. The links between such notions and the categories which are associated with marketing to increase consumption is an interesting one; these notions suit excellently as scientific legitimations of corresponding ideologies and the social structures built upon them (Miiller (1981), 58). What Ziegler (1982), the Swiss sociologist and politician, states about death in his remarkable book 'Die Lebenden und der Tod' ('The Living and Death') in which he compares the thanatopraxis - i.e. the way cultures deal with the fact of death - in our capitalist 'Producer-Society' with an African culture in Brazil, can be seen as the dominant image of man: "People produce goods and so themselves become products" (Ziegler (1982), 15). "Death exists predominantly in relation to the systems of production, the exchange through consumption of goods" (Ziegler (1982), 42). Or as Hales ((1974), 26) puts it: "Society is classically represented as an aggregate of individuals who find their social reality only in the market." Marcuse, in an early essay from 1933, went even further in denying any psychological attempt to understand work because it neglects the ontological character of the concept of work, which is immediately related to human existence. Scientific approaches which are based on the notion of needs and their satisfaction in

Beyond Motivation

11

the world of goods are not able to understand the full richness of work. And he continues: "There is no doubt that defining work from and in the range of the satisfaction of needs reduces the meaning of work from the outset to a particular dimension (that of the material 'world of goods'), it even becomes rooted in this dimension so that all other, non-economic modes of work have to be regarded primarily from this perspective" (Marcuse (1965), 23).

Marcuse's position is akin to Politzer's who, in 1929, expressed the conviction that "work only became a psychological problem the very moment capitalist production required a rationalized exploitation of the individual" (Politzer (1974), 96). I am convinced that the notion of motivation is not a discovery but an invention (cf. Lawrence (1991), 260) and that the social reality as well as the image of man which underly the predominant theories of motivation are based on fictions. These are not only permanently latent but also continuously perpetuated in our organizational theories and its application to our work enterprises. I do not intend to present a philosophy of meaning but a look behind some of the rather obvious shortcomings and shortcuts of the predominant scientific explanations of our contemporary social reality is inevitable in order to reach a better understanding of what work and its meaning could be about.

Fragmentation and Splitting

The image of a motivated man is not only a reification of the consumer as one of man's roles in our society; in a very naive and non-scientific manner it also confirms a continual societal process of fragmentation. This fragmentation is based on the dichotomy of the individual and institutions through which both man himself and his institutions are destroyed and dispersed into tiny little fragments which are no longer connected and related. In comparison to the classical sociological concept of differentiation (Durkheim (1960); Simmel (1890); Luhmann (1984), 256 - 265), which refers to a segmental or functional discrimination of a society or its subsystemic social structures and which, as such, can be seen as mankind's attempt to deal with higher degrees of social complexity (and autonomy), the notion of fragmentation - in its psychoanalytical tradition of the theory of object-relations (Klein (1948)) - is immediately related to splitting and segregation (cf. Morgan (1981)). As such, fragmentation refers to the schizoid processes through which persons organize their own inner world by splitting the reality into good and bad parts which then can be only idealized or denied (cf. Smith (1989), 7 ff.). In experiencing and dealing with the outer world such a schizoid splitting creates and perpetuates the fragmentation of the outer world. Splitting and fragmentation cannot only be understood as mutually reinforcing processes - the projected dismemberment is again introjected and vice versa - it can also be seen as the immature and inadequate attempt to reduce complexity through neglect. It has psychic and social implications and consequences. Whereas differentiation presupposes parallel processes and mechanisms of integration, fragmentation and splitting are based on the (false) assumption that a whole reality can neither be realized nor does it exist. Although it seems plausible that the high amount of fragmentation in our contemporary industrialized societies and enterprises is interrelated with the present high degree of social differentiation (Dickson (1974); Williams (1982)) - "the more we differentiate the world, the less easy it is to integrate experience" (Pym (1975), 687) - the following thoughts do not preclude that, for example, peasants or labourers in pre-industrial times did not suffer from fragmentation (cf. Herlihy (1973). The fragmentation of the world is manifold. As far as the individual is concerned, reality is not only fragmented into social, political, and private areas; we are getting so used to fulfilling a fiction, that thoughts, actions, experiences, and

Fragmentation and Splitting

13

emotions can no longer be interrelated and connected - they no longer belong to the one person. It also becomes increasingly difficult to overcome the split between the individual and his role as well as between the different roles in which one is acting. As May ((1983), 63) stated: "A man who can keep the different segments of his life entirely separated, who can punch the clock every day at exactly the same moment, whose actions are always predictable, who is never troubled by irrational urges or poetic visions, who indeed can manipulate himself the same way he would the machine whose levers he pulls, is the most profitable worker not only on the assembly line but even on many of the higher levels of production."

Our institutions are fragmented, and, in various ways, also fragment our experience. In our western societies there is always the temptation to confirm the fiction that our private lives do not have anything to do with social or political life. Even our institutions are to a certain extent divided into thosfe which are supposed to have a political impact and those which do not; into institutions which then can either be more democratized or more humanized. The fragmentation of our institutions and our working organizations in particular is designed and administrated in such a way that the planning, managing and supervision of work is fundamentally separated from its execution. As Weil ((1978), 165) indicates, it is our version of the division of labour that one set of people merely handle the machines and another set of people are allowed to think about the organization of these people and their machines. Working organizations perennially confirm the fiction that some are managers and others are workers, as if managers do not have to work and workers do not have to manage in order to perform a common task (cf. Teulings (1986), 156). This continual process even affects the work itself. The time when workers performed a whole task with their own subjectivity from beginning to end seems to be gone for the majority of employees. "As in the army, political power and the possibility of control is fragmented at the bottom and consolidated at the top. The desire to maintain hierarchical relationships has led to the adoption of production techniques that appear to require them. The design of assembly-line production technique, for example, coincides with a particular mode of the division of labour" (Dickson (1974), 87).

Our working organizations no longer represent the fact that "people despite their ability to compartmentalize and despite the schizoid character of modern life, are not essentially segmental" (Katz and Kahn (1966), 323).

The Fragmentation of the Organization of Work The majority of our organizations are not only characterized by a continual separation of managers and workers; but also, hand in hand with it, there is a fundamental split of authority, responsibility, skills, knowledge and even activity. Despite the political myth that all men are equal, some are more so than others. Out of all

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

the members of an organization only a few are supposed to have authority, be responsible, have the required skills and knowledge, and are therefore regarded as being actively committed to the aims of the organization. As a matter of fact, the underlying dynamics of this basic fragmentation not only lead to a gradation of all these qualities and abilities as a reality in the sense that some do have more and some less. In fact,, this split can go very much further in that the members of an organization seem to behave according to the underlying assumption that only a few have all and the majority have nothing. To state this in psychoanalytical terms: those at the top are deemed to be omniscent and omnipotent and thus all others are ignorant and impotent. This fundamental split in our organizations is not just a quality of the social system. It is interrelated, legitimized and perpetuated by the complex psychic processes of introjections and projections of the inner world of all members of an organization. Those at the top regard those at the bottom as not potent enough or rather being too passive to manage themselves. Frederick W. Taylor ((1911, 63), for example, working with Bethlehem Steel, expressed it some eighty years ago in his 'Principles of Scientific Management': "And besides this, the man suited to handling pig iron is too stupid properly to train himself'. As far as the underlying message is concerned, nothing has really changed during the last decades. The more those at the top and their various representatives regard the worker as being 'stupid', the more work has to be fragmented into pieces. This leads to the psychic reality that those at the top deal with their own inabilities, weaknesses, replaceability, passivity, and impotence (cf. Teulings (1986)) by projecting them onto others. At the same time this projection from those at the top is related to their own introjections of strength, potency, uniqueness, and activity which they ascribe to themselves. The corresponding confusion also takes place on the part of those commonly called employees or workers. Through projection they seem to lose their own strength which they enjoy quite extensively in other outside relationships, and at the same time, they introject all the bad parts of the organization. Finally, they lose their self-esteem and self-regard. The result of such a collusion, at least as far as the latter are concerned, is very well expressed in an anonymous poem from the auto workers' underground at General Motors, which Peters and Waterman ((1982), 235) quote 'In Search of Excellence': "What is it that instantaneously makes a child of a man? Moments before he was a father, a husband, an owner of property, a voter, a lover, an adult."

At least for those who are used to psychoanalytic thinking there is no doubt that such a fundamental split is not only created in the organizations of our industrial world. The split starts with the very first moments of life in our culture, when

Fragmentation and Splitting

15

an infant learns to behave and to define himself according to his mother's and parents' expectations, in order not to deny himself by losing the love and care his life depends on. With this very moment of an infant's birth begin again and again the unconscious temptations of his parents to act out and to perpetuate the insults, humiliations, self-denials and experiences of inferiority they experienced in their own childhood as well as in their adult life (cf. Sievers (1993)). Underlying these processes, even though very often covered through the individual myth of a 'happy childhood', are always complicated dynamics of a perpetuated mutual contempt. The ongoing temptation for the parents is to demonstrate their own unconscious impotence (and their own self-contempt) through contempt towards their child. "Contempt for those who are smaller and weaker, this is the best defense agaist a breakthrough of one's own feelings of helplessness: it is an expression of this split-off weakness" (A. Miller (1981), 67). This contempt, which the parents experienced from their own parents as well as on various other occasions in their own biography, leads to the child's own contempt towards them - something which to a great degree they were not allowed to express or to become aware of. As Miller also demonstrates in her book, the contempt and dependency into which every child is born are very nicely and more or less successfully covered in our culture by the fiction that a child needs his parents - as if parents do not need their children, too, for their own maturing and for acting out and overcoming their own impotence - an insight which only later led this author to renounce psychoanalysis (A. Miller (1988), 231 ff.). There are good enough reasons to assume that this straightforward fiction "They, the children, need us, the parents, and we, the children, need them, the parents!" - correlates highly with the fiction that workers are not adult enough to manage themselves while working on a common task and therefore need managers. Or, to connect it more directly with my hypothesis: "They need us to be motivated!" Taking it further, managers very often talk, and probably more often think, about workers in their firm as their employees (cf. Martin (1990), 344 f.). It also can be assumed that the underlying reasons for parental contempt towards children are not too different from the managerial contempt towards workers. The drama of the worker is to a certain extent the drama of the gifted child! "And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society" (A. Miller (1981), 69). And as in the case of the socialization process in the family, this fiction and the resulting fragmentation in organizations are not primarily and exclusively patterns which either the parents or those at the top impose upon children or workers. Rather, it is a mutual collusion in which children and workers are caught. I very well remember the anger and confusion of many participants when I once said in an 'Institutional Event' (an intergroup exercise of a Tavistock-style Working Conference to explore relationships between conference-members and management (cf. e.g. E. Miller (1989); Rice (1965); Sievers (1973))) that neither

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

I in the role of the director, nor my colleagues in their role as managers regarded the conference members as our employees, but as members of a common learning event with specific roles. They felt enormously insulted. (This mirrored their understanding of the world outside the conference.) They reconfirmed that people like to feel how they are expected to feel. Such a "vicious cycle derives some of its energy from the basic assumption dependency (Bion (1961)) around which organizations are mobilized. The dependency and social passivity present in the larger society are taken across the boundary of enterprises by individuals as role-holders, and vice versa. Dependency of a basic assumption nature is preeminantly available for study in enterprises" (Lawrence (1979a), 247).

The Fragmentation of Work In my experience as a consultant it is not unusual to be approached by a client with the explicit expectation of my motivating his workforce. This was the case some time ago, when the management of a huge central warehouse for spare auto parts asked a colleague and myself for consultation (Sievers (1984)). The central warehouse was rebuilt according to the highest technological standards after it burned down two years earlier. The problem they presented us with was that after having enjoyed international success by European standards before the fire, they were now unable to reach their former standards despite the latest technology. They obviously had been very proud of their workforce during the transition period in which they not only had to rebuild the warehouse but also had been able to continue the spare parts supply on a decentralized basis through enormous logistic efforts. During the transition period workers as well as management did not hesitate to spend extra time and effort to keep the distribution of parts going. Their only explanation for the present low performance of the unit was that workers were no longer motivated enough to meet the previous standards. Whereas some of the management were partly convinced that giving workers "a kick in the pants" would do it, some of them thought there should be more sophisticated techniques of motivation which would lead to even better results. It very soon became evident that despite the newest techology which was implemented during the reconstruction period - high bay warehouse, driverless transportation systems, computerized information processing, broad streets through the warehouse for fire trucks etc. - their social organization of how the work was done and how different areas of work were interrelated was pretty poor. Not only were they unable to integrate the six hundred Turkish workers into the organization's culture; nearly every job was highly fragmented into subtasks without any reference to more general tasks, the product, the plant's core mission, their own performance standards or to the final customer. The majority of workers seemed to be human tools which could easily be replaced. This was, for example,

Fragmentation and Splitting

17

symbolically expressed by the fact that those workers who handled the spare parts in the non-automatic areas of the warehouse were referred to as 'pickers'; this 'job-description', in addition to the original American image of a harvester, sounded like chickens in a laying battery. Work in the warehouse was fragmented into a thousand islands which management then tried to integrate again through a hierarchy of leadership and rather rigid control procedures. The ultimate goal of the whole organization, towards which management as well as workers were pushed, had become the attainment of standards and to satisfy the international company, which came to be seen as the mother company. This particular example is no exception in the majority of today's organizations. And at the same time such a high state of work fragmentation and highly organized meaninglessness is not only characteristic of most of our contemporary organizations, it has developed in our industrialized civilization since at least the beginning of this century, and is perpetually increasing. Especially "the large corporation specializes the functions of its people and then coordinates them to achieve machine-like efficiency" (Chamberlain (1969), 136). "The division of work into fractionated tasks not only made external control of employees necessary but placed the control firmly in the hands of employees and subsequently in a new class of professional managers" (Williams (1982), 8; cf. Marglin (1974)).

One very obvious and also often used excuse for this increasing fragmentation of work itself is to hold Frederick W. Taylor and 'Taylorism' responsible. Taylor allegadly destroyed the meaning of work for the worker through his time and motion studies and the segregation of work into single movements. If one does not accept this simple explanation and tries to realize the particular socio-economic situation at the beginning of this century, the way workers were used and exploited and how difficult it was for the enormous number of unemployed people - always available to substitute for the employed ones - to survive, and if one takes further into account the concern Taylor himself had of enabling the worker to have a less deprived and more worthwhile life (cf. Weisbord (1987), 24 - 69), as well as the fact that even Lenin thought that scientific management was "not only a useful tool for capitalism, but the answer for socialist production, too" (Dickson (1974), 56), then another explanation would seem necessary. Therefore, the way in which work was already organized when Taylor began his research did not allow a majority of workers to find any meaning in the work itself except that it merely prevented starvation; work primarily had the function of allowing oneself and one's family to survive - mainly under conditions which did not even allow the question as to whether one's own life was useful or not. It seems reasonable to assume that Taylor's question to Schmidt, his 'Pennsylvanian Dutchman', whether he wanted to be a number one man, was not primarily an attempt to lead him and his colleagues into further exploitation by the Bethlehem Steel Company. On the contrary, it can be seen as an acknowledgement of the existing total alienation of the worker from his work, intends to give him

18

I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

some chance of leading a useful life beyond his work, since the work itself could not be regarded as being useful for the worker anymore. Instead of looking to a point in time when, in the history of western industrialization, fragmentation increased to such an extent that work finally lost its meaning for the majority of workers (cf. e.g. Marglin (1974)), the development of my hypothesis is better served by understanding this fragmentation and how it is experienced by the different parties, especially managers and workers, involved in the process of work and its organization. Through the continual differentiation and fragmentation of work in contemporary organizations, workers' activities are not only reduced to the smallest job components such as the hand motions required to keep a conveyor belt going or the mere eye movement to control an automatic production process, but the notion of work itself has been converted into jobs and job performance. The content of work has been lost to a great degree through the ways work has been, and still is, organized in the majority of our enterprises. What Weil, the French philosopher, described from her own working experience in the early thirties is still accurate half a century later: "The complete unawareness of what one is doing is extremely demoralizing. One does not get the feeling that a product results from the effort. In no case does one rate oneself a producer. Nor does one have a feeling for the relation between the work and the payment. It seems as if the activity is arbitrarily imposed and arbitrarily rewarded. One gets the impression of resembling to a certain extent those children whose mother, in order to keep them quiet, gives them beads to string up and promises candy for it" (Weil (1978), 127 f.).

To the extent that work has been reduced into a chronologically measurable economical factor, i.e. labour, it has lost its broader cultural connotation which is as old as mankind. Work in this ancient sense is the way human beings make meaning "of the relations with their outside world and with each other" (Hoebeke (1988), 336). "Work in itself has an enormous social regulatory power: the interdependence between the various competences necessary to make even simple artifacts has always been a social glue for the actors involved in a joint task of settling their conflicts and centrifugal forces" (ibid.). "Througout recorded history work has meant many things for many people: achievement, fulfillment, salvation as well as drudgery, degradation, damnation... People continue to love and hate their daily work, to be bored or excited by it, to dream of escaping from it or into it. ... Above all, work is a necessity, a condition of being alive. ... With so universal a phenomenon found at all times in all cultures and even in man's dreams of a better society, attitudes to work must reflect the infinite variety of life in its meaning to individuals" (Jahoda (1966), 622 f.).

Today it appears as if these original qualities of work and the fulfillment and satisfaction work potentially offered to the individual have been transferred out of our organizations into the privacy of what in the continuous societal splitting

Fragmentation and Splitting

19

process then was called leisure time. The essential richness of work survives in the 'do-it-yourself' activities, in another fragmented space of life which was not only immediately occupied but is permanently created and sustained by a new branch of the 'Producer-Society', the 'home workers" business. Lawrence ((1983), 17) makes it quite clear that: "Do-it-yourself activities are inspired by saving costs, to be sure, but there is a satisfaction in making and repairing a household item. Do-it-yourself activities, even though conducted in a time called leisure, can be understood to be work because they involve the subjectivity of the individual performing the activities and, in the main, the performer is engaged in a whole task from beginning to end. In the course of the activities he can experience a whole range of emotions because his mind and body are engaged. There is the wish to make some item which inspires the imagination to picture what it would look like on completion. There are decisions to be made, for example, about materials, dimensions and so on. There may be frustration experienced as the individual tries to realize his aim but there is the satisfaction of solving the problems as they are encountered. In the end, there is an object, be it a shelf, a garment or a motor car, fully repaired with which the individual will be disappointed or satisfied. But whenever that individual does a similar task, he can carry forward the learning he derived from his previous project."

Looking at contemporary organizations, it somehow seems as if those who are, in the common use of the English language, called workers, rudimentarily and symbolically carry the loss of what work could be if they only were able to manage it and themselves to a higher degree. In this context it is probably no accident that the early attempts to redesign and to restructure work in order to increase motivation were sold originally as 'job design'. This approach very well illustrates the reduction and fragmentation of work in our organizations. 'Jobs' is the label for what is left of work after all managerial and satisfying aspects have been removed. It has even lost the taste of the crumb from the table of the rich man, so that it finally has to be enriched and flavoured artificially - via motivation. As Hollway ((1984), 37) indicates, the meaning of the word 'job' has itself lost its orginal connotation of "a small definite piece of work especially in one's own calling". The implied tragedy of 'job design' can be elucidated by the analogy of the child who desparately desires real evidence of the love of his parents but is smothered with presents instead (cf. Levinson (1981), 111). Motivating workers through incentives, or what in the language of motivation theory is called 'motivators', is also one way - as it is for parents - to hide one's own contempt and the guilt feelings connected with it (A. Miller (1981), 67). And as everybody feels with a child who does not really want all these toys and sweets but takes them, workers, too, sometimes buy into what is sold to them as job-rotation, job-enlargement, job-enrichment, etc.. With this in mind, Pym's remarks ((1975), 691) become comprehensible: "It is difficult to take seriously those social innovations designed to modify man's lot in the condition of employment. However, in addition to their coercive functions these exercises

20

I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

make good sense as rituals of industrial man. Furthermore, this is how wise managers privately view them, though they cannot admit it."

There is no doubt that the majority of jobs can only be filled because they provide employment, which has as its main benefit the financial resources needed for living - and to take over the role of a consumer. As a recent international research project on the meaning of work has shown, "the dominant underlying reason why people work is to secure and maintain an income to purchase needed and/or desired goods and services" (MOW (1987), 250). Very often the main advantages of employment are to prevent the loss of roles and role relationships, keep in touch with 'reality', and to avoid fundamental confrontation with the nothingness (Novak (1970)) which dominates the experience of unemployment (cf. Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel (1933/1982)). "Pym (1975) in his article 'The Demise of Management and the Ritual of Employment' has done much to classify the differences between work and employment. Most individuals do their work within employing institutions. With the rise of industrialization, which has made contemporary societies what they are, people generally were brought from their homes (where they carried out their work) together under one roof, so to speak, in order to carry out work which then could be partialized into smaller, discrete operations because it was believed that the division of labour was a more efficient method of production. Concomitant with this was the growth of employing policies, regulations and rules. Hence, work became 'imprisoned within the constraints of time and space defined by machine and social order' (Pym (1975)). Alongside this kind of discipline, industrial production in contemporary societies likely would not have reached the same peaks as, for example, in times of war. So employment can be seen as a 'prison' but, at the same time, it also provides the only available opportunities for the majority of adults in industrial societies to carry out their work" (Lawrence ((1983), 171).

The reader may very likely come to the conclusion that my view and that of the authors cited here overemphasize the point and are too pessimistic in their critique of the quality of work in contemporary organizations. I, however, understand it as one important perspective of what work is about and what is permanently hidden within motivation theory by its merchandisers. What encourages me to continue this analysis is not only the fact that there are other 'thinkers' who share this view but that there are 'actors', too, who, if only on rather unique and special occasions, allow themselves to think along similar lines. One very impressive example from 'the bottom' can be found in the transcript of a conference in Canada where unemployed and employed people worked on their own experiences (Lawrence (1983)). I also found encouragment in the thoughts expressed by a group of managers in an international tyre plant when we were working on the (projected) assumptions they had about the workers in their plant. This is what they imagined the workers might think: -

"Independent, autonomous work is impossible! You fall apart after working at this machine for five years! I am afraid to articulate myself!

Fragmentation and Splitting -

21

We have no future, no career, it is always the same! If only I were allowed to work as I wanted! We are manipulated and blackmailed, with the argument of saving our jobs! Productivity is achieved on the back of the workers! Only a minimum of my skills is being used! We are second-class men! Nobody listens to me and my problems! They quite often ask us, but they really don't care! They really don't know our concerns, they never have time for us! They've let do me this dirty job for thirteen years now!"

The mutual contempt underlying these statements was to my thinking very accurately expressed by one of the workers in this plant, who said with resignation that out of the many skills he personally had for building his own house - planning, deciding, constructing etc. - the company probably did not want more than five percent. And Morgan ((1986), 283) referring to Blackburn and Mann (1979)) similarly states that in some enterprises the majority "of manual workers exercise less skill in their jobs than they use in driving to work". This also demonstrates very well how mutual contempt - one of the underlying dynamics of the intraorganizational splitting among managers and workers - is interrelated with the fragmentation of work into jobs. I am convinced that what I have tried to describe and question so far - the dichotomous split in our organizations and the fragmentation of work - is only the tip of the iceberg and that underlying this segregation, somehow frozen underneath the surface, is another fundamental split in contemporary western society, that is the split between life and death.

The Fragmentation of Life There is no doubt that contrary to motivation theories and partly encouraged by their limitations and simplifications there are growing attempts and concerns to overcome the devaluation of work in our industrial organizations. Increasingly, the question of how work can obtain quality is being extended and converted into a search for the quality of working life with the dual intent, on the organizations' side, of being able to offer qualified work instead of jobs and of relating work once again to the individual and his life, which obviously occupies a larger space than just the forty hours or so a week during which he is employed. What still gets lost in all these far-reaching attempts is the fact that work and working life are not only aims in themselves but are aspects of a much broader entity, namely a man's or a woman's life. The temptation which is included in the quality of working life movement, is just to substitute one fragmentation with another, i.e. the fragmentation of work into jobs with a fragmentation of life into working life and the remainder of it (cf. Neuberger (1980)). What is regarded as working

22

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

life is not only that part of work which is imprisoned through employment, it also seems to emphasize an understanding of work which - according to Marcuse (1933/1965) - neglects any relatedness to human existence. The seduction to be tempted in this way also exists around the commonly shared fiction that for the overwhelming majority of people, working life is just a period of their lives, starting in the late teens or early twenties and ending with retirement in their sixties. Nothing is said about its end, which like one's birth, according to the underlying fiction, is assumed to happen outside this space of time. "There has been relatively little attention directed to the linkages between work and nonwork, perhaps on the assumption that working is so important in an industrial society that it really does not matter what the citizen does with his non-working time" (Dubin (1976), 3;cf. Near etal. (1980)).

The ease with which this fiction of life after work for everyone is maintained is partly due to increasing internal health and safety regulations in organizations and the fact that those who actually do end their lives before retirement normally do not do it at the workplace. (I remember very well the near psychotic information policy when, in a German subsidiary of an American company a couple of years ago, a newly elected member of the board did not survive the rites of his initiation at the carousal of the very first night; people were not even allowed to attend his funeral.) And if people, and in particular workers, do become disabled to the extent that they have to retire early, this is just another way for organizations to get rid of the underlying problem that the potential of every individual is limited and finally does come to an end. "The accident at work belongs to the economic order, it has no symbolic value" (Baudrillard (1982), 261; cf. Tataryn (1979)). And even the deaths of key executives "do not significantly affect the market" (Worrell et al. (1986), 684). Death and the experience of death are, as far as our enterprises and their personnel departments are concerned, neutralized through what is called the 'natural fluctuation', which in addition to death also includes pregnancies, retirements or job changes and just has to be accepted like all natural facts of life. "Bureaucracies are impregnable by death. At worst it robs them of experienced talent which may be scarce. The organization itself is hardly disturbed - the dead man's replacement is already wailing. A bureaucratic society, therefore, need not prescribe the passage of mourning: death creates no crisis in its corporate life. So we come to perceive grief as a sickness because, in terms of the dominant principles of our social organizations, the unwillingness to replace a vacated role promptly is as much an aberration as the unwillingness to substitute for a missing satisfaction" (Marris (1974), 90 f.).

The fragmentation of life into a working life and the rest of it also perpetuates the underlying myth that the firm itself is immortal. The contemporary enterprise has come to symbolize immortality thus - as is very convincingly shown in the works of Brown (1968), Campbell (1973), or Dunne (1965), (1975) - replacing the ancient city and the empire in this role. "Organizations need to be assumed to be, at

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least potentially, immortal" (Schwartz (1985), 32; cf (1990)). The endurance of the social order is a myth as old as mankind which either allows man to find peace in the inevitability of his own death or denies it (Campbell (1973), 20 f.). This myth, in particular in American family businesses, is sometimes symbolically reified by the fact that the founder is buried in the yard of the firm. Especially during times of recession this is also permanently emphasized through the dismissal of employees in order to let the firm survive. The inheritance of property in general, and the inheritance of a family-owned firm in particular, carries on the notion of immortality. The fact that the threat of bankruptcy of Krupp, AEG or British Leyland is seen as almost a national disaster is evidence enough that immortality is ascribed to the majority of our employing enterprises. As in family businesses, in which the son takes over the firm from his father and subsequently gives it to his son, the immortality seems to be shared by those who identify themselves with the firm and are identified with the firm by others, i.e. the management. According to the predominant myth in western industrial society, managers are the only ones who can and should perform the necessary functions for the survival and the success of the enterprise (Martin (1982), 129). The actual fragmentation of the system then has to be projected onto individuals, workers in particular. Those in power introject the notion of being above fragmentation. Although there can be no doubt that managers, too, die they nevertheless seem to be above such banalities. Although they may occasionally perceive themselves as having pledged their lives to the devil, they very often are the only ones who have committed their whole lives to their organizations, which does not leave much opportunity for those at the bottom. It is, as Cleverleg ((1972), 190) states, one of the curiosities of the management Pantheon that one can acquire a place in it even in one's lifetime. According to this myth, these managers, like the ancient gods, carry their sources of authority and power inside themselves, needing no motivation or enforcement from others at all. This is a myth, which is permanently reinforced by the fiction that those in the middle carry their marshall's batons in their knapsack and, after having made their career, are potentially able to ascend above the myriad of mortals. Yet "the manager in the medium-sized to large concern is finding great difficulty in deriving a sense of achievement from his tasks. Industrial man's response to this crisis is to deny it. Instead he has invented a massive arsenal of symbolism, meetings, objective-setting games (management by objectives), appraisals and assessments, information systems (e.g. computer print-outs), graduate recruitment programmes, management sciences and job redesigns which provide the delusions of purpose, tangibility, personal responsibility and performance" (Pym (1975), 683).

To expand on this point, what normally is dealt with in organization theory, management science and business administration seems to be this divine heaven, continuously legitimized and lauded to the skies by the high priests of science, who at the same time are unable to recognize the divine spark in everyone. Instead

24

I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

of contributing to the understanding of industrial society and its development, management science degenerates to "a mere uncritical projection of the ideas and practice of managerial elites" (Hales (1974), 3). Through the myth of immortality of the firm and its management, the previously described split between those at the top and those at the bottom is not only reinforced but also attains the quality of a foregone conclusion. It becomes an unassailable and irrefutable truth. As I already mentioned, this fragmentation of life and the glorification of the employing institutions and their management must be seen and can only be understood as an expression of the more fundamental split which dominates western culture and society, i.e. the split of life and death and the tremendous ignorance of the latter. Ziegler (1982) accurately described it as follows: "The taboo with which the capitalistic producer society covers death is only one aspect of a much further reaching strategy of concealment: a cultural strategy used by the ruling class in order to hide and to harden the system of inequality which privileges them" (ibid., 16). "The way of thinking of the ruling capitalistic class is motivated by one general principle: the principle 'of concealing death', of denying in an organized manner its approach and its lived and livable reality"(ibid., 55). "Death is no longer a destiny. It only exists in relation to a system of production, of exchange and of consumption of goods"(ibid., 42). "The reigning way of thinking 'expatriates' death, makes one believe in a biological catastrophe before which all people seem to be equal. In this way the capitalistic society not only reduces death to a 'natural', miserable, meaningless, frighthening, tabooed event, but simultaneously uses the silence which accompanies death to conceal people's fundamental inequality vis-a-vis their death as well as in their lives. The symbolic violence of the capitalistic society converts death into an absurd pseudo-natural event which puts an end to an existence which this society has constructed and processed according to its own standards of goods" (ibid., 316).

And Elias, one of the few sage contemporary sociologists, writes about the loneliness of the dying in our society: "Never before in the history of humanity have the dying been removed so hygienically behind the scenes of social life; never before have human corpses been expedited so odourlessly and with such technical perfection from the deathbed to the grave" (Elias (1985), 23).

It is the toilet metapher, as Slater ((1971), 18) states, which has become predominant: we not only try to get rid of the reality of human waste and its disposal but also try to decrease the visibility of our social problems. Though the reality of death is fundamentally denied in our society as well as in our work enterprises, it seems as if only workers have to consciously carry the burden of such a denial. Those participating in the immortality of the firm through the denial of their own death (managers) do regard the remainder, the workers, as the objectives of their own divine fate. Even if it could easily be disproved by a quantitative analysis, this fiction is sustained by the assumption that it is the workers and not the managers who have to suffer from the loss of work and that

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they are the ones who have to face unemployment caused by managerial decisions in the case of rationalization, or by fallacy, in the case of mismanagement. As death and the dead body in our society very often do not mean anything other than a confrontation with nothingness and therefore has to be eliminated in a hygienic and sterile manner, the loss of work and unemployment are similar phenomena and therefore have to be denied through doles from the enterprise or national insurance. Like life insurance in the case of death, these financial regulations for unemployment are a societal attempt not only to eliminate further consequences of such a loss, but also to deny all consequences whatsoever.

Work and the Loss of Meaning

The three aspects I have tried to describe so far - the segregation and the ignorance of the worker vis-a-vis the management in the employing institutions, the fragmentation of work into jobs requiring only a minimal amount of skills and activities in comparison to those a mature individual possesses, and the fragmentation of life into a working life by not only ignoring the rest of it but also denying the necessary fact of its end through death - are all facets of the same growing problem of contemporary society, i.e. the fundamental and never ending human concern for meaning; or, to put it less academically, the search for an answer to the question 'How does one lead a useful life?' Before going on to look for a way out of the misery of work in the present state of industrialization - and I am pretty sure that I cannot contribute any more than a letter or a word to the signpost on the road - we first need to examine social realities and their consequences, which are characterized by a great amount of meaningless work. Bearing in mind the unconscious, underlying psychic and political dynamics of our industrial civilization, it has become evident how difficult it is for the majority of modern men and women to find any meaning in the work they are doing (cf. Berger (1964), 212 ff.). This is a difficulty with which not only workers but also managers have to struggle; one part of a working population cannot develop and invent meaning on behalf of the other part. This would only repeat the fundamental fragmentations and perpetuate the present phenomena of social inequality. As far as the underlying dynamics are concerned, it would recreate exactly the situation where motivation was invented as a surrogate for those who obviously were not able to give meaning to their work and their lives anymore. As a matter of fact, I regard motivation as an invention; an invention made by social scientists and permanently perpetuated by schools of business and generations of managers. The need to 'motivate' is, as McWhinney ((1985), 12) put it, not a property of human beings but the product of alienating organizations. The invention of motivation took place in a historical situation in which through the differentiation and fragmentation of work into jobs and isolated activities, the possibility of actualizing for oneself and others any meaning in work became lost for an increasing percentage of the employed. And as meaning gets lost (and with it the ability or quality of meaning as a co-ordinating and integrating source for

Work and the Loss of Meaning

27

one's own actions as well as for the interactions with others) motivation has to be invented. Through motivation the lack of meaning of work becomes substituted or converted into the question "How does one get people to act and produce under conditions in which they normally would not be 'motivated' to work?" "The problem is not that of the degradation of men and women, but the difficulties raised by the reactions, conscious and unconscious, to that degradation" (Braverman (1974), 141). Elias ((1985), 54; (1991), 20, 49 ff.) convincingly describes meaning as a social category referring to a plurality of inter-related people as its subject and which, as a category, cannot be understood if it is only related to an isolated individual. In contrast, motivation does refer to a rather solipsistic dimension of a self-contained and isolated entity. Motivation is primarily seen as relating to the intrapsychic mechanics of the inner world with no further connection to the outer social world except that it can be manipulated by others. Motivation theory directly reifies one of the predominant consequences of the continuous fragmentation of work, i.e., the loneliness of the worker. This is expressed by the increasing personal inability and pre-structured impossibility of reaching out, relating to other workers, and realizing a relationship between his own activities and the mission of the organization of which he is a member. Weil ((1978), 240), sees this loneliness as the central feature of most of our enterprises. To quite an extent, this is the same isolation and loneliness in which people in western society are supposed to end their lives. It is anticipated in their work experience: 'Too often, people today see themselves as isolated individuals totally independent of others. To further one's own interests - seen in isolation - then seems the most sensible and fulfilling thing for a person to do" (Elias (1985), 34). "The resulting distorted self-image of a person as a totally autonomous being may reflect very real feelings of loneliness and emotional isolation. Tendencies of this kind are highly characteristic of the specific personality structure of people of our age in more highly developed societies and of the particular type of high individualization prevailing there" (Elias (1985), 57).

If meaning, as the relation to one's work and co-workers, can no longer be seen and managed by the individual, people have to be managed; managed in such a way that they are able to operate without relating and being related. When people are managed they do not have, or are not assumed to have responsibility for themselves anymore. "The salient myths of organizations" are primarily based on the assumption that "management equals man-management" (Lawrence (1979a), 246). The alienation created and sustained by meaninglessness "has been accepted as part of most people's jobs for so long that it is usually regarded as normal" (Hales (1974), 17). Work's loss of meaning has fragmented the worker's inner world. Colleagues and superiors may perceive the worker as being fragmented. Inevitably this leads to his being regarded - by himself and others - as disabled or stupid. And as

28

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

individuals are no longer able to fit together either the bits inside themselves or those in the outer world, mechanistic models have to be developed and used to overcome this fragmentation and the threatening chaos which is its final consequence. Motivation becomes a framework for the chaos of the organization and the inner world of the managers, though the chaos then has to be projected onto the workers. Motivation as the surrogate for meaning allows one to substitute any holistic awareness and relatedness of the individual by a trigger, which can be easily pressed or stroked - whatever seems to be more successful in making people perform according to other people's expectations. It seems as if management were saying to the workers: "If you don't know why you are doing what you are doing, we'll give you good reasons. And these reasons are good because science offers sufficiently convincing models and explanations to let your actions appear meaningful!" As will be further explored in the third part, the same can be said from the management of leadership: "Since you don't know what you are doing, why you're doing it, or what it means, we have assigned people to fill you in. These are our leaders. And just in case they're as ill-informed as you are, we'll tell them what to tell you!". Leadership in this sense also becomes a surrogate for meaning. Leadership becomes the instrument through which the management of people is executed. "Effective leadership might, therefore, be described as the ability to supply subordinates with needed guidance and good feelings which are not being supplied by other sources" (Kerr and Jermier (1978), 400). The inflation of leadership approaches mirrors the limitations and the poverty of the underlying values and assumptions about men even more so than do motivation theories. The various leadership approaches of the last decade, e.g. situational leadership (cf. Miiller and Hill (1973)), represent a scientific attempt to further verify a hypothesis after having been confronted with the fact that both organizations, as complex social systems, and individuals contain an enormous amount of variations. But instead of including this variation in the leadership concept and extending it into situational leadership by offering different structural and behavioral patterns for different situations, a more sophisticated and difficult solution would have been not only to admit that variation exists in the individual but also to allow for his ability to manage them by himself. Such an approach would convert what usually is referred to as leadership into management which is primarily concerned with creating conditions, boundaries and opportunities, in which people manage themselves and their own variances vis-a-vis a common task in varying social situations. But leadership theories, and situational leadership in particular, seem to confirm assumptions about man according to which people are not grown up yet, and are not educated enough to develop their own strengths to cope with their own as well as situational variances of the outer world, i.e. that they are not able to handle the mechanics of their own inner world in an environment which to an increasing extend has become meaningless through

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fragmentation. This tendency of contemporary leadership approaches seems very accurately expressed by Pondy ((1978), 92), who offers a description of leadership as a "residual category to which we assign the causual responsibility for events we cannot otherwise explain".

The Meaning of Meaning I assume that it has now become clear that developing and explaining my hypothesis on motivation as a surrogate for meaning cannot result in an attempt to overcome the meaninglessness of work and life by creating new meaning in a positive sense. Besides the fact that such an individual attempt to produce meaning would be a contradiction in itself in that meaning, I believe, necessarily has to be created and discovered through social acts, my main concern in this essay is not the production of meaning but rather its destruction; the destruction to which we are becoming increasingly attuned and which, as previous meaning falls further into oblivion, becomes a reality in itself. What I am primarily concerned about is understanding and elucidating how one bestseller in the social science department of our contemporary department store for surrogates of meaning is being used by its sellers and its customers as a means to reduce the complexity of our organizations and society in order to create orientation and enable action, and at the same time to enforce a social reality in which the surrogate no longer represents either the quality of a replacement nor what it actually stands for. Instead of reconstructing a meaning underlying the original surrogate, my concern is to discover the original meaning of meaning behind the surrogate of motivation. To refer to G. E. Lessing's (1779/1962) parable of 'Nathan, the Wise' again, my concern is neither about the replacement and inheritance of the rings (as a metaphor for religions) nor about what the original ring looked like. Nor am I interested in finding out whether it still exists or not, but rather what it meant for the old father when he first received the original ring, regardless of whether he himself inherited it, got it as a gift or bought it. I do not intend, my contribution to join the chorus of complaints about the loss of meaning in contemporary society as if meaning is leaking from our lives and, therefore, has necessarily to be supplemented and substituted by new supplies of meaning. These attempts seem to me primarily like sales in the department store for surrogates of meaning. They reconfirm the logic of the 'Producer Society'. My concern is not that certain meanings have changed or got lost, it is the underlying loss of the possibility of meaning through the increasing ignorance of meaning and the necessity of linking one's life to it. Though I agree with Marquardt (1983) when he says that any direct attempt at finding meaning is nonsense - or to quote one of the aphorisms of Stanislaw Jercy Lec, the Polish writer: "There is no meaning in making the search for meaning into an activity in itself' - I disagree with the former in that I do not believe that "meaning is a code-word for

30

I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

happiness" and that the concept of meaning itself, used as a synonym for a useful life, necessarily has to become pathetic, which would mean that any concern about meaning must be empathetic. The argument seems to me to be pejorative, reducing meaning to one of its predominant contemporary fictions, i.e. that life has to be happy in order to be meaningful. I assume that this 'happiness of life' is a cover-story like the fiction of a 'happy childhood' (cf. Khan (1990), 301)). As the 'Producer Society' permanently leads us to believe that happiness correlates with consumption, we become more and more aware individually, and collectively, that this kind of happiness cannot last forever. The high price we are paying for it, in terms for instance of growing ecological disequilibrium, is increasingly becoming obvious. Though I do not know any straight-forward answer to the question of how to give meaning to one's life, I am convinced that in addition to happiness, meaning has also to do with pain, grief, disarray, mourning among others and finally with the fact of facing one's own as well as others' death. I disagree with the position expressed by authors such as Watzlawick ((1979), 263) that the question of meaning in itself is meaningless. Instead of equating meaning with happiness in one's life, Simone Weil's attempt in her 'Notebooks' to link work and joy seems more convincing to me: "What shows that work - if it is not of an inhuman kind - is meant for us is its joy, a joy which even our exhaustion does not lessen .. Joy is nothing other than the feeling of reality ... Sadness is nothing other than the weakening or disappearance of this feeling" (Weil (1970), 8f.; cf. de Man (1927)).

Similar to Berger and Luckmann's (1966) theory of a social construction of reality, an ongoing social destruction of reality seems also to be true (cf. Gray et al. 1985). As there are actors on both scenes, there are also occupations of meaning and their agents, who take their own advantage by depriving others of the possibility of referring and relating to meaning. This deprivation seems to be reconfirmed, legitimized and institutionalized by the fact that there are enough people who, either through introjection or through despair, deprive themselves of the ability of relating to meaning. If meaning cannot be found, there are always merchants who supply it, just like huge international companies who "give people control over their destinies; they make meaning for people" (Peters and Waterman (1982), 239) and who provide them with the gift of autonomy (Willmott (1991), 21). The extent to which meaning carries the fiction of happiness is very well expressed by the following statement: "By offering meaning as well as money, they give their employees a mission as well as a sense of feeling great. Every man becomes a pioneer, an experimenter, a leader. The institution provides guiding belief and creates a sense of excitement, a sense of being a part of the best, a sense of producing something of quality that is generally valued" (Peters and Waterman (1982), 323).

On the one hand it is the godlike-ness of the company which creates meaning for its creatures and, on the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that quite a few

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31

of the successful companies these two authors describe seem to have managed themselves quite well, so that work in them has not always lost its meaning. Referring to meaning as the underlying principle behind the tremendous individual and collective fragmentation and splitting processes also means changing the frame of reference through which reality is predominantly perceived. Just as reality beyond the frame of a picture is the logical precondition for perceiving the special reality of a picture and its particular message or meaning, it has to be related to something else in order to be transcended. Meaning in general and particularly the meaning of one's own life can only be realized from a point beyond the frame. That means that the meaning of life can only be derived by referring to death, the inevitable final point beyond life. Without the realization that we will all die, the logical dimension of life resembles a schizophrenic patient who fails to include the 'as if-part of his phantasized reality when referring to himself or to others (cf. Bateson (1972b); Goffman (1975); Lawrence (1985)). Our social reality is constructed on the assumption that there is neither an end to life nor a life after death. It is not surprising that this fiction is not only continuously reified in practical life and scientific theories. One of the main problems in contemporary society seems to be the difficulty, insecurity, and confusion with which we are confronted in trying to organize and to understand our experiences in terms of traditional frames of reference whose values and the evidence they were based on become more and more fragile and questionable every day. The only logic I can see in current motivation theories is reduced to a reality inside the frame of a life otherwise surrounded by nothing. Instead of admitting the limitations and insufficiencies of our traditional conceptualizations by attempting to transcend them, the available frameworks are reduced even further into fragmented parts which are only comprehensible and interpretable through the remainder of an already segmented reality. The reduction of social reality is not an uncommon phenomenon in our societies. As Ziegler ((1982), 15) states: "The producer society achieves the 're-creation' of man by denying death and its function as an impending event." Motivation theory is an attempt to deal with the fact that our perceptions "burst the frames of our well-tried conceptualizations" (Lawrence (1979a), 236) in such a way as to invent new concepts to understand the individual structure and drives of perception instead of acknowledging the fact of the burst itself. Though I do not regard it as an easy task, I am rather convinced that solutions to this perceptual burst have to be found by inventing new conceptualizations which extend and transcend our frames and provide containment for the individual and social experience of uncertainty, chaos, destruction and meaninglessness in contemporary human existence. Lawrence ((1982b), 121) outlines what the direction and the quality of such a transcending attempt to search for new conceptualizations might be like, when he writes:

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Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

"Coming to terms with death, with our own mortality, is to start to live creatively. The acceptance of death is the beginning of the discovery of ways of giving and receiving meaning and therefore purpose and reason to life. By bringing together life and death, by making connections between the two we begin to struggle with the tragedy of life. If you will, we take existence as being serious. The moment we do that we start to search for meaning to existence."

A similar point is made by Ziegler (1982, 319), in referring to the main task of what he calls a generative sociology: "We have to include death in our thinking as an absolute impediment, as consciousness of finiteness, i.e. the uniqueness of our existence, in order to make a weapon out of it for our fight for equality." And Bettelheim, who somehow escaped death in a German concentration camp, acknowledges from his experience that "in a strange dialectical way, it is death that endows life with its deepest, most unique meaning" (Bettelheim (1979), 5). On another occasion in 'The Uses of Enchantment' he states: "Gaining a secure understanding of what the meaning of one's life may or ought to be - this is what constitutes having attained psychological maturity. And this achievement is the end result of a long development: at each age we seek, and must be able to find, some modicum of meaning congruent with how our minds and understanding have already developed" (Bettelheim (1976), 3).

It therefore may be assumed that during different phases of one's life not only do the answers to the question of what the meaning of life is change, but also the question itself has a different impact at different times. Looking at motivation theory from this angle and taking account of the reification of fragmentation and fiction, it seems to me that the authors of these theories are in a curious way reifying their own juvenile immaturity. These theories were not only mainly developed in an American academic culture of high achievement and under conditions of 'publish or perish', they were fabricated in the earlier years of academic careers and ambitions for the primary purpose of gaining a reputation and/or tenure (cf. Leontiades (1989) 12 ff.), i.e., during a phase of a scientific life which in my experience is not particularly concerned with a search for meaning in the deeper sense stated above. Motivation theories presented are primarily theories that have emerged from the 'morning' of life. They propagate an image of man that totally ignores more mature qualities in the 'afternoon' of one's life, such as are described by Jung ((1983), 168): "Only he stays alive from the middle of life on who wants to die with life. For what happens in the hidden hour of life's noon is the conversion of the parabola, the birth of death. Life in its second half does not mean advancement, development, augmentation, superabundance of life but death because its aim is the end. Not to accept the summit of one's life is equal to not accepting its end. Both mean: not wanting to live. Not wanting to live is synonymous with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing is the same turn."

The search for new conceptualizations that offer enough containment for our perceptions, thoughts and experiences includes the idea that meaning must be

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discovered. "One cannot believe in, espouse, a meaning or a value unless one has discovered it rather than invented it" (Martin Buber, quoted in Holbrock (1971), 167). An understanding of meaning as given by God, or as the essence of an existence that only has to be discovered and accepted, is only still shared in contemporary society by a small minority. There is no doubt that among the meanings offered by the countless producers and merchants, there are good and bad fruits or, in the terminology chosen here, there are meanings of various qualities and there are surrogates (Schiilein (1982), 659 - 663). As Lawrence ((1983), 36) puts it: "It is important to discriminate between those systems of meaning which are designed to open up the creative possibilities of living and those which, in effect, delimit the choices available to individuals", so "that systems of meaning which are more about defending against the anxiety of living can be replaced with more constructive alternatives" (ibid., 47).

Work and its Reference to Meaning Let's go back to the leitmotiv of meaning: to understand work raises the question of the nature of a useful life. This question goes far beyond the issue motivation theorists and managers in the job of motivating are primarily concerned with. Whenever they do address themselves to the question of how work can be seen as a useful pursuit, they usually offer answers about the cosmetics involved, about the appearance of work rather than the psychological usefulness of work itself. The explanations and models motivation theories have delivered up to now have neither changed the relation between work and life nor contributed to a better understanding of their relatedness. The quality of the contribution of motivation theory to our knowledge and a better understanding of our individual and social existence seems to me quite accurately expressed by Weil ((1970), 19): "People used to sacrifice to the gods, and the wheat grew. Today, one works at a machine and one gets bread from the baker's. The relation between the act and its result is no clearer than before." After what has been said so far about the fragmentation and splitting in our work enterprises and in society at large, it has become clear that the meaning of work not only has to be seen in relation to the meaning of life, but that the search for the meaning of work can only be based on the goal of attaining the ability to overcome and transcend fragmentation. The meaning of the work one does and the meaning of one's life cannot be regarded as being two pairs of shoes for different unrelated occasions. They are related and have to be related by the individual if he or she wants to avoid schizophrenia. The relationship between the meaning of work and of life should not be misunderstood to imply that an individual is obliged to realize the meaning of all his actions at work at all times in terms of the meaning he has found for his life. Such a perpetual calculation would not only destroy meaning but render one incapable of any activity at all.

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What, however, is meant by postulating a relationship between the meaning of work and life is that work can only have meaning in its fundamental sense when it is not just regarded as a dimension of the employing institution, but also as a part of an individual's life and of our collective lives. Since meaning can only be understood from outside the frame of life itself, the meaning of work has to be qualified by the fact of human mortality. If Dürrenmatt, the writer, is to make sense, when he states that "through mortality comes humanity ... mortality makes human" (Kreuzer (1982), 45), the acknowledgement of mortality as a fact of life is the prerequisite of any attempt at humanizing work and working life. In addition to the relatedness of the subjective experience of work and life, there is also a more collective interrelatedness of meaning which is often forgotten. Marcuse (1933/1965) makes the point that nobody's work starts from the very beginning in that any work a person does - and to a certain extent everybody's life, too, - is based on work which has been done by others before. Whatever work we do is dependent on the work others have done before us - my glasses, my pen, this paper, the window and the landscape, also machines, tools, materials, and even money. Our ability to work is based on the fact that we are surrounded by the finger-prints of previous workers. The fact that today we are surrounded primarily by shortlived goods easy to replace and modernize has contributed to our not seeing in a piece of work the mortality and the death of those who, sometimes generations ago, have accomplished this work. The realization of this kind of holistic relation of meaning, work and life depends not only on the individual and his maturity and capability, but is also to a large extent a matter of whether the organization of work in an enterprise takes this wider frame of meaning into account in its culture. Despite the increasing scientific boastfulness about the impact of meaning in organizations and the management of meaning (e.g. Peters and Waterman (1982); Deal and Kennedy (1982)), it seems to me that the majority of our industrial enterprises and other employing institutions have not yet taken the notion of meaning seriously enough in their design and structure or in their everyday activities. On the other hand, as far as the successful American companies Peters and Waterman (1982) describe are concerned, it would seem that quite a few of these companies have succeeded in managing meaning in their organizations and for their members not only in the pejorative sense that those at the top tell those at the bottom what it is all about, but also in a more mature sense. They seem to have achieved an awareness of the fact that in the long run they can only keep their share of the market and survive if they rely on adults who look on their work as an important dimension in leading a useful life. They not only offer mere employment, but also the challenge and opportunities of finding meaning. This is not the place for further judgement on whether or to what extent some of these obviously successful companies really do overcome the meaninglessness of fragmentation and work and how much members can actually make their lives more meaningful. Indeed they may have primarily found and established

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more sophisticated ways and procedures of implementing and managing even better surrogates for meaning than the previous merchandisers of motivation. Regardless of the possible limitations a closer examination would reveal, what these companies do accomplish is to provide much farther reaching scope and a more holistic view of the firm than other companies do. They seem to have taken Weil's ((1970), 61) desirable state seriously, "that every worker should need to know how the whole enterprise functions." Whereas a worker's perspective often seems to be limited to the job or rather to the particular motion he or she is doing in order to perform the job, these companies are very much oriented to issues beyond the usual boundaries, e.g., towards their actual and their potential customers; an orientation which can only be successfully continued if it is in principle shared by all employees. There are at least four different areas or references of meaning that can be distinguished in the context of these companies: (1) meaning related to the work place, the task and the immediate work group or unit; (2) meaning that goes beyond the immediate work group and refers to the interface of one's own with other work units; (3) meaning as the relatedness of a particular job to the surrounding organization/company as a whole, e.g., culture and product, and (4) meaning in the greater context of the organization and its environment, e.g., customers, politics, markets. The first reference is in the area of organizations primarily concerned with new forms of job design, rotation, enlargement, enrichment, semi-autonomous work groups, and other quality of working life programs. The instruments for changing job organization tend to get stuck at this first stage. I cannot see how autonomy can be realized and managed without taking the boundaries of a subsystem and its environment into account, but attempts are repeated time and again to install semi-autonomous work groups without paying attention to any further references of meaning. It may well be that the fiction and paradox this particular approach is based on is demonstrated by the label under which it is propagated: semiautonomous. The underlying assumption of job design seems to be that, since meaning is not available beyond the job anyway and/or that the limited resources of the worker do not allow any linking between his job, the organization, and its environment, work has to be enriched and manipulated with ever higher degrees of motivation variation. Since it is enormously difficult if not impossible for a worker to experience his work as meaningful exclusively from inside the conditions of the work itself, the same difficulty can be assumed for the other levels of reference to meaning, too. It is more than aggravating to try to give meaning to work which can be related to the product but not to the customer, as is the case for example in a lot of sub-contracting firms or where the product is sold under another name or label.

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Meaning cannot successfully be embodied in an enterprise if the actualization of meaning on one level is not interrelated with the next one(s) in a manner that would facilitate transcendence (cf. Hartfelder (1989)). In spite of the motivational tools and incentive systems most successful American companies use, some of which often appear rather strange to a German observer, a number of these companies do in fact succeed either consciously or unconsciously in establishing meaning in the broader sense. Where heavy emphasis is laid on relating the work inside the firm to the organization as a whole and to its environment, it appears that the management of meaning as a whole (and at its various reference levels) has become an explicit part of the managerial function as a whole. The majority of their members would seem to have these different references of meaning in mind and are thus able to manage their own work vis-a-vis the company and its environment. They succeed partly because they do make otherwise hidden or forgotten aspects of social systems explicit, i.e., they create and maintain their myths and they are concerned explicitly with inventing meaning. Again, it cannot be decided here if this is just a way for these companies of responding to the fact that "men need myths in order to give meaning to their being" (Lawrence et al. (1975), 141), that "myths are institution builders" and "a way of transmitting the value system" (Selznick in Peters and Waterman (1982), 282), or as Hales ((1974), 3) put it that these myths only "serve to legitimate the social order of advanced capitalist society". It nevertheless appears to be true that these companies consider the creation and maintenance of myths and meaning to be one of their main managerial tasks. In an astonishing way, they seem to be able to integrate the rationality of their products and technologies with the rationality of meaning, carrying as it often does the quality of fairy tales, fantasies and sometimes even enchantment. The assumption that in most of these companies meaning seems to be available to every member of the organization and that it is also managed in a system-related manner does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that these companies or their members never have to struggle with meaning or to deal with meaninglessness. It makes it easier if it seems that meaning is being dealt with and managed, but this does not necessarily mean that all questions are answered. Despite the encouraging trends in some companies, these attempts cannot bridge the gaps of meaning established and sustained by surrounding society. Meaning is managed by these organizations in a rather narcissistic way, in that even if the community of an enterprise is taken into account and its members are encouraged to get involved in its activities - meaning is exclusively related to a particular company and has nothing to do with broader issues. Meaning seems to be primarily invented and maintained on the basis of the fiction that society is not only unknowable (cf. Lawrence (1979a), 238), but also does not really exist. This supports the impression that on an organizational level the same limitations that can be seen on the individual level in the prevalent tendency to make the search

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for meaning an exclusively solipsistic matter are repeated. It is this individualistic reduction of meaning Elias ((1985), 53 f.) refers to: "But with very few exceptions, these meditations try to gain access to the problem of meaning by postulating as the 'subject' of meaning - in the traditional philosophical manner - a human individual in vacuum, an isolated monad, a sealed 'self', and then perhaps, at a higher level of generality, the isolated human being, or, as the case may be, consciousness as a universal. Whether expressly or not, it is then expected that each person by himself, precisely as an isolated monad, must have a meaning, and the meaninglessness of human existence is lamented when this kind of meaning is not found."

What, however, is missing is another, a fifth dimension of meaning through which the reality inside the organizations and their immediate market environment is related to society, the world and the universe and also to the fact of every member's mortality. We can assume that this reference, at least in some of the longerestablished and successful American companies, was originally taken into consideration when we examine images such as the inscription on the memorial of the last private owner of Procter & Gamble that was spontaneously erected by employees after his death: "William Cooper Procter lived a life of noble simplicity, believing in God and the inherent worthiness of his fellow man" (Shisgall (1981), 116).

Companies normally do not deal with issues of this fifth dimension directly. Questions and answers on the final meaning are usually regarded as an individual issue and as a personal matter. Whereas this 'division of meaning' is acceptable in so far as the meaning of meaning really does not seem to be the business of any particular company - except perhaps for very specific organizations like the Churches - from another point of view, such a strict boundary avoids any questioning by its members of a given meaning. Raising these issues and suffering from the lack of an answer can be easily relegated to an individual quest, and can be seen as a matter of an individual's midlife crisis (cf. e.g. Jaques (1970)) or just his general psychopathology which does not have any relevance to the organization. Very often the lack of a relatedness of meaning in organizations and meaning in this broader sense is rigidly maintained. There is a continuous tendency to substitute the meaning of life with a meaning of work (or of gamesmanship) by neutralizing and devaluing further dimensions. The correlated overemphasis or overkill of meaning in its first four references means that members concerned about the meaning of their lives often begin to question the organizations they work for and the meaning they have been committed to up to then, be it a surgeon in a hospital, a worker or a manager in a plant, or a warden in a prison. The interrelatedness between the last two references to meaning is not a specific criterion of these two references only. It can be assumed that the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of all these different references is a conditio sine qua non for any individual confronted with the question of the usefulness of his or her

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own life. Assuming a continuum of meaning through different levels instead of a discrimination of specific parts or areas does not mean that every individual actually has at his or her disposal this whole range of meaning all the time; it only means that it should be available and that it can be taken into consideration. Therefore, it can be postulated that organizations have not only to allow their members individual room for meaning, but also have to include the search, creation and maintenance of meaning in this broader sense in the design and management of the company.

Meaning beyond Surrogates

As I have already stated, my main concern in this essay is to understand and elucidate the attempts to construct and destroy meaning in contemporary enterprises. To identify the social scientists and managers responsible for inventing and maintaining the concept of motivation and the various motivation theories as the main agents of this destruction process would be as easy as to blame armourers and commanders for the immense horrors of war. A reconstruction of meaning cannot seriously be expected as long as we do not acknowledge that what has been described as the fundamental fragmentation and splitting processes in the outer world of enterprises and society is also continuously sustained and perpetuated by just the same mechanisms in our inner world, by our individual tendency to discriminate between those at the top and those at the bottom, and by compartmentalizing our own activities into unrelated events and to deny the mortality of our own existence. In regard to the chances of overcoming fragmentation and the necessary change related to this, Jung ((1977), 599) makes it quite clear that "it is the single individual who will undergo it and carry it through. The change must begin with one individual; it might be any of us. Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loathe to do himself. As nobody knows what he could do, he might be bold enough to ask himself whether by any chance his unconsciousness might know something helpful, when there is no satisfactory conscious answer anywhere in sight."

This is not an easy venture! It entails an awareness of the relatedness of one's own inner world, dreams, hopes, and anxieties with external reality and its social construction. It also means acknowledging our own dependency on what is offered as truth and as meaningful and is reconfirmed every time we buy into it. Part of this dependency will also be discovered in the helplessness and emptiness that prevent us from recognizing the lie in what is otherwise commonly taken to be the truth. There can be no doubt that "truth is not discovered by proof but by exploration; it is always experimental" (Weil (1970), 135). On the other hand there also seems to be enough reason to assume that in the institutions in which we work and live, we continuously "tell each other 'lies' about the institution and we believe them because to confront them would be to open up our fears and anxieties about not being in the institution and possibly

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being alone. Not to believe the lies and subscribe to them would be to step out from the crowd, from the shared perception and mutually agreed understanding and be made quite deviant, or even 'mad' in social terms. Consequently people go along with what is commonly believed. While people in employing and work institutions, for example, like to think that they are pragmatic, realistic, and are effectively pursuing goals, they may also be giving themselves a secure sense of reality as a way of existing" (Lawrence (1983), 38).

One of the most frightening and dangerous experiences in such a venture is probably the foreseeable result that any serious attempt to confront only one of these lies might well lead the way to an endless enterprise, into an odyssey which, aside from its doubtful return, can only be undertaken if the precondition is clear that one will not be the same one was at departure. Going back for a moment to the point of departure of my own thoughts: the hypothesis that motivation is a surrogate for meaning must be extended to question other attempts at conceptualizing further equally important aspects of social reality in work institutions. No matter which particular one of the whole range of concepts we choose to start with - management, participation, leadership, stress, economic growth, efficiency etc. - it very soon becomes clear that the conceptualizations traditionally taken for granted no longer provide a frame for our experience and our attempts to accept and understand its meaning. Taking, for instance, the hypothesis already mentioned that the firm is immortal and that management identifies strongly with this aspect of company life, it may be questioned whether participation in organizations, which I have up to now taken to mean a more or less mutual process of two parties being involved in a decision or negotiation process designed to meet the common goals of an enterprise, can be seen as a mere fictitious quarrel about immortality in which management has everything and a vested interest in defending it against the mortal workers. Another point is to understand what is involved in the concept of stress, which is at present undergoing quite an inflation both in the language of everyday life and in the academic world. To question it may, as Lawrence (1987) states, lead to the conviction that the experience of stress is a way of avoiding anxiety based on the assumption that anxiety per se is seen as to be bad. It might also be asked to what an extent perpetual and unlimited growth as the underlying assumption of western economy is based on our own boundless greed with which we try to attain immortality and, as we get increasingly frightened of it, try to project onto external objects which can then be easily devalued and attacked. To raise this question may be a rather safe and sophisticated way of dealing with it; to accept its truth for oneself does not make it very comfortable to live with. Weil ((1979), 58) writes in her 'Gravity and Grace' that "we must leave on one side the beliefs which fill voids and sweeten what is bitter; the belief in immortality". This can only be taken seriously if it goes with the conviction that "to love the truth means to bear the emptiness and therefore to accept death. Truth is on the side of death" (Weil (1981), 22). And as one penetrates - like Joseph Conrad in his short novel 'Heart of Darkness' - "deeper and deeper into the heart

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of darkness" (Broadbent (1979)), one becomes aware that the self, identity (as the image one carries of oneself) and role (as a scientist, manager or worker) become fragile. They become inventions in which we ourselves as well as others have heavily invested. One consequence of taking societal fragmentation and splitting processes back into oneself in order to overcome them is to acknowledge the untruth of the idea that "one man's sense of reality is another man's myth" (Novak (1970), 25). The belief eventually leads to the often repeated segregation that only we are men, and others are savages. If one accepts for oneself and others that we too are savages, we must conclude that all reality is necessarily a construction and as such fundamentally based on myths, that "basic myths so comprehensively shape one's view of reality that one can hardly get outside them" (ibid., 31): "The experience of nothingness arises when I discover that my myth is not necessary and inescapable, but arbitrary and socially prearranged. I then seek a more accurate version of reality, only to discover that alternative interpretations are also myths - better myth for some purposes, perhaps, but surely myths" (ibid., 30).

A first, but nonetheless infantile, reaction to such an insight might well be to avoid and deny the experience of nothingness in order not to lose all sense of orientation for further action. But a person who faces the thought in a mature way can draw other conclusions from it: "By his endless drive to question a man sooner or later may perceive that all the supports offered by his culture, his social position, and his achievements do not remove the fundamental law of consciousness: he stands alone in a darkness and he must die ... Granted that I must die, how shall I live? That is the fundamental human question, which fundamental myths aim to answer" (ibid., 48).

This brings us immediately back to the question raised above: 'How does one lead a useful life?'. And since the majority of contemporary men and women can no longer rely on once commonly shared straightforward answers which, with few variations seemed to be true for centuries, new answers have to be discovered. Being aware of the discoverable character of myth and meaning as answers to this final question provides us with a way out of the infantile fatalism of not being able to choose an answer into a new kind of freedom, a freedom of choice through which it becomes "important to discriminate between those systems of meaning which are designed to open up the creative possibilities of living and those which, in effect, delimit the choices available to individuals" (Lawrence (1983), 36). The search for meaning as the discovery of one's own answers can never be dealt with in a solipsistic manner. Just as the 'invention' of one's own identity only can be managed by facing the relatedness with significant others and therefore has to be seen as a social act, 'inventing' one's own meaning system also necessarily takes place in the presence of and relatedness to relevant others, living or dead. "Meaning is not instantaneous. Meaning is discovered in what connects, and cannot exist without development. Without a story, without an unfolding, there is

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no meaning" (Berger and Mohr (1982), 89). Any choice of meaning beyond its surrogates therefore has to be linked "with the dialectical relationship between the symbolism of life and death, and ... with feelings that may be as old as mankind" ((Lawrence (1987), 207). The search and the decision for meaning cannot be understood as static, but will be modified and presumably radically changed after critical experiences in one's life. It also implies that one has to give up taken-for-granted assumptions about oneself, others and the institutions in which one lives and works. Forging a new system of meaning for one's life is also analogous to the act of mourning (cf. Sievers et al. (1981), 113). Thoughts about the single individual's task of constituting his or her own meaning vis-a-vis socially accepted systems of meaning quickly remind us of just how much the social dimensions of the search for meaning are normally ignored and neglected. This seems to be the case for two similar and closely interrelated reasons. What I am getting at here is the tendency of contemporary society to reduce the quest for meaning into a private matter of the individual on the one hand and, as far as social systems are concerned, to limit the search to within the boundaries of specific institutions on the other hand. Thus, the underlying assumption is, for example, that the meaning discovered and sustained in one industrial work enterprise can neither be related to a competitor's nor to the meaning systems of other institutions, much less to any other societal issues. It thus seems to be confirmed that the search for meaning cannot be a public issue - and even less a political one. The collective denial of any search for meaning is peculiarly evidenced by Elias' (1985) earlier remark that the loneliness of dying people in contemporary society mirrors the loneliness of the living. Both are, individually and socially, unable to face their own deaths as a fact of life. The fact that the concern about meaning is forced back into the privacy of the individual or into the 'intimacy' of an institution leads, on the societal level, to a schismatic coexistence of different and contradictory meaning systems. In order to sustain the fiction of a democratic pluralism of opinions and ideas, any relatedness among these meanings must be made to appear superfluous. In addition to the splitting processes already described, there is a curious split in our institutions between their dominant cultures and guiding myths on the one hand and the actual experience of its members on the other hand. This is a fundamental split in the sense that individuals define themselves as being capable of devaluating and disregarding their own experience. In this context, it does not really matter whether, according to the fundamental fragmentation, they are managers or workers; very early in their careers they simply have to learn and to accept that an apparently deviant interpretation of one's own experience does not count. This is a pattern which obviously has been forced on each of us in our early childhood and which we, as parents and teachers, partly unconsciously and

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partly consciously, perpetuate in raising our children (cf. A. Miller (1988)). As Novak ((1970), 35) states: "Our educational system favours pragmatic, conventional, cognitive intelligence rather than creative, imaginative, and effective intelligence. The costs in alienation are hardly measurable." "The university is now what the church once was, the guardian of conservative myth and the indispensable supporter of political and economic power" (ibid., 33).

The predominant cultures of our institutions impede more often than not any attempt on the part of a mature individual to stand up and call as a lie what he previously had accepted as truth but can now no longer relate to its own efforts of giving meaning to experience. Fatalism seems to be the only honest reaction towards these institutional impediments as long as we remain unaware of and do not accept that we nourish our own and society's lies with the impediments inside ourselves and our own compromises, and that these prevent us from questioning the taken-for-granted reality and its underlying assumptions. By converting all attempts to struggle with meaning into a private matter of their members and by treating them with all kinds of surrogates, the majority of our institutions, industrial and non-profit alike, not only create an institutional vacuum of meaning but also neglect any social concern for the possibility of meaning. In this regard I highly value the attempts of some of the successful American companies which Peters and Waterman (1982) describe in their book. Even if it seems difficult from an outside perspective (with one's own demands and prejudices) to imagine how, for example, companies like 'Disney Productions' (cf. McWhinney and Batista (1988), 51 f.) or 'McDonald's' (cf. Turner (1986), 108) do secure the preconditions for a collective search for meaning as part of their search for excellence, it nevertheless has to be acknowledged that a growing number of companies are becoming more concerned about how to link their economic and organizational aims with the fundamental 'needs' of their members to give meaning to their lives. Though this is not the place to argue more specifically about just how far any of these companies finally do succeed in giving the necessary leeway for a struggle for meaning that would open "the creative possibilities of living" or whether their meaning systems "in effect delimit the choices available to individuals" (Lawrence (1983), 36), one may ask if a collective concern for meaning in contemporary institutions might not end in another fad or a caricature if it is managed in the old-fashioned way, i.e., mechanically from the top to the bottom. Meaning then quickly becomes an instrumental notion and will degenerate to just another management tool. My own doubts about engineering the corporate mind were confirmed in a recent example relating to the installation of a vision for a big American corporation. The internal brochure of AT & T, entitled 'Our Vision', is based on a colourful and, on first impression, quite fascinating painting of the company's origin from

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the Bell System to its visionary future in cosmic galaxies. The huge visionary image, which hangs in the company's main lobby, is, however, not only a masterpiece of cultural engineering with a whole variety of mythical symbols. The phoniness of the visionary statement, signed on the second page of the brochure by all employees, is striking: "Our Vision: We and our products are the creative force for effective universal communications. We take pride in our special quality and commitment to excellence. We are individually empowered people who nourish each other in a changing environment. We share leadership, operate with united direction, and passionately enjoy our freedom to realize unlimited potential. We are committed to loving and supporting each other as we collectively achieve beyond excellence. Our customers are equal partners and members of our family. We genuinely care for their well being and make each of their experiences with us positive and memorable. We enrich their lives. We are a visible model of support and service to our corporation and the universal community. We give our unconditional commitment to enhance the quality of life and human growth."

It can be assumed that this particular vision has not been produced by the people themselves who signed it but rather has been superimposed by an (external) consultant who - obviously regarding himself as an 'expert' in myth-building and story-telling - was paid to envision the company's employees, thus helping them to overcome the break-up of the former Bell System empire (cf. Tunstall (1985)). This particular example mirrors very well the most recent outcome of the 'search for excellence' of the eighties in a variety of American corporations. They confirm what Harrison ((1983), 209) had suggested at the beginning of the decade, that "Peters and Waterman have made 'excellent companies' a national catch-phrase for the 1980s that perhaps rivals the evocative power of Sputnik in the 1960s." It also seems like the incarnation of a meta-motivation theory in the sense that people who have devoted their whole lives to the meaning of the corporation need no further motivation anymore. Like the people in Huxley's 'Brave New World' these AT & T employees are tied to their company's customers; the brochure claims that the enrichment of their lives "represents an almost sacred or spiritual bending which creates .. power and service for all mankind". In future galactic communications "a man-like being, a machine-like being and an animallike being ... will all be able to communicate with each other" representing "the ultimate union and connection of all life forms", so that even the ability to discriminate a pipe-dream from a nightmare loses meaning. People who have been turned into 'man-like beings' fit better than real men into the requirements of a corporation of galactic communication. As opposed to this particular example and the general trend it represents there can be no doubt that any movement towards new frontiers of meaning as seen from an individual's or an institution's perspective has to be a venture. Equally there can

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be no doubt that, as far as institutions are concerned, the majority of those who have been called or call themselves managers (or leaders) will not necessarily and per se be the helmsmen on the forthcoming voyage. What is needed for such an enterprise are men and women who are prepared and have sanction, i.e., their own as well as others' authority, to learn from their experience - even if it may be frightening for themselves and for others. They must re-make meaning and experiment in order to modify and reconstruct the present reality of their institutions. In the course of my own and some of my colleagues' experience as consultants and researchers in a series of greenfield site projects, i.e., the setting-up of new works of already existing firms (cf. Sievers et al. (1981); Sievers (1983b)), we were involved in and felt the challenging and fascinating as well as the frightening and depressing aspects of the venture of finding and establishing meaning for new working conditions. Together with the people we worked with on these occasions we repeatedly experienced that "greenfield site projects offer not only the chance to take an innovative and creative stance towards organizational, technological, and managerial problems but also doing this without all the hindrances and restricting factors of traditional structures, norms and expectations which are normally connected with developmental and experimental changes in already existing 'old' plant systems" (Sievers et al. (1981), 1).

On the other hand, however, we have been continuously confronted with the narrowness of our own minds as well as with that of the structures of the already existing institutions as they were expressed by some of their members. Despite quite remarkable innovations which could be developed and implemented in some cases, we also had to learn that every attempt to set up a new factory which entails forging a new system of meaning for life in the enterprise has to be a compromise and that despite success "the finally realized result comes to have a sense of failure" (ibid., 94). Though we see in the projects we were involved in some sources for social hope in that they "are important steps toward new frontiers of the development of work organizations from which further ventures could learn" (ibid., 101), our experience also painfully taught us to what a limited extent institutions allow their members to learn from their experience. The deep experience people gain from an involvement in such a venture for "further important steps toward a realization of higher degrees of social hope and aspiration for social innovation" (ibid., 102) is not really utilized: "Without such learning experiences managers ... will tend to escape again and again from their own anxieties, the complexitiy and insecurities of the organization ... They will also tend towards a higher degree to pre-structuring the organizational reality and so lose sight of their previous intention to create it in a mutual reality construction process with the work force. Through such immature actions they may save their illusions but as a consequence they destroy any chance for deeper involvement of the work force" (ibid).

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I. Motivation as a Surrogate for Meaning

The decision as to whether one is prepared to live and work a life in its mature sense, a sense in which anxieties, disillusionment, suffering and death, too, are important dimensions of experience and its meaning, or whether one is immaturely defeated by a life of happiness seems to represent a fundamental human dilemma as old as mankind itself. As such it is the dilemma of the mythological figure of the hero who, like Heracles, stands at the parting of the ways facing luxury and light-heartedness on the one path and virtue on the other path. In its Christian version the myth offers the choice between a wide road to hell and a stony path to heaven. From my understanding of the social sciences and my present struggle for meaning, I have to admit that I find it difficult to communicate any immediate notion of 'hell' and 'heaven' (cf. McDannell and Lang (1990)); but I am at least sure that in managing our private lives, work enterprises and political concerns, we are permanently subject to the seduction of surrogates for meaning unless we, individually and collectively, are prepared to face death as a fact of life.

"What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community." T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

II. Participation as a Collusive Quarrel about Immortality

Participation as a Quarrel

Looking back on my own experiences as a consultant in organizations, I am aware of how often I have been confronted with the discrepancy between participation in theory and participation in practice. Although more limited, my experience is similar to how Ramsay ((1977), 497) summarizes his own: "My own discussions with managers, unionists, and other informed observers reveals that few can cite any practical examples of participation which, on reflection, do not fall into the categories of either triviality or instability."

"Implementing employee involvement is so complex, so difficult, and, not uncommonly, so frustrating, that it is easier to talk about than to do" (Semler (1989), 77). Insoluble difficulties are often encountered when attempting to increase participation in a work enterprise and often change projects are broken off before achieving their aims. On these occasions it appears to me as if "the participation issue ... is now nothing but a hobby of the academics without resonance among those who do the real work" (Jahoda (1979), 208). Greenberg ((1975) 191), in his review of the workplace participation literature comes to the conclusion that: "the call for popular participation in workplace decisions comes from literally all comers of the social and political spectrum. As paradoxical as it may seem, the advocacy of such decisional reforms comes from both the political left and the political right, from both management and labor, and from both intellectuals and some hard-headed business leaders."

"Many publications and research reports deal with the subject, many speeches advocate its use, and a great deal of experience reveals its misuses and abuses" (Bolle de Bal (1989), 11; cf. Széll (1988), 71). Participation has become part of the corporate rhetoric (Gherardi et al. (1989), 156). "Forms of participation and co-determination can be seen as the ultimate confirmation of hierarchy" (Teulings (1986), 161). "The international literature on participation in decision-making, industrial democracy, power equalization, worker management, democratic leadership, and similar topic issues is diffuse in meaning and purpose, involves frequent contradictions, harbors a plethora of undefined terms, is plagued by ambiguous theoretical underpinnings, and provides a few useful statements for the policy makers. Even a cursory review of this literature quickly

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leads to the depressing conclusion that there is yet no clear set of questions regarding the issues of participation, let alone a set of answers which begins to define the nature of this phenomenon and its determinants and consequences" (Dachler (1978), 17).

And Nehrbass' ((1979), 428 f.) summary of these answers from management theory is equally pessimistic; it reads clinically: "The impression the reader is intended to come away with is clear: Participation is a proven management tool; it is 'extremely motivational' (Carlisle (1976), 478); it 'fosters commitment' (Scanlon (1973), 131); it 'reduces resistance to new methods and processes' (Beach (1975), 44); and it is, indeed, probably the most widely recognized motivational technique in practice today'" (Trewatha and Newport (1976), 417).

These authors referred to by Nehrbass mirror U.S. mainstream approaches to management and leadership which, according to Hofstede ((1980b), 56) in comparison to countries with smaller 'power distances' like Sweden, Norway, Germany or Israel, have in common "that they all advocate participation in the manager's decisions by his/her subordinates (participative management); however, the initiative toward participation is supposed to be taken by the manager" (cf. e.g. Tannenbaum and Massarik (1950); Sashkin (1984), (1986)). Participation seems to be caught in a discrepancy between fascination and quarrel. The individual and collective image envisages a high degree of participation by the different parties in work enterprises through which those who are affected by decisions or changes actually take part in creating them (cf. Lawler (1986)). However, our daily experience is of endless quarrels about the range of participation possible. The parties involved in contemporary organizations, particularly in work enterprises, often spend more time and energy in establishing preconditions for participation than in jointly solving specific issues. "The situation is confused and confusing: in a sloganized fashion everybody is in favour of a participative society, but by different means and for unspecific ends" (Jahoda (1979), 206). I vividly remember many difficulties in attempting to find a useful working definition for participation among a group of researchers working on a comparative study of the role of workers involved in improving their working conditions in various European countries (cf. Sievers et al. (1981), Sievers (1983b)). Although it was decided at the very outset not to refer to a sophisticated scientific definition of participation - which would probably have been a project in itself - it nevertheless took us quite some time and energy simply to come up with a commonly accepted concept of participation. Facing the potential quarrel about participation between employers' and employees' representatives not only gave us a deeper insight into the politically explosive nature of this issue, but also helped us to imagine the potential quarrel which any attempt at participation between workers and managers might induce. "Defining 'participation' is a difficult problem since this term does have specific meanings within different languages and within different national human and industrial relations systems" (Bolle de Bal (1989), 13).

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We had a similar experience when we attempted to compile a selection from the numerous bibliographic sources on participation. We were looking for a reasonable number of European cases which would somehow exemplify workers' influence and involvement in organizational changes aimed at an improvement of their working conditions (DiMartino and O'Conghaile (1985); Sievers (1983a)). What at first appeared easy soon evolved into a kind of detective investigation. The difficulties we had in finding convincing cases in the literature mirrored the limited existence of workers' participation in enterprises, and quickly cleared some of our illusions on the subject. It struck us that, despite the German situation with its specific tradition of codetermination and its formal institutionalization at the top-level of a company (cf. Briefs (1989), (1992); Garson (1977)), participation seems to "have little influence on the daily work experiences on the shopfloor" (Jahoda (1982), 87). On the other hand, in my work with organizations I repeatedly experience the enormous difficulties which the demand for participation evokes. For example, some of the managers in a German subsidiary of an international American tyre company justify their own reservations about cooperating in a participative manner with the works council by accusing the workers' representatives of being agents of a militant union, naively unaware that the workers might view them as agents of an exploiting capitalist multinational. Another example is that of a Protestant hospital in Germany in which the cautious attempts of the top management group to get the employees on lower levels - nurses, physicians and administrative staff - more intensively involved in the primary task of caring for the patients are resisted by the Church as the hospital's controlling body. A third example involves a jail for juvenile delinquents in which the managerial group, after having worked intensively over a long period to improve the working conditions of the prison officers, became confused as to whether to look on inmates as criminals or colleagues. Westwood (1987) describes a similar experience in a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. By analyzing the social discourse of an introduction to a 'participation scheme' he demonstrates the dominance of management in its attempt to define what participation should be about. "Management assumes for itself a privileged position that gives it the sole right to delineate the meaning of the term and its relationships. It claims the right to speak adequately and sensibly about participation whilst at the same time denying the veracity of any other talk which might so presume" (Westwood (1987), 187).

Thus participation "is made into a framework, into a structure that is then inserted into the existing organizational structure, filling it completely" (ibid., 194). As participation through management "is placed in the company of the familiar, it becomes the familiar, it need no longer be feared or misunderstood" (ibid., 195). Merely considering a change of the current state of the status quo often raises fundamental anxieties and mobilizes enormous fantasies of defeat and subjugation

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at higher levels of the hierarchy. Although experiences may be similar in various kinds of institutions, it would seem that in work enterprises these anxieties become more evident because of the higher identification of those at the top, commonly called managers, with the entrepreneur or the proprietor of the enterprise. Referring to codetermination in one of their German subsidiaries, a top manager of an international company accurately expressed the anxiety of managers generally when he said: "It's not really that we're against participation! But, you know, if we allow the workers to participate, this would ultimately mean grabbing the tiger by the tail. That brings us into a situation in which we as managers are no longer in control of where the tiger will lead us!" What underlies this image is the managers' basic mistrust that if workers are really allowed to participate in deciding on their working conditions, they would ultimately try to influence the choice of products, the distribution of profits, and might finally even take over the enterprise. "Managers sometimes fear that greater worker participation and involvement will be at the expense of their own authority" (Sashkin (1982), 61). This reaction appears only at first view different from Ramsay's ((1977), 496) conclusion that "the waves of enthusiasm for participative schemes... seem on each occasion to have arisen out of managerial response to threats to management authority". Instead of publicly facing anxieties in order to acknowledge their political relevance and to deal creatively with the ensuing pain, the practice in contemporary work organizations seems to be characterized by participative games between managers and workers. As Dickson ((1974), 182) writes: "By placing relatively insignificant decisions in the hands of the worker, such as the rate at which he decides to work to meet a predetermined target, it is hoped that pressure will be taken off demands on significant issues, such as rates of pay, or the level of targets."

Flavoured primarily through the dominantly American literature on management, there is an increasing tendency to reduce participation to an effective managerial tool by which those at the top intend to achieve more commitment and contribution from those at the bottom (e.g. Hersey and Blanchard (1977), 181). Participation is regarded as "activity defined, regulated and handed down by management" (Jackson and Carter (1985), 23). On the other hand, however, particularly in the context of the legal regulations governing codetermination in Germany, workers demand the right to better information and participation through their representatives in the works council. Judicial decisions are often required to determine whether a certain issue falls under the regulations of the codetermination law or not. Demanding and enforcing their right to participation may, on occasions, even become a strategy for the works council to react in a manipulative manner to what is perceived as manipulation by management. By postponing an urgent or important decision requiring the agreement of the works council, other decisions involving management can be forced through. With this strategy, which sometimes contains elements of blackmail, the content

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and extension of participation in a particular enterprise can be extended further than is required by the codetermination law. To refuse participation in a certain area is just as frequently used by the works council as a strategy to extend its right to participate as it is by management to seduce workers into agreement on critical issues by offering them certain concessions. The situation can then arise in which an enterprise's works council agrees on issues not accepted by their unions. This was only recently the case with Volkswagen in Germany where - under the label of 'the great deal' - management offered to agree to the 35 working hours per week in order to get the works council's consent to the introduction of a personnel information and controlling system that had been previously rejected on the grounds that it would introduce the 'glass man' (cf. Schuller (1990)). Often participation in work enterprises seems like a gimmick or a game played by both sides. In such cases participation seems to be torn between a managerial tool to increase effectivity and a workers' defense against further development and innovation. In its extreme forms, participation can be used by either side as a means of mutual manipulation. Metaphorically, participation can be seen as a continuous quarrel about the quality and the length of the prison chains of workers while the tragedy of imprisonment itself and its consequences are overlooked. As shown in the first part of this book, any serious attempt at achieving greater participation revives and reinforces projective fantasies generated by the underlying split between those at the top and those at the bottom. This confirms the idea of participation as a quarrel. The pain and shame resulting from this dispute may nurture mutual feelings of contempt between managers and workers, thereby serving to maintain the traditional division between authoritarian paternalism and regressive dependency. Participation therefore has to be turned into a bad object, into something seen as bad. The workers' frustration turns their longing and desire for participation into a bad object. And since participation implies something bad and destructive for workers, it can be manipulatively exploited by management. And wherever participation is turned into an object of hatred, that is, into a manipulative strategy to be countered by the workers (because they believe it would demand undesired work loads and energy from them) it has to be forced onto them by management. Where management is convinced that the majority of workers deliberately avoids the required commitment to more effective work and where this, because of its contemptuous connotations, cannot be stated or expressed openly, an offer of more participation comes to be seen as an instrument of betrayal, deception and seduction. Management, therefore, is obliged to uphold a view of participation as a good object with which the workers ought to identify, if only they could realize and accept what is good for them. In one of his early articles Argyris ((1958), 115) gives a further explanation as to why the relations among managers and workers in an enterprise are so often experienced as 'bad':

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Participation as a Collusive Quarrel about Immortality

"One possibility is that managers deep inside are quite uncomfortable with, and may even feel guilty about, the power vested in them. If this is valid, then any behavior which emphasizes to the leader that he is 'all-powerful' will tend to make him uncomfortable. It will also make him painfully aware of the true psychological distance between the employees and himself; that is, that they are not on an equal level, all working together as co-workers. In other words, the employees may have (unknowingly) found a way to needle the managers where it deeply hurts - namely, to act as if the boss is the boss."

The contemptuous notion of participation is advertised and sold using various labels; 'cooperative leadership', 'management by objectives', 'organization development' or 'quality circles' foster and perpetuate a paternalistic and mendacious derivative of participation. There is, however, ample evidence that in various countries, despite its generally painful quality, participation has led to more encouraging and convincing results. There are, of course, some organizations, and even companies, which have established more mature forms of participation between workers and managers in their mutual attempt to construct their working and production conditions (cf. e.g. Walton (1982), (1985)). The fact that they are often more successful and prosperous may encourage others to overcome the impediments and resistance described above. Although this is not the place to elaborate the point, it occurs to me that only few of them are among the successful cases and companies which Peters and Waterman (1982) have presented so enthusiastically in their account of American successes. In too many of these cases the concept of 'participation' still seems to be caught up in gimmicks and games. In contrast to the praises sung by these (as well as various other) authors of the apparently more human and more successful companies, my concern here is of a different kind. Instead of searching for and idealizing examples, my intention here is directed more towards gaining a better understanding of why attempts to institutionalize higher degrees of participation are often neglected, finally fail or are aborted in resignation, rage and despair. It is my intention to outline reasons as to why participation in most organizations and work enterprises is related to the experience of contempt and resignation and to various other 'negative' feelings. Although it may sound paradoxical, it seems to me that the quarrel is the 'ideal type' with which we can describe what participation is about. Although in a descriptive sense this seems obvious, I do not want to use the concept 'ideal type' in a normative sense, postulating that participation necessarily connotates a painful wrangle. What I am referring to by 'ideal type' is, in the tradition of Max Weber's use of the concept, an abstraction which serves a double function. In comparison to the specific situation and its variances in a particular enterprise, the notion of participation as a quarrel provides a more general concept that expands the potential for analysis. As the heading for this second part of the book indicates, the description of participation as a quarrel will later be used as an image or a metaphor and it will serve as an 'ideal image' or an 'ideal metaphor'.

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55

Although my choice of 'quarrel' as the qualifying metaphor for participation is deliberate, it is unusual and perhaps contradictory. The 'New Webster's Dictionary' defines participation as follows: "to take a part or have a share in common with others". It connotes co-operation, sharing, complicity. Participation, as such, refers to community, integration and synergy. The term 'quarrel', on the contrary, refers to struggle, fight, war or altercation; according to the dictionary it means "an angry dispute; a wrangle; a break of friendship; the basis or ground of variance, complaint, or objection". In so far as participation means conjunction, and quarrel disjunction, the metaphor of participation as a quarrel appears in terms of its logical construction to be a contradiction in itself. But in keeping with the psychosocial logic of our organizations, contradiction of this kind reflects the very contradictability of participation as an organizational phenomenon. It could, therefore, be stated that the attempt to conceptualize participation in organizations as a quarrel is based on a 'phenomenological ideal metaphor'. My suggestion to think about participation in terms of a metaphor instead of offering a traditional, scientifically appropriate concept or definition with its inherent limitations allows for contradictability in participation. Every image or metaphor is, as Morgan (1986) states, not only a way of seeing, but is also a way of not seeing. The necessary limitation and selectivity of the image can, for instance, be compared to a photograph of an object using various 'technologies': If we take the picture in the most common way with a normal camera, the image on the film will be approximately identical to the image we are used to seeing with our own eyes. However, it varies significantly if we take it with an X-ray, or with ultrasonic or infrared equipment. Although the object is the same, the image, despite some consistent similarities, will be different. Attempting to approach participation as a phenomenological ideal metaphor suggests possibilities as to the contradictability of conjunction and disjunction. The meaning of the contradictability or the dialectic of conjunction and disjunction is made clearer by replacing the Latin derivatives with their Greek synonyms 'symbolizing' and 'diabolizing'. The former, from the Greek \symballein\ means to relate, to put together, to unite, whereas the latter from the Greek 'diaballein means to separate, to split and to fragment. The dialectic reality of conjunction and disjunction can then be either termed as 'symbolic diabolization' or 'diabolic symbolization' (cf. Sievers (1990c)), the implication of which we will see later. This way of looking on participation metaphorically as a quarrel brings us back to the fundamental splitting and fragmentation processes in enterprises and throws more light on the issue of participation. In the previous part the split between those at the top and those at the bottom, i.e., between managers and workers, was presented as the basic split in enterprises. As I further suggested, this fundamental organizational split can only be understood, as far as its underlying psycho-social dynamic is concerned, in relation to our societal tendencies by which we establish and nurture the split between life and death, both individually and collectively.

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The fundamental split in our enterprises between managers and workers can thus be described as an organizational process of diabolization, a process whereby the outer world of social reality and the inner world of individual members, workers or managers, are split into two unrelated parts. The concept is also connected with ongoing attempts at self-idealization and the diabolization of the other side and its representatives. Where this fundamental split is the dominant and exclusive dynamic of an organization, it ultimately leads to permanent warfare. In this light participation can be understood as an attempt to symbolize, to compensate, repair and reintegrate. Participation as a quarrel refers to this Janus-facelike reality and can therefore be described as the symbolization of a diabolized organizational reality. In so far as the organizational reality can only be understood if it is perceived as a double reality of the inner world of its individual members and as the external collectively shared social reality, it can be postulated that what is understood as participation connotes compensation and repair of the inner as well as of the outer world. Any attempt then at symbolization in an enterprise as an expression of compensation and repair of the diabolic dynamic of splitting affords a more profound base than just providing participative tools, strategies or technologies. Participation in the sense of symbolization presupposes that a whole can be imagined and experienced. To realize this in the enterprise many of its members must overcome fragmentations from their roles as workers or as managers. Like democracy, which is extensively based on participation, participation in a work enterprise can only be based on the prerequisite that a certain amount of its members are allowed to mature, and allow themselves to be mature (Winnicott (1950)). It seems that participation requires "a strong effort, or series of efforts, against any adverse agencies or conditions, in order to maintain one's existence or to attain some end" (New Webster's Dictionary). In keeping with the notion of participation developed here, 'maturity' can therefore be described as the symbolizing capacity to deal with and overcome the diabolizations of one's inner world. Although participation and maturity have to be understood as narrowly linked, corresponding processes, the focus in this part of the book is limited to participation as the symbolizing desire and capacity of the various parties involved in an enterprise. Maturity as the related symbolizing force of the individual person will be one of the main issues of the following third part where its impact on leadership will be further investigated. As I have already indicated in the previous part on 'motivation as a surrogate for meaning', the fundamental split in work enterprises between those at the top and those at the bottom seems, as far as the social splitting process is concerned, to be only the tip of the iceberg. Underlying this dichotomous split and its connected fragmentation is another fundamental split in contemporary western societies the split between life and death, death being denied in the process. In the first part I was mainly concerned with the split between working life and the remainder, as well as with the enormous difficulties we face individually and collectively in our search for meaning. By ignoring death we have lost our frame of life. In this

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previous attempt to re-question the surrogate function of motivation and related thinking I was trying to explore and to understand the significance of life and death for the search and constitution of meaning. I now need to reconsider the notion of life and death and to reframe it slightly in the context of participation. It is usually thought that management has to motivate its subordinates, and I have tried to demonstrate that motivation is based on a very individualistic intrusive process, whereby certain specially sanctioned and commissioned members of an enterprise try to mobilize the inner world of other members so that they may contribute and perform more effectively. According to this more person-oriented perspective, the focus on our contemporary thanatopraxis relates more to the personal experience of life and death in the context of its social construction. As such, participation has to be understood primarily as a social process through which groups or parties in an enterprise interrelate in order to establish and maintain a common reality. Death and life in this context have to be taken from a wider, more general perspective, that is, as raising the issue of whether people in an enterprise regard themselves and others as mortal or immortal. Although "mythological narratives on the origin of death all over the world" built a constituent part of "the myth of origin of the normal life of mankind" (Kerényi (1950), 20), the reality of death and mortality as constituent human qualities is neglected and denied in contemporary work enterprises and in society generally. It seems that people are preoccupied with the notion of life, and this can be correlated with our predominant organizational concerns for growth and survival. "The long-term goal of an enterprise is to ensure its survival as well as to increase its wealth for the shareholders concerned" (Bühner (1990), 19). Through the fragmentation of work life and life we have more or less succeeded in expatriating death and mortality from our institutions and it seems that work enterprises are exclusively devoted to an ongoing, permanent notion of life. At a time in history when even imagining immortality after death has become fragile and doubtful, larger organizations and work enterprises have become incarnations of a belief in immortality without death. That work enterprises have become incarnations of immortality does not, however, mean that they provide immortality for all their members. Immortality is a scarce resource, available only to the happy few; and immortality of the enterprise as well as of its few members can only be achieved and maintained at the cost of many others and their lack of immortality. As I will further discuss towards the end of this second part, the quarrel about immortality might for this reason have become the central dynamics in contemporary work enterprises. At the core dynamics of an enterprise, the quarrel about immortality must necessarily have far-reaching implications for the idea, process, and quality of participation. If the gift of immortality is limited to the few, then the majority only have the choice of taking part in the quarrel or withdrawing from it while retaining all their feelings of envy, rage, and despair. In face of these central dynamics -

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and this is the hypothesis which I will elaborate on and develop in this second part - participation has to be seen as a collusive quarrel about immortality. This hypothesis specifies the ideal metaphor of participation as a quarrel mentioned above. Participation has already been described as a symbolization of a diabolized organizational reality. What I am now adding is the content, or the specification, of what that diabolization in our organizations is primarily about, that is, the split of its membership into those who have a greater chance to be seen by others and by themselves as immortal and those who do not have such an opportunity. The hypothesis entails the view of the quarrel as collusive, as in an 'ideal metaphor'.

Participation as a Process of Mutual Collusion

Although the current practice of participation may appear at a first view to be a continuous attempt from management's side to manipulate and defraud the workers, this is obviously only one part of the truth. It seems to me that in order to create a more accurate picture of the participative quarrel between management and workers, it might be conceptualized as a collusion, in which both sides, managers and workers, are unconsciously caught. The dictionary definition of collusion is a "secret agreement for deceit or fraud". In the collusive case of participation both sides mutually use and abuse each other in their attempts to defraud each other. Both sides, managers and workers alike, are objects as well as subjects of their own deceits which are, in turn, nurtured by corporate cultures, myths and fictions. It appears to me that most of our organizational cultures perpetuate a collusive reality which, despite established fragmentation, sustains the need for further collaboration of a participative kind. However, they are obliged to present more mature forms of participation, otherwise the fictitious quality of the underlying assumptions and the social reality erected on these would be unmasked. The schizophrenia of our western industrial culture is so deeply incorporated in our work enterprises that participation has to be rejected, even destroyed, because it does not fit in with the predominant unconscious assumptions about the relationship between managers and workers as a relationship of non-relatedness. Laing's notion of games is helpful in looking at the collusive character of participation. Managers and workers are playing a game at not playing a game, which we could call the symbolization of the diabolized organizational reality. It appears as if both sides are saying: "If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game" (Laing (1971), 1). The rules of this game are: They are playing managing. We are playing working. We are playing workers because they are playing managers. They are playing the kind of managers that we think the kind of workers we are playing ought to admire. We are playing the kind of workers that they think the kind of managers they are playing ought to desire.

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If they were not playing managing, they might well be more working than we are except when we are playing very working. If we were not playing working, we might well be more managing than they are - except when they are playing very managing. So they play harder. And we play ... softer. They want to make sure that we could never be more managing than they. We want to make sure that they could never be more working than we. They therefore seek to destroy the labour in themselves. We therefore seek to destroy the managerial competence in ourselves. We are supposed to admire them for the managerial competence in them that we fear in ourselves. They are supposed to desire us for the labour in us that they despise in themselves. They are supposed to desire us for the labour in us that they despise in themselves. They desire us for our labour which is their labour, but which they can never claim to. We admire them for their managerial competence which is our managerial competence, but which we can never lay claim to. Since they may only love their own labour in us, they envy us our labour. Since we may only love our own managerial competence in them, we envy them our managerial competence. The envy poisons our collaboration ... (adapted from Roszak and Roszak (1969)).

Although it is untrue, the fiction has to be maintained that workers cannot and, therefore, must not manage and that managers do not have to work. In face of the fiction that all members of an enterprise are potentially unable to integrate both managerial and labour competence within themselves, participation becomes the integrative link between managerial and labour skills towards a common task. However this image of participation only further reifies its collusive quality. Because members of an enterprise do not engage as whole persons with managerial and labour skills, participation seems to be based on the notion of relating isolated skills and fragmented persons. As far as its function in the industrial production process is concerned, a derívate of participation of this kind would appear to be nothing more than a functional equivalent to power. Whereas the discriminative split between management and the work force was traditionally bridged by command and obedience, it is hoped that this gap will now be increasingly overcome by participation. Since workers and their representatives predominantly see themselves as advocates of the interests of labour and the work force of an enterprise in any participative or negotiation process with those traditionally called managers, they neither seem to claim managerial competence for themselves nor do they regard their own activities as being managerial. Disregarding, for example, the work of the works council as a managerial activity or function seems to perpetuate the fiction that workers are not managers. And managers are so preoccupied with their managerial commission that they lose sight of the fact that by and large they too are employees. Although according to the German codetermination law, the majority of managers are entitled to elect the works council and would be eligible to be candidates themselves, it seems unthinkable to them that their own (and as such 'workers") interests could be represented through the works council. To

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mobilize their own employee status would create much anxiety among managers. The predominant fear would be that he or she would be a deceiver and a traitor in the eyes of colleagues (cf. Kunst and Soeters (1991)). In so far as the mutual agreement of collusion has to be concealed, it can be assumed that the symbolization of the diabolized organizational reality outlined above has to be carefully hidden. Collusion is like a plot, in which the object of the secret plan is a third party against which it is directed; it has to be understood as a plot between the parties themselves who share the secret agreement. Participative collusion between managers and workers then needs to be concealed from the outside world as represented in customers, competitors or other institutions. Although hiding the collusion from the outside world may contribute to maintaining a positive image of the firm or company, the fact of the agreement about deceit or fraud as well as its contents have to be concealed among the parties themselves. In order to keep the collusion alive the secrecy of its agreement itself has to be kept secret. The process of concealment, therefore, has to become reflexive; it has to be established as a 'reflexive mechanism'. A reflexive mechanism is a social process which is applied to itself (Luhmann (1966)), through which the underlying process can then be increased in its probability and effectivity. The learning of learning or the decision on decisions are well known examples. In comparison to other reflexive secrets (Sievers (1974)) where the existence of a new product, marketing strategy or technology of an enterprise is kept secret, and the fact of the secret itself is concealed from other members or subsystems of the enterprise; the reflexive mechanism, in the case of a collusion, has to be managed differently. A reflexive secret is usually maintained whereby the limitation of its confidants and even the fact that these know about the secret has to be concealed from other potential confidants. In order to keep a secret secret both the contents of a secret as well as the fact of the secret itself have to be hidden. Whereas in the case of such a reflexive secret the boundary between those in the secrecy and those out of it has to be carefully sustained, the reflexivity of the secret, in the case of a collusion, has to be managed differently. The reflexive secret is based on a conscious psychic attempt of the confidants to keep the fact of the secret socially non-conscious in order to keep the contents of the secret non-conscious. In comparison, the function of the reflexivity of the concealment in the case of collusion is quite paradoxical. The social reality of the agreement of a mutual deceit and fraud between managers and workers has to appear and to be dealt with as if it does not socially exist. It is the paradoxical function of a collusion to allow the construction of a double reality for those who are inside the collusion. It permits those in it to defraud and to be defrauded. As long as the secrecy of the underlying agreement is (socially) successfully kept, it prevents calling these mutual frauds a fraud; on the other hand, however, it cannot be openly addressed as an intended action for which responsibility could either be taken or ascribed. It appears to be extremely difficult if not impossible to see through a collusion in

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which one is involved with others without the help of a neutral third party. Every attempt to question the contents of a collusion or even the collusion itself must be devalued and socially neutralized by defining the fact of the question as well as the act of the questioning itself as unintelligible, groundless, or as proof of aggression or madness in those who raised the question. However, the negation of a fraud does not mean that it is not experienced as such individually or collectively, but rather that the experience must be silenced; it has to be 'digested' inwardly, i.e., to be dislocated and displaced unconsciously. In a further attempt to understand collusion, it can be described as an unconscious agreement between the various parties involved for mutual deceit or fraud which, in order to be socially effective, has to be socially denied; this denial, through which the concealment becomes reflexively concealed, is primarily managed by the unconscious processes of individal members of the social system of the work enterprise. Wasdell ((1983), 59), referring to Menzies ((1970), 34 f.), describes the psychosocial interrelatedness of such a collusion from a slightly different perspective: "The majority of human social institutions are essentially collusional in process, working with the lowest common denominator of unconscious material and exhibiting extremely low levels of social awareness or maturational potential. New members commonly have to enlarge their zones of repression and unconscious collusion in order to match into the social system. The collusional agenda is the avoidance of disturbance of unconscious material for any member of the institution."

These reflections on collusion as a mutual social process may throw further light on the paradoxical and contradictory constellation under which participation in contemporary work enterprises is supposed to be practiced. As was stated above, participation can be seen as a mutual attempt at integration, compensation and repair among various parties. As such it can be understood as a process of social symbolization. On the other hand, as far as its underlying psycho-social dynamics are concerned, collusion can be understood as a simultaneous process of integration and splitting. The integrative or conjunctive quality of a collusion lies in the fact that it is an agreement, whereas the splitting or disjunctive quality can be seen in the content or the assumption upon which the agreement is made, i.e., mutual deceit or fraud. Fraud necessarily entails both the defrauded and the defrauders and can thus be seen as a mutual social process of splitting and exploitation between managers and workers. This social splitting process is accompanied and sustained by a further individual, personal splitting process. The individual has to deny and to displace deep feelings and reactions which result from the mutual defrauding processes, and has to split off and to diabolize parts of his or her own inner reality in order to survive the collusion and the quotidian quarrel. These unconsciously repressed feelings are denied, internalized and digested, either to poison one's own inner world, or

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they are projected onto other people as their objects, contributing to the 'soiling of the environment'. In any attempt to summarize these reflections we can see that the proposition to phrase participation as a process of mutual collusion is complicated and confusing. Participation appears as an unconsciously agreed upon, fictious social process of symbolization, which reconfirms the underlying social diabolization of the mutual split between managers and workers as well as the personal, individual fragmentations of the individual people involved. Although the proposition may appear somewhat overemphasized, participation in contemporary work enterprises runs the risk of becoming the collective attempt to symbolize the diabolized outer world through a diabolization of the inner world; participation is the diabolization of the diabolization via symbolization. In the context of reflexive mechanisms, which I referred to above, participation is our attempt to install symbolization in the face of a reflexive diabolization. At first glance this conclusion appears pessimistic, even depressing. As such, it may even discourage any further attempt to increase participation in industrial enterprises. But participation is not an easy venture, "participation is tantalizing", as Will McWhinney, a friend and colleague, says. This view might give us the key to overcome the gimmicks and games characterizing many attempts at propagating and installing higher degrees of participation in organizational practice and in management literature on the subject. Becoming aware and accepting the tantalizing quality of participation is the only possibility of overcoming the reification by which participation is reduced into a management tool, a technique for further humanization or a good that can be manufactured, distributed and consumed just as any other industrial product (cf. Holler (1983)). To consider participation as tantalizing may lead to an understanding of participation as a vision. Tantalus himself suffered endless pain for his attempt at defrauding the gods. As in his fate, participation may seem to be something much desired and at the same time tormenting, because any attempt to reach and to grasp it will be in vain. The paradoxical and dialectical quality of participation in industrial enterprises entailed in the symbolization in face of various diabolizations somehow seems to be a 'passion de bonheur'. This is an expression which Albert Camus used in his novel 'La Peste'. 'Passion' can mean both desire and enthusiasm as well as suffering, and participation in this sense is the desire for a relationship among managers and workers which simultaneously intensifies the suffering caused by the fact that this relationship fundamentally is a relationship of non-relatedness. After having sketched the larger frame and the paradoxical reality in face of which participation in industrial enterprises is expected to take place - or, because of its tantalizing character, to be avoided - it is now necessary to look at the mutual collusion between managers and workers more specifically in order to reach a better understanding of the various diabolization processes and tendencies in the face of which participation is intended to achieve a kind of a symbolization.

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The mutual collusion in which workers and managers in an enterprise are caught finds its expression in various fictions and myths that are not only legitimized and perpetuated by the corporate culture, but also seem to mirror the predominant value system of western industrial society. These predominant values seem not only to support an Orwellian social reality according to which "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"; it even seems to support the splitting into subjects and objects or producers and produced (cf. Berger and Pullberg (1966)). This creates and sustains the fiction that only a minority could be regarded as human beings, whereas the vast majority has to be seen as part of a machine or as commodities on the market. The myths and fictions through which the collusion between managers and workers is sustained and legitimized are manifold. One expression of the predominant fragmentation between managers and workers can, for example, be found in the ongoing tendency and attempt to infantilize workers.

The Infantilization of the Worker It seems as if the only pattern most western workers can relate to is that of the child vis-a-vis its parents. Through the nature of the work provided for them the employing institutions infantilize the workers. They do not allow them to develop or mature, but limit them to regressive and familiar reactions. In an attempt to elucidate some predominant psychic and political dimensions of work experiences, Lawrence ((1986f), 221) shows that the relationship of the workers to their enterprise is becoming infant-like: "The worker is always at the receiving end of the chain of commands. This experience in the authority-political system of the enterprise is reminiscent of the authority structure of childhood. Decisions that affect his immediate work-life are always in others' hands; for example, the organization of production schedules, the arrangements of shift working. This induces the same kind of paranoia that was experienced within the emotional relationship of childhood".

One expression of this paranoia is, for example, the search for a 'lost object', that is, the lost 'good' mother. The wish for a 'good' management or for 'good' relations substitutes for the lost good mother. "This sense of loss, of longing, dominates the psychic structure and exacerbates feelings of dependency" (Lawrence (1982a), 26). Since this infantile wish cannot normally be fulfilled, it gives rise to feelings of hate and aggression. Management then becomes a 'bad' object. But because it cannot be treated as a bad object, those negative feelings have "to be turned inwards in depression, which is anger turned back upon the person" (ibid.). These unfulfilled wishes for dependency also seem to be transferred into the fantasized notion of participation, a psychic process through which workers' participation is turned into the infantile metaphor of relating to a nurturing and

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caring parent. As I have previously stated, from the workers' point of view, participation, too, implies a 'bad' object. This further leads the worker into collusion. Despite his desire for dependency, he does not want to be treated like a child. Whereas the majority of workers may again turn their feelings of hate and anger towards themselves or choose to distance themselves further from their enterprise and work by withdrawing into a schizoid position, others may move into a rebellious position. The schizoid withdrawal becomes a predominant reaction under the present collective, cultural condition whereby workers tend to disengage themselves from the outer world. Lawrence ((1982a), 27) states the hypothesis "that the conditions of work are such that one mode of relating is that of schizoid withdrawal, which means that individuals have to take some of the characteristics" which are like those which schizoids in the clinical sense show. They are persons who avoid close relations with others, are unable to express anger and hate directly, and have an autistically self-oriented, withdrawn, introverted personality. "The term schizoid refers to an individual, the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Such a person is not able to experience himself 'together with' others or 'at home in' the world, but, on the contrary, he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as 'split' in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on" (Laing (1965), 17).

The predominant anxiety in this position is, as Segal (1973) states, that the persecuting object or objects would overwhelm the individual, destroying not only the ideal object but also the self. In terms of the terminology suggested here, schizoid withdrawal is a position in which persons split themselves off from the outer world; by neglecting the relatedness with others they diabolize themselves. This allows them to avoid feelings of anger and depression. As a result of their work experience and of their inability to relate, these workers have turned into a position of schizoid withdrawal and have given up any hope of participation. They seem to see participation either as a gimmick or as a manipulative attempt by management to force a relatedness onto them which they would experience as paranoid and frightening. Motivating the workers is ineffective and inappropriate, since the schizoid withdrawal is unconscious. The workers feel they have "little chance to be reorganized in a mature fashion because they are continually being pressed into "'childhood emotional relationships which result from integration in a pattern demanded by mass production'" (Pederson-Krag, 1951)" (Lawrence (1982a), 28). Another equally immature posture which enables workers to cope with the hate and anger experienced in the non-fulfillment of their dependency wishes is that of rebelliousness. The rebellious position, only taken by a minority, is the attempt to direct the aggression outwardly - preferably toward a confronting and

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authoritarian management. Rebelliousness can become a compensatory reaction against a management which is experienced as a rejecting object, as confusing and inconsistent, "so much that workers cannot make sense of them and their demands. ... While this (rebelliousness) may be regarded as a sign of real independence it is probably more accurate to describe it as 'pseudo-independence' (Kets de Vries, 1978)" (Lawrence (1982a), 28). Rebelliousness and action tied to it may mobilize particular individuals for a certain period, but as time passes they are unable to deal with the disappointment and frustration of unsupported and unrealized rebellion. For rebellious workers, participation seems to be just a game which prevents them from their diabolization of management. In special situations, as in times of severe and long strikes, or of an economic crisis, it may even be the case that those rebellious individuals are especially mobilized by the hate and rage of their coworkers and become elected to the works council because of their diabolizing aggressiveness towards management. But, in so far as a choice of this kind may also be understood as a displacement of these negative feelings from the coworkers themselves into their rebellious spokesman, the individual thus selected may eventually manoeuver himself into a situation of splendid isolation, unable to relate either to his sentient employees or to management in its capacity as the works council's counterpart. The workers' infantile positions of schizoid-withdrawal and rebelliousness causes management difficulty. As their own collusion indicates, managers do not understand Bion's (1961) 'flight' or 'fight' positions, and then seem to be trapped into reacting or responding to the workers. And, as at the same time "managers representing the organization are also caught in the web of their own anxieties about production, status and power" (Lawrence (1982a), 31), they may easily contribute to perpetuating the mutual collusion. Management's apparent choice between response or reaction is not, as far as its consequences are concerned, a real one. It may try to solve the conflict through further confrontation - but this might provoke withdrawal instead. Management may come to believe that it is not primarily the enterprise through its perpetuation of the mutual collusion which causes the workers' low productivity, but that it is the workers themselves as individuals who have deliberately decided to contribute less. With this in mind, management may then be seduced into making use of the traditional managerial tools of putting pressure on individual workers to contribute more effectively. These tools involve motivation, control and participation. "Participation is thus best understood as a means of attempting to secure labour's compliance. However, the framework of common interests upon which participation is premised is untenable" (Ramsey (1977), 481). Participation is thus offered to the workers as a gift to bail them out of their schizoid position. And though this gift is meant to manipulate and motivate the workers, it is presented as if it were in praise of the workers. Despite management's conviction that the workers deliberately withdraw and do not take part in creating the wealth and the future of their enterprise, they are thought of as if they do have the strong desire to participate. Management

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therefore has to change its feelings of anger and hate towards the workers into the very opposite. They are afraid that the open expression of negative feelings would press the workers further into the schizoid position, and they therefore have to play the game of being fond of the workers. Participation thus not only becomes an expression of management's collusion, it further increases the mutual collusion between management and the workers; participation becomes a fraudulent instrument. For the workers who have withdrawn into the schizoid position, the offer of participation may seem like rape, and deceit, a violent intrusion. Seen as a symbolization/diabolization, participation of this kind can be understood as an attempt to symbolize based on management's hidden diabolization, whereby diabolization of the workers is to be ignored. And again the character of the participation game is the affirmative attempt to confirm the relationship between workers and managers by ignoring their underlying non-relatedness. The maintenance and the perpetuation of each side's non-relatedness towards the other requires so much energy, fantasy and activity to cope with the underlying anxieties and related negative feelings that the relationship or symbolization notion of participation can only be realized ceremoniously. Lawrence and Miller ((1982), 403) state that the worker "finds his satisfaction from within his sentient groups and not in the task organization" and this is true of management, who often passes its time in its own world of luxurious isolation and endless meetings. "What has been described is a culture of social passivity. Assuming that no mature way can be found to speak from the workers' culture or meaning system, as opposed to breaking it down and imposing on it other meaning systems such as that espoused by management, then passive individuals will be fostered. They are passive in the sense that the social structure is seen and experienced as being outside of them and not amenable to questioning, only acceptance. Furthermore, this structure is split off from the actual social structure they carry 'in their minds' and which they internalise from their own culture. All this means that individuals find it more difficult to give meaning to their lives and become isolated units, without a mutual interdependence with objects in their human environment. Individuals thus become preoccupied with themselves and unemphatic. There is no possibility of creating anything either by oneself or in conjunction with others - or, indeed, in relating with others" (Lawrence (1982a), 32).

In face of the paradoxical constellation of participation in industrial enterprises explored here, that almost seems to favour the impossibility of any more mature forms of participation, it has to be stated again that my present concern is the consideration of the ideal metaphor of participation as a mutual collusion. Whether and under which preconditions more mature forms of participation can be realized or developed will be discussed towards the end of this second part.

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The Discrimination of Responsibility Hand in hand with the infantilization of the worker is the familiar division of responsibility and authority in our employing institutions. Despite the fact that most of our enterprises would collapse if the majority of workers gave up responsibility for their work, our organizational theories, as well as the actual design of our enterprises and the organizational reality built thereupon, are primarily based on the assumption that those at the bottom are unable to take over any significant responsibility for the institution through which they earn their living. As Menzies (1970,16) states, the "collusive social redistribution of responsibility and irresponsibility" in enterprises is quite enormous. Contrary to the predominant ideal of management, which is based on a rational model, the perspective developed by Jaques ((1952), 254 f.) would seem to be quite unusual. With respect to the possible defensive psychic quality of organizational structures, Jaques' perspective is similar to Menzies' (cf. Jaques (1974); Kahn (1976), 75 ff.). Jaques regards responsibility as "attached to a role (which) is the sum total of tasks, people, and equipment given into the charge of a person by virtue of his occupying a given role. For these he is answerable, in the sense of having to give an account to his superior, who in turn is responsible for him. Subsumed under responsibility are the duties and obligations which an individual undertakes as part of the process of being given authority; responsibilities which are not satisfactorily balanced by the authority necessary to discharge them being felt as a burden" (Jaques (1952), 254).

Responsibility as such is directly linked to authority, and may therefore be seen as involving the means, resources and boundaries a role-taker is supposed to make use of, including the possible range of tasks and roles he or she can authorize. This is in comparison to power, which "is a quality of the individuals or groups who occupy positions in the organization ... responsibility and authority are qualities of the social structure of the organization" (ibid.). Although power and authority have to be seen as different qualities, it is, nevertheless, "an essential of sound organizations that power and authority must not be too disparate" (Jaques (1952), 255). The present notion of responsibility included in the predominant managerial philosophies, on the contrary, seems to be similar to the definition of Lawrence et al. ((1975), 82) which they quote from a particular enterprise's document: "Responsibility means accepting an assignment, being personally committed to seeing it through to success and, if necessary, being prepared to accept the consequences of failure. Responsibility cannot be delegated, so that a manager is responsible for all of the commitments accepted by his staff and has also the responsibility for providing an environment in which each individual is able to fulfil his obligations. Authority is the freedom to act, and relates to the ability to control the resources available to a person to carry out his responsibilities. Authority is delegated to an individual by his

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manager. Anyone having responsibility for an assignment must have sufficient authority delegated to him to ensure the success of the assignment. Accountability is an examination or assessment of how well responsibilities have been carried out in terms of results that have actually been obtained and the efficiency with which they were achieved."

It is the predominant understanding "that responsibility is assigned and, therefore, authority is delegated for which the individual is accountable" (Lawrence et al. (1975), 82). Whereas responsibility is ultimately located at the top, authority is handed down to other managers and job holders. It seems as if responsibility and authority in our organizations are divided in such a way that the former is regarded as something very special, limited to the very few, and the latter is seen as equipment of certain job positions in a hierarchical order. A scandal in a government or a company exemplifies this. If a failure or a fraud committed in the lower echelons of the hierarchy is revealed, the top politician or executive manager is supposed to take responsibility for it and face the consequences. And a manager who hands down responsibility to his subordinates, as Pym (1966) has found, risks being regarded as less competent by his boss (Hollway (1984), 39). The concentration of responsibility in an enterprise at the top is similar to the assignment of a captain on a ship. Traditionally he is the first man behind God to carry responsibility for the vessel, given to him by its owner - the King, (as in Columbus' case), a well-off merchant or a shipping company. The captain's ultimate responsibility is to be the last one to leave the sinking wreck. It seems that responsibility is strictly related to property and its ownership; as such responsibility is handed over to the person who, in the owner's commission, is assigned to take care of his property. As a consequence, authority becomes the means through which the owner or his governor delegates power to certain subordinates in order to administrate and accomplish the continuance and augmentation of his property. Although according to predominant management philosophies responsibility is linked to a personal commitment of those at the top of a company towards the owner(s), it seems that the link between responsibility and ownership can lead to a romantic vision of responsibility by the workforce as its derivate. In production units where technological innovation is low and limited, workers often personally take over responsibility for the machine that is assigned to them for a large period of their working lives. By identifying with a machine they can nurture the fiction that this machine was entrusted to them by the owner or his governors. Their relationship to the machine is like a horseman's to his horse. This finds expression in the fact that workers sometimes carry their own private tools with them and care for their machines - even where it has to be concealed because maintenance and repair departments are functionally separate. Through their own identification with the machine, these workers claim that no other authority has been delegated to them than responsibility for their machines.

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Despite increasing tendencies to integrate maintenance and quality control into the work of an individual worker, the predominant myth in most of our enterprises still seems to be that the worker cannot be seen as responsible in an efficient sense for what he or she is doing. Instead of understanding control as a constituent quality of the individual and the individual worker, attempts are taken to extract control from those at the bottom and to install it further up in the hierarchy. Not being seen as responsible for what one is doing increases the infantilization of the worker and reconfirms his tendency toward schizoid withdrawal. Just as the ancient slaves "knew the freedom resulting from not regarding oneself as responsible" (Camus (1975)) the lack of responsibility which is projected onto the workers by management is subsequently introjected by main parts of the workforce, legitimizing their own attempts of disengagement and withdrawal. Consequently becoming rebellious even to the point of sabotage might seem desirable as a way of seeing oneself as responsible and perhaps potent as a worker (cf. Bensman and Gerver (1963); Sykes and Matza (1967)). But as sabotage in itself is a confirmation of irresponsibility, it has to be hidden and restricted to the immediate sentient group of workers. Still, becoming destructive can be seen as a way for the workers to cope with the characteristic lack of responsibility in their work. They can either become self-destructive by regarding themselves as being less than mature adults or they can act out their destructiveness by ruining the product that they are meant to produce. Related to the myth that those at the top of an enterprise who hold responsibility for the continuance and augmentation of the owner's property (from whom this responsibility is handed over) is the fiction that management is not supposed to be responsible to guarantee employment. Responsibility implies that for an enterprise to survive and grow, workers sometimes have to be dismissed. According to the fundamental split in our enterprises, management is required to take care of the property or the invested capital, whereas it is the responsibility of the works council or the unions to represent and to look after the interests of the workforce. Because its responsibility might include making them redundant, the worker often sees management as a 'bad object'. From the workers' point of view, the only 'good' and therefore legitimate responsibility is that which is taken on and represented by their representatives in the works council or the union. How the underlying split between those at the top and those at the bottom may increase the collusive confrontation between management and the workers has, for example, been recently experienced in the shipping industry. In Germany, and equally so in other shipping nations where the industry, due to a worldwide crisis of overproduction and structural change, is heavily subsidized by regional and national governments, the works councils in the larger shipyards seem - partly through the workers they are representing, partly through the unions - to be pushed into a position in which they see themselves as spokesmen and representatives of the workers in general, regardless of whether they are employed in the shipping industry or elsewhere. They then tend to see their own position as the only

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responsible one, declaring that of management to be irresponsible. In so far as they are exclusively mobilized by the basic assumption of fight/flight (cf. Bion (1961)) their inability to admit any reduction of the workforce often seems to disenable them and therefore the enterprise to diversify into the production of new and alternative technologies and products. To the extent that top management is seen as the traditional holder of responsibility vis-a-vis the owner(s), there seems to be an increasing tendency to turn responsibility towards a hireling dimension. Although responsibility seems to be given to certain individuals and, therefore, carries a personal quality of commitment, it is increasingly transformed into a function. To the extent that personal career and salary have become the main criteria for managerial success, responsibility is turned into individual capacity and competence. The personal skill to take and to carry responsibility as a manager takes on the characteristic of a good which can be offered temporarily on the market, but which can also be withdrawn and handed over to competitors if it appears to guarantee greater profit. In so far as managerial responsibility becomes a commodity on the market, it looses in the eyes of the workers its reliability and credibility. The socially sanctioned possibility for managers to withdraw themselves and their responsibility for the sake of their individual career may further legitimize workers to remain in their position of schizoid withdrawal. But the collusion about responsibility, which has so far been described from a macro-perspective, can similarly be elucidated from a micro-perspective. Although what Menzies (1970) stated is taken from her experience as a researcher of the nursing service of a British general hospital, it may be relevant in showing how responsibility and irresponsibility are collusively redistributed in many contemporary enterprises. Although the role of the nurse in a hospital vis-a-vis the physician is that of a worker, it includes significant differences in relation to the amount of responsibility invested in it. Since it is related to the recovery or the survival of the patients, "the nursing task tends to evoke a strong sense of responsibility in nurses, and nurses often discharge their duties at considerable personal cost" (Menzies (1970), 16). As this responsibility also usually includes a heavy and often painful burden, nurses might be eager to escape from it in fantasy or through irresponsible behaviour. Because the experience of "this conflict fully and intrapsychically would be extremely stressful" (ibid.) nurses tend to partly alleviate this intrapsychic conflict, at least as far as their conscious experience is concerned, into an interpersonal conflict. "People in certain roles tend to be described as 'responsible' by themselves and to some extent by others, and in other roles people are described as 'irresponsible'" (ibid., 17). Consequently, the more senior nurses tend to preserve their own self-esteem as 'responsible' members of staff by describing the junior nurses as 'irresponsible', and as more irresponsible than they themselves had been when they were juniors. As a result the junior nurses claim that they are

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treated as though they were in fact irresponsible and, therefore, unnecessary strict and regressive discipline is imposed on them. Menzies (ibid.) states: "We came to realize that the complaints stem from a collusive system of denial, splitting, and projection that is culturally acceptable to, indeed culturally required of, nurses. Each nurse tends to split off aspects of herself from her conscious personality and to project them into other nurses. Her irresponsible impulses, which she fears she cannot control, are attributed to her juniors. Her painfully severe attitude to these impulses and burdensome sense of responsibility are attributed to her seniors. Consequently, she identifies juniors with her irresponsible self and treats them with the severity that self is felt to deserve. Similarly, she identifies seniors with her own harsh disciplinary attitude to her irresponsible self and expects harsh discipline."

The more the intrapsychic conflict between one's own experience of feelings of responsibility and irresponsibility can be avoided by referring to an interpersonal conflict, the easier it seems to cope with and evade the pain with which it is connected. This tendency to not experience responsibility as a psychic dimension is further promoted by the confusion of the surrounding social structure and its role system, which leaves unclear who is responsible for what. In addition, the responsibility for the performance of a certain task in the hospital is frequently disclaimed by forcing the task upwards in the hierarchy. In the case of the nursing service this practice has, over the years, become such that many "tasks are assigned to staff at a level well above that at which one finds comparable tasks in other institutions" (ibid., 19). According to the underlying collusion over responsibility, people at lower levels who had the required skills for the task were not allowed to perform it because they were regarded as not responsible enough. The mutual collusion between superiors and subordinates is summarized by Menzies ((1970), 20 f.) as following: "Nurses as subordinates tend to feel very dependent on their superiors in whom they psychically vest by projection some of the best and most competent parts of themselves. They feel that their projections give them the right to expect their superiors to undertake their tasks and make decisions for them. On the other hand, nurses, as superiors, do not feel they can fully trust their subordinates in whom they psychically vest the irresponsible and incompetent parts of themselves. The acceptance of their subordinates' projections also conveys a sense of duty to accept their subordinates' responsibilities."

Although, as I have already stated, most work roles in an industrial enterprise do not really compare in responsibility to a nurse's, there are, nevertheless, many instances in which this is not true. The main difference between a nurse and a worker may not be the burden of responsibility, but rather the nature of that responsibility. Whereas the responsibility of a nurse is ultimately related to the individual patient, whose existence and survival, according to the principles of medical ethics, has to be protected, it seems that in the case of the worker, and especially of those employed in an enterprise of mass-production, the responsibility is limited

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to his fragmented contribution to a certain product. The fact that a worker's failure or mistake can usually be repaired or compensated for and usually goes without serious consequence for the individual allows the worker to separate himself from his own feelings of responsibility and to project them into the supervisor or other managers, who are paid to be responsible. The replaceability of the good he is producing, as well as the fact that he does not participate in the final profit and the surplus value of his work, may contribute to the worker feeling less psychic conflict than the nurse. On the other hand, it may give him an infantile self-image, which again prevents him from seeing himself as mature. Encouraged by the underlying splitting between those at the top and those at the bottom and their related projections, the workers vividly experience the absence of responsibility. "Responsibility is elsewhere linked to the disowned parts of the self, which are also projected elsewhere. They increase the power of, and hence the dependency on, the leader. For by projection, the leader becomes the sole repository of power, skills, and reality testing" (Turquet (1974), 370).

In addition to projecting responsibility into superiors, the 'collusive social redistribution of responsibility and irresponsibility' in our contemporary work enterprises is comparable to the senior/junior one in the hospital. The discrimination between skilled and unskilled workers very often allows the former to regard themselves as being more responsible than the latter. Even if a skilled worker may ultimately not be regarded as responsible by his supervisors, he can see himself as taking on the responsibility which the unskilled seem to refuse and to project to those above them. But this may even increase the collusion. To the extent that skilled workers are not rewarded for taking on responsibility, the responsibility which they actually do claim to assume on behalf of the unskilled can only be expressed as a burden. Gender, nationality and race differences can further contribute to this collusion. Female workers tend to be deprived of responsibility because they are thought to be more interested in increasing their family income than in their work. Similarly, in the eyes of the 'natives', foreigners - be they Gastarbeiter, Chicanos, Algerians or coloured members of the British Empire - lack responsibility for their work because they often accept the more demeaning jobs and the worst working conditions. Moreover, in face of the present situation of high unemployment, they are seen as taking away jobs from the 'native' unemployed. In the context of the ideal metaphor of participation as a collusion, it seems to be evident that the collusive distribution of responsibility further elucidates the inherently symbolized diabolization. Although responsibility, both from its etymological origin as well as from its phenomenological meaning, can be defined as the ability to respond or to commit oneself to giving a future answer (cf. Kahn (1976), 75), it seems that most employees, particularly workers, are deprived of their ability to appropriately respond from their own inner world to what is expected of them in their work. This deprivation then has to be reconfirmed by a work design which substitutes the ability to respond by the necessity

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to perform. And the collusive quality under which participation is expected to occur is seen in that people have to be mechanically linked to a job from which they themselves are personally dissociated. The postulate to participate in the design of the working conditions of an enterprise then becomes an offer from management to workers to assume responsibility for conditions which ultimately reconfirm their inability to respond. However, if the wish for more participation becomes expressed by the workers or their representatives, it may be interpreted and restricted by management as the infantile desire to change and improve a situation whose implications cannot be calculated or known. The desire for further participation thus has to be refused in order to prove that it is only management that can really assure responsibility. Regardless of which side initiates the attempt towards higher participation, the mutual consent to participate can be seen as the common attempt to symbolize the diabolization between managers and workers. The situation is such that managers have the capacity to symbolize themselves in their role, whereas the relationship between the workers and their work is seen to be diabolized.

Contempt and Mistrust The infantilization of the worker means that he is not responsible for his work. It is an expression of the fundamental splitting in our work enterprises according to which those at the top are seen by themselves and by others as adults and those at the bottom are seen as children. This splitting also reconfirms the basic dynamics of contempt, as has already been stated in the previous chapter. It seems to me that this contempt, to the extent that it constitutes the dominating dynamics between the parties and people involved in an enterprise, becomes a central part of the collusion in which the attempt at participation is caught. This mutual contempt poisons the relationship between management and workers and is collusive in so far as it has to be concealed. Its direct expression has to be avoided because it is destructive. Any formal reference to it therefore has to appear vague and harmless. Contempt in its German meaning as 'Verachtung' is the opposite of 'Achtung' which, in this case, means regard or esteem. Its origin is in the rootword 'Acht', which means to banish someone; in its emphasized version as 'Acht und Banri it means outlawry and excommunication which, in its historical sense, means the expatriation of someone from the clerical or sacral as well as from the civil or profane community. Such a person was regarded as a felon who could be killed by anybody without any further consequences. Although such a reference of extinction or extinguishment may in the present context of participation in contemporary enterprises seem to be too exaggerated and dated, it nevertheless elaborates the metaphor of what contempt as a psychic and social process seems to be about, i.e. the segregation and displacement of a certain unaccepted reality or individual by a person or a group. Those who are the object of such contempt

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are no longer one's fellows. They represent those with whom one has nothing in common and whose segregation is legitimized. The contempt of others is the ritualistic confirmation that one oneself is an in-law. Contempt is based on a splitting of good and bad as well as on a damnation of the latter; as such it is a further expression of diabolization. Although outlawry and excommunication in the literal sense, that is, dissociating a person from his community, may seem dated, the underlying metaphor elucidates the concept. The predominant exile and expatriation which underlie contempt is that the other, whether a person or a group, is no longer regarded as a subject, but is turned into an object. The contemptuous collusion finds its expression by means of a mutual process of objectification. Within it, both managers and workers in our work enterprise mutually deprive each other of their subjectivity and consequently of their humanity. This will be further described in the following part. Part of the reason that this mutual contempt between managers is rarely mentioned in text books on management and organization is that most authors and scientists have never themselves been part of an industrial enterprise, or if they have, it has been in a limited managerial role. Their theory is limited by their 'literacy' tradition, (cf. Pym (1986); (1990), 238 ff.). These theories reflect a social reality of our organizations and enterprises that are expressed in the 'scripts' perpetuated in management and business administration curricula in colleges and universities. This tradition relies on preaching and is similar to the orthodox theological interpretation of the Bible, which takes little account of further developments of the natural and social sciences. Metaphorically, this tradition is still based on the view that the creation of the world, as it is described e.g. in the Old Testament, is supposed to be taken as real and not just as a certain, in itself contradictory, expression of a much more extended and widespread mythology. The opposite, obviously less propagated tradition is, as Pym states, the oral one. In comparison to the preach-like and convictional character of the literacy tradition, the latter is based more on listening, exploring, and doubting. And as most social researchers and scientists are unable to listen to what is going on in the outer world of work enterprises or to their own inner worlds, the fact that contempt plays an important part within our organizational reality is not surprising. Referring to researchers who, like e.g. Weil (1978) in the early thirties, were themselves employed as workers in various countries (cf. Aktouf (1983), Haraszti (1977); Pfeffer (1979)), Jahoda makes the point that workers are humiliated in every possible way. According to these researchers' experience "contempt and mistrust for the manual worker is built into the system" (Jahoda (1982), 41). Within the oral tradition, we can see how the use of language in an organization reflects mutual contempt. Aktouf (1985, 35; (1990)) who worked for quite some time in a brewery both in Algeria and in Montreal, believes there is a fundamental language gap between management and workers. On the basis of this research on participation for his dissertation (Aktouf (1983)), he concludes that it is through

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language that the fundamental confrontation and splitting in our work enterprises is predominantly expressed (cf. Westwood (1987)). As a matter of fact, he sees two languages in the cases he investigated. Their separatedness mirrors a lack of communication, a splitting and segregation between the leaders and those led, and shows that they experience the same reality in very different ways. The workers' language expresses a deeply rooted feeling of abandonment; it confirms a hierarchy which places them in a world of betrayal and villainry. The language of management, on the other hand, adheres to rituals and conditions of an 'official' kind, which establish and perpetuate the hierarchical order. "A further sign for the great distance of these two 'worlds' is that they are talking about each other in principal only in the third person" (Aktouf (1985), 36). As such they confirm what Chanlat ((1984), 192) writes when he refers to his experience in the Quebec water works: "The frequent recourse to the third person for referring to the others is an indication that one considers them as non-persons, i.e. as objects. The denial of the others as persons and their reactions thereupon finally let it appear as legitimate to recourse to authoritarian methods. Such a spiral leads to a mutual rejection and contributes to develop a climate of mistrust."

The above can be broadened to apply to work institutions in other western countries with regard to the image of those at the top about those at the bottom. We see an enormous amount of contempt in the following perceptions and images (Aktouf (1985), 40 f.). In the eyes of their superiors, the workers, by nature, have a wholesome dread of work, they are stupid and unworthy of any trust. They are literally the 'enemy', who has to be relentlessly fought. They show neither ambition nor pugnacity, they are lazy. As such, they must be regarded as perverse, immature and irresponsible. On the other hand, the enterprise itself, as well as its management, becomes the target of the workers' contempt. The workers see them as representing hypocrisy and betrayal: executive managers are seen as omnipotent and condescending unknowns, preoccupied only with productivity and profit. Just as there is a God in heaven, they seem to be gods on earth. The supervisors, in particular, are regarded as watch dogs, not only incompetent, but cruel and hypocritical, looking for reasons to be angry, preoccupied primarily with figures. Aktouf ((1985), 43) concludes that these images and concepts with which the workers refer to their supervisors carry "connotations of betrayal, fawning subservience, dependent debility, failed eagerness, lack of dignity, self-esteem and even masculinity". As the above examples might suggest, mutual contempt between workers and managers is so great and so frightening that it has to be concealed both by social scientists and by the parties involved. There are good enough reasons to assume that the former as researchers or consultants would be prevented from further access to a work enterprise if they spelled out this reality, and the latter, the workers, as individuals or through their representatives, would be digging their own graves. The only instance in which such deep contempt might be expressed openly

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without severe consequences is in a strike. "A strike", as Lawrence ((1986f), 222) states, "sanctions the participants to give voice to their suffering, their more irksome feelings of futility, and their desperation. A strike allows for the containment of the feelings of rage of individuals and the social psychosis of the crowd."

But it seems that contempt is not primarily addressed to the respective other side, but is rather used as a means to influence public opinion and arbitrators. The rules of this 'game' seem to be that after arbitration both sides no longer regard as true or real what they mutually produced during the escalation of the conflict. Going back to usual business does not, however, diminish or extinguish the underlying circular contemptuous reality. Each attempt at defending oneself against feeling self-contempt results in contempt for the other, and in order not to become the object of the other's contempt, one responds by further contemptuous attacks. To protect oneself from being the victim of the other's contempt is to make the other side into the victim of one's own contempt. But as the chance to victimize is unequal between managers and workers, the workers are left carrying the main burden and suffer more. This is comparable to the family situation, where parents can more easily express feelings of contempt towards their children than can their children towards them for fear of losing their parents' love. Similarly, the workers are primarily the ones who have to conceal their contempt. To the extent that those at the top have the power and the respective means to suppress the open expression of the workers' contempt, management may nurture its own illusion of being the only legitimate in-laws of the enterprise. Management's contempt towards the workers maintains their self-image of a false-self (cf. Laing ((1965), 94 ff.). And workers, in order to keep their own self-esteem and their false-self, redirect the contempt that management has directed at them into other outside relationships. For some, this may ultimately lead to the situation described by Weil ((1979), 49): "In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within him and poisons him." As we have seen, this mutual contempt between managers and workers is embedded in the dynamics of diabolization. In order to get rid of the aspects which are (often unconsciously) activated inside oneself, one has to redirect these aspects or feelings into the other who, as an object of one's contempt, becomes separated from the community and from oneself. This process of denying reality somehow equals the mythical law by which the bearer of bad news gets killed. As such, contempt can be understood as the diabolization of the other, be it an individual or a group, which serves to avoid the admittance of one's own selfdiabolization. In order not to acknowledge one's own self-diabolization contempt is expressed and acted out on the assumption that it is the other who, through his false behavior or his limited capacity, is diabolizing himself from an equal relationship or a group position.

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To relate this paradox back to the idea of participation as a potential symbolizing process further elucidates the metaphor of a collusive quarrel. There can be no doubt as to how problematic participation would be if the parties involved were able to realize their mutual contempt; it poses the question of how one could relate to others who have deliberately withdrawn from a relationship. More precisely, how can managers and workers relate equally to each other if they believe that they really have nothing in common? In addition to the actual contempt felt by managers and workers in contemporary work enterprises there is a further, more fundamental contempt, a constituent part of the history of industrialization. We see that contempt is not limited to the social world, its construction and its everyday interactions at the workplace, but is built into the machines and technology that surround our work and its work places. This can be further exemplified by women's quest for equality with husband, father, boss - but all within the confines of patriarchy. And our institutions, including the family, are part of a patriarchal system, determined by a tradition of contempt. Whereas the child can nurture the fantasy of possible revenge and contempt against others when he himself has grown up, the worker does not even have this possibility. Moreover, as many workers are the children of workers, they share their father's fate of degradation, contempt and infantilization. This is especially true in traditional heavy industry, e.g. in the coal mines and steel works, where the sons of workers often had to face the same exploiting and oppressive supervisors and managers as their fathers did. Although these workers were adults, they were forced to remain in childlike dependency. Lawrence ((1986Í), 221) states, "workers are forced to behave at a less than mature level because the emotional position they are put into is less than adult". This is even true for those who in the last decades of increasing demand for managers moved from their family's working class background into management. As managers in a supposedly adult position, and in order to build on their careers, these men were forced to join the contemptuous chorus of those at the top, disdainful of those at the bottom. In so doing, they betrayed their own fathers. This disdain and contempt of the workers is not only engraved in individual and collective experience, but it is also part of the design of the physical world which makes up industrial work. Dickson ((1974), 43) in his book 'Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change', makes the point that "the apparent need for authoritarian discipline and hierarchical organization of the factory required to operate complex production-line equipment, for example, is held to justify the accompanying relationship between management and workers".

It seems to be a determining fact in the history of industrialization that factories were built for machines and not for people or workers. Industrial plants were conceptualized, designed and built according to the 'dictates' of technology. And in the spirit of enterprise, what really counted was the expertise of the engineers, who were able to copy, to implement and to develop technological innovations.

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As, for example, Ruppert ((1983), 16 f.) states, when Krupp's first newly built smelting works, which were literally erected on a greenfield site at the end of the last century, it was the technology which determined the work, whereas the 'social' issues of life such as housing, health and alimentation arrangements, which were also newly built, were located in the immediate environment. This is part of "the industrial technology" which "embodies the social relations between men required by a capitalist economy" (Dickson (1974), 179). As Dickson further elucidates in his analysis of the development and implementation of technology in the history of industrialization, technological innovations were not only determined by the extent to which they increased the efficiency of production technology, but also by the intent to maintain "authoritarian forms of discipline, hierarchical regimentation and fragmentation of the labour force" (Dickson (1974), 64). Technology and technological innovations as such were always a means of social control to ensure that the workforce would operate the machines to their maximum capacity. "The institutionalization of technology has meant that the choice of particular machines, or at least the control over this choice, remains in the hands of a dominant social class. And since technological innovation ... is only carried out to the extent that it coincides with and maintains the interest of this class, new machines will only be introduced within the constraints that are imposed on the activities of the individual members of society" (Dickson (1974), 171).

The way an enterprise or a factory is laid out, designed and shaped has not, as far as its basic structure is concerned, changed very much since the beginning of industrialization. Although the technological equipment, its speed, and the kind of production processes may have changed significantly, the way workers are allocated and controlled by this technology, and the relationship between workers and managers still reconfirms "the experience of persecution that the employed population ... have had since the beginning of industrialization" (Lawrence (1986f), 218). Despite the fact that many workers at present are well enough educated and competent to manage themselves in various contexts outside their work enterprise, they are still thought of and treated like their predecessors were. But perhaps contemporary managers feel more guilt about their contemptuous victimizations than did their predecessors. This contempt, therefore, has to be concealed and veiled by various social technologies. The extent to which the veiling of the underlying contempt can be managed through the appearance of an 'objective' reality is further characterized by the use of strategic planning, a socio-economic technology which has in the last few years gained increasing importance as an instrument of managerial planning and marketing. As one author recently put it without any restrictions, strategic planning "is one of the major tools by which management can create a shared vision of what a company wants to become. ... The very act of instituting such a process, ... signals to the

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organization members that things are changing ... Strategic planning can also provide a sense of direction for a company and its employees as well as specific goals to motivate and guide behaviour" (Flamholtz (1986), 133).

Led by economic rationality, strategic planning attempts to differentiate and to discriminate an enterprise's activities according to its actual potential and to the estimated demands and opportunities in the market. To the extent that certain products make a higher profit, promise increasing profit rates for the future, or no longer cover their production and distribution costs, they are placed into certain strategic positions and therefore require different technical, financial and social resources. The labelling of the various products as 'cash cows' or 'stars' simultaneously enables management to veil the contempt which they might feel, especially for those workers who produce less successful products that are considered to have 'dried up'. The disregard for the inefficient product thus often becomes a substitute for the contempt for the worker who is not performing well enough. How easily the contempt entailed in strategic planning can be revealed becomes evident when it is directly applied to employees instead of to products. Odiorne (1984), for instance, in his attempt to apply portfolio-analysis to human resources management (a term which in itself nicely covers the underlying disregard and contempt for employees), does not hesitate to refer to workers (in the two lower squares of the Boston-window of the portfolio) as 'working horses' and 'deadwood'. This reminds me of 'Boxer', the old working horse in Orwell's 'Animal Farm', who finally ended at the knacker's yard; it also raises the question for me, what else can one do with dead-wood other than burn it (cf. Sievers (1988))? The development of strategic planning, restricted to the top and then executed at the bottom, further increases the workers' experience of futility and dependency. In addition to experiencing themselves as means of production, the workers have to regard themselves as strategic tools of the competitive battles their supreme command is fighting. This may even include the possibility of the surrender of part of its troops in order to win the day. As such, workers are at the strategic planners' disposal; to dismiss a considerable amount of the workforce often enough becomes management's only stated alternative to avoid the total shut-down of a work enterprise. These workers, as they join the army of the unemployed, often become the contemporary equivalents of what in earlier times were outlaws. Management reallocates its responsibility for the unemployed to society in general and to the welfare state. The workers in turn feel a deep sense of shame as a result of managements' contempt towards the unemployed. In high-technology and mass-production enterprises it may be that the worker "is dwarfed by the machinery which can produce a sense of threat and inadequacy" (Lawrence (1986f), 221). As Anders ((1980), 21 - 95; cf. Titel (1991)) in his essay 'On Promethean Shame' elaborated more than thirty years ago, the extreme technology of the machinery with which the worker is often confronted raises the

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enormous shame inside himself of being inferior. The "thinghood" of the machine seems to him to be more complex and potent than he himself is. To raise his self esteem, the worker experiences himself as a thing. As he is confronted with the longevity of the technology, which will probably appear to him as immortal, as well as with a new variety of immortality, which is "the industrial re-incarnation", the "series existence of the products" (Anders (1980), 51), he has to escape by perceiving himself as a thing. This is the only possible defense against not experiencing himself as mortal vis-a-vis the apparent immortality he is surrounded with. Despite the fact that he himself, in collaboration with other workers, actually produces the products, he feels inferior towards his products. This leads to a feeling of irritation and disorientation. "Shame is" as Anders ((1980), 66) says "a disturbance of self-identification; a confusion". This confusion can be understood as a sense of self that is less than ideal - one is not the man one is 'supposed to be'. As he surrenders to the overwhelming and often dangerous technology, the worker, at the same time as he "masters these tools and their operations, ... can have a frightening sense of potentially destructive power literally in his hands. In his mind, however, he knows he is ultimately powerless to alter the environment in which he is employed in any substantial way. This induces a sense of unreality" (Lawrence (1986f), 221). "To be ashamed", as Anders ((1980), 70) writes, means "not to be able to do anything against the fact that one can't help it". As such, the sense of shame and the feeling of self-contempt often appear as the ultimate solution through which workers seem to respond to the contempt which is addressed to them by management. The only escape from this kind of self-contemptuous identification then often seems to be offered by internal splitting. In order not to derive one's own self-definition from the contempt experienced in the work place, the worker might split his work life from his home life, hopeful that his home life will provide greater self-esteem. In order to rid himself of his contemptuous work experience, the worker might turn his work into something for which he feels contempt, thereby allowing himself to separate his feelings towards his work from himself. This, for example, was expressed by a Greek 'Gastarbeiter' we interviewed in a tyre plant, lifting the heavy weights of a huge tractor tyre by himself who said: "They let me do this dirty work for thirteen years now!" Instead of defining himself as an 'it' towards which he was supposed to feel contempt, he displaced his own contempt into the 'it-ness', the thinghood of his work; in order not to reify himself, he had to reify the work he was doing to save his dignity, which would otherwise have been denied him by management. By reifying the work he was given he was able to resist the dehumanization caused by the obsolescence of honour and dignity he was surrounded by in his work environment (cf. Berger et al. (1974), 78 - 89).

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Given what has been stated so far about the mutual contempt and mistrust between workers and managers in contemporary work enterprises, as well as the predominant experience of futility by the workers, it seems that participation appears quite unlikely, both in the eyes of management and in those of the workers. We cannot avoid taking seriously the psycho-social views sketched here, nor can we dismiss them as unreal, prejudiced, one-sided or too pessimistic. Further steps towards more participation cannot be taken unless participation is perceived as a struggle or a quarrel, not as a game or a gimmick. The conviction which underlies the expectation and hope for more participation includes the need to accept, to explore and to understand the collusive character of this quarrel. I am convinced that acceptance of this kind cannot be achieved by traditional images of scientific enlightenment - that the collusion can be overcome if it were to be analyzed and described, if only in a scientifically adequate manner. If the symbolization inherent in participation is to be realized, its existing diabolizing constraints must be acknowledged as real. This necessarily includes the readiness and the capacity of managers and workers to expose themselves and to admit their respective experience of despair. And the collusive quality of the relationship can only be worked through if enough people are able to admit and explore their despair about it. This requires that they are prepared to suffer from a painful reality which they normally deny (either by neglecting it, or by displacing it into their respective counterpart). Hope towards more mature kinds of participation can only be realized if the despair, which is so rigidly concealed under the present collusion of the quarrel, is admitted. If more workers and managers were to express their despair regarding the collusive quarrel, more social scientists would take the despair seriously. But to admit to such a despairing reality in contemporary work enterprises is in itself not enough. It must be extended to the lack of managerial and organizational literature, to the confusion in thinking beyond the present mainstream approaches, and to the fact that further attempts of this kind might turn the perpetrator into a deviant and a stranger in his own scientific community, and he might even be considered to be mad. It may well be, as Jan Tossebro, a Norwegian colleague, recently expressed in a letter, that "it is much too rare today that social scientists are addressing these huge questions which may be because meaning also has vanished from social science".

Management as a Myth Another aspect of the collusive quarrel needs to be explored, that is, the predominant myths about management. In the third part I will elaborate on the fiction on which our traditional, contemporary understanding of management is built. As I have already briefly stated above, this is based on the assumption that for one part of an enterprise to function, it has to be managed and controlled by the other part. According to the

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predominant fiction, it is the managers, as representatives of the employers who are supposed to manage the workers so that they can perform at their work. "Managing the individual at work" is not only the main target of work psychology and organizational behavior (cf. Hollway (1991)), but also the predominant image of what management in contemporary enterprises is about. It seems that since the beginning of western industrialization we have collectively accepted and perpetuated an image of the manual worker akin to that of the ancient slave, the bondsman of the Middle Ages or the mercenary, who built the pyramids and filled royal armies. Although the rising industrial enterprises at the beginning of industrialization could not do without experienced craftsmen, it seems that this positive image of a working man was not then, and still has not become, the predominant one of mass-production. Odiorne's (1984) image of the 'working horse' to describe human resources, and 'cash cows' referring to products, expresses how the relationship between managers and workers is traditionally perceived by the former. The worker is seen as the horse set before a carriage or a plough, which provides the necessary effort, energy and endurance used by the coachman or the ploughman according to his own intent and direction. Horses and their drivers often literally lived under the same roof, and there were times when horses e.g. in their Teutonic tradition, had mythological divine quality (cf. Baum (1991)). So, although horses were sometimes highly valued and depended upon by their owners and users, they nevertheless remained objects that could be used and employed either for the cultivation of the land, for fighting battles or for the transportation of goods. The working horse had to be trained to perform effectively and it also had to be controlled to protect its user from uncontrollable outbursts of its enormous power and instinctive drives. Seen in this light, it is hardly surprising that the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology gives one meaning of the word 'managing' as "training a horse; action and paces of a horse"! The managerial control superiors have executed in industrial enterprises since the beginning of industrialization has served this double purpose, akin to the guiding of a horse. Like coachmen, managers are supposed to be the ones who steer what, where and how the work is to be accomplished, and they have to control the workers to protect them from their own instinctive rage and destructiveness. Instead of perceiving the possible resistance, rebelliousness and rage of the worker as inherent in the relationship between entrepreneurs and their representatives on the one side, and workers on the other side, that is, as an expression of the inequality, injustice and exploitation through which the work was organized and its surplus value distributed, these feelings are instead ascribed to the workers, thus implying their potential for bestiality. In order to deny feelings of anxiety and impotence related to the possible risks and insecurities in the venturous process of setting up and developing a new industrial enterprise, managers turned the workers into their paranoid objects. Although the former had to rely upon the latter for their work, the latter actually became terrifying objects.

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Though this is not the place for a detailed description of the developmental process of western industrialization (cf. e.g. Landes (1968)), the mutually paranoid constellation of the relationship between management, as representatives of employers, and workers has been evident since its very beginning. Particularly when thousands of them were employed in one and the same industrial enterprise, workers represented an enormous threat vis-a-vis management. This can, for example, be realized from the extensive rules and orders at the beginning of the industrialization process whereby the working days and lives of workers were rigidly determined. As, for example, Ruppert ((1986), 35 ff.) or Wirtz (1982) describe, the mere language of these regulations demonstrates how workers were forced into coercive frames of rigid instructions which then defined their working conditions. Not only were breaches of these factory-orders punishable with high penalties, they were often legitimized by public administration, thus eventually allowing the local police to use their power in order to protect the employer and his property. There seems to be enough evidence that these regulations were not primarily and exclusively intended to organize the production process and to increase its effectiveness; they seem predominantly to have been expressions of defence against the anxiety arising from the unconscious irrationality of the mob of workers. These regulations and their language of permanent menace were a preventive strategy through which management tended to protect itself against possible revolt of the workers as well as against irregularities and disorder they might cause by staying away from work. Workers thus were, for example, regarded as "not sufficiently civilised", not "educated or responsible enough" (Ramsay (1977), 485, 495), "indisciplined and lazy" (Marglin (1974), 91), or just "too stupid to train themselves" (Taylor (1911)). In face of such a high anxiety level and the enormous paranoid threats ascribed to the workers by management, one might hope to conclude that the relationship between managers and workers in contemporary work enterprises has changed over time. Although to some extent this may be true, it can also be assumed that many of these early regulations and instructions of disciplining and selfdisciplining over past generations have been internalized and introjected into the collective identity and mentality of the worker (Ruppert (1986), 39). What contemporary organizational sociology ascribes as 'membership-preconditions' or 'membership-role' contents takes for granted management's expectations as to how employees are supposed to behave in order to maintain one's workplace and income. The notion of organizational membership itself seems not only to be a scientific abstraction of men and women as human beings, but it also serves to conceal the more basic reality "that formal organization is at bottom social organization that defines 'social being' and not 'organizational membership'" ((Cooper (1983a), 217). Cooper (ibid.) quoting from Goffman ((1968), 164), further elaborates this point:

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"In our society ... a formal instrumental organization does not merely use the activity of its members. The organization also delineates what are considered to be officially appropriate standards of welfare, joint values, incentives, and penalties. These conceptions expand a mere participation contract into a definition of the participant's nature of social being. These implicit images form an important element of the values which every organization sustains, regardless of the degree of its efficiency or impersonality. Built right into the social arrangements of an organization, then, is a thoroughly embracing conception of the member - and not merely a conception of him qua member, but, behind this a conception of him qua human being."

The fact that at the early times of industrialization management could so easily and successfully turn the workers into objects of their own anxieties can, in part, be explained. It is important to remember that in the early days of industrializaton most workers entering industrial enterprises (like the contemporary 'guest workers') came from different living and working conditions and cultures or subcultures. Their adaptation to the mechanical working rhythm of the factory must have been an unbearable threat and torture. As Mantoux ((1962), 375 quoted in Marglin (1974), 95 f.) describes the 18th centuiy in Britain, "in the early days factory labor consisted of the most ill-assorted elements: country people driven from their villages by the growth of large estates ..., disbanded soldiers, paupers, the scum of every class and of every occupation." If one further realizes that many of these workers had neither guaranteed employment nor social security, lived in terrible housing conditions and survived at their existential minimum, one can see how their anxieties, despair and often weakened physical condition allowed management to perceive them as frightening or as even less than human. Because managers devoted their lives to the entrepreneurs, the corporation and the enterprise's progress, compassion towards these poor people often was beyond their capacity. Those who expressed compassion did so in their roles as citizens or members of a church. Through the above brief historical sketch of the paranoid constellation between management and the workforce we can see that "management is, by the nature of the relationship it dictates between men, an intrusion on people's lives and lifestyles" (Aktouf (1985), 10). As such management seems to be based on the view that one part of the employees have the right or even the obligation to determine the remainders' usual fate: "The ideology surrounding management in our society is that only managers can and should perform the important functions deemed necessary for the survival and success of organizations, and further, that in order for the organization to be effective, they must direct, control, monitor, and discipline others. (This is commonly expressed as 'getting the work done through others.') The evidence that is available suggests that this is a convenient half-truth, thus qualifying it as a myth: While real managers, especially those not at the top of the organization, lack the time, ability, discretion or all three for the developmental functions that are presumed critical to survival and success, they do invest tremendous

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energy in maintaining the organization by directing and controlling others who actually do the work of the organization ... The myth is strengthened by the fact that in many organizations, managers become symbols of order and stability, regardless of any specific functions they perform. Furthermore, managers occupy positions and claim salaries that others aspire to, and those aspirations, in combination with the symbolism, are seen as part of the 'glue' that holds the organization together. As long as these values prevail, they act to guard against, or successfully block, any alternatives that challenge them" (Martin (1982), 129 f.)

This predominant myth of management is further enforced by the common belief that managerial activities are primarily guided by technical rationality. As Ingersoll and Adams ((1986), 366; cf. (1992)) show, this belief serves as a managerial metamythology that is based upon the following assumptions: "(1) Eventually all work processes can and should be rationalized, that is, broken into their constituent parts and so thoroughly understood that they can be completely controlled, (2) the means for attaining organizational objectives deserve maximum attention, with the result that the objectives quickly become subordinated to those means, even to the extent that the objectives become lost or forgotten, and (3) efficiency and predictability are more important than any other considerations."

Keeping in mind the above brief review of the development of the management/worker relationship in industrialization, it seems that it is one of the functions of such a predominant rational managerial metamyth to immunize managers against experiencing deep, painful feelings arising from the underlying mutual paranoid constellation. As such, this metamyth is akin to the western medical one, which requires of the good physician or surgeon that he distance himself from sympathizing with his patient. It is also not by chance that these positions are traditionally held primarily by men. In this way the emphasis on rationality in the managerial metamyth mirrors a commonly shared social myth concerning a general 'division of labour' in which the woman's role is to feel, and therefore to suffer, leaving the men to solve daily problems and to shape and plan the future. According to predominant scientific rationality, 'scientific management' in its various denominations has become the only image of what the coordination of work, the mastering of human problems and the search for meaning seem to be about. Ingersoll and Adams, in their attempt to explore the managerial myth, even state a more radical perspective towards the managerial metamyth of technical rationality. The paradox and the irony they noted in this myth system is that it itself is "a set of beliefs, which, by its nature, denies the existence of its own myths" (Ingersoll and Adams (1986), 377). By denying the mythical quality of this belief system, the view that there is no place for myth at all in good management is maintained. This "rational-technical myth system appears in a variety of forms in our macroculture" (Ingersoll and Adams (1986), 371) and is simultaneously maintained and

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reconfirmed in our respective academic and managerial subcultures. Underlying our scientific mainstream approaches to management "is a set of beliefs holding that people are not natively as rational and strategic as they need to be in solving organizational problems and getting work done, but that there are techniques they can master that will make them more so - more 'professional' - in running an organization" (Ingersoll and Adams (1986), 373). It seems that this rational-technical orientation of contemporary management science, because of its underlying rationalization (in the sense of explaining unrecognized motives through other plausible but false ones), offers a clever way out of thinking about the mutual contempt experienced by managers and workers. Moreover, if the worker is seen as to be inadequately educated, and just not rational enough, the manager is reinforced in his role, both personally and professionally. His self-esteem remains intact. He can also identify with those at the top, who, as e.g. the former Chairman of the Board of Daimler-Benz recently put it, are "to represent the spirit of their enterprise ... with their whole person; they have to embody it internally as well as externally" (Breitschwerdt (1987), 277)). In line with the rational-technical orientation of management theory and management schools, managers read that they "are supposed to look and act 'professional', which means clean, uncontroversial in appearance, and uniform" (Ingersoll and Adams (1986), 375): "Managers should be tough, loyal, decisive, respectable, and aggressive (Sloan, 1964). Maccoby's (1976) Jungle Fighter have also been found to typify a particular group of highly touted managers in the public sector (LaBier, 1980: 143). The behaviour of these managers is characterized as pathological from a psychological point of view but is nonetheless adaptive for success in the bureaucracy. More specifically, this adaptive behaviour appears as "the ability to appear and act tough, to put others down and humiliate them, to constantly test others, and to produce a flurry of activity on demand - memos, decisive talk at meetings, 'fire fighting' and so on (LaBier, 1980: 144)" (ibid.). The rational-technical managerial metamyth serves as the legitimation for the myth of the 'super-manager', as described by Westerlund and Sjostrand ((1981), 160): "A 'typical' manager not only has the information necessary for a certain decision, but also the competence required for its analysis. He further realizes the various possibilities available for his actions, he also knows the probability with which each of them may happen as well as their consequences both for himself as well as for his organization. At the same time he is certain about what he wants to accomplish; his objectives are clear and unequivocal. Thus he is able to relate a chosen alternative both for his own preferences as well as for the various objectives of his organization. The degree to which his own personal preferences, his needs, objectives as well as the means to reach them are in accordance with the interests of his organization is nearly optimal." Alfred Krupp, who extended the Krupp company in its second generation from a mere workshop into a huge enterprise (cf. Calogeras (1989), 51 ff.), showed to

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what extent this managerial metamyth is based on the omnipotent dream of an ideal machine. In 1874 he stated: "What I intend is that nothing should depend upon the life or the being of a certain individual, so that with the extinction of such a person, no knowledge and no function should die, that nothing (of relevant significance) would happen or would have happened which would not be known in the centre of procuration or happen without foreknowledge or allowance of it, that one could study and review the past of the plant as well as its probable future in the office of the central administration without the necessity of asking any of the mortals" (Henss and Mikos (1984); cf. Kocka (1969), 344; Woldt (1911), 103).

The superman image of management and its underlying technical-rational metamyth can, in the context of the fundamental splitting between managers and workers on which it is based, be regarded as a process of idealization. Segal (1973) defines idealization as a schizoid mechanism based on splitting and denial. Like the above schizoid withdrawal, it is an expression of the paranoid-schizoid position. The creation of an ideal object serves to keep it away from the persecuting object, thereby preserving it from destruction. The greater or more unbearable the feelings of persecution, the more extreme the idealization, which can be linked to a magical, omnipotent denial based on a phantasized, total demolition of the persecutor. As such, idealization can be directed both towards oneself as well as against others, and the idealization of management also relies on self and other-referential processes. Through projective identification, a psychic process by which parts of the self and the inner object are split off and projected into the outer object which then again becomes identified with these projected parts, managers and workers mutually sustain the idealization of the former. One potential expression of this schizoid withdrawal is the infantilization of the workers, whereas the idealization of management can be understood as an immature, child-like escape into the parents' position. Just as the eldest child might take over its parents' role vis-a-vis younger siblings in order to cope with the frightening anxiety of its parent's absence and the phantasized persecution of his siblings, the idealization of managers often serves as a magical omnipotent denial of one's own weaknesses and the escape into the parental position. In accordance with the predominant managerial metamyth, in so far as this idealization is based upon ascribed knowledge, skill, rationality, responsibility and authority, the image resembles that of a father, a commander, a professor and an entrepreneur. Like the workers' experience of futility, infantile dependency or schizoid regression, managers too have collectively found patterns to conceal their related experience towards their own conscience as well as towards that of others. A managerial outfit, the representational business suit and a leather brief case symbolically emphasize that managers live in another world, prefabricated by prestigious goods and services which prevent them from experiencing their own schizoidity and its related guilt and loss. Although consumption and a particular life-style

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may compensate for the threat and privation of workers, it seems as if in the worker's case it reconfirms that he is not what he is supposed to be at work. In the case of managers, the surrogate confirms that the manager really is what he appears to be. The most important aspect of the predominant technical superman megamyth of management seems to be that it propagates the unexamined belief that there is no reality beyond rationality. To the extent that this managerial metamyth is based on the assumption that it is beyond myths in the sense of any set of shared beliefs, it also confirms that the organizational world and its inherent economic reality can neither be reasonably understood nor managed from a mythical angle. As Ingersoll and Adams ((1986), 362) state "the managerial metamyth is devoid not only of numinous quality, but at odds with the very idea of the numinous. ... The promulgation of a rational technical orientation toward tasks and relationships" which the managerial metamyth contains thus excludes any further reference to other value and belief systems, metaphors and symbols through which people's perceptions and actions are usually guided. Since the managerial metamyth essentially is antimythical, it denies the existence of any other myths in general and those myths, in particular, which "point to the mysterious, the spiritual, and the holy - which by their numinous content provide deeper dimensions to life than does the managerial metamyth" (Ingersoll and Adams (1986), 377). Notions like meaning, maturity or wisdom, which are as old as mankind, are totally absent as long as management's only concern in regard to the academic subculture is "how to use scientific knowledge to manage people effectively" (Nash (1983), XI). Looking at the managerial myths and the rational-technical metamyth in the context of the above considerations about participation reinforces the collusive quarrel as its ideal metaphor. In face of the predominant managerial myth, participation as a possible attempt at symbolization has again to be seen as based on underlying processes of diabolization: diabolization of the managers' inner world of cognitive and analytic competence as a defence against deeper, more mature experiences; and the diabolization of the workers by management in the sense that they are not seen as being intelligent enough to be considered equal. Consequently, they have to be guided and treated by managerial techniques. Management's role as a good or bad object becomes confusing to the workers. The superman-like self-image of management and its related feeling of intellectual superiority seem to be the main reason why participation is often a gimmick in the eyes of management. The rational-technical metamyth of participation as a notion of equality between people seems contradictory. The very fact that workers and their representatives usually lack adequate information keeps them from making major decisions, and when they do have access to information, management complains for various reasons, particularly on the grounds of interference with strategic planning. And so, information remains firmly in management's hands. Management's conviction that workers do not have the potential for participation, which ultimately means that they are not capable of becoming managers

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colludes with their opinion that participation is a useful and necessary managerial tool for motivating workers' and raising their performance level (cf. e.g. Guest and Knight (1979); Lawler (1986); Vroom and Jago (1988)). As such, management's offer for (limited) participation becomes an intrusion, an attempt to increase the workers' self-esteem without changing the way in which managers think about them. That the workers' involvement in participation is limited to talk about the amount of their piece-rates reminds me of young children who receive their weekly pocket-money with the intention that one day they might learn how to cope with money. And, just as parents usually do not make plans that their children will one day participate equally in the distribution of the family income, managers do not hope that their participative tools will lead to radically different forms of profit sharing with the workers. At this point it becomes obvious that the technical-rational metamyth of management and the infantilization of the worker, which might result in a position of schizoid withdrawal, are collusive and interdependent. The rationalization inherent in the managerial metamyth as a psycho-social mechanism of denying a more complex reality to one's inner world corresponds with schizoid withdrawal by many workers in so far as both these processes are based on splitting and diabolization at the individual level. To the extent that the respective diabolization of both managers and workers are maintained and reinforced through reciprocal processes of projection and introjection, managers and workers mutually sustain an equilibrium whereby they relate in a limited fashion, way below their capacity as adult men and women. From this perspective, each step towards participation in an industrial enterprise has to confirm the experienced reality according to which some are supermen and the remainder are 'Untermenschen' - the German word used in the Third Reich to discriminate all those not belonging to the Aryan race. It sometimes seems if the only way by which managers and workers could establish a notion of participation would be for the former to conceive themselves as less than supermen to enable their counterparts to conceive themselves as men. But this attempt, or vision, would require a different kind of managerial metamyth which would include myth as an important element in any attempt at symbolization. For the majority of industrial enterprises Aktouf ((1985c), 16) is right when he claims that at present, "the systems of symbolic manifestations of 'management's love' and 'employee's love' appear to be mutually exclusive and irreconcilable".

Participation as a Collusive Quarrel

In contrast to the often very promising notion of participation as presented in the majority of our textbooks on management and organization, it would seem that participation is rather more an improbable dimension of contemporary work enterprises when viewed from the 'ideal metaphor' of a collusive quarrel. Whereas the predominant concern, in practice and in theory, seems to be to facilitate and improve the relationship between managers and workers so as to provide solutions to the basic industrial conflict, the emphasis in these considerations is on an analysis and exploration of the possible reasons why, despite its widespread propagation (cf. e.g. Sashkin (1984), (1986); Lawler (1986)), it is obviously so very difficult if not impossible to establish a participative working relationship among the parties involved in industrial enterprises. What has been described so far may seem over psychological, socio-psychological or even exclusively psycho-analytical to some readers, but I am convinced that the idea of regarding participation as a collusive quarrel, i.e. as an attempt to create and sustain a relationship of non-relatedness among managers and workers, gives us an important insight into its political implications which traditional managerial approaches do not seem to offer. What I mean by political implications is the dynamics and dimensions of how people, individuals and groups, in the process of 'managing' conflicts, either consciously or unconsciously influence each other and thus change or maintain a common social reality in accordance with their own expectations, desires and anxieties. In using the term 'politics' in this way I am referring to E. Miller ((1980), 41) who defines "the relations between two systems (as) ... political, where one system is consciously or unconsciously attempting, or is perceived as attempting, to impose its goals and values on another". From this point of view it would therefore appear that the majority of considerations on participation, despite the political effect they have of imposing managerial goals and values on the workers, really favour an a-political instrumentality. It has also become evident that the political dynamics underlying the expressed intent to promote participation in the sense of a policy of involvement and relatedness can be described as a political objective of non-involvment and non-relatedness (cf. Lawrence (1980b), 82 ff.). Referring to these double political dynamics in contemporary work enterprises, the politics of involvement and

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relatedness on the one side and those of non-involvement and non-relatedness on the other side, it becomes possible to work out a further dimension of the 'ideal metaphor' of collusive quarrel. What has been described as processes of symbolization and diabolization cannot just be expressed as the conjunction and disjunction through which individuals in enterprises, managers and workers alike, and their respective subsystems, management and the workforce, either integrate as systems within themselves a holistic notion of reality or dissociate themselves from it. We can see that it might also be referring to the politics to which these systems are consciously or unconsciously committed. It can therefore be stated that the collusive quarrel not only exists in management and the workforce, it is also a predominant factor in the politics each side is using to impose its goals and values on the other and simultaneously to defend itself against such an imposition. Participation as the attempt to symbolize a diabolized reality (of the inner and the outer world) appears as the collusive quarrel to enforce a common politic of relatedness by means of political strategies of non-relatedness. As such it often appears as if participation is a social illusion which either consumes enormous energy and causes endless frustration in the never-ending attempt to install it, or which finally turns the collusive quarrel into an ongoing battle reminiscent of the class struggle as we know it from the social reality of work in earlier phases of western industrialization. A third position admitting the enormous difficulties and the social improbability of participation and at the same time allowing further hope must appear totally unimaginable. To some extent a collusive quarrel of this kind can be said to be characterized by a basic assumption culture (Lawrence (1980b), 86; cf. Bion (1961)). The parties or groups involved in the diabolized symbolization attempt at participation "form, in Bion's terms, a basic assumption fight/flight group" (Lawrence (1980b), 86). Like any other basic assumption group a fight/flight group neither performs work on the task level of production nor on that of conflict regulation or solution. "Preoccupation with fight/flight leads the group to ignore other activities, or, if it cannot do this, to suppress them or run away from them" (Bion (1961), 64). Though I am quite aware that Bion originally developed the concept of basic assumptions with reference to small groups, there seems to be adequate reason to apply it to broader institutional contexts and their cultures. In comparison to the work done e.g. in an industrial enterprise, those basic assumptions that are also usually acted out are "typical of the earliest phases of mental life" (Bion (1961), 141). There are notable parallels between the notion of a collusive quarrel as developed here and the basic assumption fight/flight culture, as described by Bion: "The individual feels that in a group the welfare of the individual is a matter of secondary consideration - the group comes first, in flight the individual is abandoned; the paramount need is for the group to survive - not the individual" (Bion (1961), 64). "Flight offers an immediately available opportunity for expression of the emotion in the fight/flight group and therefore meets the demand for instantaneous satisfaction - therefore

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the group will fly. Alternatively, attack offers a similarly immediate outlet - then the group will fight" (ibid., 180). "In the fight/flight culture the reactions of the group throw into prominence the individual with paranoid trends" (ibid., 73). "The fight/flight group shows a total absence of recognition of understanding as a technique. All are opposed to development, which is itself dependent on understanding" (ibid., 160). "The fight/flight group expresses a sense of incapacity for understanding and the love without which understanding cannot exist" (ibid., 161). "The workgroup understands that particular use of symbols which is involved in communication; the basic assumption group does not... The 'language' of the basic assumption group lacks the precision and scope that is conferred by a capacity for the formation and use of symbols" (ibid., 185 f.; cf. DeBoard (1978), 40 f.).

The attempt to understand the relevance and the underlying issues of participation in contemporary work enterprises so far has led us to an understanding of participation as a mutual collusion between managers and workers which, despite its many collusive details, is part of an institutional fight and flight culture. This perspective has been partly derived from Bateson's (1972) concept of double-bind and from Bion's basic assumptions. Though both concepts refer to less complex social systems than organizations, it has been stated that the mutual collusion involved here operates to a high degree at an unconscious level. And it is this unconscious quality of the collusive process both parties are caught in which so often prevents the actors themselves from any further understanding as well as from any further attempts towards a mutually acceptable solution, i.e. towards more mature forms of participation. The institutionalized forms of participation developed in our enterprises to date, whatever the term they go by - codetermination, works council, social bargaining or shopfloor democracy - all appear from this viewpoint to be 'the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety' (Menzies (1970). This conceptualization of the issue of participation leads us to further questions as to the nature and the quality of these underlying anxieties. Referring to Melanie Klein's distinction between paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties, the fundamental fragmentation between management and workers which intensive projections and introjections permanently sustain and perpetuate, strongly suggests that the nature of anxieties related to participation is of the paranoid-schizoid kind. As Segal ((1973), 26) in her 'Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein' states: "The leading anxiety in the paranoid-schizoid position is that the persecutory object or objects will get inside the ego and overwhelm and annihiliate both the ideal object and the self. These features of the anxiety and object-relationships experienced during this phase of development led Melanie Klein to call it the paranoid-schizoid position, since the leading anxiety is paranoid, and the state of the ego and its objects is characterized by the splitting, which is schizoid."

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In her classic study of the nursing service at a general hospital, Menzies ((1970), 39 f.) describes the variety of defensive techniques nurses have established and use in their daily work with patients; she comes to the same conclusion: "In general, it may be postulated that resistance to social change is likely to be greatest in institutions whose social defence systems are dominated by primitive psychic defence mechanisms, those which have been collectively described by Melanie Klein as the paranoid-schizoid defences".

At this point I would like to briefly reiterate my own interest in the nature of participation in enterprises today. For me it has become quite clear that participation is not just a social fiction, but also a useful and even an unrenouncable fiction. The alternative is to chime in on the already voluble chorus and sing loud praise to the sole virtue of the creation of wealth. Taking participation to be an unrenouncable social fiction is pure romanticism or naivity, unless it evokes the necessity of elaborating and exploring the fictitious vision upon which it is based and the equally fictitious convictions that constrain and stifle all further steps towards this vision. To indicate here only briefly what I intend to elaborate more extensively in the following chapters of this second part, my idea of holding on to the fiction of participation is based on the belief that those who intend taking a greater risk towards participation in contemporary work enterprises, i.e. those who really try hard to make this dream come true, need to become more aware of their own and of their counterpart's mortality; the never-ending human dream of immortality contradicts any participation attempt; it either reconfirms its illusive character or degrades it into a tool of oppression. Before further elaborating the hypothesis that what is predominantly called participation in our industrial enterprises ought to be primarily understood as a collusive quarrel about immortality, it is important to look into the metaphor of a collusive quarrel in some more detail. Considering the dissonance and confusion connected with any attempt to install or to increase participation in an already existing enterprise and the often long standing history of mutual contempt related to the issue, it might seem reasonable to assume that the chances for participation would be better in a new plant where the majority of employees have been newly recruited. A new venture of this kind might give further hope for the creation of mature relations between workers and managers, if its founders make use of insights from the social sciences as e.g. offered by the socio-technical approach, open systems planning or organization development. Our experience as a group of researchers (Sievers et al. (1981)) working on a greenfield-site project was that the original enthusiasm for more mature forms of participation which accompanied initial investigation of the setting up process of new factories or plants built by various companies soon died. In one particular case of an international American company which over the years had developed quite a tradition in setting up new works in various countries

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with a comparatively high level of employee participation, we were faced with what we called a participative dilemma resulting from the fact that the intended profit and flexibility of a new plant "aimed for by management could only be accomplished through the collaboration and commitment of all the workers and so their participation had to be won by management" (Sievers et al. (1981), 98 f.). Though the majority of the newly assigned managers felt convinced and challenged by the rather unique chance of creating something new and developing an organizational design primarily based on the participation and collaboration of all employees, participation nevertheless seemed as time went on to become increasingly instrumental and more of an end in itself. The internal dialogue between managers and workers about participation can be imagined somehow as if management, at an unspoken level, was saying to the workers: "We do need your involvment to accomplish our task successfully. We also are pretty sure that we can't get it without you feeling involved. But since we will get scared the more you really are involved, we would prefer to make you feel that you are being involved, instead of actually involving you. You must know, we don't feel good about it. But if we were to seriously involve you, we would feel even worse!" (Sievers et al. (1981), 99)

Whereas the answer of the workers, equally unspoken, may have sounded like: "Based on our own experience as workers we are used to being cheated by management tricks for a long time now. We were promised again and again that certain alterations would pay off as an advantage to us, but we have very often had the experience that in the long run we really can't trust management. We are even aware that this time you seem to be somehow taking your efforts more seriously than we are used to, but we still doubt how far your bosses really will allow you to let us be involved. In the short run we may even be happier and more satisfied if we buy into it, but who can guarantee us that in the end, when we are confronted with further restrictions and the disillusionment of our hopes, we are not even more unhappy and disappointed than now." - In the particular circumstances of the case at hand, this hunch was eventually confirmed when the plant, despite its high performance and efficiency, was shut down fifteen years later because of uneconomic shipping costs in relation to the developing European market. As far as our case material of this particular plant is concerned we were quite aware that "this instrumentalist notion of participation can lead to the temptation on the part of management of avoiding the necessary search, negotiation, anxiety, learning and educational processes that more mature forms of participation would afford and therefore substituting real participation with giving the workers the mere feeling and impression of participating. Instead of involving workers in essential decisions, management seem very often to have tried to limit the extent of the workers' involvement merely to aspects of procedure" (Sievers et al. (1981), 99).

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For another newly set up plant of the same international company in the U.S. Elden ((1975), 3), who for some time was involved in it as a consultant, came to the conclusion that "there was a clear inverse relation between the importance of a decision to keeping the lines running and the degree of work autonomy (compared to management's) in making that decision. The more weighty a production decision the less weighty worker participation in that decision compared to management participation."

Reviewing these cases, we, as a group of researchers and consultants, drew the conclusion that participation "rather was installed as a management tool or given away as a gift from management to the workers". That participation "in essence was a managerial strategy to attain the goals of humanization instead of democratization" and that "this underlying and probably unconscious orientation towards participation may have had an impact on the extent of the workers' involvement". The involvement from both sides seems to a certain degree to have been immature, "because they could not deal very deeply with the underlying political processes of participation" (Sievers et al. (1981), 99 f.). Our research as well as other experience I have had as a consultant in organizational change and development projects indicate to me that participation, particularly in industrial enterprises, is primarily regarded in relation to humanization rather than democratization. Despite the often repeated phrase of a 'democratization of work' (cf. e.g. van Beinum (1986), 7) it seems to me that the political dimension of participation it encompasses either has to be neglected or carefully restricted to the dimension of work in an enterprise. An additional 'democratization of management' would ultimately question the ownership rights legitimated by our capitalist based economy. Emphasizing humanization instead of democratization seems to reconfirm the politics of non-involvement described above in so far as the predominant use of the term 'humanization' seems to be based on the individual and, therefore, to reconfirm the notion of "an isolated monad, a sealed ' s e l f , and then perhaps, at a higher level of generality, the isolated human being" (Elias (1985), 53). The predominant notion of humanization, promising the individual less painful working conditions and a higher degree of self-fulfilment, seems to confirm the underlying capitalist legitimation in the same way as it is the individual owner or shareholder who is ultimately supposed to profit from his invested money. It is the individual employee and the individual worker, in particular, who is supposed to gain from participation as a tool of humanization. Through the underlying individualization, the conviction is reconfirmed that humanization and, connected to it, meaning, can be realized without any further notion of relatedness. Since, however, the realization of the core mission of a work enterprise requires at least a minimum of coordination among individuals in general and among those assigned as managers and workers in particular, participation has to be propagated and enforced as a means providing the necessary relatedness among otherwise isolated human beings. The fact

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that social science literature seems to be preoccupied with questions of employee satisfaction and productivity, as e.g. Lischeron and Wall (1975) noted, need not, therefore, astonish. Making better satisfaction of the needs of the individual worker, the aim of the humanization of work can mean that higher productivity and effectivity is legitimated andoperationalized (cf. Holler (1983), 111). Participation, as offered to the workers by management, becomes a means of satisfying the former in order that they then work more efficiently - thereby finally satisfying management in their wish to be regarded as efficient and successful by the enterprise's owner(s) who hired them. It seems to me that the notion of humanization as a management tool is founded on the Promethian desire to be deeply concerned about those who - both in Greek mythology and metaphorically in contemporary enterprises - share the fate of the ephemerals, i.e. those who in the eyes of the most powerful of the gods primarily struggle for their existence only to be ultimately destroyed, raped or annihilated. According to Greek mythology it was Prometheus, one of the Titanes, who created mankind. Zeus once decided to exterminate the human race because he had become envious of the increased power and competence achieved by the mortals and he only saved them in response to the fervent supplications of Prometheus (Ranke-Graves (1984), 128; cf. Kerényi (1946)). Prometheus was also the one who stole fire and donated it to mankind, after Zeus had decided to withold it. Prometheus failed in his attempt to keep evil from mankind. The box which he had given to his brother Epimetheus and which contained age, labours, sickness, madness, depravity and passions was opened by Pandora, Epimetheus' wife. Prometheus can be seen as the symbolic figure of a high concern for mankind; his activities can be described in our terms as oriented at the humanization of mankind. Despite his painful fate, he represents the immortal god to whom mankind is indebted for its subsistence. It seems to me to be exactly this feeling of potency and generosity which managers unconsciously desire when they claim to be seriously concerned with the humanization of work, their efforts soon, in the majority of cases, exclude the necessity of improving their own fate and can thus be seen as a gift donated to their workers. The fact that humanization, as it is increasingly propagated e.g. by quality of work programs, has become more or less a kind of moral obligation, cannot obscure the fact that management sharing their concern may consider itself to be on friendly terms with the workers. As long as the latter don't overemphasize their concern, they protect themselves against a Zeus who might become suspicious of their increasing power and competence. This kind of concern for humanization raises the feeling of superiority and generosity on management's side, at least as long as it is not regarded as a mutual concern of managers and workers that might ultimately improve their common working and living conditions. It is this feeling of superiority and dominance that seems to prevent management from more serious attempts at democratization and which, as

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Winnicott (1950) writes, is based on the assumption that potentially all people are capable of being mature. To be concerned for more democratization in industrial enterprises, therefore, would force management into the unenviable position of being nothing more than equal to the workers. Confronted with the choice of either humanization or democratization of an industrial enterprise, management leaves no doubt in its choice for humanization that all men are indeed equal; but it also unspokenly reconfirms that some are more so than others. On the other side, however, as long as this inherent 'betrayal' remains socially unconscious, or, to use Orwell's expression from 'Animal Farm', as long as it does not become obvious that some of the pigs actually are walking on their hind legs, managerial support of humanization really does give the workers the impression or even the conviction that "care is provided by management" (Lawrence (1980b), 83). A management which seems to be caring for the workers and the improvement of their fate not only nurtures dependency phantasies and needs of the workers; it also tends to raise their gratitude if they buy into it or confronts them with feelings of guilt if they decide to refuse to accept their humanization as a gift from management. From a broader, more historical perspective, the refusal of managerial gifts of this kind must not be primarily understood as an expression of the workers' ingratitude. The long and often hard struggle in which workers and their representatives persistently and often painfully fought for every step of improvement in their working conditions and the bitterly won liberation from a slave-like existence imposed by capitalist and paternalist entrepreneurs and their handymen make the refusual to comply to management's conception of their humanization understandable, it being the only possibility of collectively saving their own self-regard and esteem. To accept humanization, i.e. the improvement of their working conditions as a gift from management, would also mean for the workers to betray those who have spent their whole lifetime, or have even lost their lives, in fighting for their own and their successors' liberation from capitalist slavery.

Participation as a Quarrel about Immortality

As has already been indicated in this chapter in dealing with participation, the underlying hypothesis here is that the mutual collusion in which both sides, managers and workers, are permanently caught in their endeavour to achieve participation in contemporary work enterprises can neither be understood nor overcome unless it is interpreted in terms of its underlying basic dynamics and anxieties as a collusive quarrel about immortality. Although the longing for immortality is as old as mankind itself and underlies as such all human effort at creating and maintaining culture (cf. Becker (1973), 96), it is quite astonishing that our contemporary organization theories and, more specifically, the increasing concern for organizational and corporate culture seem to mainly ignore the issue of immortality. This is even more surprising as our contemporary institutional and societal practice is full, not to say plastered, with our attempts to install immortality. After what has been stated in the first part on our common attempts to develop surrogates for meaning, one quite obvious explanation for the discrepancy is the fact that the underlying notion of death, too, has become more or less obsolete in western society. As the notion and the experience of death get lost, the fantasy of our own individual and collective immortality seems to grow as a logical consequence of this absence. It can be best proved if it is no longer questioned, but merely taken for granted. "Man reckons with immortality and thus forgets to reckon with death" (Kundera (1990), 97). Contrary to predominant organization theories, however, originating primarily from a psychoanalytic background, there is an increasing interest in mythology as well as in organizational symbolism to address and to question our individual and collective construction of immortality as an underlying and constituent dynamic of our social construction of reality. The scientifically relevant concern for immortality beyond theological discourse and related philosophical fields was, in the early development of psychoanalysis, primarily initiated by Rank, who was Freud's closest co-worker for twenty years before working as a psychoanalyst both in Paris and the U. S.. His ultimate deviation from Freudian orthodoxy led him to become a severe critic of the psychoanalytic movement. Rank's ideas were later revitalized, particularly by Becker ((1973), (1975)), and immortality as a topic is now (in the work of a few other authors such as e.g. Brown (1968), Campbell ((1968), (1973) and Dunne (1965), (1975)) gradually being integrated into

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some social scientists' attempts to understand and conceptualize organizations (cf. e.g. Denhardt (1981); Schwartz (1985)).

The Immortality of the Soul The significance the issue of human immortality has for Rank makes it appropriate to present his basic considerations in some detail. In face of the enormous knowledge and scholarship exhibited by his extensive writings, which have only been partly translated from the German, any such attempt must necessarily remain a brief sketch. What Rank tried to develop is a scientific attempt to understand mankind's belief in the soul as "delivered since primeval times through popular belief, religion and mythology" (Rank (1930), 1). Rank regards psychology as it was developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a mere derivate of mankind's belief in the soul. His concern can in my opinion be most accurately expressed by the title of his last book 'Beyond Psychology' which he completed shortly before his death in 1939 (Rank (1958), as well as by the subtitle of 'Seelenglaube und Psychologie' (Psychology and the Soul; Rank (1961)): 'An essential enquiry on the origin, development and the essence of the psychic' (Rank (1930)). Although Rank himself actually resisted using the concept of psychology for his own enquiry, the psychology he developed totally differs from the newer scientific and primarily cognitive psychology, including psychoanalysis, in its Freudian orientation. Rank was convinced that for the psychology of his time, and this still seems to be true for many contemporary mainstream approaches, the human soul simply did not exist any more. Psychology as such has manoeuvred itself into a curious position in which it on the one side has disclaimed the ancient belief in the existence of the soul although on the other side it continues this belief in soul through its interest in the I, the individual life of the soul (Rank (1930), 12 f.). The attempt of psychoanalysis, in particular, to save the notion of the human soul in its Freudian foundation on sexual drives can only be regarded as materialist (Rank (1930), 34). Such a psychology can be described as antipsychic because it destroys the belief in soul through its psychic consciousness (Rank (1930), 88), which primarily seems to be due to the fact that the apparent objective origin of modern psychology as a science is a manipulative one, in so far as it originated "from practical objectives with the aim of influencing and dominating one's fellow-creatures" (Rank (1930), 8). Rank himself is convinced that "psychology does not deal with facts but exclusively with ideologies which, as for instance the belief in soul, cannot at all be reduced to facts, but have to be treated as ideologies and which one has to attempt to understand as originating from a certain mentality, rather than explaining them from a certain reality" (Rank (1930), 93).

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Rank regards the soul as an ideology which itself is born from the belief in immortality and which, as it continously creates new ideologies, always and exclusively serves the continuation of the belief in soul (Rank (1930), 94). Contrary to what Rank sees as the predominant development of the scientific concern from the belief in soul into a doctrine of soul (Rank (1930), 76), he attempts to describe the path "which the belief in soul has taken through the sexual ages towards psychology" (Rank (1930), 64), "the development ... which the belief in the immortal soul had to make from its early beginnings in pre-animistic materialism till it finally flowed into scientific psychology" (Rank (1930), 75). This is not the proper setting in which to question in detail Rank's profound thoughts and thorough considerations with regard to our human belief in soul as it has developed since the beginning of mankind. I am, however, quite convinced that a broader description of his view would contribute towards a deeper understanding of our time, and its related attempts to conceptualize socially constructed reality and its ideological or mythical origin. Akin to Durkheim's attempt in his 'Les Formes Elémentaires de la Vie Réligieuse' (Durkheim (1981), Book 2, Ch. 8,327 ff.), which originally appeared in 1912, Rank attempts to elaborate the evolutionary development of man's belief in soul. As he had already stated in his earlier book 'The Double' (Rank (1925a), (1971)), the beginning of the development of the so-called belief in soul can be characterized through the total denial of death through the immortal soul. "The fact of dying and its denial through the individual brought the soul into the world" (Rank (1930), 16). In this time, which Rank ((1930), 85) describes as "the animistic times of individual belief in immortality" the soul was imagined quite materialistically as the double, the shadow or the mirror-image (Rank (1930), 15, 78) who or which was supposed to substitute man after his death in the sense of a quite real survival (Rank (1924), 189). Then, in the following ages, "the individual belief in immortality appears in the totem system as a collective belief in rebirth ... because of the social soul-collectivism" (Rank (1930), 77). This belief in immortality seems to have been determined by two different deaths, "one transducing to immortality, and a second one genuinely final", an idea which seems to have contributed to the institutionalization of the first taboo, the inhibition of killing (Rank (1930), 18). In its further development, the belief in the immortal soul changed from its totem connotation as the belief in the collective spirits into the mother as the representative of psychic immortality (Rank (1930), 25). In "matriarchy it was ... the idea of the embodied collective soul which found its expression in the role of the mother and the mother goddess (the all animating and nurturing mother earth)" (Rank (1930), 82). Rank ((1930), 84) calls the adjacent phase of the belief in soul 'the generative immortality ideology of the sexual ages'. This period is determined by the denial of death in that the father began to perceive himself as the ultimate begetter of his children and the sons, in particular, who became his successors. Through paternity and subsequent patriarchy, 'earthly individualism' was enforced. How

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difficult it was for men to accept such a fragile notion of individual immortality in comparison to the previous collective one is, according to Rank, indicated e.g. through the resistance of the father to his son as is seen in the ancient heromyth or in Cronus, who, by swallowing his children, attempted to regain his 'soul-material' through the incorporation of his sons (Rank (1930), 67 f.). The following phase, which Rank ((1930), 48) calls 'the Christian times of the child or the son', led to a spiritualization of the soul (Rank (1930), 78). The Christian God, symbolized by his reborn son, became the symbol of the immortal I (Rank (1930), 59 f.). Through Christianity, the previous social fatherindividualism was overturned. "The son took his place as the real heir - but rather than of the father, of individualism! The role and the function of the spiritual sole carrier moved from the mother to the son whom the sexual ages had awarded this high role because it was he who (through the medium of the mother) had received the soul of the father and had to pass it on in turn to his son" (Rank (1930), 82 f.). "It is in the Christian notion of the son that the soul for the first time receives its individual incorporation, whereas in matriarchy it found its collective and, in the notion of the father, its social representation" (Rank (1930), 83).

Through modern natural sciences the soul, and sexuality, were finally biologized (Rank (1930), 52 f.). This is the still reigning psychological age which is not only dominated by the attempt "to represent and to let the traditional soul symbols act in human gestalt but to clothe them in a human form, i.e. to make their not yet understood essence and actions plausible, to motivate and to explain them in such a way that we have to designate as psychological" (Rank (1930), 63).

It is from this perspective that Rank questions Freud's orthodox psychoanalysis. Rank, who in his early times "was the only one in the 'inner cirlce' of the founders of psychoanalysis who had no knowledge of medicine" and in whom Freud had invested so much for the purpose of his studies in social and cultural fields "for the range of psychoanalysis needed to be broadened" (Freund (1959), VI), succinctly summerizes his critique of psychoanalysis by stating: "Psychoanalysis is only in a minor part psychological cognition; in its main part, however, it is an interpretation of the old animistic soul values in the scientific terminology of the sexual ages" (Rank (1930), 92). Although the development of the belief in soul and the immortality ideology based on it is only outlined here, Rank's attempt at differentiating various epochs can be summarized in the following way: The bodily individualism of the shadow soul (1) leads to the psychic collectivism of the divine soul (2) which as it is overcome by the bodily collectivism of sexual procreation (3) finally is removed by psychic individualism (4). And closely connected with these different ages is an increasing abstraction of how immortality has been conceptualized and imagined: "First the body itself was supposed to be immortal, then the collective soul, later

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generative sexuality and finally the individual as well as collective work (science)" (Rank (1930), 188). At the same time, the place of the soul has been continuously dislocated. Whereas originally, in the animistic ages, the soul was believed to be in the blood or the breath, then in important organs such as liver or heart, it later, in the sexual ages, was located in the sexual organs or the sperma necessary for procreation, till in the psychological age, consciousness finally became the place of the soul. Although consciousness on the one hand has mediated man's knowledge about sexuality and procreation and about death, it has, on the other hand, become a kind of insurance against death. As Rank ((1930), 189 f.) states at the end of his 'Belief in Soul and Psychology', this "has led to the paradox that man especially regards himself as immortal in his fugitive consciousness, which extinguishes with his death, whereas he is convinced of the decrepitude and transitoriness of the body, which was imagined by the primitive to live eternally. Thus, the death which has been recognized by consciousness is denied by the individual self-consciousness."

To the extent that psychology is based on a consciousness which itself is nothing but the denial of individual death and mortality, immortality is the psychological creed of mankind (Rank (1930), 193). What Rank intended instead by his own work can best be expressed by what he wrote shortly before his death in 1939, he at that time being fully aware that his own life work was completed (Rank (1958), 16): "Man is born beyond psychology and he dies beyond it, but he can live beyond it only through vital experience of his own - in religious terms, through revelation, conversion or re-birth." Rank did not rest content with his severe critique of modern psychology and psychoanalysis. He described and elaborated his own view of how contemporary people, particularly men, try to cope with and to confirm their striving for immortality which, he is convinced, is an aspiration as old as mankind itself. In 1905, at the age of 21, Rank wrote 'Der Kiinstler' (The Artist) which was published two years later (Rank ((1925b), (1932), cf. (1959)). It was his first book and led him to make Freud's acquaintance; it is here that he extensively elaborated the belief in immortality as a precondition for creativity. In addition to what he calls the average man, Rank describes three different social patterns by which people in our times create their immortality in an attempt to avoid being overwhelmed by the inescapability of their death. These are the neurotic, the hero, and the artist. The 'Mr. Average Man' Rank occasionally refers to could easily be misunderstood to be used in a pejorative sense. "For the average man ... immortalization is achieved through participation in or identification with the creative cultural ideology of his time, be it religious, political, scientific or artistic" (Menaker (1982), 34; cf. Rank (1958), 117). "The average man uses his calling chiefly as a means to material existence, and psychically only so far as to enable him to feel himself

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a useful member of human society - more or less irrespective of what his calling is" (Rank (1959), 190). For the average man "his calling is (not) only a means of livelihood" (ibid.), he also, as far as the construction of his own identity and the outer reality are concerned, "has great difficulty in dealing with ideologies; he needs concrete personifications - in religion, for instance, or myths of leadership - and his preference for a definite concrete person is something that even such spiritual movements as Christianity cannot evade" (Rank (1959), 217).

Whereas Rank's concern for the average man would seem to be over-limited to the individual level of how he copes with adaptation and survival, Becker ((1973), 187) adds to this the social implications involved: "If we say that the average man narrows down 'just about right', we have to ask who this average man is. He may avoid the psychiatric clinic, but somebody around has to pay for it ... . Even if the average man lives in a kind of obliviousness of anxiety, it is because he has erected a massive wall of repressions to hide the problem of life and death. ... All through history it is the 'normal, average man' who, like locusts, have laid waste to the world in order to forget themselves."

As far as Rank's three social patterns or types are concerned, there is, first, the neurotic. Heavily influenced and, in Rank's ((1930), 34) terminology, misguided as a result of the annihilation of the soul by modern psychology, the neurotic suffers from a kind of overload of the internal psychic which, with the loss of its inherent belief in immortality, eventually self-destructs. The neurotic is caught in an inescapable bind. Excluded from the experience of love after the loss of a psychic (religion) and physical (sexuality) collectivity he has no choice other than to return from the individual belief in a soul of love to the primitive belief in himself, thereby missing the necessary naivity for such a belief. Through the loss of any collective belief in soul he can only choose a heroic gesture, relying exclusively on the immortality of the I, a 'solution' which finds its main expression in psychosis with its megalomania and its cosmic phantasies. In addition to the conflict between the ideologies of the individual and of collective immortality, neurosis also includes yet another implication: "Not only that he aspires to an individual religion i.e. immortality, the neurotic also represents the psychological type kat exochen, whose tormenting self- consciousness undermines his own deification and, therefore, rather than allowing a creative evaluation of the soul, only permits destructive interpretations of it" (Rank (1930), 97).

As Rank ((1959), 265) puts it on another occasion: "we have before us in the individual neurotic, as it were, the opposite of collective belief in the soul and immortality ideology - that is, instead of the more or less naively expressed wish for eternal life, as it appears today in collective ideologies, we find an apparent desire to die, one might almost say a wish for eternal death."

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For Rank ((1931), 131) neurotics are "men who are constantly killing themselves" in so far as through their predominance of the life fear they prevent themselves "from full expression in living, which would be death" (Rank (1959), 272). On the other hand, however, there is no doubt for Rank ((1958), 49) that "not unlike the fool at the courts of medieval rulers, the neurotic of our times reflects our own foolishness under the guise of his symptoms". If we are to follow Rank's thoughts and to develop them further, it seems to me, we must conclude that the neurotic is, to some extent, the product of the psychology which Rank so heavily criticized. In so far as psychology has become the institutionalization of the individualist, ahistoric, and non-societal interpretation of the individual, which is furthermore lacking any awareness of its own degeneration and limitations, it seems to me that those who have chosen to use their calling as a means for the maintenance and further development of such a science are somehow reconfirming and perpetuating their own neurosis by scientific means. To the extent that those 'psychological neurotics' primarily seem to legitimate and to use their cognitions and constructions to understand the other, which ultimately means to manipulate him, they can be described as 'obverse narcissists'. Contrary to the 'normal narcissist', to whom the prophecy of the mythical seer Teiresias - he "will live to a ripe old age, provided that he never knows himself!" - was as equally addressed as it was to Narcissus, the 'obverse narcissist' seems to survive as long as he, being the mirror-image of himself, never knows his own real face. As such the neurotic is preoccupied with his own consciousness and self-realization, which have become surrogates for what in previous times has been and often enough still today is regarded as man's soul. The neurotic thus has become the incarnation of the psychological man for whom his own psychology has become the only means to explain himself and his world. "The neurotic represents the individual who aims at self-preservation by restricting his experience" (Rank (1959), 148). He "has a bad relation to reality not because it is bad but because he wants to create it instead of using it" (Rank (1930), 126); he is the one "who has to erect all the barriers internally while avoiding the external real ones" (Rank (1930), 128). Faced with the choice between the fear of life and the fear of death, he has chosen the former, which ultimately places him in a paradoxical bind: in order not to live his life fully, which would mean to experience death, he ends up in a vita reducta, he becomes a living dead, not unlike the modern zombie (cf. Sievers (1990a)). In so far as the neurotic individually faces "the metaphysical problems of human existence", "he can be understood .. as a miscarried artist" (Rank (1959), 272). Contrary to the artist, philosopher, or scientist, however, he cannot find a constructive way to cope with these problems and, therefore, counters them with destructive means. The second type, the artist, is, in Rank's view, a social type who is effective in his attempt to gain immortality. In comparison to the hero, who may be thought of as the artist's spiritual double (Rank (1958), 97) and who has to make himself immortal through his often painful works, the artist gains immortality through his

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creativity. Mythologically, the hero "is constituted by a fusion of the two separate selves, the mortal and the immortal, in one and the same personality; he has, so to speak, absorbed his original double ... into a doubled self which has, as it were, two lives to spare" (Rank (1958), 95). The hero and the artist, about whom Rank wrote extensively on various occasions during his life, and in which writings he expresses quite fascinating views both in relation to the mythology of the hero and to a theory of art and creativity (cf. Rank (1909), (1925b), (1932), (1959)), have chosen "the perpetuation in the work produced", they are characterized by "a strong preponderance o f . . . the fear of death to production" (Rank (1959), 149). Rank's main concern is with creativity (cf. Menaker (1982), 29 ff.). He regards "the artist's creativity as the main most dramatic example of man's striving for self-expression, growth, and change" (Menaker (1982), 29). "The artist tries to protect himself from the transiency of experience by creating in some form a concretization of his personality, thereby immortalizing his mortal life" (Menaker (1982), 34; cf. Rank (1959), 139 f„ 145 f.). Akin to the hero, the artist is a type not only as old as mankind, but whose respective role has also changed in keeping with the predominant ideologies of man's belief in soul and immortality. Whereas in earlier times the role of the artist was related to religion as "the collective ideology par excellence" (Rank (1959), 122) because he was the one who made the abstract concrete, it somehow appears as if in our present time his role has to be more that of making the concrete abstract, i.e. to mediate the idea, originally for himself, and hopefully in the result for his contemporaries too, that there are other realities beyond present psychology and the universally accepted neurotic notion of an individualist consciousness, with its various reifications. Referring back again to the conceptualization presented above, the artist can be seen as one who in his individual personal way tries to symbolize a broader reality than the reduced and diabolized reality that has become the exclusive concern of psychology and the neurotic type. This kind of concretization of the abstract cannot only be accomplished through what is known in contemporary art as 'abstract art', it can be equally well expressed through art which appears at first to be 'concrete' or 'realistic'. Coming back to Rank and his understanding of the artist, a further difference to the neurotic seems to be important. Whereas the latter in his individualist attempt tries to immortalize himself, personally breaking with any relation to the collective, "the work of art... immortalizes the artist ideologically" (Rank (1959), 148) as well as collectively, in so far as through his productivity he "replaces ... the originally religious ideology by a social value"; he "also secures to the community a future life in the collective elements of the work" (ibid.). The creativity of the artist further becomes evident as he is "an individual who is unable or unwilling to adopt the dominant immortality-ideology of his age - whether religious, social or other - and that, not because it differs ideologically

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from his own, but because it is collective, whereas what he aspires to is an individual immortality ... The artist obtains his individual immortality by using the collective ideology for his personal creativity and, in this way, not only re-creates it as his own, but presents it to humanity as a new collective ideology on an individual basis. Thus he himself becomes immortal along with his work" (Rank (1959), 169).

One may object that Rank's view appears too idealistic, especially if one e.g. considers those artists and their work who became the court-artists of the Nazis or the heroes of socialist ideologies. Rank's 'Art and Artist' was published before most of the creative German artists were labeled by the Nazis as 'degenerate', and does not explicitly refer to this particular period. The officially accepted artists of this kind seem to have identified themselves so deeply with the predominant collective immortality ideology that they have given up any attempt at aspiring to an individual immortality going beyond the predominant collective mouthpieces they have reduced themselves to. In so far as it is more the work and its accomplishment that finally counts for these artists rather than their own personality, they resemble the type of hero they were often regarded as in the totalitarian systems they served (cf. Rank (1958), 101). Akin to the way Rank in later life critized psychoanalysis, it can be said that these artists helped reduce ancient symbolizations of the belief in soul into individualized concrete human images; they attempted to humanize art in a socially neurotic way. These artistic attempts can somehow be described as instant immortalizations in so far as their artists aimed at achieving fame for their works rather than success in the sense Rank ((1959), 218 f.) refers to: "I should like to refer success to the living and fame to the dead, or, more loosely, to understand by success something which means something actual to the creative artist - I do not mean merely material gain - whereas fame, like work itself, has a more ideological significance and concerns the work rather than the artist ... Fame, which we have taken as a collective continuation of the artistic creative process, is not always, certainly not necessarily, connected with the greatness of a work; it often attaches to an achievement whose chief merit is not its high quality, but some imposing characteristic, sensational either in itself or in its topical circumstances."

In comparison to artists, who seem to be more concerned with social approval by contemporaries and the predominant collective immortality ideology, the creative artist is primarily concerned with his own ego; the artist is his own calling which he needs for his spiritual existence (Rank (1959), 190). "The creative type nominates itself at once as an artist" (Rank (1959), 189). "The appointment of the artist by himself as artist" is, as Menaker ((1982), 35) writes, "an act which reflects one's individuation, one's emergence from the matrix of childhood dependency. It is the precondition in the average individual for the creation of a mature, separate personality, and for the creative artistic personality it is the first productive work. The subsequent works of the artist are in part repeated expressions of this primal creation and in part justifications of it through the dynamism of work."

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"Out of the individual's mortality-immortality conflict" the creative artist finds his own way "between individuality and collectivity" (Menaker (1982), 32). As such he is for Rank a symbol of the creative person, regardless of whether his calling is in art, poetry, philosophy or science; an example of the creative process through which a person creates himself, affirms his own will and assumes responsibility for his own being, as well as for his acts. Last but not least, the artist has always been a symbol for Rank himself. He, as Menaker (1982), 38 f.) put it, "turned his fear of death and his struggle with life into a creative act, first through the creation of his own personality and ultimately the creation of his psychology of creativity and of the will." "The creative type, in dealing with his fundamental problem of the Self, achieves his personal justification by performing his cultural function - to revive the spiritual values of irrational forces for his generation and thus promote their continuity" (Rank (1958), 77).

The attempt to understand Rank's thoughts and work on immortality creates a curious dilemma. If one shares Rank's view that belief in immortality and, particularly, in the immortal soul is nothing but a fiction, an ideology which mankind has created and sustained because it cannot face the reality of death, it then only seems logical to follow, as an example, Weil's ((1979), 58) demand that "we must leave to one side the belief which fills voids and sweetens what is bitter: the belief in immortality". But wouldn't that also mean giving up any belief in man's soul which, according to Rank, is an ideology born out of the belief in immortality and which, through the continuous creation of further ideologies, perpetuates itself? Would renunciation of the soul not ultimately reduce the individual and collective attempt at understanding the meaning of life to the position in which Rank placed today's psychology? That position is, again, that modern psychology has, on the one hand, given up belief in soul and, on the other hand, substituted it with psychic consciousness, thus leading to the paradox that the "consciousness which extinguishes with the individual's death" (Rank (1930), 189) at the same time is regarded by the individual as the containment and guarantee of his immortality. To abandon the notion of a soul puts one into the situation of the neurotic who, since he cannot link himself to any collective ideology, ultimately kills himself via deification. It seems as if the abandonment of the soul not only reduces man to a materialistic entity without access to metaphysical dimensions, he also seems to loose the ability to relate to others by any other means than physically. This lack of relatedness further means that without any notion of a transcending soul, man cannot accomplish his own individuation, i.e. his creation as a mature person and personality. "We must, therefore", as Menaker ((1982), 5), one of Rank's biographers, put it, "believe that there exists a spiritual dimension - be it actual or illusory - for it is this belief, this faith, that sustains us and gives meaning to our existence".

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What Menaker formulates can be further developed when related to some of the thoughts I have already referred to in the first part. As Lawrence ((1983), 36) stated, "it is important to discriminate between those systems of meaning which are designed to open up the creative possibilities of living and those which, in effect, delimit the choices available to individuals." Having such a choice, we also have to replace those "systems of meaning which are more about defending against the anxiety of living ... with more constructive alternatives" (Lawrence (1983), 47). For me there can be no doubt that in order to take life seriously "we have to include death in our thinking as an absolute impediment, as consciousnes of finiteness" (Ziegler (1982), 319); we therefore have to give up the belief, as old as mankind, that we can individually or collectively accomplish immortality. Whereas belief in immortality is a defense against the anxiety of living, I am nevertheless convinced that the soul is a meaningful concept man cannot renunciate in the attempt "to open up the creative possibilities of living" (Lawrence (1983), 36). As Lawrence ((1986c), 3) writes on another occasion: "L'âme, n'est-ce pas la capacité qu'à l'esprit d'être conscient de soi et de réfléchir sur soi? Elle est la source primordiale de la subjectivité. Nous lui sommes redevables de concevoir nos responsabilités et de reconnaître volontiers l'autorité des valeurs morales. Il ne s'agit pas seulement d'avoir le sens du 'bien' et du 'mal', mais de permettre aussi à d'autres d'en juger, de se situer vis-à-vis des autres. L'âme nous aide a évaluer nos propres actions et à distinguer parmi les actes possibles ceux qui peuvent être créateurs de ceux qui peuvent être déstructeurs. Elle est aussi pour beaucoup une possibilité d'acceder à une forme de transcendance et d'en accepter ce qu'elle implique d'exigences et d'espoirs. En ayant refoule l'âme, nous nous sommes privés de la faculté d'étonnement radical. Une âme vivante, en état de surprise, serait attentive à l'existence de ce mauvais genie que constitute notre capacité d'auto-déstruction absolue ou notre orgueil de maitrise totale de la nature. Une âme en état de surprise ne pourrait accepter l'inhumanité de l'homme a l'égard de l'homme. L'âme, c'était aussi la faculté d'émerveillement, de modestie, de respect et d'admiration devant l'univers, la capacité de songer à ce qui se dissimule derrière la perception des faits et celle de rester ouvert au doute et au mystère. L'âme nourrit une vérité qui se cherche."

There can be no doubt that a notion of the soul of this kind is not only beyond psychology, but also beyond most of contemporary science. But if we as men and women want to live beyond science (cf. Rank ( 1958), 16), we have no choice other than to select our concepts and myths in such a way that they give meaning to our experience and the lives they are based on. In addition to self-consciousness, the concept of the soul thus includes man's capacity of relatedness, transcendence and of giving meaning both to his respective actions and to his life; man's soul represents the spiritual and the numinous; as such it is the container of the irrational and non-rational, which are constituent dimensions of human existence.

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But how then is it possible to retain the notion of the soul and to abandon the myth of one's immortality, be it individual or collective, since the soul itself, according to Rank, is an expression of the immortality ideology? Wrong would be to answer that belief in soul is, based on the creative possibilities of living out these myths provide, a right myth, and that belief in immortality is a wrong myth. This is simply inadequate, at least as far as Rank's thoughts are concerned, because he closely linked creativity with the artist's potential to establish his own immortality. At the same time, however, he leaves no doubt that this belief or ideology is a process of self-deception (Rank (1936); cf. Becker (1973), 189). The ability of the artist to create new illusions is thus based on the ancient illusion of immortality which he again has to create and sustain for himself. Schwartz ((1985), 35 f.), in his attempt at understanding the paradox and tragic elements which obviously seem to be a part of any cultural system, refers to the underlying process of symbolization by stating: "Humans abandon their organic identity, which, in a way, is the only one that is uniquely their own, and adopt a symbolic identity. Indeed, they feel their organic identity, because of its vulnerability and finitude, and exchange it for a chance at immortality. But the immortality, even if achieved, attaches not to the person but to the symbol. People simply cannot avoid their animal nature. The ultimately inescapable knowledge of this provides the impetus to live in the constructed symbolic world."

Denhardt ((1981), 11 f.), alsorefering to Rank and Becker, makes a similar point. Through culture "we seek to achieve in a spiritual way that which we are unable to achieve in a physical way - an extension of our own potential and a connection between our individual lives and the life of the universe ... The major cultural institutions of our time may be read as primarily immortality symbols."

The question can be raised as to whether the soul itself both as at present conceptualized and in the past is nothing but a symbol for immortality or, more precisely, for man's deep desire to be or to become immortal. If this is the case, it does not mean that the person is immortal; "the immortality ... attaches ... to the symbol" (Schwartz (1985), 36). This would mean that the soul is itself a cultural symbolization through which man in his various concretizations through history tries to relate the limitedness and finitude of his (bodily) existence to eternity as well as to his predecessors and successors. As this transcending capacity, in so far as man's individual or collective past is concerned, is only possible to a limited extent through the vivid memory of one's own experience, it can, to the larger extent, be realized through relatedness to symbolizations, be they works of art, oral traditions, written texts or various other cultural artifacts (cf. Gagliardi (1990); Sievers (1990b)). A similar phenomenon seems to be the case if living men try to imagine their own immortality as not being founded on a further belief in God: Through the memory of their successors and through the spiritual and/or physical artifacts men have transmitted or created during their own lifetime that they - in

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an anticipated accomplished future, i.e. "retrospectively, as if it had already been completed" (Schwartz (1985), 34) - (hopefully) may be remembered and maintained in the lives of others. In so far as the soul, as man's immortality symbol, which exists beyond his own physical death, can be 'realized' or, so to speak, kept alive through symbolizations of his previous existence or the memories of others, the soul can be regarded as a reflexive symbol or a metasymbol. A s such, the soul can be seen as the symbolic representation of man's hope for eternal presence. But to regard man's and, therefore, one's own soul as the (meta-)symbolic representation of the totality one believes to be in one's own personality, to regard the soul, as Durkheim ((1981), 368) put it, "as the symbolic expression of the personality", places belief in immortality on very shaky grounds. In comparison to the ancient notion of man's soul as a double, a kind of 'blessed clone', images like this of the soul confront man with a high degree of insecurity and raise fundamental doubts as to his immortality. Contrary to the Christian tradition, in which man's immortality ultimately depends on God in that He is the one who decides on eternal redemption or damnation, the symbolic consideration of the soul presented here makes man in his desire for immortality heavily dependent on his successors (cf. Sievers (1989b)). From his own life, partly from his conscious experience, partly unconsciously, he realizes that there are countless others both among his contemporaries as well as among his predecessors who are not remembered individually by anybody. To imagine that this could be his fate, too, must appear deeply mortifying to him, because it confronts him with the possibility that with his death he might finally die - not only his body, but his soul, too. It is in this respect that the artist and the hero, as Rank described them, can be seen and understood. Driven by the fear that they may both phyisically and symbolically die, they set up their lives in such a way as to create and to see their own immortality. They are often seen to externalize and to materialize what is inside them in order to produce the works that are intended to survive them. They are driven by the illusion that if their works become symbols of immortality, they will have a part in that immortality. Through the creation of their symbolic artifacts, the artist, in particular, intends to produce not only the basis of his success and reputation vis-a-vis his contemporaries, but also the sources of the fame that remains or even increases after his death. Since he is able to influence the probability of his immortality through his own creativity and production, the artist may appear to be more autonomous and independent of others. Even when he is not successful in the eyes of his living contemporaries, he may still rely on a later postmortal fame, thus sharing the fate of many of his artistic predecessors. On the other hand, however, success and fame, as Rank ((1959), 226) put it, "make him once more a collective being, take him from his divine creative role and make him human again - in a word, make him mortal. However much he may like to return to earth and become human, he cannot do it at the price of his own immortality; and the paradox of the thing consists in the fact that success and fame, which make him collectively immortal, make him personally human once more and restore him to mortality. His work

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is taken from him by the community, as the child is taken from its parents, and in place of it he receives his title to fame, rewarded like a mother by a state hungry for soldiers. The artist, too, looks for his reward, but he hopes to return by his success to life, whereas fame condemns him often enough to spiritual death."

Questioning the belief in immortality and encouraging its renunciation while at the same time retaining the notion of the soul (both as the symbolic link between the individual and the collective part of the personality and as the symbolic bond between finitude and eternity) seems to offer a further key to understanding contemporary man's illusory struggle to give meaning to his existence. Attaching the immortality not to the individual person's physical body or self-consciousness, but to the soul as a symbol, opens a different dimension which will be further elaborated in the following parts. The notion of objectification, akin to diabolization, refers to man's inability to construct and to endure his living world in a symbolic sense. As will be stated more extensively in the next part, objectification can be understood in a double sense: as reification it means the materialization of either the inner or the outer world; as deification it is the attempt to idealize either oneself or others. Both reification and deification can be considered to be based on processes designed to annihilate death: the former through the non-mortality of thinghood and the latter through the immortality of divinity. From this perspective the artist in Rank's sense reduces in his attempt to gain immortality the symbolic dimension of life via deification. Equally, this is the way the hero acts through "a new religion of immortality", as it originated in the ancient Greek mythology: "the deification of the hero, who, being himself immortal, successfully competed with the Gods" (Rank (1958), 98 f.). There can be no doubt that Rank, in working out the individual and collective dynamics of cultural creativity and its underlying 'management of illusions', has made an important contribution to our understanding of man and his soul. Although he does not deal with Bertold Brecht's question - "When Hannibal crossed the Alps, wasn't he accompanied by his cooks and his soldiers?" - Rank ((1958), 117) seems to be accurate when he writes: "At any rate, what strikes us as important is the realization that even all the real achievements which we sum up as 'culture' have been accomplished by deviants, that is, by personalities who were either above normal or in any case outside the realm of the average. The average type shares the spiritual values of civilization only through a kind of vicarious participation, whereas the really creative type - be it hero, artist or scientist - falls a victim to his own creation for which he has to sacrifice himself in one way or another."

What seems, however, to be missing so far is the fact that these images of the creative personality, and particularly the role of the hero, are mainly idealized projections of men in their early adulthood. Their obsession with the illusion of individual immortality thus has not yet been confronted with the experience of either their own or relevant others' mortality. It is, as will be shown in more detail in the third part, this experience of death which ultimately qualifies the hero in

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his search for immortality, heroic as it is represented, for instance, in the epical figures of Gilgamesh or Parzeval. What has also been neglected up to now is the reality that especially the hero, but to some extent the contemporary scientist, too, not only himself "falls a victim to his own creation for which he has to sacrifice in one way or the other" (Rank (1958), 117) but that the price for the creation of his own immortality illusion is often the death of countless others. Often enough, the monster to be killed is not just a dragon, as in St. George's legend (cf. Sievers (1990b)), but rather other men, who, either as aggressors, adversaries and enemies or as his supporting hosts, have to be annihilated or sacrificed by the hero. Too often in the history of mankind the self-creation of the hero, i.e. the attempt to produce individual immortality for his own as well as for collective immortality's sake has ended as tragically as, for example, in Hitler's Third Reich: in the megalomanic damnation to death of millions. Culture itself embodies a similar ambiguity. In so far as a culture, be it that of a group, an organization or a society, carries the function of the collective continuity and survival of the system, it is the symbolic incarnation of its members' collective immortality; an immortality which in itself is nothing but the illusion that a city, a state or an enterprise will last forever. As such, the cultural immortality illusion is the meta-illusion through which the belief in individual immortality is sustained and legitimized for the 'average man' and, to a considerable degree, for the creative type. The paradox function of such a culture is, however, that on the one hand it enables the reference to meaning, increases the possibilities of living, extends one's life and thus provides the possibilities of being; on the other hand it reduces the possibilities of its members of being human. If it is true that humanity necessarily presupposes the acknowledgement of mortality, culture, since every human attempt to create and maintain culture is based on the denial of death and mortality (cf. Becker (1973), 96), also entails a dehumanizing potential. Culture, therefore, not only means man's incarnation and humanization, but also his impediment and inhumanization (cf. Freud (1973)); it is through culture that man denies knowledge about himself and, because the acknowledgement of this knowledge would so deeply mortify him, he must permanently declare himself to be above-human, a kind of super-man (cf. Sievers (1992)). Culture thus offers an ego-ideal as well as the illusion of attaining it (cf. Schwartz (1986)). As this would seem to be true of any culture, a culture which places its main emphasis on youth and early adulthood must make it even more difficult for its individual members to question the predominant ideology of immortality. The image of youth thus becomes a further symbol of eternal youthfulness and to the extent that the creative type is either reduced to the 'juvenile hero' or to 'the artist as a young man', it would appear to be almost impossible in this kind of culture to establish and maintain any notion of maturity. The immaturity such a culture seems to favor and to perpetuate further enhances the possibility that men and women in their later adulthood might be able to reconcile for themselves the collective illusion of immortality with the individually experienced reality of mortality and to

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find their own creative answers vis-a-vis the predominant ideologies. In a culture dominated by the image of eternal youthfulness, the necessity for creativity seems to decrease; the more immortality is assured collectively, the less any individual person may question the premise and thus embark on creating it for himself. And, as a matter of fact, it seems that the function of creativity, or what in the population is increasingly regarded as such, has intensively changed. In comparison to previous times, in which creativity was more or less related to the creative personality, creativity today appears to be more and more linked to products and to the appeal given them by marketing and advertising. Not only that creativity has been increasingly defined as a human ability that can be induced by social techniques such as e.g. brain-storming or synectics, it also seems to be more intensely related than ever to products and their promotion. The immortality of the product is creatively produced, and, it might be added, it is through buying and possessing the products that individual immortality is produced for a vast majority of people. By no means the only, but obviously one of the best examples to demonstrate this immortalization through goods is the car industry. In face of the fact that car accidents have become one of the major causes of death in society, car producers have now begun to emphasize security aspects and the chances of survival. Some years ago Volvo, for example, ran a big advertisement campaign which showed a pregnant woman waiting behind a curtain for her husband to come home. Just recently Daimler-Benz, in a huge supplement to national newspapers, emphasized the enormous effort the company is putting into the future of mother earth. From what has been said so far about the guarantee and perpetuation of the immortality illusion through culture, it would be very astonishing if the denied mortality did not lead to further social as well as psychic dynamics. It can, therefore, be assumed that the mortality which the majority of the members of a culture of this kind cannot acknowledge for themselves has to be relocated elswhere, i.e. into those members of the respective group or organization who, from the point of view of their individual psychic disposition or from the predominant emotional division of labour, are prepared to embody it. Apart from those few mature individuals who for themselves can unite the knowledge of their own mortality with a creative cultural role, it would seem that in contemporary western societies women and old people are, in terms of their social roles, increasingly the target of an elsewhere disowned mortality; the corresponding psychic disposition is reserved to neurotic personalities who individually face and cope with the death fear resulting from human finitude. Since a culture is collectively unable to bear human mortality, and the anxieties related to it, i.e. its own social neurosis, this has to be individualized and personalized. To the extent that mortality, according to the predominant collective cultural ideology, is diabolized, i.e. split off from commonly shared symbolic representations, certain individuals become damned, so to speak, to a preoccupation with diabolized mortality. They become socially induced neurotics, who, as Becker

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((1973), 176 ff.) has indicated, then have to bear the burden of what others, the average man and the creative type alike, are not willing to carry. Since death and mortality collectively have become a nightmare, the awareness of human finitude is relocated in certain individuals who must consciously carry it. As the only ones to realize the meaning of human mortality, they also have to carry the brunt of its related anxiety. They become so preoccupied by their individual attempts at avoiding death that their capacity to relate to others and to participate in the world is reduced. "By killing off so much of himself and so large a spectrum of his action-world" the neurotic "is actually isolating and diminishing himself and becomes as though dead" (Becker (1973), 181, referring to Rank (1936)). As such the neurotic is faced with the difficult problem of representing for himself symbolically what has been diabolized on the social level. Similar to the creative type, the neurotic has to create his own symbols which, in comparison to the former, however, are not based on the believed illusion of immortality but on the great effort of avoiding the reality of death. In comparison to the creative, whose individually produced symbolifications may deliver the material for further collective symbolification processes, the neurotic is stuck to the private individuality of his symbols. The complexity and paradox nature of this neurotic attempt somehow equals the way in which, on a social dimension, participation can be understood. As I stated above, participation between managers and workers can be seen as the collective attempt at a symbolization of the diabolized outer world through a diabolization of the inner world. Forced by the diabolized outer world, in which mortality is collectively denied, the neurotic has to individually produce his own symbols in order to diabolize himself. Neurosis is thus the individual attempt at installing symbolization in the face of reflexive diabolization. As Becker ((1973), 183) puts it: "We can see that neurosis is par excellence the danger of a symbolic animal whose body is a problem to him." But, as he continues, "in this sense, everyone is neurotic, as everyone holds back from life in some ways and lets his symbolic world-view arrange things: this is what cultural morality is for" (Becker (1973), 183). Being preoccupied by the anxiety of death and the production of his defences against it, the neurotic, in comparison to the creative deviant, is the deviant who damns himself, because he cannot relate in a positive way to the strong unconscious desire in him that he, too, might ultimately be immortal. Mortified by the awareness of his mortality, he is only capable of terrifying himself. Given the creative and the neurotic as two extremes within which any attempt of the 'normal' man to live life sanely in the knowledge of his own death, it seems obvious that no single man or woman can totally give up the unconscious vision of his or her own immortality. Although it is much easier to say it than to live it, I believe that the only possibility to live one's life in any way creatively in awareness of one's own mortality is to hope that one will be remembered for some time by others through what (especially the work) one does and that one

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will not be overwhelmed by the mortification arising from the unrenouncable discrepancy between the conscious acknowledgement of one's mortality and the deep unconscious vision of one's immortality. "Living comfortably with the full consciousness of the inevitability of one's own death is", as Schwartz ((1985), 34) states "if not phenomenologically entirely impossible, at least incredibly difficult". In the light of these thoughts on the immortality of the soul, our concern with the participation of those involved in an industrial enterprise might seem to have got lost in more philosophical considerations. I am, however, convinced that these considerations are important in order to gain a deeper insight into what is meant by the underlying hypothesis that participation is a quarrel about immortality; they also raise important issues which will, later on, contribute to a deeper understanding of what leadership is all about. Whereas these reflections on immortality have up to now dealt with broader levels of the individual, society and culture, I would now like to look into the question of how men's illusionary longing for immortality is related to the enterprise and the work people accomplish there.

The Immortality of the Firm In previous times the Church was the predominant organizational representation of our collective western belief in immortality, and this was to some extent expressed in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the living and the dead as in various forms of worship. Our companies have to some extent taken over the spiritual and cultural function of confirming belief in immortality. The increasing size of many work enterprises, many of which now operate on a multinational basis, drives this point home all the more clearly. On a metaphorical level it could be postulated that the clerical hierarchy has been replaced by management. Chief executives take the roles formerly assigned to the episcopate, the college of cardinals and the pope (cf. Hopfl (1992)) and the host of saints has been substituted by outstanding pioneers, heroes and inventors. There is a great deal of evidence to indicate that for most of our contemporaries as, indeed, for ourselves, our secular institutions and, in particular, larger sized enterprises have taken over the function of the collective symbolification of survival, eternity and immortality. "Institutions ... are themselves structures through which to facilitate the sharing of images of immortalizing connectedness" (Lifton and Olson (1974), 88). "The major cultural institutions of our time may be read primarily as immortality symbols" (Denhardt (1981), 12). With increasing industrialization in the last century workshops grew into firms and became more established as a source of employment and products. The more they grew, the more they became institutions with their own identity. Especially with the beginning of mass production in the steel, chemical and electric in-

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dustries, new works were set up on a large scale. Like cities of the future, they exceeded by far the villages and quite often even the towns their employees came from. Several of these firms became empires, first in the national markets and soon later internationally, benefiting from the increasing demand of early industrialization and often supplemented by the colonial expansion policies of the respective national governments. Towards the end of the last century the majority of these firms had grown from craftmen's workshops to family owned businesses, mainly handed down by fathers to their sons, and in some cases, even spread out for capital investment reasons over the larger family. Only a minority of these enterprises were originally founded collectively by communities or as companies of shareholders like e.g. the gas and electricity works for public utilities, the long distance railroad or the 'Trusts' in the United States, which also lead to the invention of a new and different legal person: the corporation (Drucker (1987), 13). The more these firms grew and extended, the more the technology used and the less the needs of the workers determined the design of the factory. With very few exceptions there never was a problem hiring workers, even though these often had miserable working conditions. What really counted for the entrepreneurs of these early times was to recruit professionals, especially engineers, to develop, set up, extend and maintain the plants. These professionals, who, known in Germany as 'private servants' (Privatbeamte) in analogy to 'civil servants', were "reckoned to be the lackeys of employers and capitalists" (Pym (1980), 228). The welfare of employees, which originally had been a part of the workshop owner's patriarchal role toward 'his' workers, degenerated into a social image, and was increasingly concentrated in foundations. And the more the original workshop or small-scale factory was converted into a huge machine base determined by a fine division of labour, the more the individual worker lost sight of the whole. All this was, as Ruppert ((1983), 25) describes, governed by the basic conviction that "it would be possible to improve the conditions of living and the organization of work by one's own actions both in order to reach more individual happiness and to be able to experience the 'harmony' of a happy societal corporate life under improved conditions ... Thus the motivating demands for meaning meant: Improving the conditions of work and living is desirable on all levels; this requires considerations which make the utmost 'profit' recognizable and which thus permit effectivity and rationalization."

One can quite easily imagine the Promethean feelings and the fascination of the Utopian drive towards new frontiers and into the promised land experienced by early entrepreneurs, employers and investors as well as by the professional staff they employed. And, akin to the mythological figure of Prometheus, whose name means 'providence', these men must have felt the temptation to consider themselves gods. The fact that they often preserved their employees from starvation can only have heightened their sense of benevolent omnipotence. Various aspects can be examined to show how these enterprises became collective expressions of their members' belief in immortality. First, as far as family

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owned businesses are concerned, there is the notion of inheritance which, for those directly in the line of succession, quite literally symbolizes the desire for immortality. Akin to the inherited farm or an ancestral estate, the firm became yet a further version of the patrimony which is to be maintained and improved by the heir in order to pass it on again to his inheriting son (cf. Sievers (1989b). The more these enterprises grew and expanded over time the more they - similar to a principality or an empire - became symbols of eternity for the workers employed by them. Quite often they were repeating the dominant pattern of immortality demonstrated to them by their employers, i.e. the immortality ideology of the sexual ages in which, according to Rank's evolutionary psychology, the father incarnates the immortality of his soul in his son. In comparison to the enterprise or the company, which was the inheritance of the entrepreneur and employer, the gold watch somehow became the workers' symbol of immortality. As, for example, Donovan, the singer, delineates in his 'Goldwatch Blues' (cf. Sievers (1986), 91), "for fifty years of disciplined servitude to work, the enlightened employer gave to his employee an engraved gold watch" (Thompson (1967), 70) which was then usually passed on to his son and grandson who often also followed in the same footsteps. In so far as the individual belief in immortality was linked to the collective immortality of the firm, it did not matter too much for the worker whether the enterprise continued throughout time to still belong to the family of the original founder or not. Huge companies like Daimler-Benz, Krupp or Procter & Gamble demonstrate clearly that, once the symbolic links between a worker's and an entrepreneur's family were installed (in order to provide immortality), it no longer matters whether the real successors have meanwhile died or left the business; the worker was still working for the original employer's family and the survival of his patrimony. Where, as was often the case, whole communities, villages, towns or urban districts provided an enterprise with its workforce over generations, the collective immortality which the former represented was additionally guaranteed by the work enterprise and its owners. That this guarantee ultimately proved to be an illusion was often the painful experience of workers and families who suffered shutdown, bankruptcy and the displacement of whole plants and factories. In other cases, however, the early enterprises extended over the generations to such an extent that they themselves became the nucleus of a city or a whole industrial area; occasionally, as e.g. Volkswagen at Wolfsburg or Pullman's railway company in the U.S., enterprise and city were almost identical. Furthermore, these huge enterprises have since the latter part of the last century largely assumed the function of an ancient city. They have the physical appearance of a city, like ancient cities or political empires; they also became the source of myth and phantasy relating to eternity. As Dunne ((1968), 94) put it, "it is a regular thing for empires to be deluded with a 'mirage of immortality' to imagine themselves destined to endure forever on earth". Like the city for its citizens and for the surrounding

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people, the work enterprise became "the essential symbol of civilized stability" (Rank (1958), 90). As the predominant incarnation of modern man's belief in immortality, it would seem, however, that the work enterprise serves a different immortality function towards its employees than it does towards its founder and his successors. Whereas the latter often equals Rank's creative type of the hero to the extent that the founder and/or his immediate successor were often real entrepreneurs living for the realization of a certain idea and taking corresponding risks, the majority of employees are 'average men' doing their jobs and fulfilling their roles according to the expectations placed in them. It therefore seems as if the entrepreneur, akin to the artist and the hero, generates his own immortality individually, whereas the immortality of the worker is exclusively the outcome of his identification with the collective ideology. Although it is doubtlessly true that the first entrepreneurs, the original founders and owners, created their own individual immortality through their own work, they inescapably make themselves more dependent on others than is the case with the artist and even more so than with the hero. Besides the fact that an entrepreneur relies heavily on the people he has hired in order to make his dream come true, he is also obliged to rely on an earlier ideology of immortality. An enterprise only then affirms the notion of eternity if there is evidence that it will continue to exist for the following generations, i.e. that it is still later owned by a member of the founding family. The procreation of a son is, therefore, a further constituent prerequisite of the entrepreneur to establish his own immortality. In his attempt to produce his own immortality, the entrepreneur must integrate his creativity and his procreativity. In comparison to the artist, who, at the end of his life, may die in the consciousness that through the creation of his works and its donation to the world he has produced his own individual immortality, the founder of an enterprise depends on the conviction that it is his soul, incarnated in his son as his successor, that lives on as the spiritual element of the enterprise. In his attempt at proving to himself and to his contemporaries that he is above average men, that he individually has a certain creative potential, the entrepreneur is forced to regress into the bodily collectivism of the sexual ages. The fact that in American enterprises, in particular, the founder was sometimes buried in the yard of his business premises or that he is often still kept alive in a sculpture or an oil-painting seems, as far as the spiritual attempt at establishing immortality is concerned, to be related to an even earlier matriarchal immortality ideology. "Prehistoric burial rites clearly indicate that the most primitive idea of a tomb for the dead was a housing for his soul - a replica of the maternal womb from which he was to be reborn" (Rank (1958), 90). As such the entrepreneur by being buried in the heart of his creation or by hanging on the wall of the sanctissimum of the firm returns into the bosom of the great mother from which his soul derived. On a symbolic level, it is the repetition of the pieta, the womb of the mother into which the dead body of the son returns. In this context, it is interesting that in Japan, i.e. in a quite different cultural context from the western

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tradition, it is the custom in some of the larger corporations to bury employees on a company owned graveyard as well as to take care of their graves, somehow giving the impression of eternal belonging. Rank's thoughts on the foundation of cities add a further important aspect to the idea that the foundation of individual enterprises is an expression of men's desire to establish immortality. A s e.g. in the case of ancient Rome and the myth of Romulus and Remus, cities were in the primitive history of mankind often founded by twins (cf. Rank (1958), 88 ff.). Rank (1958, 92) believes "that the heroic type emerged from the cult of twins and the self-creative tendency symbolized in the magic meaning of twinship. As the twins appear to have created themselves independently of natural procreation, so they were believed to be able to create things which formerly did not exist in nature - that is, what is called culture." And, as a matter of fact, 'twins' played this role not only as the founders of ancient cities, but they also became the founders of enterprises which later developed in several cases into huge empires such as Daimler-Benz, Schuckert und Halske, Procter & Gamble or Hewlett-Packard. Contrary to the individual founder and entrepreneur, who had to install his own soul and immortality by setting up and developing his firm, the myth of twins is based on the idea that their immortality is derived from the mother; the creation of their heroic work can therefore be seen more as an affirmation of their immortality than as its production. A further difference between modern twin-founders of industrial enterprises and the individual entrepreneur was that, whereas the individual founder, as mentioned above, had to face the deep anxiety that his enterprise would die with him and, therefore, linked it to patriarchal procreation and inheritance, it seems that twins, less preoccupied as they were with procreational immortality, were able to put more effort into the institutionalization of their common work by developing a solid social and financial structure as the basis for the enterprise's growth and survival. Since, however, the quarreling of the twin brothers and the murder of one by the other is also a constituent part of the myth, the twin founders of an industrial enterprise may have had to face a dynamic fight from the very outset of their common effort to which the individual entrepreneur was less exposed, or only at a later phase, namely that he was, according to ancient mythology, to be killed by his son. What has been said so far about the immortality of the firm may give rise to some further important thoughts, reservations and new ideas; for many, however, it may appear as a rather academic concern which is far removed from everyday issues and the reality of contemporary work enterprises. This is in my experience not true. From working with people and organizations I have become convinced that the question of how an enterprise can confirm the (illusive) belief in its survival and eternalization either to single members or to all of them often becomes so centrally significant that the belief is defended by drastic means; and since it can neither be raised nor answered it has to be acted out. The individual or social

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crisis which may result from this process, confronts people, on occasions, with the existential question of their psychic and/or physical survival. It is above all in role-analysis, a type of discursive communication which allows people to explore the space between their role in an enterprise and their individuality on the one hand as well as between this role and the organization on the other hand (cf. Reed (1976); Weigand and Sievers (1985); Auer-Hunzinger and Sievers (1991)), that these dynamics are, in my experience, discovered. Although it is not an easy venture, it is always fascinating - and often quite releasing - to discover how a person's individual longing for immortality is not only loosely related to the collective ideology of the enterprise, but is often so deeply embroidered in it that this relationship causes a high amount of individual and social confusion, embarrassement and sometimes even madness. Take, for example, a founder's son, a young manager of a medium size company, who is severely caught by the 'twin-dynamic' he previously had not even been remotely aware of. On the day of his father's burial, the manager's cousin reminds him that 50 % of the company belonged to him and his father, the respective manager's uncle, and informed him that he intended changing the company's organizational structure with respect to ownership. The episode not only destroyed the young manager's dream of being the sole successor of an enterprise which he was convinced was exclusively set up by his father; it also lead to a re-writing and reinterpretation of the company's whole history. When his father had come back from the Second World War there was not enough business any more for him and his two brothers in the family-owned firm which had been founded by their grandfather. After it was decided that the oldest of the brothers take over the existing workshop, the middle brother set up a firm of his own. Although it was primarily his initiative that got the new business running, he took his younger brother in with him and, since the capital of the firm at that time was very low, he actually made him a formally equal partner. Over the next decades, as, through the initiative of the middle brother who was the entrepreneur type, the original workshop developed into a successful, internationally operating enterprise, the younger brother continued to work as a kind of supervisor, i.e. the one twin was symbolically killed, allowing the other to act as a creative hero. Although the founder was buried with the strong belief that he had established his individual immortality, his son was suddenly confronted with the embarassing insight that the image he had set up for himself of being the sole successor had failed and was only an illusion. The new situation must have seemed to him like having to share with a double what he had previously regarded as the exclusive source of his own individual immortality. The psychosomatic symptoms which he displayed until we disentangled this confusion were quite obvious: in confrontation with the third senior manager, who he and his cousin had recently recruited, he blushed, nearly lost his voice, and could not even swallow. In a similar situation, another young manager, who was supposed to take over the more than 125 years old enterprise from his father, got entangled in

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guilt feelings caused by his sincere desire to convert the business, owned by the broader family of aunts, uncles and cousins, into a shareholding company, the shares of which were not only to be owned by himself and the family but to some considerable extent by the employees, too. Only through extensive analysis of the collective immortality ideology of this company and of the different individual immortality patterns of the predecessing protagonists who had occupied the chief executive role as well as of his own phantasies and ideas about it, did it finally become possible to disentangle and explore the mythical cobweb and finally to allow him to design a potential top-manager role for himself. It thus became possible for him to avoid the apparent trap of the collective wish for a saviour by designing his own role in accordance with his own abilities. The recent merger of two enterprises operating in the same branch is another vivid example that led to my conviction that the various immortality beliefs, especially in turbulent times of innovation or crisis, may have a heavy impact on a company's future. They also seem to be particularly well concealed during these phases. Only after the merger contract between a larger German franchise company and a smaller chain-store company of the same branch had been signed did it became known to some of the employees of the newly integrated enterprise that the chain-stores, were no longer owned by the previous founder of the business under whose name they still existed, but that the larger part of them belonged to another major company whose main profit-making operations before the merger were concerned with the production of goods which were then sold in the chainstores. When it became obvious that the commonly shared belief in a merger between two family-owned enterprises, (both of which had been built up by two men who had each inherited from their fathers a local specialised store in different towns) was no longer true, the discovery caused such turbulence in the newly created company that the life-work of one of these men was actually destroyed and that of the other seriously damaged. After the merger with the chain-stores, the franchising company was converted into a shareholder company and the former owner with his sons and two other partners saw no other alternative than to sell the majority of shares to another internationally operating retail company that was not only able to raise the required capital with effortless ease, but was now in a position to determine the future policy of the franchising company and its fate. Although the entrepreneur who had been the main instigating force in setting up the enterprise had been elected chairman of the advisory board, his reappointment for the following period now seemed to be completely beyond his influence. When I first got involved in this case I saw myself very much caught up in the mechanics management was using to accomplish the merger between the franchising company and the chain stores. They were convinced that a little cultural engineering would accomplish the integration of the two companies, their employees and the two management groups (cf. Blake and Mouton (1981), (1985)). What they did not take into account was that the intended integration of two management styles was a far too narrow frame in face of the greatly increased complexity

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of the newly created social reality. Above all, two dimensions were severely neglected and, although they were somehow related, they had to be discriminated. The first dimension concerned the totally different expansion policies of these companies in the past. The franchising company had predominantly invested in the know-how and competence of a national marketing network, the purchase and distribution of the goods, a central administration for the franchise partners and the training of their employees, thus leaving the financial risk of investment in a store and its effectivity mainly with the owners of the stores themselves, i.e. the franchise partners. In contrast, previous expansion of the chain-stores was financed by the owner, a role assumed in the early stages by the originator of the idea, but which was soon taken over by the huge production company. The second dimension, which could not have been realized at the beginning of the merging process, was that of the different strategies these two entrepreneurs had elected in order to maintain their individual immortality illusion by means of the enterprises they created. On the basis of the exploration and analysis we have since then conducted it now appears as if the entrepreneur of the franchising company had built his vision of an empire primarily on a mixture of procreative and institutional inheritance, whereas the entrepreneur who had started the chain-store business, having given up the dream of a family empire early on, had obviously tried to establish his enterprise with the support and protection of a more powerful entrepreneur; he somehow had chosen the role of a colonial governor under the auspices of the crown. Whereas the former entrepreneur attempted to produce his individual immortality by the intended successorship of his (biologically) procreated and (socially) adopted sons with whom he had built the second management level as well as through the franchising system, i.e. the perpetuation and extension of a creative idea which allowed him to receive some of the pay-off (the pension) from the franchise partners during his life-time, the latter seems to have given up capital ownership of his created idea in order to foster and expand it. Whereas the former thus seems to equal the creative type of the hero, who intended to earn the fruits of his works partly in his own lifetime, the immortality strategy of the latter seems to equal more that of the artist who gains his immortality primarily through the reputation his work earns, rather than through a monetary return on investment. It seems that what ultimately jeopardized the life work of the entrepreneur of the franchising company and his younger partners was the megalomania of one of them, whose individual creativity strategy became, at least for some time, collectively predominant. His obsession with the idea of becoming market leader first in Germany, and ultimately in Europe, exceeded all economic considerations; his urge to be the greatest, to be like God, in which he was supported by his colleagues, turned out to be the company's downfall. What they had done on a small scale before, i.e. purchasing instead of closing down a less successful store which a franchise partner wanted to shake off, but for which no purchaser

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could be found, finally, when applied as an expansion strategy for purchasing the chain-stores, confronted them with the illusionary quality at the base of their predominant immortality strategy. Driven by the desire to become the market leader and thus being less dependent on the competition, they had to surrender a critical amount of their shares in order to raise the required money for the purchase. They ended up accomplishing the paradox: The franchising company almost reached a leading position in the market, but those who founded and expanded it, in the hope of establishing their own individual immortality, were finally confronted with their own mortality. Elaborating the immortality notion of the firm and its significance in the history of industrial development is, however, not complete without drawing attention to a further dimension of the immortality function of the industrial enterprise, by which I mean the immortality ideology of the Protestant or Calvinist ethic as it is expressed in the spirit of capitalism. This is not the occasion to discuss in more detail the extent the Calvinist ethic actually has had an influence on the growth and development of capitalism in the history of western industrialization. We can, however, assume that, as Max Weber ((1965); cf. Fromm (1990)) elaborated at the beginning of this century, Calvin's doctrine of predestination exercises a significant influence on western economic rationality and the organization of the related work. Despite the often repeated imputation, Weber ((1965), 77) leaves no doubt that he does not believe "that capitalism as an economic system is a result of the reformation". What he (Weber (1965), 117) intended with his work was to discover the psychological impetus created by the religious belief and the praxis of religious life which provide the individual with direction for the conduct of his own life. Weber's intention to elucidate the significance religious influences have had on certain aspects of the capitalist based culture (Weber (1965), 77) equals very much Rank's (1930) intention to explore man's belief in soul. What Rank states as mankind's belief in immortality and its related creation of the soul finds in the Calvinist ethic its expression in the guarantee of grace. Man's good works are, as Weber ((1965), 131) puts it, not the means to purchase one's own bliss but "to get rid of the anxiety about one's salvation". Since God, the almighty, has already predetermined who will be in his eternal presence, men cannot accomplish their own bliss, they can only prove it through their own works. This is the main difference to the creative types Rank described as the artist and the hero. Whereas these types are seen by Rank as establishing their own individual immortality vis-a-vis the dominant collective immortality ideology, the heavenly elected in the Calvinist tradition prove through their works that they have been elected, i.e. that immortality and eternal bliss is invested in them. As Weber ((1965), 134) puts it: "The life of the 'saint' was exclusively oriented towards a transcendental aim: bliss; but for that very reason it was in the course of this world thoroughly rationalized and determined by the exclusive criterion to augment God's glory on earth."

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In so far as the Calvinist immortality belief or ideology is essentially based on a very individualistic selection of the few from the many - "for many are called, but few are chosen!" - it entails to a certain degree an esoteric image of man that is determined by a high degree of dependency. As the 'saint' has no means whatsoever of influencing or changing the fate of the majority of his contemporaries, who are damned from eternity to eternity, it is only logical that the latter are the objects of the former's contempt. This "solemn inhumanity" had, as Weber ((1965), 122) put it "one consequence above all: the feeling of a tremendous internal loneliness of the single individual". Being a successful entrepreneur obviously appeared to many Calvinists to prove their own salvation and to increase the glory of their God; restless professional work was the only way of banishing religious doubts and securing predestination (Weber (1965), 129). Economic success of one's life on earth could be regarded as immediate evidence of one's eternal life in heaven - greater success banished the underlying anxieties all the more. It appears logical that the attempt to extend one's firm into an empire that survives one's own physical death is better proof of one's own bliss and immortality. It is fascinating and frightening at the same time to imagine how this fundamental split of the Calvinist ethic between elected individuals on the one hand and remaining anathemizeds on the other hand, reflected in a newly founded or owned enterprise, could be converted or perverted into the fictitious assumption of the few proving their own immortality and the many just contributing to it through their labour. It may even be assumed that this Calvinist immortality ideology served as an important legitimation to justify the fundamental split and fragmentation of those at the top and those at the bottom which, as it was described in the previous part, increasingly determines the social reality of western work organizations since the beginnings of industrialization. Frederick Taylor's well-known remark that a worker shoveling iron is too stupid to train himself, might, in addition to its obvious paternalistic tone, equally be legitimated by this ideology as confirmation that he is not predetermined to live immortally. In so far as the Calvinist belief in the immortal soul is based on the conviction that the 'chosen' do not have anything in common with the vast majority of the non-chosen, it ultimately justifies the conviction that the latter can be used to the formers' advantage and the glory of their God. According to this religious belief there is no space whatsoever for the notion of participation (cf. Dickson (1983), 913). Driven by the anxiety that they ultimately might be mortal and not selected for an eternal life in the presence of God, people in this Calvinist tradition necessarily must be obsessed with proving their immortality through restless work. Rationality became the predominant means by which the world was to be structured and subjected in order to substitute the deep irrational anxieties by the rational calculation and assessment of one's predetermination. It somehow seems that living in this belief means substituting one's earthly life for a symbolic life

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(cf. Becker (1973), 183) in the sense that life's exclusive meaning is to deliver for oneself the proof that one will live the eternal life after death.

Immortality Limited: Greek Mythology as a Metaphor for Participation The fundamental concern for immortality and the segregation of the 'chosen' from the 'damned' inherent in the Calvinist ethic is not only an expression, or over-emphasis, of certain elements of Christian tradition and ideology; it also goes back to the ancient Greek origins of Christianity. It seems that contrary to the Judaic roots of Christianity, 'chosenness' in Greek mythology has a totally different meaning and significance. Whereas Judaic mythology is based on the conviction of Israel's chosenness as a people confirmed by the covenant Jahwe made with Jacob, the cosmography of the ancient Greeks is characterized by a dualistic split between immortal gods on the one hand and mortal men on the other hand. Although the discrimination between immortality and mortality in Greek mythology has various discrepancies, it is primarily based on a dichotomy between those who are supposed to live eternally and the ephemerals, who face early death. Whereas the majority of Greek gods and goddesses are seated on Mount Olymp, it is the destiny of the mortals to cross the river Styx at the moment of their death and to enter the Tartaros, the empire of Hades and become his subordinates (cf. Ranke-Graves (1984), 67, 105 ff.). What, however, struck me in my attempt to reach a better understanding of the mortality/immortality dynamic in Greek mythology is the fact that despite the impression of a dichotomous split, the boundary between mortality and immortality is not a very precise one. Not only that the mortality/immortality dichotomy is embedded in a differentiation between Olymp and the 'Underworld' (the one dominated by Zeus, the other by his brother Hades), but also that the underworld is inhabited both by the spirits of dead men and women as well as by gods and goddesses. Whereas some among the immortals in the Tartarus like Hades and his wife Persephone, the king and queen of the underworld, remained gods in the full sense of the word, others like Uranus, Cronus or the Titans were - not unlike the fallen archangels in Christian mythology - damned to live in Tartarus, thus retaining their original immortality. In the same way as this appears to be the case in ancient Greek mythology as a whole, the idea of Hell, in particular, mirrors "the contradictory assumptions of the early inhabitants of Greece about the next world" (Ranke-Graves (1984), 108). Whereas Hades, on the one hand, was the "personification of the finalty of death" (ibid.), not allowing anybody to leave the underworld, Tartarus, on the other hand, included a threefold differentiation of areas for those who had lived a good, bad or indifferent life on earth. The ancient Greek concept of the underworld included the Elysium, a region next to Hades

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dominated by Cronus, whose inhabitants could be reborn if they wanted (ibid., 106). Although gods were considered the incarnation of immortality, they often tried to overwhelm, destroy and annihilate each other as, for example, in the chain of succession from Uranus through Cronus to Zeus: Uranus was emasculated by his son Cronus with the help of mother earth, his mother; at the moment of his death Uranus predicted that Cronus would be enthroned by one of his sons; a prediction which then caused Cronus to swallow year by year the children Rhea bore him; Zeus, his last son, only survived because Cronus, betrayed by his wife, swallowed a stone wrapped in the child's napkins. When Zeus had grown up and Cronus was old Zeus caused his father to vomit both the stone and his siblings. Cronus then, together with his own siblings, the Titans, was banished to Tartarus (cf. Ranke-Graves (1984), 30 ff.). Similar to the Hebrew myths of creation (cf. Graves and Patai (1989)), man, according to the early Greek myths, was not only created at a late stage, but was always perceived as being mortal by nature. Like the boundary between men and animals, the boundary between gods and men never was a precise one. Similar to the Centaurs, for example, who were half horse and half man, or to the Satyms, who were men in the form of animals, gods procreated children with mortal women and goddesses married mortal men like Harmonia/Aphrodite and Cadmos or Thetis and Peleus (cf. Kerenyi (1983), 31 ff.); some of their sons became heroes and succeeded in gaining immortality either by cheating the gods, like Tantalus, or through great feats, like Heracles. Odysseus, an illegitimate son of Sisyphos, is another example that heroes could become immortal: on his way back from the Trojan War Calypso, a goddess of death, offered him immortality if he stayed with her on the island of Ogygia. Greek mythology, like any ancient mythology, includes the answers to the questions fundamental to the people of the time; the myths comprised the beliefsystem by which these people lived and died. But what appears to characterize the Greek myths, in comparison for example to later Judaic mythology, is the fact that, with very few exceptions, men almost never considered themselves to be equal to the gods or their friends. According to the early myths in which Prometheus is the creator of mankind, men somehow originated from the ongoing quarrel between the gods; the former were the object of the envy, eagerness, punishment and annihilation of the latter. Even in the myth of the five epochs of mankind (cf. Ranke-Graves (1984), 29 f.) the area of the Golden Race in which men lived as Cronus' subordinates in peace and happiness, is irrevocably over. Thus Hesiod, the ancient poet, describes his contemporaries as "degenerated, cruel, unjust, malicious, lewd, without respect for their parents and teachers" (ibid., 29). In contrast to the vast majority of their gods and goddesses, average ancient Greeks had no other choice than to feel powerless, inferior and mortal - a fate they either accepted in resignation or fought against.

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From a contemporary view it appears to me that ancient Greek mythology is not only preoccupied with two concerns, but that these 'themes' are so culturally intertwined that it is still today difficult to disentangle them, i.e. the predominance of men over women and the desperate longing for immortality. Ancient Greek mythology, not unlike any other ancient attempt of mankind to 'explain' and to 'understand' the origin and existence of man and the universe, is not a monolithic system of beliefs which was created or declared at a certain point in time and has been preserved ever since, but is rather the result of a cultural and mythological invasion. The immigration of the vagrant sheperds from the steppes east of the Caspian Sea into Asia Minor and Europe by the end of the third millenium caused an enormous mythological conflict and resulted in the assimilation of the former inhabitants. The Greek myth we know is basically "the conflict between the patrilinear and patrilocal cult of gods and heroes of the invading Greek shepherds and the matrilinear and matrilocal theogony of the conquered peasents of mediteranean origin who inhabited the land before the arrival of the Greeks" (Bomeman (1985), 233; cf. (1975), 143 ff.).

As Borneman so vividly and extensively elaborates, the Greek myths mirror an ongoing mutual process of domination and subjugation of the Greek invadors visa-vis the original inhabitants of Attica. What was primarily acted out sexually by the Greek invaders, the enormous contempt towards the peasants and the serfdom of the former inhabitants' women by the predominantly male immigrants, was expressed in Greek mythology. Basically it has become a confounded mixture; the Greeks were considered to be barbarians by the original inhabitants and were unable to accept women as equals (ibid., 234). Although Borneman does not explicitly link the conflictuous (and failed) attempt to dominate and substitute the former matrilinear theogony and cosmography by a patrilinear one, with the emphasis in Greek mythology on immortality, they do in fact appear to be closely intertwined. The permanent degradation of woman and the maternal in the majority of Greek myths appears to me also to be a collective attempt to destroy and to annihilate the eternity which both the eternal mother and mother earth represented. Akin to the fundamental change of the immortality ideology from the animistic to the sexual ages, as described by Rank ((1930), 84), Greek mythology can be understood as the attempt to found eternity and immortality in the male procreation and its respective line of succession. From this perspective, the dichotomous split in Greek mythology can be interpreted as a mirroring or projection of fundamental social conflict as well as the attempt of the Greeks to anchor a 'new' belief system, their desperate longing to dominate the contemptible inhabitants, particularly the women, who stood for the former matrilinear culture and cosmology. Greek mythology thus not only served as the justification and legitimation of the domination desire of the Greek invaders, but also as a substitute or reparation for the permanently repeated experience that they were dependent on the original inhabitants for their own survival. From a

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psychoanalytic perspective this attempt can be interpreted as projective identification, i.e. the Greeks projected their own desire to dominate women, the original inhabitants and death into their gods; through identification with them they could sustain the belief that they could take part in their gods' power, masculinity and immortality. Whereas a patrilinear and patrilocal projective identification may have 'functioned' reasonably well in the original culture east of the Caspian Sea, in the region we know as Greece, it had to be overemphasized to defend it against the original belief system with which it was competing. That survival and ultimately the longing for immortality played a central role for the Greeks, both individually and collectively, since the early times of invasion is further evidenced by the fact that the first attempt of the Greeks to dominate the peasant tribes and their highly developed culture failed; it ended in total cultural and economic regression. As Borneman ((1985), 235 ff.) indicates, contemporary school-books and even historical publications either ignore or barely mention that the erection of the Greek dominance (the first European patriarchy) did not work in a rectilinear manner but - after the invasion of Crete, the military climax of early Greek history - led to the most disasterous set-back in European history. The first blooming of Greek culture was followed by a regression into stone-age conditions during which, for half a millenium, all cultural institutions deteriorated and the number of Greek settlements, and with it the population, reached its lowest point in Greek history. "This is the central point of Greek mythology: The Greeks died out because the Aegean peasants died out from which they lived. A devastation without comparison began. The desolation had set in almost everywhere around the end of the twelvth century and led to ghost-towns not unlike the later Klondyke in the eleventh century" (ibid., 236).

When we take account of this disastrous development of the early Greek invasion, it becomes obvious that the whole of Greek mythology can almost exclusively be regarded as a product of displacement: "a kind of group amnesia which allows everything appear in the magic light of the superhuman that happened in the times before the set-back" (ibid., 237; cf. Assmann (1992)). And to the extent that humanity in Greek mythology was almost exclusively synonymous with what men regarded as humanity it can be added that this group amnesia was accomplished by the prevalent image of the 'super-man', i.e. the hero and the gods. From what has been stated so far about Greek mythology, it will not surprise that the hypothesis I have elaborated in this part on participation was actually derived from my own reading of these ancient myths: the desperate longing of the Greeks to take part in the immortality of their gods seems to me to be the predominant element of their mythology; the longing for immortality is a logical 'explanation' for the attempt to understand the ongoing quarrels both between the gods themselves as well as between men and gods. I have taken the collusive quarrel about immortality inherent in Greek mythology as a metaphor to interpret well concealed 'lies' underlying the concern for participation in contemporary

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work enterprises. I consciously have not chosen Greek mythology and the inherent quarrel about immortality as an analogy for my interpretation of the ongoing struggle among managers and workers in today's enterprises and organizations, because I am convinced that the attempt to search for similarities in the ancient Greek belief system and its inherent economy and organization of work on the one hand and our contemporary work ethics and ideologies on the other hand is fruitless, or at least might easily have guided me in a different direction, i.e. the history of economic thought. I explicitly have taken a metaphoric perspective instead, because I would like to suggest and elucidate the resemblance of the underlying psycho-social dynamics which neither appear obvious at first sight nor from a common sense point of view. What, however, encouraged me to use the metaphor of a quarrel about 'limited' immortality is the conviction that the desparate longing for immortality described above is obviously as old as mankind. A myth in itself is, as Kimmerle ((1983), 52), referring to Blumenberg (1979), put it, a logos in which survival and power are connected by a purposeful rationality. Using an ancient myth or mythology as a metaphor for aspects of contemporary social reality adds further dimensions to the wide-spread conviction of a metaphor-free reality, which in itself is nothing more than a metaphor. Above all, it opens a perspective to the underlying anxieties and desperate longings which we have lost sight of in our predominantly rational attempts to understand and explain the world. As my understanding goes, working with metaphors does not lead one to a truth in the way one searches for a lost treasure or a perished city. To remain with an archeological metaphor, it is like digging into underlying strata to understand images of age-old cultures. Just as findings can be understood as roots covered underneath the surface, metaphorical treatment of the myth may lead to a reintegration of a much deeper and less obvious perception and problematization of reality than the one we are used to. Metaphors, in general, and the metaphoric reference to ancient myths, in particular, may allow us to come to grips with some aspects of our social and political reality which, although concealed behind our official language, are basic to the meaning and belief system we collectively live by. What has become obvious in applying Greek mythology and its struggle with immortality as a metaphor for participation in contemporary work enterprises is the wide similarity of psycho-social processes operating to establish and sustain a limited access to immortality. In both cases the belief system of immortality as well as the limited number of ways to reach it are mythologically anchored. This serves a double 'purpose': it places the ownership and the accomplishment of immortality into a collective ideology and it expatriates any other belief in immortality. The fact that the maternal mythology of the ancient inhabitants of Greece has almost fallen into oblivion appears, from this perspective, functionally equivalent to the fact that the immortality ideology of the working class has almost vanished.

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It is worth noting that the Marxist concept of the working class takes on a completely different meaning if one reframes it in terms of the metaphor of a collusive quarrel about immortality. The Zeitgeist, as it sweeps change accross Eastern Europe, seems to be based on the conviction that not only socialism has definitely failed, but also that the working class as a constituent element of Marxist philosophy has been unmasked as a fundamental error. This is where the metaphoric frame can help add to our understanding of events. Both the beginning of the socialist movement and the rise of the unions cannot be adequately understood without taking account of their desperate longing for the domination of the working class and the conviction that at a point in the future the Marxist Utopia of a communist society can be realized. Through their identification with the working class, workers, especially in the early days of socialism, could not only transcend their daily toil and suffering, but were able to commit their lives and death to a collective immortality ideology which promised a totally different fate for the workforce and for all of mankind. Although the differentiation between the socialist and capitalist immortality ideology cannot be reduced to a matrilinear/patrilinear discrimination as is possible with the ancient Greek invaders and the original inhabitants, the conflict between the two more recent mythologies, was - and to a certain extent still is - characterized by similar dynamic forces and is just as significant. The fact that the contemporary world seems to be dominated by business, and the fact that the business-world itself seems to be determined by big (international) companies and their (top) management has robbed the identity of the former working class of any real comparison with the ancient Greek peasants and has reduced the worker to a handyman of general economic development and prosperity. The equally valid truth that (multinational) companies and those who derive their identity and purpose in life from them - not unlike the Greek invaders vis-a-vis the orginal inhabitants - depend on the workers for their own survival seems to be either totally ignored or dehumanized and reified in such manner that the companies' wealth is said to be based on various resources, among which human resources have an incontestable part. There can be no doubt that the notion of the working class, as perceived by the philosophy (or mythology) it is based upon, is incompatible with the contemporary myth of participation among management and workers. Whereas the contemporary emphasis on participation in our work enterprises may be interpreted as an attempt from the side of management to overcome the previous class conflict, or as an offer of reconciliation, it appears to be unconsciously occupied by the collective amnesia that millions of workers have failed in their individual and collective desperate longing to establish a totally different paradigm of what work and work organization could be about. According to the latter interpretation in the same way as Greeks failed to acknowledge women as human beings, participation thus can be understood as the expression of management's deeply rooted inability of ever acknowledging the worker as a human being.

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The Iconography of Immortality in Work Enterprises The history of western industrialization can, to a certain extent, be regarded as a struggle between two competitive immortality ideologies: the collective ideology of the working class, which was inspired by the Utopian liberation of mankind, and the individual ideology of the entrepreneurs or the 'capitalists' who, in the process of developing their workshops into enterprises, recruited staff to supervise, control and manage the increasing number of hired workers. Whereas at the early stages of industrialization the immortality ideology of the sexual ages (cf. Rank (1930), 84) seems to have dominated in the sense that the majority of enterprises became family owned enterprises in which the founding father attempted to establish his immortality by passing on the enterprise along to the line of inheritance, the immortality in the course of the further growth and expansion of the enterprise later on was predominantly symbolized by the firm itself. And, as already described, the more the firm took on the immortality function of the ancient city, the more this immortality was to be guaranteed by its citizens. Similar to the ancient city in which by far not all people living in it were regarded as citizens, 'citizenship' in respect of the firm was restricted to the 'free' men who were supposed to manage it either in collaboration with or on behalf of the owner(s). In comparison to the immortality inherent in the working class, which in principle was perceived as the immortality of a 'new' mankind, the guiding principle of the immortality of the firm resembles more the principle of the elected in the Church. Similar to the clergy in the Catholic Church, the management of the corporation, particularly those at the upper echelons, became the guarantors of survival both for themselves and others; the managerial line of succession equals, from a symbolic or metaphoric perspective, the ecclesiastical line of succession of the bishops, who derive mandate and authority from the apostles, these in turn having been chosen by the divine founder Himself. Although boundaries in any particular work enterprise may appear rather vague, they are, metaphorically speaking, based on a differentiation between the ordained and non-ordained. Thus managers tend to regard themselves and are tended to be regarded by others as successors, delegates or assistants of the entrepreneur, regardless of whether he is still alive or whether the enterprise has evolved into a share-holding company. Despite the 'metaphorical evidence', the predominant immortality ideology in contemporary work enterprises seems, however, to embody a curious contradiction. The images or 'icons' of what is considered sacred are concealed by a special iconography of its own. Contrary to the icons in the Eastern Orthodox Church, which are considered sacred by all of its members, both clergy and laity, the immortality icons in work enterprises are concealed behind the profane and rational appearance of business management. In keeping with the underlying split between life and death in contemporary western societies, business, in general, and managers, in particular, seem to be exclusively concerned (or preoccupied) with rational planning, decisions and strategies to accomplish the further

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growth of their enterprises. The conviction that the future survival of an enterprise guarantees its medium-term existence is permanently reinforced by the almost exclusively rational orientation of business administration and economics. At a time in which money has become the only communications medium in the societal subsystem known as 'economy' (cf. Luhmann (1984b)) and seems to have lost any transcendental meaning, it would appear superfluous, if not even stupid, to assume that the protagonists of business could be concerned with 'deeper' issues, or that their private concerns might have anything to do with their business activities. Any attempt at questioning this reality, either in regard to its practice or its legitimizing theory, faces the risk of being regarded as iconoclasm, as someone who attacks cherished beliefs. Questioning a manager's concealed iconography of immortality will most likely evoke a reaction of defense. I, for example, remember very vividly the annoyed reactions of a management group in a German subsidiary of an international American company when we, in our role as consultants, asked them whether they themselves were not employees in much the same sense as the companies' employees (cf. Pym (1982a), 2). Although, as a matter of fact, only a minority of them were in the strict legal sense defined by the German "Co-determination Act" as 'executive managers' (leitende Angestellte), i.e. representatives of capital in the legal sense, it became clear that their identification with the owner, an American mother-company, went far beyond their actual work roles and had become part of their personal identity. From their first reactions we were convinced that questioning their carefully sustained self-image by suggesting they, too, might be mere employees must have thoroughly shocked them and aroused fundamental anxieties. If we had not already succeeded in establishing a profound working relationship with them in previous encounters, they would probably concluded we were communists and simply broken off the cooperation just to get rid of us. I assume that my experience in this and other cases, namely that managers tend to be unable to conceptualize their own status vis-a-vis workers in any other way then in terms of a fundamental inequality, can be seen as the predominant icon of management in today's enterprises. This is not too surprising in so far as the majority of our organizations are structured informally along similar lines. Professors and students, officers and soldiers or hospital staff and patients with more in common than the accomplishment of a common task not only seems to be an exception, but could well be unconsciously sustained by an immortality ideology according to which the students, soldiers, and patients might not make it and may even die. It can even be interpreted as an immediate outcome of the vicious circle of contempt, which, as was discussed in the first part on motivation as a surrogate for meaning, sustains the more unconscious expectation that, as an adult, one may be able to redeem one's superiority by projecting inferiority into others. Regarding one's own fate as being beyond that of the workers, students etc. thus also serves collective amnesia commonly known as a 'happy childhood'.

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In the case of the German subsidiary of an American company just mentioned, one manager, most 'surprised' at our questioning the difference between managers and workers, was himself earlier in his career the youth representative on the works council of a previous company he worked for. Although as a manager he was legally eligible to vote at the works council's election and even to candidate in it, he for himself could only cope with his earlier painful experience by disassociating himself from it. Because of the collective amnesia he and his colleagues in management were trapped in, it was not even possible for him to consider the question of whether membership in the works council might alter management's cooperation with the workers' representative in a constructive way. This particular case of a manager who has disassociated himself from his own previous painful experience as a worker is far from unique; rather it expresses a general trend. Not enough that this man through his own effort and with the 'grace of the gods' has become a 'hero', has gained 'immortality' for himself and thus a seat on Mount Olympus; what he has accomplished individually is on the collective level, that members of management must create and perpetuate their own individual immortality. The permanent temptation to ignore the fact that they, too, were born from the womb of a mortal mother is great and, in order to join and to be accepted by the non-ephemerals they have learned to ignore death, be it their own or that of the workers. To the extent that management's business is mainly devoted to the survival of the enterprise, most clearly expressed in the longing for continuous growth, the experience of loss becomes so frightening that it can only be interpreted as severe weakness which will ultimately end in the enterprise's downfall. Since the notion of loss thus becomes an economic concept that severely jeopardizes the survival and the future existence of the enterprise, it can no longer be perceived as a 'small death', as a normal fact of life, as a common individual experience of those who in C. G. Jung's term have passed the noon of their lives. To the extent that the almost total denial of death has become the prerequisite for management to fulfill its apparent primary task of guaranteeing the enterprise's future, management both in collective as well as in individual terms seems to have lost concern for those who simply do not have any other choice or who are damned to early death. The underlying unspoken contempt for the workforce does not seem to have much changed since the early days of industrialization: "if those at the bottom cannot preserve themselves from starvation, it is not management's task to care about it; they should take care of their own fate; if they do not know how to live an useful life, it is not our fault!" Such contempt of those excluded from divine immortality may be even easier to sustain as society makes provision to guarantee at least the physical survival of those condemned to end their working life in the Hades of unemployment. Because they are so utterly preoccupied with their own immortality, the gods, not unlike Greek mythology, can no longer be regarded as friends to the mortals. As a consequence, it often seems as if the workers are the only ones left to carry the burden of management's denial of death. Like in Greek mythology they

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are the ones who occasionally challenge or even outwit the gods, but generally are no more than objectives of divine fate. They are the ones who lose their work in order to resolve current or potential future crisis. What has been stated up to now about management's immortality seems, in the strict sense, more or less restricted to the upper echelons of the hierarchy. They are the ones who 'have made it', thus serving as identification figures for their subordinates and potential successors in management. Some among the latter, particularly those in middle and lower management, may have reason enough to doubt their 'eligibility' to divine immortality, but still may nurture the hope of ending their life in Elysium, i.e. the blissful land of eternal happiness, at the other side of the ocean to which only the relatives and favourites of the gods have access (cf. Huonder (1970), 10). The hope of immortality of those at the top of the managerial scale is further sustained by their (potential) successors. As Dunne ((1965), 20 f.) writes about ancient Egyptian mythology: "A man had no hope of an afterlife, it seems, unless he had a survivor to stand at the grave on the day of burial and to maintain the care of his tomb. The survivor assured continued contact of the dead with the living, contact by which the dead enjoyed and appropriated the life of the living. No such contacts existed for the man who did not have a survivor or who was not properly cared for after his death."

In comparison to the worker whose fate seems to be determined by mere interchangeability and replacement, the manager, through an institutionalized career system, can sustain the hope that a successor one day will follow in his foot-steps and continue what he has accomplished. The fact that some of the big companies have drawn up succession plans for their critical management positions may, in addition to its official function of preventing harm by the sudden death of a member, serve the endurance of this hope of individual immortality. This connotation of a successor may also serve as a defense against the anxiety that those behind one in the career path may - akin to the Greek myth of a quarrel among the gods have no other intent but to dethrone or to emasculate their presuccessors. There are also good reasons to assume that the differentiation between 'eternals' and 'ephemerals' constitutes or contributes towards the different time-frame through which managers and workers are supposed to perceive their respective contributions to the work enterprise. The obviously different time horizons managers and workers have to cope with both in respect to their work lives as well as their daily working activities seem, on a symbolic level, to reconfirm the fundamental split between the immortals and the mortals. Workers are e.g. usually excluded from any long-range planning; in comparison to the monthly salary of the manager, usually calculated on a per annum basis, workers are traditionally paid on an hourly or piece rate (the German word Arbeiter in its medieval origin means, in addition to craftsman, day-labourer); their recruitment usually takes much less time than the often sophisticated procedures used to select managers, also, in case of dismissal, workers normally have shorter periods of notice - and

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lower compensation. Once recruited, managers enjoy a wider time perspective through their career, whereas hired workers must often count themselves lucky to find at least some small token of rotation to save themselves from the monotony which is an inherent part of the job. Usually it is the worker's time that is checked and measured either by control-clocks or by time-and-motion studies; the fact that sometimes managers too have to clock-in usually serves symbolic purposes: they reassure their equality, knowing full well that they will not be especially compensated for working the over-time expected of them. The fate of the workers in this collusive quarrel about immortality seems to be that of the permanent loosers, the ephemeral mortals who share only the misery and death left them by Pandora in her box. In comparison to the divine, the workers represent mankind who has fallen step by step from the heights of godlike happiness to deepest misery and to moral depravity; according to Aischylos, the ancient poet, mankind is nothing but 'dream-like' and the 'shadow of fame' (cf. Huonder (1970), 10). Since the challenge and fascination of work in an enterprise seems to be associated with managerial competence, the workers, working day after working day, are the ones who experience vulnerability, destructibility and morbidity and who are faced with their own mortality. Workers who want to save a hope of immortality for themselves have no other choice other than to pour it into the dream of retirement. The sooner they reach it, the better. It is believed to give them all the happiness and relief they so desperately renounced all those years before with the brief interludes of daily 'leisure' after work and during vacations. Although the envy of workers towards management is usually only expressed through channelled institutions like wage negotiations or strikes, it must be enormous. It is the envy of the workers instilled and maintained by their partly conscious, partly unconscious conviction of their own hopeless mortality vis-a-vis the immortality represented by management. This envy, together with management's preoccupation with immortality and its contempt towards the worker is the underlying collusive dynamic which turns the contemporary attempt towards participation among managers and workers into an endless quarrel.

The Works Council: Tantalus or Sisyphus? The works council has a very special role in the ongoing discussion on participation and in the underlying quarrel about immortality particularly in Germany, where the Labour Relations Law has institutionalized the works council in almost all enterprises. This is not the appropriate place to present too many details about the legal regulations governing this particular institution of codetermination (cf. e.g. Sievers (1983a), 30 ff.), but it is nevertheless important to mention that the institution of the works council itself is a social innovation which was only implemented in the early fifties on the initiative of the occupying forces after the Second World War. In mentioning its origins I do not by any means mean to

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question its right to exist, but rather to indicate that the works council cannot be seen as a body which somehow 'organically' grew out of a specific consciousness about industrial relations in German enterprises. It can also be assumed at present that, as far as management is concerned, the works council in the majority of German enterprises is rather more tolerated than accepted. This assumption will probably be rejected by members of management in formal statements but which, in my own experience as a consultant, is confirmed time and time again by the recurrent dream that at some point in the future management will have succeeded in cooperating with the workers and will then no longer need a works council. What also often strikes me is the fact that, because the works council is regarded by management primarily as an institution imposed by law and the unions, it is very often not accepted as a labour representative body. The main strategy of management towards the works council seems to be to avoid conflicts by creating and sustaining an atmosphere of paternalistic benevolence or some kind of mutual gentlemen's agreement. It is still the exception that management and workers jointly attempt to use the works council creatively to develop new forms of potentially 'collective' management. Management's acceptance of the works council often does not go beyond the level described by law. The chances of using the institution of the works council as a challenge to create new forms of cooperation seem quite low in the majority of German enterprises. Often, management seems to envy the works council due to the monopoly of workers' representation the latter lays claim to and, at the same time, it is not prepared itself to budge an inch from its own self-image of representing the invested capital of the enterprise, thus ignoring the fact that their role is that of an employee. By neglecting their own eligibility for the works council, managers individually as well as collectively reinforce the split between those at the top and those at the bottom. Through their own 'regression' into a fictitious immortality the (nonexecutive) members of management also continuously deny and regret the legally enshrined status of the works council as the representatives of all employees in an enterprise. Whereas these managers, in the eyes of the workers and their representatives in the works council, tend to be regarded as being mortal like themselves, through their mere refusal to take part in elections for the works council, managers choose to underscore their own superiority. This self-exclusion from the mass of mortals serves their own self-promotion into the divine world, but the resulting lack of legal representation may, on occasion, prove severely disadvantageous. If a (non-executive) manager e.g. is defeated in the divine quarrel with his colleagues and/or the employer he, in the desperate experience of being nothing but an employee, usually struggles with the consequences alone and does not have any allies among the mortals he previously seperated himself from. Despite management's disdain and contempt of the works council, the latter is sometimes pushed into or voluntarily plays a dubious role with the power vested in it by the existing legal provisions. It therefore occasionally seems as

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if management does not have any other choice but to come to terms with the 'demon'. Like Faust's pact with Mephisto, management thus makes concessions to the workforce as a whole or to its chairman in order to receive the necessary agreement for certain decisions. But whereas Faust promised his soul to the devil when he died, management in these cases tends to seduce the 'demon' by allowing him to take part in the fruits of immortality. Management's seduction often imposes the role of a Tantalus on the works council or its chairman. The 'confident cooperation' described by the German Labour Relations Law between management and the works council is akin to the relationship between Tantalus, the king of Sipulus in Lydia, and the ancient gods. This wise king was described by the poets as a favourite of the gods (Moritz (1979), 287; cf. Ranke-Graves (1984), 352 ff.). Being a son of Zeus he was allowed the unique privilege for a mortal of sitting at Zeus' table and listening to the conversations of the immortals. Ultimately, he betrayed the gods by telling their secrets to the mortals and proving their omniscience: he invited them to a meal at which he served his slaughtered son Pelops to them, from which only the goddess Demeter ate a shoulder-blade. As a consequence he was damned to eternal torments and the never-ending fear of death, which hung as a rock over his head and permanently threatened to fall on him. The myth of Sisyphus may also contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between managers and workers. Sisyphus' damnation to eternally roll a huge boulder up a mountain again and again is well known. Sisyphus, the first king of Corinth, had as a mortal exercised control over the gods by betraying Zeus, the father of the gods, who once had kidnapped Aegina, the most beautiful daughter of Asophus, the River-god. Zeus' punishment of Sisyphus for this betrayal was mainly based on the fact that his motive for the treasonable act was neither indignation at the kidnapping of the nymph nor sympathy for Zeus' deceived wife, Hera, but mere selfishness - Asopus gave Sisyphus a spring on the mountain of his citadel in return for his services. When Zeus sent Thanatus, the angel of death, to punish him, Sisyphus put him into chains, which meant that nobody on earth could die. Ares, the god of war, then intervened and liberated Thanatus. He brought Sisyphus into Hades but Sisyphus again succeeded in escaping by employing a trick with his wife, whom he had forbidden to celebrate the sacrifice of death for him. He finally received his well-known punishment when Thanatus again forced him out of his citadel and finally escorted him down to Hades. Sisyphus is not, for me, a symbol of the fate of mankind in general as for Camus ((1975), 111), for whom Sisyphus teaches us "the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises the rocks." Comparing the fate of Sisyphus with that of the contemporary worker Camus states: "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus,

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proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory" (ibid., 109).

It seems to me that, in addition to the myth of Tantalus, Sisyphus, as a metaphor, leads to a deeper understanding of the role the works council represents at the curious boundary between management and workers. Not only that Sisyphus sets limits to the omnipotent power of Zeus, the father of gods, and that he betrays his misdeed; the most important symbolic implication of this myth can be seen in his success, that by putting Thanatus, the angel of death, into chains, he prevented mankind from dying. Even if he finally did not succeed in making real the age-old dream of destroying the terror of death, he at least for some time enabled men to be immortal like the gods, and he repeated this for himself the first time he was in Hades. Despite all the powerlessness and the misery in which he finally ended, he was able to present the hope to his fellowmen that man, in all his weakness, at least occasionally, can surpass the gods or be like them. Although only for a short while, he was able to rearrange the boundary between the divine and the ephemeral. The mythical figures of both Tantalus and Sisyphus are protagonists of the futility and failure of mankind's attempt to take part in the immortality of the gods. Although both were sons of Zeus, they were nevertheless mortals who, after their death, had to suffer endless pain in Hades. Whereas Tantalus tried to make mankind immortal by handing on nectar and ambrosia, the divine fruits of immortality, Sisyphus attempted to extinguish death by putting Thanatus, the god of death, into chains. They were damned by gods like Prometheus who although himself immortal, appears to have been the only divine friend of mankind. Not only that he is credited with being the creator of mankind, he also attempted to give man fire, up to then a privilege reserved to the gods. Although Prometheus retained his divine immortality, according to Aischylus' drama, he was chained to the rock with his eagle. Some thirty thousand years later he was finally liberated by Heracles who shot the bird (cf. Kerenyi (1984), 164 ff.). These three mythical figures, regardless of whether they themselves were mortal or immortal, so severely evoked the envy of the gods with their attempts to let mankind participate in immortality that they were more or less eternally damned. In addition to these protagonists and their fates, Greek mythology has yet another 'pattern' that somehow bridges the fundamental dichotomy between the immortals and the mortals. Contrary to the attempts described above of letting mankind take part in the immortality of the gods by betrayal or 'confrontation', i.e. by destroying the fundamental split among the divine and the ephemerals, this other 'pattern' overcomes the basic split by fusion or merger; whereas the former appears to be an expression of a collective immortality ideology or strategy, the latter is more an individual one in that is in heterosexual intercourse between an immortal and a mortal. Whereas the betrayal of the gods seems, as far as its

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underlying psycho-social dynamic is concerned, to equal the basic assumption of the 'fight-flight' position as described by Bion (1961), sexual fusion of mortals and immortals mirrors the basic assumption of 'pairing'. Whereas, however, Bion's notion of pairing emphasizes the hope of a yet unborn Messiah in a small group a myth which e.g. in the Christian tradition is maintained in the immaculate conception of Mary by the Holy Spirit, but which as a myth is much older pairing in Greek mythology appears to contain the notion of attaining immortality through the intercourse or marriage, particularly if the mortal partner is male. Zeus, the emperor of the gods, is not the only, but definitely the best example of endless divine attempts to seduce or rape mortal women and of procreating mortal children. Heracles is the most prominent example among them that a mortal 'successor' can attain a seat on Mount Olympus, although this was only the result of a mistake when he was suckled by Hera, Zeus' wife (cf. Ranke-Graves (1984), 415). Menelaus, on the other hand, was a mortal who married the divine Helen; the deity Calypso offered immortality to Odysseus on condition that he give up his longing to sail home to his wife Penelope and marry her instead. It appears to me that both these versions of ancient Greek myths, the betrayal of the gods through Tantalus and Sisyphus and heterosexual intercourse between immortal and mortal men and women, are expressions of how two fundamental dynamics of Greek mythology are mingled. In comparison to the male protagonists, who, by attempting to betray the gods, acted out the underlying amnesia of the disastrous failure of the first Greek invasion, the pairing of mortals and immortals can be seen as an attempt to overcome the paranoid-schizoid dynamics of these early times which had created and confirmed the fundamental split between the divines and the ephemerals. Whereas the divine seductions and rapes mirror the patrilinear and patrilocal immortality ideology of the ancient Greek invaders and particularly their contempt towards women, the marriage of a mortal man with a female god seems to be an expression and a reconfirmation of the matrilinear cosmography of the original inhabitants of Greece. The parallel version of mythological intercourse according to which either a god takes a mortal woman or a mortal man is married to a goddess indicates the contradictory nature of the relationship Greek men had to the women who were the objects of their contempt. If my impression can be confirmed that only men were married to a goddess, as e.g. in Menelaus' and Helen's case, whereas gods exclusively took mortal women as an expression of their own divine quarrels, this would be further confirmation of the previous matrilinear cosmography, according to which men only reached immortality in alliance with the immortality incarnated in women. The myth of intercourse or marriage between mortals and immortals in itself seems to serve the function of sending the much older matriarchal myth of the sacred marriage into oblivion, thus reconfirming the patriarchal predominance of the early invaders. This reconfirmation brought about a fundamental reconstruction of the logos on which the ancient myth of the sacred marriage was

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based. The myth of the sacred marriage appears to have been a symbolification of mankind's relatedness to nature and the cosmos, but the later notion of intercourse or marriage between immortals and mortals presupposes the predominance of the patriarchal cosmography over the matriarchal. It is also an expression of a double process of objectification through which the natural and cosmic forces have been turned on the one hand into personalized gods and, on the other hand, fertility has been reified into the sexual act of procreation. As Dunne (ibid., 31) writes: "In reality the sacred marriage was ... an end in itself insofar as it was the climax of civic commerce with the gods. Because the gods were considered to be the powers of nature, human association with them did mean communication with the forces responsible for fertility and could be thought to rebound to the fruitfulness of nature. But what seems to have been sought primarily was the fellowship of the gods. It was for the king to attune himself directly and immediately to the cosmic powers and the cosmic rythms so that by attunement to him and in sympathy with him all the people of his city might find themselves in living resonance with the gods. Human intercourse with the gods in the city was thus brought to consummation vicariously in what was conceived to be the cohabitation of the king with a goddess."

Since the ancient wish of man to be like the gods obviously cannot be realized by a direct quarrel with divine male counterparts due to the fundamental anxieties raised (such as eternal damnation or being killed by the father), it has in a certain sense to be 'recollected' into a longing to consort with a goddess; but as Dunne ((1965), 32) put it, this creates a Faustian desire to take part both in the male and in the female symbolification of immortality: "Marlowe's Faust rejects a succubus, a demon assuming female form, but with demonic help evokes the shade of the divine Helen, kisses her and cohabits with her, hoping thereby to obtain immortality and yet fearing at the same time to bring upon himself eternal damnation. Goethe's Faust, less fearful of damnation, seeks union with a goddess at first through demonic connivance, seducing Margaret and then abandoning her for the legendary Helen, but in death parts company with demons to reach out towards the Eternal Womanly."

However, akin to the betrayal of the gods, consorting with them does not offer a collective solution to the ancient Greeks either in their attempt to overcome their own misery or to preserve them from early death. Being the creators of their Gods through their own projections and projective identifications, the Greeks are caught in their own transferences. They only seem to confirm the conclusion which Dunne (ibid., 34) offers: "It is difficult for any real sympathy or community of interests to exist between beings so alien to one another. The gods, of course, can commiserate with men, can take pity on men and do them acts of kindness, but there can be no real sharing of lives when men are mortal and the gods are immortal."

The incommensurability and incongruity of any attempt at real sharing of lives between mortal men and immortal gods appears - in the context of the present hypothesis about participation as a collusive quarrel about immortality - equally

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true for the relationship between management and the works council as the legal representative of the interests of an enterprise's work force: there can be no real sharing of lives when workers are mortal and management is immortal! Similar to the futility in Greek mythology arising from negation of the fundamental split by betrayal or from attempting to overcome it by fusion and merger, any attempt to use these means in order to eliminate the split in contemporary work enterprises must necessarily appear equally hopeless. From what has become evident in the context of Greek mythology, i.e. that to a very considerable extent it serves as a legitimization of the rearrangement of previous patterns of relatedness, it may be possible to uncover a further important angle which will help us to understand in a different way what the participative quarrel between management and workers might be about and what it seems to persistently conceal. Greek mythology is based on a threefold attempt to reinterpret the previous constructions of reality held by the original inhabitants and the historical experience of the Greek invaders themselves: (1) social amnesia of the disastarous results of the early invasion, (2) superiority and dominance of men over women and (3) objectification of man's relatedness to nature and the cosmos through deification. From a metaphorical perspective it would appear that the widely accepted societal construction of reality on which contemporary enterprises are based includes a similar reinterpretation of a previously different relatedness of man, work and nature: (1) The discrimination between capital and labour and its respective ownership is in itself neither a natural one nor a divine right. Our common conviction that a minor part owns, invests and accumulates capital while the majority exclusively contributes their physical or mental labour to the accumulation process is, from a historical perspective, a rather late one. The fact that it e.g. in the context of the daily organization of work and the participation of those involved in the work process is regarded as an irrefutable truth acts as social amnesia towards earlier times in which the divine king, who accumulated gold as a symbol of immortality, was the symbolification of the immortality of all the kingdom and inhabitants. Parallel to the ancient city, whose immortality, according to Dunne, was based on its citizens and not on its walls, the divine king's immortality was based on his kingdom symbolized by the eternal nature of gold. The societal split on which our economy and its respective organization of work enterprises is based is determined by the supposition that one part of the population contributes toward an increase of profits in order to irreversibly (somehow 'eternally') increase invested capital, whereas the other part acquires money in order to earn a living. The double concern of making money for growth and of earning it for a living is not just a preoccupation with everyday survival; it also contributes to a wider social amnesia in so far as it can be regarded as a collective attempt to forget what was a truth for our presuccessors, i.e. the fact that we have to die and that we, too, are mortal.

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(2) Collectively as well as individually we have become so used to the idea that labour is a market commodity resulting in a price determined by offer and demand that we have almost lost sight of the much older view that labour, regardless of whether it is perceived as a consequence of original sin or not, is the expression of man's relatedness to nature and the cosmos. As against this original meaning, labour in contemporary life has been objectified in a double sense. On the one hand it has been reified into work, i.e. a primarily quantitative 'article' which can be measured in monetary and time dimensions or in employment; on the other hand it has been deified in the sense that the labour which was previously a man's or a woman's part in the creative process with the 'world' and as such a basic human activity now, in the derivative form of 'work' or 'employment', has been turned into a thing provided by an employer to its employees. This means that the majority of women or men who do not receive such an offer from an employer have no other choice than to regard themselves as being unemployed and this is how they are seen by others, too. This deification of labour is even more articulately expressed in the respective German terminology which refers to Arbeitgeber, Arbeitnehmer and Arbeitslose. It is based on the metaphor that like God, who gives, or donates, life to a person, it is the employer who gives work to those willing to take it. As the metaphor goes, nobody can have work unless it has been given to him or her from above. (3) The fact that enterprises and their management are dominated by men is expressed in the general attitude that work is an object of rationalization and efficiency. The equally valid notion of creativity, fertility, growth and pain which e.g. was part of the early meaning of labour in the sense of 'travail of childbirth' or of ploughing (cf. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology) seem to have totally fallen into oblivion. Despite the fact that women often comprise a significant part of the workforce, the association related to work and to the work enterprise have to such an extent become male categories that the work of a housewife, for example, is no longer generally regarded as such. It seems that these three fundamental reinterpretations of labour underlying our economy and organization of work - social amnesia, objectification and its maleoriented predominance - have contributed to the generally accepted construction of reality that those who take part in the work enterprise can no longer relate as human beings, but only in terms of their respective roles and interests. It therefore seems that people in organizations and work enterprises, quite like the ancient Greeks, are basically unable to "have a life together" (T. S. Eliot) and that "there can be no real sharing of lives" (Dunne (1965), 34), because they individually as well as collectively are not in a position to overcome the transferences according to which one part of the 'workforce' comprises (immortal) managers and the other part (mortal) workers.

Beyond Collusion: Participation among Mortals

I recently asked a friend, a human resources manager in a German subsidiary of an international company, about her own experience of participation among managers and workers. Her answer was resigned: "When I began my present job a couple of years ago, I was convinced I would be able to initiate an organizational move towards more participation and a significant change in the relationship between managers and workers. But, the more I tried, the more I had to realize that it is a vicious circle: the more one tries the more one gets caught up in it oneself!" Although I assumed that she was right and was really expressing from her experience and in her terms what I have described as the collusive quarrel, I also, unspokenly, felt encouraged by her answer to pursue the line of my thoughts even further. Developing a view of participation based on the fact that both managers and workers alike are mortal seems to me to be swimming against the tide in face of the prevalent fictions and myths of our times. It goes against the stream of our common convictions about everyday life, as well as against the mainstream of scientific legitimations. If one is not willing to succumb to bitterness, the attempt almost "calls for daily acts of heroism" (Novak (1968), 1). The aim of installing and increasing participation in work enterprises is usually legitimized by the argument that higher levels of participation lead to increased effectivity because of the greater satisfaction of the workforce thereby achieved. There are, however, good reasons to assume that such a correlation between more participation and increased effectivity is primarily based on the personal convictions of researchers or consultants, as, for example, Lischeron and Wall (1975) have indicated. Furthermore, the attempt to correlate participation with satisfaction seems in itself to be based on a very limited image of man as a creature yearning for happiness, as well as on a rather mechanistic notion of how this correlation can be accomplished. To reduce participation to a tool for more happiness or satisfaction on the workers' side does not really transcend the candy-and-whip notion already described; it perpetuates the paternalist notion that management donates work to the workers and thus totally ignores the underlying political dynamics. From what has been said so far in this second part of the book it has become obvious that participation cannot be accomplished in quantitative terms by being

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implemented or administered in doses; participation is based on a qualitative change in the relation and minds of people in organizations who are willing to face their equalness through the fact that all are mortal. Although mortality as a precondition for participation refers to a self-evident truth, the ongoing struggle with respect to participation in contemporary enterprises seems to confirm that "self-evident truths are those which one discovers latest" ((Camus (1986), 71); as Camus ((1975), 23) writes on another occasion: "Man is mortal. One can nevertheless count the minds that have deduced the extreme conclusions derived from this". It appears to be very frightening to acknowledge one's own mortality and to "leave on one side the beliefs which fill voids and sweeten what is bitter: the belief in immortality" (Weil (1979), 58), especially for those in the upper echelons of our organizational hierarchies who have either made a pact with the devil or are regarded as divine. "Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose" (ibid., 84). Individually and collectively giving up a pervasive myth like this is not an easy venture. People who have previously taken it as a reality either for themselves or in relation to others suddenly share the experience of total emptiness which not only fundamentally questions what one believes one has accomplished, but which at the same time does not point in any direction. Experiencing nothingness of this kind confronts one with a total lack of answers to the basic question of how in the knowledge of its irrevocable end one can still lead a worthwhile life. The search for a mature answer to this question necessarily leads one to further questions about the meaning of one's life, and the meaning of one's work, and it raises questions of their interrelatedness. The preparedness to give up the fiction of our and of others' immortality and to resist the continuous flow of contrary temptations and acknowledge as a fact that none of us are divine would add an entirely different dimension to what is usually presented as 'humanization' - particularly when we talk of the humanization of work life. For almost four decades now what has been offered and implemented as humanization in our work enterprises usually creates the impression that the divine top, occasionally with the help of consultants as their high priests, has decided to donate a gift that will relieve the miserable fate of the mortals at the bottom. Metaphorically, limited humanization like this cannot be even regarded as an invitation to sit at the dinner table of the divine; rather, it amounts to wiping off the crumbs from their table while withholding the nectar and ambrosia, the fruits of immortality, for their own consumption. In face of how we cope with death in western societies, it seems to me that to postulate human mortality as a prerequisite of participation must necessarily smack of revolution. Instead of displacing death and mortality into the millions suffering from famine in Ethiopia, the Sudan, and now even Russia, into the war in Yugoslavia or into the polluted environment, mortality has to be brought back to civilized contemporaries. To a certain extent, this reallocation of mortality from

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external and distant objects into the subjects parallels the process through which, in the French Revolution, authority was (re-)allocated from the State or the King back to the People. At least for some time the French Revolution intended to establish and to acknowledge the subjectivity of the people themselves; this spirit found expression in the slogan 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' which only later (after 1870) was officially known as the slogan of the French Revolution and since then has become a constituent element of western democracies, or at least of their rhetoric. Although this is not the time to go further into the socio-political history of these concepts (cf. Comblin (1989); Comby (1989)), it nevertheless seems to me that, on a metaphorical level, the notion of liberty, equality and fraternity as a political postulate not only includes an acknowledgement of human mortality, but that it ultimately has to be based on it in order to retain its credibility. The acknowledgement was, as Papenheim (1988) demonstrates, not even taken for granted by the philosophical and political protagonists of 18th century France. It would be very surprising therefore, if death and mortality were easily acknowledged as a prerequisite of the contemporary politics of participation, either at a general level or in the specific context of today's industrial enterprises.

Equality through Death The question of the origin of inequality among men is, as Rousseau postulates (1754) in his 'Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes', one of the most interesting and at the same time most difficult one to answer ever discussed in philosophy. Rousseau's conviction that men by nature are equal obviously had an important impact on the French Revolution in 1789. Seriously acknowledging mortality as a human quality of all men and women would eliminate the main basis for inequality which, enforced by the total ignorance of death, is permanently maintained in the thanatopraxis of western societies. Ziegler ((1982), 60) for this reason claims the primary task of what he calls a 'generative sociology' is that "we have to reintegrate death again into our thinking and to make it the dynamic basis of our fight for equality". As he (ibid., 181 ff.) points out, the early German Marxists propagated a 'positivity of the dead' through which they expressed their belief that the dead have an impact beyond their death. Every dead man or woman, irrespective of how trivial his or her life may appear to be, has a social meaning through which the dead stay alive beyond their deaths in the consciousness of others. The social meaning of a man's or woman's death can, according to early Marxist philosophy, be seen as the expression of a 'wrong consciousness' if somebody's death "only reproduces the predominant images of a society which propagates inequality and the exploitation of man by man" (ibid., 183); the social meaning reflects a 'right consciousness' when the correct judgement of a dead man or woman has meaning for history.

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Although one ultimately may not share the Marxist notion of a 'meaning of history', the discrimination between a false and a right social meaning of every death appears to me to be important. It reawakens our awareness for the inequality of men which exists in the exploitation of those who, in the eyes of the ruling divinities, only lead trivial and insignificant lives in society and work enterprises. They disappear for good from our producer society the very moment they are 'burnt out'; their corpses are "removed ... hygienically behind the scenes of social life" (Elias (1985), 23) and, it can be added, fall into eternal oblivion. What is, however, even more frightening is the fact that it is not only 'them', the divinities, who, in order to maintain their own immortality, cause these legions of apparently insignificant deaths; it is also 'us', who have become so familiar with the never-ending bombardement of meaningless deaths that we very often find it difficult to induce any further meaning into our own macabre account of death than the expression of our own contempt and ignorance towards the death of others. The macabre account of death which we, in one way or other, have become used to is exemplified by Solman and Friedman (1982). Describing the battlefield in which American companies compete with each other, which is probably not very different from other western economies, the authors present a case from one of the automobile companies that went public. In the development of their new Pinto, Ford was confronted with serious defects of construction in the gas tank which had caused a high number of accidents leading to one hundred and eighty deaths. In an internal bulletin, distributed internationally to Ford automobile dealers, the company came to the conclusion that the costs of recalling cars already sold would by far surpass the financial burden on the national economy resulting from the material and personal injuries caused by both accidents which had already occured and those statistically likely to occur in the future. This is only one example of our own ignorance towards death through which we contribute towards maintaining and perpetuating the common denial of death in capitalist society. Living persons and their dead bodies are permanently reduced to mere market commodities. It seems we can only live the equality based on our mortality as human beings when we become aware and are prepared to acknowledge our ignorance; only "when we are all guilty, will democracy begin" (Camus (1968), 112). The 'equality through death or mortality' is further substantiated by Laing's writings on psychosis. Although his postulate of a context of mutual sanity in which two sane persons meet refers to the dyadic relationship of individuals, it can serve as an analogy in the context of managers and workers. "When two sane persons meet, there appears to be a reciprocal recognition of each other's identity" (Laing (1965), 35). To recognize a context of mutual identity does, on the other hand, not exclude "a disjunction of one kind or another between the person one is in one's own eyes (one's being-for-oneself) and the person one is in the eyes of the other (one's being-for-the-other)" (ibid.). Laing suggests "that sanity or psychosis

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is tested by the degree of conjunction or disjunction between two persons where the one is sane by common consent" (ibid., 36). Where one is prepared to agree on a context of mutual mortality, immortality in the context of participation in work enterprises as described above can be perceived as a kind of sociosis, as a social disjunction with respect to mortality. Mortality or immortality is in this way tested by the degree of conjunction or disjunction between two parties, where the one is mortal by common consent. Bringing the notion of commonly shared mortality back into the context of work enterprises seems to me to make it necessary to take account of the basic equality inherent in mortality. Irrespective of all the "fundamental differences in the quality of contributions which individuals can make" (Jahoda (1979), 218), this equality has again to find an expression in our attempts to conceptualize work and its respective organization. In his attempt to overcome the discrimination implicit in the work roles in an enterprise, Lawrence (1980b) refers to the concept of citizenship and applies it to the workplace. A citizen for Lawrence (ibid., 69) is "someone who is a member of a political community, such as a nation or, in this context, an industrial enterprise. The term 'citizen', for me, connotes someone who is mature ... I also want to hold on to the idea of a role that is capable of allowing the individual to stand outside himself, his enterprise, his larger social environment, even his society, to reflect on his other roles within these frames. Citizen, in the discrete way I am using the term, is a metapolitical role that implies the capacity for self-management. This ... I have earlier defined as someone who is refusing to allow cultural assumptions to remain untested and he is disentangling the cobweb of myths and mysteries of our social institutions. It goes almost without saying that such a person values democracy and understands that democratic institutions can only be built by people who are capable of developing themselves as persons. The citizen recognizes the painful truth that neither 'democracy nor maturity can be implanted on a society' (Winnicott (1950), 186) because democracy is an achievement of a limited society, such as an industrial enterprise, at any one time."

Especially Lawrence's reference to the capacity of a mature individual to disentangle the cultural assumptions and the cobweb of myths and mysteries from which they are derived makes the concept of the citizen a valuable basis for managers and workers to mutually acknowledge their common mortality. This is also the precondition on which their 'capacity for self-management' is based. This capacity opens a new perspective for management in general, as will be dealt with in detail in the following part on leadership. Furthermore, as Aries ((1976), 24) demonstrates, for centuries leading up to the 18th it was the central metaphor of the individual vis-a-vis his or her hour of death: "Death ... is a publicly and exactly determined ceremony, which is organized by the dying himself; it is he who controls it and who knows its formal procedure. In case he ignored or falsified this procedure, it was the task of the bystanders, the physician or the priest, to remind him of the Christian order which at the same time was the traditional one."

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As against the thanatopraxis and the self-management of death prevalent in previous centuries, in contemporary western society we have become more and more used to the idea and hope of death occuring suddenly or in our sleep, thus escaping the experience of dying and also relieving the dying of responsibility for their death. Individually and collectively we have become more and more used to the idea and the experience that the physicians and the hospital staff are the masters of death who decide both on the point of time of its occurance as well as on the circumstances in which it is to take place; the funeral director then takes care of the dead body. They all try hard to create the impression of an "acceptable style of facing death" (ibid., 59). We have thus not only lost all influence over our own deaths and the death of those we love, but through the way death is managed in society have increasingly adopted the fiction that "neither we nor those we love and care for are mortal. In a technical sense we acknowledge that we may die; we effect life insurances to protect our relatives against predicaments. But in reality, in the depths of our self-consciousness, we feel we are immortal" (ibid., 69 f.).

Contemporary thanatopraxis seems, as far as its lack of participation and selfmanagement is concerned, to mirror the everyday reality in industrial enterprises. The extent to which we have given up the management of our own death and refuse, or are prohibited, from participating in the death of those who are close to us is not too different to the extent to which the majority in an enterprise either have given up any claim to self-management of their work roles or simply fail to participate in each other's mortality. It therefore seems to me that we, both individually and collectively, cannot overcome the contemporary quarrel about participation in enterprises unless we regain a shared part in our common mortality and the self-management of our own life - including its death. The participation in death and mortality as well as the regained ability to manage these appear to me, at least as a general possibility, to be the fundamentally essential preconditions for participation in the way and the circumstances our working life and indeed our life in general is managed. Participation in its fundamental sense only can be realized if we are prepared to give up the wrong belief that we are immortal and to acknowledge death as both precondition and guarantee for the equality of all men and women. Participation between workers and managers presupposes an agreed context of mutual mortality.

Liberty towards Death Liberty and fraternity were, alongside equality, the central concepts with which the protagonists of the French Revolution expressed their vision of democracy and a citizenship which would overcome the former split of French Society between those at the top and those at the bottom. These concepts subsequently have become symbolic expressions of man's dignity in general, and the question

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may be raised as to what extent liberty and fraternity can be related to mortality. Obviously, the French Revolution has not led to a renunciation of mankind's old dream of immortality nor to the overthrow of the ancient discrimination between the few who are said to reach it and the many excluded from it (cf. Papenheim (1988)). Although the protagonists of the French Revolution intended to terminate the rule of both State and Church, the Pantheon became the profane substitute for what formerly was represented by the image of Heaven. The attempt to destroy the transcendental legitimation of earthly privation through heavenly immortality did not prevent the desire of the 'great souls' to survive in the memory of mankind. Despite the obvious attempts to reinstall immortality it can, however, be hypothesized that the central slogan of the French Revolution was based on an image of man as being of this world and therefore inevitably mortal. Heidegger (1953), the controversial German philosopher, coined the expression 'liberty towards death'. As he demonstrated in 'Being and Time', our denial of death not only prevents us from acknowledging the basic equality among men; it also prevents us from realizing our own liberty, as well as that of others: "This evasive concealment in the face of death dominates everydayness so stubbornly that, in Being with one another, the 'neighbours' often still keep talking the 'dying person' into the belief that he will escape death and soon return to the tranquillized everydayness of the world of his concern" (Heidegger (1962), 297).

Heidegger expresses the conviction that as long as we as individuals are not able to accept our own death as a fact of life, regardless of how much and how often the realization frightens us, we have no chance of living out our own freedom; we are continuously driven to escape death by ignoring the end of our own lives. And what seems to be true for each individual also seems to be collectively true: as long as we are not able to acknowledge death as a fundamental quality of our fellow men we will neither be able to live free lives ourselves nor to regard liberty as a visionary, yet none the less necessary quality of mature relationships with others. As Kimmerle ((1983), 54), referring to Heidegger, writes: "Liberty towards death (is) the precondition of the possibility of liberty in general"; liberty in this sense cannot be destroyed or prevented through our individual or collective anxiety and fear of death. It also means that people do not have liberty as long as they are forced by others to deny death or experience mortal terror through war, poor health or the security regulations in connection with the work they do. "Mortal terror belongs to the preconditions through which domination is created" (ibid.). This is the case in a double sense. On the one hand, mortal terror presupposes every experience of reality under the management of anxiety, thus excluding the experience of any other dimension (Heidegger (1953), 53); on the other hand, those in power are in a position to create and maintain this mortal terror through their own actions and through the penalties they impose on their subordinates.

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To return to the context of work in contemporary industrial enterprises, it may seem exagerated to assume that management in the majority of cases still exercises mortal terror on workers. In addition to management's tendency to deny death it would, however, appear worthy of mention that at the beginning of industrialization the fate of the worker in the majority of western economies and societies was determined by a fundamental struggle for his own survival as well as for that of his family. Though at present social security regulations preserve the unemployed from starvation, the fear of becoming unemployed can nevertheless instill mortal terror. The notion of liberty, in general, and of liberty towards death, in particular, cannot be conceptualized without an appreciation of equality through death. That means, in the context of my hypothesis about participation, that liberty towards death cannot be realized in an enterprise if death itself as a fate only affects one part of the people working in it. The incongruity unavoidably leads to a situation in which those who claim to be beyond death, i.e. immortal, are not only incapable of experiencing any mortal terror themselves but, not unlike the ancient gods in Greek mythology, they are more or less tempted to force this terror on the 'ephemerals' as an ongoing expression of their contempt. If liberty derived from the liberty towards death is a precondition of the possibility of participation in an enterprise, it can only be realized if, as a constituent part of human dignity, it is available to all members.

Fraternity among Mortals It seems that among the ideals of the French Revolution, fraternity has found the slightest resonance and is the most difficult to conceptualize and realize. In its immediate sense, fraternity or brotherhood refers to the fact that men (and women) or brothers (and sisters), because of their common parents, share a relationship. In its more metaphorical sense it means solidarity and friendship among people, either in general, or as members of one society or community. It is interesting to note that in a standard French language dictionary (Le Petit Larousse) emphasis is on solidarity and friendship among people, whereas in the New Webster's and the American Heritage the predominant connotation of both fraternity and brotherhood rests on the fact that men are "linked together by similar interests or profession", they are "associated for their common interest, business and pleasure" or they are "a group of people gathered for a common purpose". It is therefore not surprising that fraternity in its English/American connotation is primarily a surrogate for competition and betrayal which men expect from their fellowmen. In this sense, "most men, as a matter of fact, do not expect 'brotherhood' or 'empathy' from others" (Chesler (1982), 265). In its broader, more mythological meaning, brotherhood has always been an ambiguous concept. On the one hand, it is mankind's dream, nurtured by the ideal

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of the French Revolution and expressed e.g. by Schiller's and Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', that all men will become brothers. This dream, in its socialist tradition, entails the idea of solidarity among the members of the working class, which will eventually include all of mankind. It thus is expressed in the streched out hands of the brothers which has become the symbol of the workers' movement (cf. Ruppert (1986), 15). In its Christian version it refers to the brotherhood with Jesus Christ who, as God's only-begotten Son, as man, has become the Brother of mankind and its salvation. In its narrower immediate sense of the relationship of men who have the same father and mother, brotherhood becomes the symbolification of an ongoing quarrel and rivalry. Occasionally, as for example in the cases of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau or Romulus and Remus, it even ends with the death or disappearance of one of the brothers. The image of the hostile brothers is such an archaic and archetypal one that it has become part of various founding myths (cf. Sievers (1989b)). This also seems to be true for the solidarity notion of brotherhood: the ancient myth of the Great Mother or Mother Earth (cf. Neumann (1974)) out of whom mankind is born makes all men and women into brothers and sisters, as does the Judaic-Christian version of the myth according to which mankind shares one and the same father in God. Brotherhood thus appears as the incarnation of both man's desperate longing for solidarity, unitedness, fusion and oneness, as well as of his mortal terror that a man will possibly be nothing but a wolf to his fellowman. As such, it is both a rebellious and a revolutionary notion. For example, if one takes the army as a metaphor for male cooperation in a more general sense, what Chesler ((1982), 269) writes, may have broader meaning: "Men in the army cannot afford to make friends with each other. They are not supposed to be too close to each other." Men in the army are supposed to renounce closer friendships because orders have to be fulfilled even against best friends; a soldier doesn't stop fighting because his best friend is injured. "If one wants to make a career, one cannot afford to have friends" (ibid.). It is also not surprising that fraternities mainly control the explosive and obstructing rivalries among men; they serve the function primarily of a "systematic restriction of indiscriminate male brutality" (ibid., 272); as such they also serve as socially accepted places for male homosexuality and eroticism (cf. e.g. Theweleit (1986), Vol. 2, 351 ff.). The revolutionary implication of fraternity as expressed in the slogan of 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' is the visionary postulate of reducing and diminishing man's dependency on those above him. Although the metaphorical emphasis of brotherhood lies on the relationship between brothers, thus reducing or even negating the significance and existence of the father/son-relationship, the political implication of the postulate of fraternity in the French Revolution and the democratic/socialist tradition derived therefrom emphasizes the end of the master/slave relatedness. To be a brother in this sense means being a person in his own right, being free and equal to others. The dependency towards the Father, the King and ultimately God

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is thus substituted by the interdependence of Brothers. The brother and brotherhood expressed the political vision that the times of the child, the subject and the servant are irretrievably gone. The citizen or 'le citoyen' becomes the title of man in the French Revolution; like the German 'Biirger' he is one among those who lives in the same city or inhabits and defends the same castle and thus shares equal rights. In the context of late 18th century France fraternity literally means the death of the King as well as that of God. Immortality can therefore no longer be deified into the King or God and mortality becomes the fate of mankind in general. In comparison to the son, and his potential successorship, as well as to the servant who is in the possession of the Father or the King, the belief in brotherhood confronts man inescapably with the fact that his own death can no longer be understood as being 'instrumental' to the immortality of the King or the Kingdom. By 'instrumentality' in this particular context, I mean, on the one hand, that the royal son, through his succession, is the guarantor as well as the incarnation of immortality of the eternity of royalty through the chain o f successors. On the other hand, as far as the servants are concerned, the immortality of the king and the kingdom is in ancient societies often guaranteed by the fact that men are buried together with the dead emperor either literally, as in the case of the Egyptian Pharaos, or symbolically as, for instance, in the case of the first Chinese Emperor. According to these ancient immortality myths, despite his own individual death, be he the son of the king or his servant, man achieves his own immortality through the immortality of the king. (And these myths, as a matter of fact, are not exclusively ancient. The Christian belief in immortality is based on the immortality of God's Son, and that which the servants will be given after their deaths if they have fulfilled their duty.) The fact that as a consequence of the French Revolution thousands of people, not only the king, were put to death, may appear as a symbolification (or proof) that those who had sincerely violated the belief in brotherhood were no longer considered eligible for immortality. On the other hand, it also may be seen as a displacement of mortality, i.e. that one's own mortality, a consequence of the belief in brotherhood, was too difficult to bear and had therefore to be projected into the protagonists of the Ancient Regime who were executed, too. T. S. Eliot says in 'Murder in the Cathedral' that "humankind cannot bear very much reality", and this orgy of assassination simply forms further proof that humankind cannot bear very much mortality. But in addition to the liberation of dependency on God, the King and the Father, fraternity is at the same time based on the emphasis on interdependency, and solidarity. A s far as its underlying image is concerned, the concept of fraternité in comparison to the citoyen is still closely bound to the family. The political target of fraternity lies in overcoming the traditional hierarchical order of the Family, the State and the Church. It emphasizes the horizontal relatedness of adult citizens as being equal members of one and the same 'patrie', i.e. native country. In

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comparison to the class structure of the Ancient Regime and its inherent potential of splitting into 'them and us', the revolutionary vision of fraternity gives space for the discrimination between 'we and I' (cf. Elias (1987)). Whereas the renunciation of dependency gives way to the adult and mature individual, the accentuation of solidarity introduces the notion of relatedness and interrelatedness among these individuals; it thus contributes and reinforces a perspective of meaning - both of one's life as well as of society - which can only be longed for socially, i.e. through the identification with and relatedness to others. To the extent that through the visionary notion of fraternity mankind is conceptualized and perceived as "a plurality of interconnected people", people constitute meaning (Elias (1985), 54). As Elias (ibid., 90) states in 'The Loneliness of the Dying', people's relatedness to death, to their own as well as their brothers' and sisters' mortality, has to be seen not only as a precondition of meaning in general, but for the meaning of fraternity, in particular. It is through mutually acknowledging this mortality that brothers (and sisters) create one another's identity, that "mutual self-creation" among men becomes likely (Novak (1968), 9). It often seems as if the most central ideals of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, and fraternity, are reduced into symbolic expressions of a certain historical and political point in time, and as such have almost lost any visionary challenge for the present. They have rather become political artefacts. In so far as we have privately and collectively got used to the resignation that what these ideals express is an Utopia which never will be realized, a similar sense of resignation is applied to the notion of participation as an ideal. In face of the given distribution of authority and property in our contemporary work enterprises, participation seems like a useful Utopian vision which will never be realized. Although it is clear that in the majority of our work enterprises as well as in our political institutions we have not accomplished much participation, I am convinced that we have still to decide whether we individually and collectively want to perceive participation as a mere illusion or as an ideal metaphor. For those who choose the former, life probably becomes easier because it justifies the conviction that some people are more equal than others, that man wants to be manipulated because he is not free, and that the world can only be kept in order if the few govern the many. On the other hand, accepting participation as an ideal metaphor means being modest enough as to give up - for oneself as well as for all others - mankind's old dream that man can gain immortality through the death of either his fellowmen or of enemies. Thus, if life can no longer be perceived as a contest with immortal winners and mortal loosers, we have no other choice but to redesign vast parts of our social and political reality. If there is some truth in the assumption that our organizations and work enterprises are dominated by collusive quarrels about immortality, the conviction that all men, without exception, will die, can fundamentally change the parameters of our collective struggle for life, which finds expression in the work we do in cooperation with others.

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Clearly, in order to make work and working conditions in contemporary western enterprises more meaningful, we need more participation; a participation among men and women who - regardless of their respective roles, competence and ambitions - share the common belief that they are equal, free and related because of the fundamental difference that separates them from the gods, that is their finitude and mortality. As far as the contemporary development of participation in work enterprises and organizations is concerned, it seems to me that we have not yet played our cards. We are just beginning to imagine what those more mature forms of participation could look like.

"A thousand policemen directing the traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go". T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

III. Leadership as a Perpetuation of Immaturity

Introduction: Discontent with Contemporary Leadership Research

The way in which social theory and practice in contemporary organizations tend to deal with the notion of leadership resembles to some extent the way we have come to deal with sexuality: leadership and sex have both been continuously reified into scientific objects, making them products which, because of their broad appeal, can be marketed with endless variations in approach, model and position. In this process, however, these concepts and the reality they represent seem to lose the quality of interrelatedness so fundamental to human interaction; that of inter-dependence in the former and of inter-course in the latter case. Most of what is offered as leadership research or theory seems to me as devoid of human qualities as the sterile and mechanical reports on sexuality by Kinsey or Masters. Just as these and similar works on human sexuality lack any implications of love, tenderness or even mortality, so leadership has been converted into a mechanical transition between those actively leading and those passively led, with no further connotations of life, culture, history, or society. "Leadership thought is now a subdivision of psychology rather than of philosophy" (Hodgkinson (1983), 197 f.). This fragmentation of leadership has reduced it to a mere behavioral category. The notion of the leader and of leadership are thus commonly reduced in the following way: "A leader may be defined as a person who influences others in the direction of the leader's goals. Effective leadership within the context of the organization may be defined as the influencing of individual and group behavior toward the optimal attainment of the enterprise's goals" (French (1974), 117).

Denis Pym's ((1974), 225) remark about experimental psychologists, that "much can be learned about (their)... intimate lives .. by studying what they have to say about the sex life of the laboratory rat" applies in the same way to what psychologists and social scientists present as the scientific truth on the relationship between 'masters' and 'slaves'. The point is also made by Miiller ((1981), 77): "It seems as if the leadership theories based on interview data are less an image of the reality of leadership than a result of the implied theories of the interviewees". At the end of his study he comes to the following conclusion: "With the ongoing attempt to grasp 'leadership' as specific interpersonal influence in the superior/subordinate-relationship we continually repeat the 'mistake of a third kind': with

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scientific over-exactness and an enormous methodological effort we produce right answers to wrong questions. In face of the existing research, the suspicion is substantiated that 'leadership' as a scientific construction has a dubious explanation value" (ibid., 177 f.; cf. Miiller (1988); Dachler (1988); Miiller and Dachler (1988)). The amount and degree of reality represented in the majority of leadership research parallels what is traditionally offered as anatomy or pathology in a curriculum of medical education, in which future physicians are trained to be engineers of the human body, its skeleton, organs, nerves, muscles, and chemistry; the limitations of such a fragmented reality, treating the body independently of an individual personality, a life, and a death is similar to the fragmentation embodied in the majority of leadership theory and research: they are confined to a convincing empiricism, as if psychic and social life does not exist (cf. Jung (1983a), 144). The main concern of leadership research seems to be the search for an infallible hazard system guaranteeing endless success - but without any further concern for the gamblers or what they may have committed their lives to. "At least from an American perspective, I would have to rate the notion of leadership as the most frequently discussed, over-studied, and yet least well understood concept in the social sciences. Incidentally, if anyone is looking to grow a consulting practice in the States, perhaps the best way to do so is to develop some practice with the title leadership in it. The only caveat is that the focus must be on individual leadership. Therein lies the fundamental attribution error which has bogged down the study of leadership on this side of the Atlantic. An overwhelming desire to examine the contributions of individuals while underestimating the importance of the richer embedded dynamics of leadership-in-action has led to a caricature of the phenomenon which is always less than satisfying in explanatory power" (Fairfield-Sonn (1989, 15). Considering the often cynical quality of current research and theory of leadership in organizations the only hope I see at present is the fact that - even, if only occasionally - people do find the courage to question what is otherwise generally accepted as the truth. And as my own argument about leadership as a perpetuation of immaturity (I will elaborate on this later) relies on both the content of other people's objections and on the fact that they have taken the risk of questioning the accepted reality it seems appropriate to throw some light on some of the reservations and criticisms expressed about the concept of leadership as presented in theories and research. Katz and Kahn (1966) in their 'Social Psychology of Organizations' were the first - or at least the first widely-read authors - to question the long accepted reality: "The concept of leadership has an ambiguous status in organizational practice, as it does in organizational theory. In practice, management appears to be of two minds about the exercise of leadership. Many jobs are so specified in content and method that, within very broad limits, differences among individuals become irrelevant, and acts of leadership are regarded as gratuituous at best, and at worst insubordinate. Nevertheless, management typically responds to instances of organizational success by rewarding the formal leader,

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and to instances of organizational failure by blaming the person so designated. There is an almost universal assumption that even a small subpart of an organization can operate successfully only if some person has been formally designated as leader" (ibid., 300). "In fact, organizational leadership, like other cases of the exertion of influence in complex social settings, is always a combined function of social structural factors and of the particular characteristics of the individuals making up the structure. And yet, social-psychological literature has been strangely silent in describing the operation of leadership processes in the real social world, i.e. within social systems; the literature of leadership has a disembodied, unorganizational quality" (ibid, 308). And more recently Calas and Smircich ((1987), 221) go a step further when they state: "The paradox is that this literature first equates manager with leader, then it measures the leadership of the manager, and when little is found, it finds ways to substitute for leadership and also to do away with management. It seems to signal a trend toward the non-human organization." The argument most often encountered is that the leadership concept in organization theory is limited either to dyadic interactions between a particular leader and his subordinates, or to behavior in small groups. In German speaking business administration and organization theory, we find statements such as: "Concepts of leadership start more or less from a dyadic relationship, they assume that a superior, in a particular situation, only has to relate to one subordinate and that the others in a leadership situation can be neglected" (Türk (1984), 65). "Implicit in our culture is a perspective of leadership which implies an individual person, who, among other things, has been a priori and formally appointed to supervise or 'manage' a group of people" (Dachler and Enderle (1989), 62). "Leadership research has up to now in its quest for 'objective leadership theories', started from an essencialistic (scientific) stance ... Leadership is primarily understood as behavior (of the leader) and behavioral outcome of those led by him" (Müller (1981), 35; cf. Müller (1987)). "Leadership research and teaching in business administration at present is primarily based on the uncritical acceptance of psychological concepts as well as theories of practitioners on leadership" (Kubicek (1984), 4). "The attempt for orientation in the area of leadership leads into concealed territory: There are impressive avenues but this leads into nothingness - small secret ways to fascinating observation posts, fog holes and muddy areas. On the map of leadership there are also quite a few Potemkian villages, invulnerable castles or wildly proliferating slums" (Neuberger (1990), 2). The disembodied quality of the material on leadership Katz and Kahn (1966) describe, is not only explained by the fact that the preferred concept of leadership relates to a non-organizational reality, but also the mechanistic quality of the human relations and influence implied in such leadership practice. Kubicek ((1984), 19) describes the understanding of leadership in the formula "leaders act whereas subordinates react with nothing but behavior." The underlying model

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is that of a monocausal mechanism according to which one has only to press a button in order to receive a certain reaction. Comparing leadership concepts to a gear change while driving a car appeared too pejorative and cynical at first, but my review of the literature soon revealed that it was just this image which was seriously offered to describe what is obviously regarded by some as the reality of leadership: "The managerial practice, therefore, should be geared to the subordinate's current level of maturity with the overall goal of helping him to develop, to require progressively less external control, and to gain more and more self-control. And why would a man want this? Because under these conditions he achieves satisfaction on the job at the levels, primarily the ego and self-fulfillment levels, at which he is the most motivable" (Haney (1967), 2o, quoted in Hersey and Blanchard (1977), 182).

Hersey and Blanchard leave no doubt that they not only agree with this author, they expressly adopt it as an expression of their own perception of the management of 'organizational behaviour utilizing human resources'. Such an approach obviously confirms the needs and desires of present and future managers. From here, it only seems a short step onwards for one of these authors, together with another colleague, to co-author the best-selling 'The One Minute Manager' (Blanchard and Johnson (1982); cf. Dodsworth (1986); Wigglesworth (1983)). May the reader who now suspects my unquieted envy in the face of such firmly anchored literary immortality excuse my populist imagination but I really do have the impression that 'love' is going for a dime at a managers' peepshow in excursions like this. Two recent items reconfirmed the lifeless and disembodied quality of the literature on leadership for me. The first was my own experience while reviewing the literature to find material for the implications of maturity with regard to leadership. Despite the general lack of this dimension, I was amazed at my discovery that, with the exception of Argyris' earlier works (e.g. (1957) (1958)), the only explicit relationship between maturity and leadership I was able to find was in Hersey and Blanchard (1977). They however deal exclusively with the maturity or immaturity of the subordinate, and their sole aim is to alter and finally overcome it (cf. Blank et al. (1988)), if needs be by subordinates' behavior modification. This confirmed Kets de Vries and Miller ((1985), 585): "What most leaders seem to have in common is the abi-lity to reawaken primitive emotions in their followers. Leaders, particularly those who are charismatic, are masters at manipulating certain symbols. Followers, when under the 'spell' of certain types of leaders, often feel powerfully grandiose and proud, or helpless and acutely dependent... (Leaders) have the uncanny ability to exploit, not necessarily in full awareness, the unconscious feelings of their subordinates. In this process, some followers may try to embrace an idealized, 'omnipotent' leader, one who will fulfill their dependency needs."

The second item was when one of my doctoral students recently proposed writing his doctoral dissertation on leadership and anxiety (Brockermann (1989)); his application for a research grant from the university was rejected with the cynical

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analysis by his reviewers: "If it is really true that managers experience anxiety, they would all end up on a psychiatrist's couch.". In his research he came to a similar conclusion, namely that the main concern in respect of anxiety in the leadership literature is directed towards the follower and his possible resistance. My impression is that leaders per se are regarded as mature personalities and that there is no further interest in their possible inadequacies. This image of leaders is mirrored by the choice of book titles on the market, such as the bestseller 'The Super Managers' (Heller (1984)). It seems to me that, in addition to its limited and biased quality, the literature on leadership comprises a huge, steadily increasing body that provides enough material to prevent whole generations of scientists from doing any further research about leadership itself. To take only one example, Stogdill's (1974) 'Handbook of Leadership', a sophistication of hypothesis, research designs, theoretical explanations and results, is boring to me. This kind of work leads me to the conviction that the scientific concern for leadership, fragmented into various approaches as it is, primarily serves to reconfirm the fragmentation of its 'object'. "Competing theories abound. We find great men theories, trend theories, environmental theories, person-situation theories, interaction-expectation theories, humanistic theories, exchange theories, behavioral theories, and perceptual and cognitive theories" (Kets de Vries and Miller (1985), 585; cf. Smith and Peterson (1988); Staehle (1992)).

Leadership research has lost sight of such aspects as what it means for a person to be appointed as a leader, or to relate to a leader, or how organizations as a whole deal with issues of leadership. The scientific concern for leadership is "the perpetuation of leadership research under the legitimacy of tradition" (Calas and Smircich (1987), 219); it has somehow been turned into "a form of artistic expression, an end in itself' (ibid., 214). McCall and Lombardo ((1978), XII) have, in my view, described the present state of leadership research very well by stating: "We need to rediscover the phenomena of leadership, the pursuit of rigor and precision has led to an overemphasis on techniques at the expense of knowing. As a result, we have masses of 'findings' that no one seems able to pull together - they simply float around in the literature, providing nothing from which one can push off to anywhere."

What Tosi ((1982), 223 f.) has written about the present state of confusion he sees in the contemporary leadership literature is also relevant: "The general definition of leadership is drawn from charismatic imagery, the measurement of leadership is undertaken with technique designed to study managers or military officers, and the stereotype which often dominates the selection of leaders is rather Hollywoodlike. ... Such an image of leadership naturally leads to a definition which has wide acceptance in the 'establishment' of leadership theory and research; leadership is the ability of one person to influence another to act in a way desired by the first."

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He continues: "The irony that persecutes the current establishment leadership paradigm is that it is charisma in which the field is interested, yet it is ordinary managers, quite often in very low level jobs, who are studied. The language of leadership is mystical, the reality mundane. Our imagery of leadership is a mental cinema in which heroic figures watch a battle from atop a nob as Napoleon, prowl the sideline of a football field like Vince Lombardi, or march down a highway toward Selma, Alabama, as did Martin Luther King. The images are of leaders in action, pleading, cajoling, and demanding that their constituents follow" (ibid., 225).

I have come to the conclusion that the scientific concern for leadership over the years has created its own phantom and that most of the scientific literature on this topic has no relevance for those who - whatever their position - have to deal with leadership in their everyday life. It seems to me that leadership, both in its more scientific orientation and in its tool and model oriented version, has been reduced to a product which is packaged and sold, either for reputation in the 'scientific community' or for money to increasing numbers of managers (cf. Neuberger (1985)). The function of social scientists has been redefined "to provide an explanation for why it is 'natural' that things should be - and thus remain - as they are" (Dickson ((1974), 189)). "What began in antiquity as a profoundly philosophical concern has become demythologized, secularized, empiricized, democratized and psychologized, and now flourishes as a thickly tangled web wherein notions of values, ethics and morality have been leeched away, ignored, or deprecated as irrelevant" (Hodgkinson (1983), 198).

A large part of what is offered as scientific knowledge and results from leadership research seems primarily to mirror the fate and pathology through which wide parts of contemporary psychology - primarily in its American origin or under its influence - can be characterized. The reality that psychology deals with is that of societyless and historyless individuals, or even homunculi, whose social orientation is narrowly restricted to dyadic processes or to small group constellations and behavior. This framework of conceptualization and problematization is so manifestly limited that any reality beyond it can be ignored or negated. The perspective offered in Rank's 'Beyond Psychology' (1958) is still seen as being outside the traditional boundaries of psychology, and further work in this direction is still not properly recognized. Credit for reopening the perspective beyond the frame of contemporary psychology goes especially to Becker (1975) who, in his posthumously published book 'Escape from Evil' explicitly refers to Rank's work. Though Rank made no explicit contribution to organization theory, he offers both in his writings and his practice as a psychoanalyst a holistic view of psychology according to which any person can be seen as a representative of mankind and is thus no longer limited to his own behavior and its rational explications, but bound in a web of images, hopes, anxieties etc. with which we all have to come to terms. Rank draws his

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conclusions from the apparently trivial insight "that people, though they may think and talk rationally - and even behave so - live irrationally" ((1958), 11) - and, as a consequence, he postulates "an irrational language with a new vocabulary" (ibid., 12).

Leadership Between Reification and Deification

Whereas science has produced a reified notion of leadership, managerial practice and the related literature, on the other hand, have turned the phenomenon into a deified surrogate, of which the hero is the most recent example. In an early paper Berger and Pullberg (1966) developed the original Marxian concept of reification for a sociological critique of consciousness. According to them (and in the Marxian tradition) the social process of reification is based on an underlying process of alienation, "by which the unity of the producing and the product is broken. The product now appears to the producer as an alien facticity and power standing in itself and over against him, no longer recognizable as a product. In other words, alienation is the process by which man forgets that the world he lives in has been produced by himself' (ibid., 61).

Therefore by reification they "mean the moment in the process of alienation in which the characteristic of thing-hood becomes the standard of objective reality. That is, nothing can be conceived of as real that does not have the character of a thing. This can also be put in different words: reification is objectification in an alienated mode" (ibid.).

Through reification the original and genuine social process of an individual and mutual construction of reality is ignored and the quality of a produced product of society, its institutions, processes etc. sinks into oblivion. The reality of the social world no longer can be realized as a continuous social process of which human beings are part; it rather assumes the quality of an endproduct to which one is surrendered and which one can only deal with in an objective mode. This process of reification is manifold: it is not limited to society as a global entity, but can be related to human beings individually and generally. Berger and Pullberg ((1966), 65) write "that the foundations of theoretical reification lie in the pre-theoretical reification of the world and of oneself"; if this is true, it becomes obvious that the objective truth and reality (and therefore reification) presented for example in sociology or psychology cannot be primarily regarded as an invention of the representatives of these disciplines. The scientific reification may contribute to an unquestioning objectification and make it difficult or even impossible to dereify the newly created reality, but it still only mirrors (or magnifies) what is going on in the world and our everyday lives. It is a process through which we all, the

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reader as well as this author, contribute, most often unconsciously. We may get our relief from it, and at the same time the very process of reification creates new and perpetuates old burdens, fears and misery. Reification may on the one side be used to gain power over others insofar as the objectivity, the facts and truths presented will be accepted as such and will limit the variance of possible reactions; but on the other side the reification of parts of social reality often leads to a loss of one's own faith, autonomy and competence and to reactions of inferiority, resignation or even despair. "Reification minimizes the range of reflections and choice, automizes conduct in the socially prescribed channels and fixates the taken-for-granted perception of the world" (ibid., 68). Very often the only way to avoid these feelings and reactions to the reification of one's own outer world seems to be to flee into a congruency of reification whereby the reification of the outer world is repeated and set forth in the inner world - where the individual regards himself and others primarily as roles or individuals, as reified entities acting in a reified world. Since "ab initio, reification entails a de-humanization of its object" (ibid., 65), congruency of an inner and an outer world reification may reduce or even eliminate the unsufferable experience of dehumanization without, of course, changing the reality of the dehumanization process itself. The slide of the social sciences into the pitfall of setting forth and duplicating this pre-theoretical reification - in which they, theoretically, convert the concrete which, as concretization of the abstract, is itself based on a conversion of the concrete into the abstract (cf. ibid., 68), again into the abstract - seems to be reinforced by a curious scientific division of labour. Whereas sociology tends to objectify society and its construction processes of social reality, psychology runs the risk of reifying the human being as the producer and actor in these processes. The reifying sociologist evaluates the human being as a 'homo sociologicus' (cf. Dahrendorf (1958)), subject to the norms and structures of his social environment, whereas his psychologist colleague accomplishes the reification of man as an individual placing the navel in the centre of the world and all further concerns as an issue of the individual's self-realization. The more the segregation of the social sciences proceeds (and as such is reified in the tradition and organization of these sciences) the less surprising it is to hear of the necessity for a further discipline - social psychology - to bridge the gap and to raise the issue of how exactly the relations between pre-produced monadic puppets-on-a-string are to be understood. In this reified form, social psychology claims effectively to complete the circle. As Ziegler ((1982), 15) very accurately writes, through this man-made reification "man produces goods and so he himself becomes a product". And since identification with a product also mirrors one's own self-esteem the variety of products open for identification may range from the machine and the computer to garbage. Organization and management approaches in general and the more popular notions (and images) of leadership in particular seem to be based on this societal and scientific process of reification and its underlying fragmentation. In addition

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to the fact that leadership phenomena are often exclusively investigated in terms of the shorter range of dyadic or group relations, the contemporary concern for leadership, both in its pre-theoretical as well as in its theoretical form, seems to a very high extent to be characterized by a bias towards extensive reification. As Gouldner ((1969), 348) states: "In large reaches of our society, but particularly in its industrial sector, it is not the man that is wanted. It is, rather, the function he performs and it is the skill with which he performs it for which he is paid. If a man's skill is not needed, the man is not needed ... In other words, the system rewards and fosters those skills deemed useful and suppresses the expression of talents and faculties deemed useless, and thereby structures and imprints itself upon the individual personality and self."

It seems to me that the caricatures depicted in management journals quite often express this part of social reality more directly and accurately than in the accompanying articles (cf. Lipp (1991), 133). One very good example to demonstrate what is meant by this reified bias of leadership is a sketch by Vladimir Rensin showing a manager who himself is mobilized by a toy key in his back and who, at the same time, moves his subordinate like a puppet-on-a-string. This particular sketch is titled: "In our enterprise we work on the basis of modern leadership principles". From my own experience as a consultant I am convinced that this and similar pictures are not only in the minds of their artists; when managers and workers allow themselves the freedom of actually taking pencil and paper and drawing their own images they produce just this kind of material. Otto Rank (cf. Hinz (1978), 192) wrote that a neurotic person seems to be totally unaware of his dreams, a normal person hides his dreams and an artist makes his dreams public; the same can probably be assumed about the management of anxieties, i.e. that artists make common anxieties public. The extent to which such an alienated objectification dominates contemporary interest in leadership can also be seen in works like Stogdill's (1974) compendium on leadership. The author explicitly excludes a chapter on the charismatic leader with the explanation that "this important variant of the leadership role has not been a willing or frequent subject of research that involves measurement or experimentation." He argues that existing studies on charismatic leadership "provide comparatively little information that adds to an understanding of leadership" (ibid., VIII). Charismatic leadership is defined by Max Weber ((1947), 358 f.) as " . . . a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernational, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader."

Though I do not believe that charismatic leadership is the most important dimension of leadership, the almost total omission of this dimension (cf. House (1977);

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Lee (1980), 228 f.; Bryman (1992)) makes me suspicious that charisma does not fit in well with what is generally considered to be leadership. This suspicion raises the question of what further human qualities and aspects of life have to be neglected in order to perpetuate the commonly shared leadership concept. The fact that charisma as a superhuman and somehow godlike or godgiven quality is (or has to be) omitted from the contemporary consciousness in regard to leadership led me to a further observation. Not only has the leader lost all but a few human qualities, he seems also with few exceptions to be void of archaic images such as those of the hero, the prophet, the god, or, for example, the father and the testator. One explanation for the removal of the underlying frame of conceptualization obviously may be the change towards more rational perceptions in what is regarded as the modern world and the conviction that the days in which men prayed to the gods and regarded the universe as something created and sustained by them are, at least for the majority of our contemporaries, irrevocably gone. At the same time it seems to me that the immense reification all around us, so far as its underlying process of alienated objectification is concerned, is only a functional equivalent of the deification through which our ancestors tried to provide their world with an unquestionable objectivity. The only 'progress' we seem to have accomplished by substituting the former deification with a new reification is that we no longer live the condition of a creation but that of a thing. Like reification, deification can be "regarded as an ultimately regressive, alienated, and self-defeating response to man's experience of separation from nature" (Willmott and Knights (1982), 216). It seems as if we have merely substituted the former non-differentiated theistic unity of the producing and the product (as a paradigm according to which men invested their hopes in their identity with the producer as part of their god-likeness) with the new paradigm which destroys the former unity and totally segregates the product from the producing. This change of paradigms moved man from a god-like creature to the alienation of thing-hood. As long as we collectively define ourselves through reification we have obviously not succeeded in avoiding our own objectification and accepting human subjectivity, the prerequisite for conceptualizing and understanding the 'unity of the producing and the product' and for finally overcoming the de-humanization both deification and reification entail. The assumption that our ancestors exclusively legitimated their own objectification through deification is worth further questioning. As, for example, Richter (1979) in his book 'Der Gotteskomplex' very extensively demonstrates, we are all individually very apt at hiding our own insufficiencies and inadequacies behind an appearance of godlike omnipotence which we legitimate with a societal plot, ignoring pain and death as parts of our common reality. The stereotype basic assumption to which we are all more or less in various ways committed is that "mankind ultimately will prosper in peace and liberty if Siegfried or St. George kills the evil dragon" (ibid., 135; cf. Sievers (1990b)). From a narcissistic feeling

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of impotence we seek escape in narcissistic omnipotence (cf. Richter (1979), 23). As Becker ((1975), 37) states: "Man needs self-esteem more than anything; he wants to be a cosmic hero, contributing with his energies to nothing less than the greatness and pleasure of the gods themselves. At the same time, this risk inflates him to proportions he cannot stand; he becomes too much like the gods themselves, and he must renounce this dangerous power. Not to do so is to be unbalanced, to run the great sin of hubris as the Greeks understood it. Hubris means forgetting where the real source of power lies and imagining that it is in oneself."

The reality of industrial enterprises is ideally suited to demonstrate that this human tendency to achieve legitimation and objectivity by converting men into gods is still very alive in the so-called Age of Enlightenment, or Post-Enlightenment. The second part of this book examined the question of why the extent and the quality of participation in contemporary enterprises and institutions is obviously very far removed from what is often postulated and declared to be the case. I worked with the hypothesis that one possible explanation lies in a fundamental societal splitting, dividing managers from workers, according to which the former see themselves and are seen by their counterparts as gods, who take part in the immortality of their firm, whereas the latter are condemned to bear the fate of ephemerals who - as in ancient Greek mythology - are surrendered to hopelessness and mortality. In the light of the differentiation between deification and reification just described, this hypothesis can be further elaborated. The social pre-theoretical splitting of those at the top from those at the bottom in most of contemporary enterprises appears to be accompanied and legitimated by massive objectification processes involving deification and reification. Through reification, which primarily seems to determine the fate of the workers, men are converted into things - as is very accurately expressed in the recent fad for managerial approaches labeled 'human resources management'. Another equally accurate and alarming example is that of 'portfolio management', in which a company's products are strategically differentiated according to their immanent risk and expected profit e.g. into 'stars, question marks, cash cows, and poor dogs'; it does not seem too exagerated to apply these names to the employees working in these different sectors. The cynicism social scientists are capable of really is incredible! Only one day after writing these sentences, the advertisement for a new book reached me announcing that: "Strategic Management of Human Resources presents a new approach to managing and developing the human resources of an organization: an approach whereby employees are viewed as assets that produce income, and techniques used to manage investment portfolios are applied. The book shows how to enhance the organization's investment in human capital by grouping employees according to productivity and growth potential, and managing each group differently" (Odiorne (1984)).

The author would probably resist the charge of contempt for classifying employees into 'stars, workhorses, problem employees and deadwood' (cf. Sievers (1988),

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(1990a/c); Staehle (1988), 583 f.), but the semantic subtleties that would have to ensue remind me more of a 'Lingua Tertii Imperii' (Sigrist (1989), 850 f.) Where men are either regarded by others or regard themselves as things comparable to the products they produce, they lose their human ability (and necessity) to die. Like things, they may lose their original quality, may be destroyed, perish and finally turn into garbage - but as they never have been accorded the ability to live, no one can care about their death. The underlying reification dictates that death is neither a part of human existence nor of man's essence. Identified as products, these men and women lose their original human capacity as producers. However, since according to our limited logic, every effect must have a cause through which it originated, the work enterprise, represented by its entrepreneurs, be they owners or managers, takes over the role of the producer and thereby reestablishes the original unity of the producer and the product. Constellations in which the majority of men can be seen as products, or rather as the creation of some few supermen, closely resembles, as a matter of fact, the way the underlying unity of the producer and the product was established in theistic views of life and the world, i.e. God (or the gods) as the creator of man, His creatures. In its more deterministic versions, man actually acts as an instrument or a tool through which the creator continues to create and complete the world as his creation: "replenish the earth, and subdue it!" (Gen. 1,28). Similarly in industrial enterprises, but certainly not only there, men in their roles as workers can be understood as the creation of their creators. Their 'creators' create profit as a form of self-approval and as proof of their survival and immortality. More concretely in terms of contemporary economies, entrepreneurs, as the producers of industrial enterprises, produce their endproducts, their goods and their services, through their workers, who act as their intermediate products, in order to achieve profit as a form of return on investment. At the same time, profit has somehow taken over the function of nectar and ambrosia in Greek mythology, and has become the new fruit of immortality. The reification through which men in their roles as workers are converted into products is accompanied and intensively reinforced by an interdependent objectification of proprietors and managers as gods or godlike beings. The reification of the many is precondition for the deification of the few. It is also evident that both these strategies of objectification, reification as its alienated and deification as its apparently sacred version, are based on an underlying de-humanization, i.e. man as the concrete either has to be converted into the abstract of a thing or of a god. Just as reification as a process is only complete when in turn the abstract is again concretized (cf. Berger and Pullberg (1966), 68), this would seem to be the case for deification, too. These considerations outline an important dimension in the underlying dynamics of work institutions, which obviously leads into other, much more frightening areas than the usual kinds of leadership theory or practice. Though I do not question the idea expressed by Wunderer and Grunwald ((1980a), 53) that "'leadership'

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(is) a cultural normative concept which according to scientists' and practioners' respective images of the world and of man is perceived differently", I do nevertheless presume to doubt whether in the majority of cases presented in the social science literature the particular bias is totally ignored and whether the underlying social and scientific legitimation and objectification strategies on which particular leadership approaches are based are thematized or even reflected.

Towards a De-reification and De-deification of Leadership

In the broader context of these societal strategies of objectification that are manifested in our work enterprises as a fundamental split between those at the top and those at the bottom, leadership appears in an entirely new light. In contrast to the predominant practice, which limits leadership phenomena primarily to dyadic interactions or small group situations, the frame of reference is altered by the construction processes of social consciousness suggested here. It is hardly surprising that the extended frame changes the appearance of leadership, just like a photograph may present another message or meaning if the cut it takes of reality is changed. Leadership, which, despite its various contradictory definitions, is commonly seen as a kind of social influence executed by the leader on those who are caused to act towards the accomplishment of certain goals, now has to be viewed in a different light. Leadership in organizations manages the gap between deified men on the one side and reified men on the other side. Leadership is the process through which the alienated split between the producing and the product artificially, i.e. in a reified mode, has to be bridged in order to reaccomplish the unity which originally existed. If the predominant characteristic of contemporary industrial production can be described as the creation of profit in such manner that godlike entrepreneurs produce their end-products through employed workers as their intermediate products, leadership gains the function of contributing to an adequate and proper management of men in their thing-hood of intermediate products. To alter only slightly what is known as a widespread management approach in contemporary organization theory, i.e. 'management by objectives', leadership becomes the management of objects. In so far as, through leadership, workers are managed like things and products, the process does not differ much from the management of other things such as machines or the product flow in a production unit. In this context, the function of leadership principles and a philosophy of management appears in a new light. Kubicek (1984) makes the point that the predominant function of the former is to provide the otherwise missing motivation and identification of employees, whereas Ouchi and Price ((1978), 42) state about the latter, that

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"a philosophy of management provides a form of control at once all pervasive and effective because it consists of a basic theory of how the firm should be managed. Any manager who grasps this essential theory can deduce from it the appropriate response to any novel situation."

In the context of the previous reflections, the function can be stated even more accurately: through leadership, dead things have to be mobilized in order to produce the endproducts necessary for the intended profit. This description elucidates more precisely the underlying cynicism and madness of industrial production to which we all have become more and more accustomed, i.e. the fact that men and women in order to perform the role of the worker first have to be converted and euthanasized into things which then again via leadership are artificially revitalized to a degree which just appears sufficient enough to deliver what is expected of them. These are the mechanisms most attractive to modern approaches on leadership, stress, motivation, participation etc. (cf. Lawrence (1987)). I have to admit that facing the phenomenon and function of leadership as a process through which the deification of men at the top and the reification of those at the bottom is transmitted is a very global and general description. It needs further exploration to prove its quality and accurateness. If leadership is executed in a context of sacred and alienated objectification, for instance, the question has to be raised as to whether leadership as a process itself is not subject to equivalent strategies of immunification. It also appears plausible that the leader himself as the executor of such a leadership is affected as a human being by the very process of objectification through which his employees and subordinates as his objects are determined. Whether a particular leader is mainly guided by an objectification of his deified or reified mode apparently seems primarily to be a matter of his place and level in the existing organizational hierarchy. It can be assumed that those commonly called managers, especially those nearer to the top, are mainly affected by the sacred version of objectification. These leaders mainly tend to identify themselves (like the ancient heros or the sons of the gods) with those at the top because they are the only ones who can provide their necessary and direly needed immortality; leaders nearest to the top have to endure and to accomplish their de-humanization via deification (cf. Rank (1933), 94 f.; Slater (1966); Smith and Simmons (1983)). The more leadership that is delegated down to the shop-floor level the more likely that these leaders are subject to the same kind of reification the workers, in this case their immediate counterparts, are affected by. Even if on occasions they are exposed to the divine light that shines through the clouds or receive some enforcement from their identification as their 'masters' voice', leaders in positions such as that of the foreman or the supervisor seem to share a fate of alienated reification; as things, they are tools; they only differ from their coworkers by the fact that they have to transmit part of the energy that is invested in them so that they feel motivated to get their own counterparts moving in the intended direction.

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In comparison to this unequivocal allocation of leaders at the top and the bottom of the hierarchical scale to one or the other form of objectification, those in between, commonly called middle-management, are less easily allocatable. The extent to which they can 'profit' from the deified version of objectification depends upon various factors, among which the question of whether they themselves have to lead others or whether they expect to make a career in the near future obviously are most significant. Yet from a more general point of view, there cannot be much doubt that those among the legions of middle managers in leadership positions are mainly reduced to tools and instruments in the broader machinery; the quality of their leadership seems to be more affected by alienation than by divinity or sacredness. With the exception of those nearest to the top, leaders at the lower levels seem to be things, like the workers. These leaders have to implement a kind of leadership they themselves neither created nor are very much identified with. In the sense that the original unity of the producing and the product is broken, i.e. that those at the top invent and set the norms and standards of leadership in a particular enterprise, leadership itself can be understood as an alienated reification. This does not exclude the legitimation leadership finds and needs in an organization that is based on a deification by which men and women in their reified version as workers invest hope, strength and competence in those at the top by regarding them as omnipotent and omniscient, not seldom symbolically expressed by referring to the top executives' offices as Olympus. The discrimination between more deified and more reified orientations of leadership objectifications helps further to elucidate the predominant psycho- or sociodynamic in a particular work enterprise. It would seem likely, for instance, that family businesses, regardless of the length of their history, tend to legitimate and perpetuate the previous charisma of the founder in a kind of deification process, whereas large bureaucratized or Taylorized organizations obviously tend more towards a total reification of leadership in which the leaders lose all contact with human qualities. It also occurs to me that what primarily in German enterprises is propagated as cooperative leadership, but which can be found elsewhere under other labels such as permissive, democratic, non-directive or participative leadership (cf. Wunderer and Grunwald (1980b), 1), is characterized by a fusion of these two objectification strategies. It can be suspected that cooperative leadership, which offers the illusion of a humanized version of leadership, is based on a complicated confusion according to which those at the bottom are only given the impression that they are expected to mobilize their own divine parts whereas those at the top give the impression that they too are objects of the proclaimed leadership style. The confusion of reality thereby produced reminds me of the rather schizoid constructions which, for instance, are described by Laing ((1971), 1) in his 'Knots'.

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"They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game."

Such a schizoidity can from a worker's perspective be expressed as: "They in Olympus are expecting us, the dregs, to regard them as human beings who, as mere tools of the shareholders, tend to give us (despite our factual thing-hood) the impression of being convinced of our godlikeness. But both sides, they and us, know that we, because we can't buy into it, only pretend to accept their equally pretended expectations." In so far as the vast majority of what is offered as management and organization theory permanently contributes to the elaboration and legitimation of this schizoid orientation, these theories further reify the underlying deification of leadership practice. What is presented as leadership research must to a vast extent, be viewed as commissioned research for which the task either explicitly or hiddenly is set by the sacred commission agents at the top. In slightly exaggerated terms, the hidden agenda of leadership research and theory can - from the underlying perspective of a sociological analysis of consciousness - be described as the scientific reification of deification; its product is the management of people as intermediate products and raw material. "As long as managers, researchers, and educators continue to subordinate themselves to a mythical superordinate conception of the managerial role, they also will continue to build prisons of the mind that become prisons of reality for themselves and many others" (Laurent (1987), 228).

Towards a Homification of Leadership If gods and things are the results of the ongoing deification and reification processes in contemporary enterprises, and of a broader objectification in human history in general, the question arises as to whether and how these ongoing de-humanization strategies can be overcome. The most obvious reaction is to postulate further humanization measures to end or diminish the homicide taking place in enterprises by which human beings are permanently converted into dead things or deathless gods. However, a review of the last decade in Germany, and obviously in other western societies too, shows that the result of the loudly promulgated humanization of working life and the funds made available for these efforts have mainly been used for rationalization and modernization programs. For this reason I suspect that humanization as a concept, at least at present, is too worn out to facilitate the radical critique of our present organization theory and practice that is so desperately needed. In order to hold on to the level of concepts used so far in the present analysis of consciousness I would therefore like to

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suggest the term homification for the concept required to achieve the object of de-deification and de-reification. To exclude one possible misconception from the very beginning, by homification I do not mean some kind of process analogous to the way owners of enterprises sometimes refer to their employees as the extended family or users personalize their computers. What I mean by homification is to think and to name things as things and men as men. Not exactly an easy venture! Both in everyday and in scientific language we have become more and more used to a continuous confusion of concepts that mirror the underlying confusion of our reality. We often lose sight of the boundaries between men and things and what they are supposed to be like. One of the most convincing examples is the way we treat the human body, a man's or woman's gestalt or the 'vessel of the soul'. Not only do we try to hygienically remove the dead body as soon as it begins to decline, but we progressively, as Imhof ((1984), 223 f.) so convincingly describes it, treat it as a thing: "Good health, i.e. the irreproachable functioning of the body, at present is the only and exclusive guarantee for our life and, as a matter of fact, for our life as a whole. If it withers then, automatically, our life withers ... Individually as well as collectively we are prepared to invest unlimited sums in it and its functioning even to the limits of a cost-exploding healthsystem ... We nurture it according to best standards; we swallow preventively additional vitamin pills and eat muesli in order to ensure that it does not miss anything. We ... jog and join anti-smoker-campaigns, allow it leisure and spare time as well as a summer and winter vacation. In addition, we tame it under the sunray lamp - almost with the intent of permanent impregnation and immunisation."

The same is true for the time perspective of human life, or rather the total lack of perspective. Having become used to the expectation that we will die in our seventies or even eighties, we, with the exception of a childhood and youth, have nearly completely excluded the idea of any further development; from his early twenties to his late sixties a man is regarded as an adult who continues his once reached state, hopefully up to his retirement. What in previous centuries, for instance, was viewed as a turning wheel, has been converted into a rectilineal movement on one's zenith with no further ups and downs or even hopelessly wrong ways or dead ends (cf. Imhof (1988)). We are so preocupied with our own steady state that we can no longer observe a personal development, not to speak of a further development of mankind. The only threat to us has been exported from the individual human being and is projected into the atomic bomb to which we are not exposed as long as nobody presses the wrong button. In addition to the difficulty to homify and to liberate ourselves from pervasive reifications, such a radical homification is confronted with further enormous impediments. Nearly every attempt to favour the process presupposes a questioning of what otherwise is regarded as immovable truth. Our culture is an underlying and determining pattern of consciousness which prevents us from further ques-

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tioning and which sets the limits of what in our everyday lives as well as in the social sciences is regarded as reasonable. To me it therefore makes sense when Berger and Pullberg (1966) in their article, from which these thoughts partly originate, come to the conclusion that one precondition of any attempt to question the predominant objectifications in order to weaken "the reified fixedness of the old world" (ibid., 7o) is a certain amount of social marginality. "Such marginality may be chosen or inflicted" (ibid.). This marginality as, for instance, Simmel ((1908); cf. Harman (1988)) vividly elaborated in his essay 'The Stranger' is the prerequisite which enables one to frame reality differently and to look behind the advertisement pamphlets which permanently tend to reconfirm the impression that reality is nothing but a market for products. What is needed is a social marginality of two kinds, a pre-theoretical marginality of men and women in their everyday lives and a marginality among the social scientists. Both are not easy to accomplish; they are both impeded by the obstacles of dependency. This is one of the predominant characteristics of our culture, regardless of whether one earns one's livelihood at a workplace in an enterprise or in a university. "As authority grips the individual at his narcissism and provides him with a career which, assisted by prestige, associates the phantasies of notability and megalomania, it seduces the individual to realize the ruling values and ideals - often against his own will" (Erdheim and Nadig (1979), 117).

In a pre-theoretical as well as in a theoretical construction process of consciousness it can be quite an adventure to consciously question what is generally taken for granted. The danger of exploring for oneself what for the vast majority of contemporaries remains either pre-conscious or unconscious is that one may end up as a real or at least as a court fool and not even as the discoverer of the unknown land to which one had previously set out. A personal psychoanalysis or ethnological field research are obvious suitable routes for such an adventure, but these are privileged routes restricted to the very few. There should be similar modes through which those dimensions can be questioned and explored which Freud, referring to the human unconsciousness, described as the 'internal foreign country' (cf. Erdheim and Nadig (1979), 121). As far as contemporary theoretical reifications of the social sciences which mainly prevent such homification are concerned, our main concern must be to emphasize concepts like role and institutions on the sociological side and the individual on the psychological side. These concepts are, on the one hand, probably most significant to conceptualize social reality, but on the other hand they make it impossible for us and for others to proceed with a homification of human beings. As long as we are used to using these concepts in such a way that they do not allow us to look at "the world as an open human possibility" (Berger and Pullberg (1966), 69) we simply confirm already existing reifications and deifications.

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The Homification of Man (and Woman) Berger and Pullberg ((1966), 69) describe how this primarily social and sociological reification of roles and institutions functions; it "operates in society by bestowing ontological status on social roles and institutions. Roles are reified by detaching them from human intentionality and expressivity, and transforming them into an inevitable destiny for their bearers. ... The reification of roles, on all possible levels of sophistication, thus produces a quasi-sacramental world, in which human actions do not express human meanings but rather represent, in priestly fashion, various superhuman abstractions they are supposed to embody. Religious, ethical and 'scientific' theories are then called upon to legitimate and further mystify the de-humanization that has occured. Institutions are reified by mystifying their true character as human objectivations and by defining them, again, as supra-human facilities analogous to the facilities of nature."

Parin ((1978), quoted in Erdheim and Nadig (1979), 117) makes a similar point: "If the I identifies itself ... with the role it itself already is corrupt. One has not chosen the role; it has been enforced. In order not to feel the coercion one is taking it into the I; the false ideal is following and adding to the false consciousness. The I is removed. One no longer is alone, confronted with anxieties, and the defence against the wishes for security and belongingness from early childhood are released. One is a role-carrier, is part of an institution or a group. The autonomy which has gone lost is squared with new kinds of satisfaction which the role is offering."

Though Berger and Pullberg do not deny the contribution of a reifying sociology, they nevertheless do not take into consideration that, as far as American culture and it can be added social science literature in general - is concerned, "reifying psychology is more popular" (ibid, 69; cf. Fromm (1957), 152). The predominant psychological vision of man, at least as far as it is represented by current mainstream management and organization theory, seems to be that of the machine, or rather of a slot machine into which limited inputs are invested in order to hopefully receive higher outputs. As Novak ((1970), 80 f.) writes: "It is good managerial practice not to argue over substantial issues, but to diagnose a situation functionally and than to isolate and pacify the agents of tension. In dealing with social groups, the utilization myth calls for a sort of engineering; in dealing with the self, it calls for a sort of stimulus manipulation. In both cases, the underlying myth imagines man to be a complicated machine, to be understood and controlled functionally."

The only difference normally allowed an individual as against a machine seems to be that, in addition to its consumption of energy and a certain need for maintenance, the individual is supposed to be concerned with higher needs such as self-realization. These can easily be taken into account as long as he, the individual, does not diverge too much or contradict the goals of the surrounding institution. The individual with very few exceptions, neither needs originality and uniqueness nor history and future. And since through nature or socialization adequate arrangements have been made for some individuals to offer more in-

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telligence, skills, and competence to better meet the standards set than others, some few can be employed as leaders and the many as their followers. Even if this notion of the individual in present organization theory appears to be an oversimplification, it seems to me that the caricature is not too far from what is prevalently regarded as reality. If we leave behind the cynicism and contempt of social science and take into consideration the human qualities we discover and (admit to) in ourselves and in others, in, for example, our internal dialogues or in friendship, we quickly gain a vision of human potential and its difference in quality to the world of things. In addition to certain peak experiences of joy, fulfillment or contentment we may have, there are also feelings of dissatisfaction, loneliness or depression which, the older we become, we can learn to accept not as superfluous or bad, but rather as sources of new kinds of hope. We may also realize that at a certain age some of our goals and intentions appear less important than before or that we discover a potential which we had not expected and believed ourselves capable of. In discovering and allowing our own individuality, marginality and madness, we not only become more prepared to admit these to others; we even become more convinced that facing madness and chaos as a substantial part of our internal and our common reality probably is the necessary precondition to individually, and collectively, continue to struggle for meaning. At the same time, we thereby begin to realize just how misleading the myth that we are the navel of the world really is. In short, we learn to view our connectedness and relatedness to relevant and less important others in the world. The more we become aware of the fact that in our own lives and experience we, too, are acting out hopes and fears as old as mankind, the more we can consider ourselves as at once both less and more important than before. In addition to the discovery of similarities and relatedness with others, we may find it unavoidable to recognize as a lie what we previously considered to be and others still regard as the truth. We may, for instance, give up the commonly shared fiction that our adult life is an endless motion along the zenith and see seasons in life (cf. Levinson et al.(1979)). And finally, we may even become used to the idea that the Minotaur we have escaped from in our own labyrinth is nothing other than a part of us and as such, as Diirenmatt, the Swiss writer, has it, the Minotaur is "the essential meaning of the labyrinth" (Kreuzer (1982), 21). I am convinced that what I have just described as the potential experience of a human life has also found recognition in a considerable body of scientific research and literature in psychology, particularly in psychoanalysis. What I want to make clear in relation to my argument is the fact that, with very few exceptions, a homified image of man is not explicitly built into and presented by current management and organization theories in general and in the literature on leadership in particular; these rather deal with a deified and reified notion of man according to which only few are like gods whereas the many are nothing more than things.

Leadership as a Myth

To consider leadership as a myth is as such no longer new in the social sciences; in fact the idea is heard more and more often. The preeminent intention of these writers, however, either seems to renounce the concept of leadership generally, as, for instance, Miner ((1975), 200) suggested abandoning "leadership in favor of some other more fruitful way of cutting up the theoretical pie", or to eliminate and to avoid the mythological quality of leadership because of its uselessness and its irrational implications. The latter of these two arguments closely resembles a debate which took place in the late fifties and early sixties in German Protestant theology in which Bultmann (e.g. (1964)) propagated a de-mythologization in his exegesis of the New Testament. This concept of de-mythologization is explicitly referred to by Kubicek ((1984); cf. Neuberger (1987)) in order to scientifically question predominant leadership concepts and principles. In my opinion, however, de-mythologization attempts of this kind make too limited use of the underlying concept of myth, whereby myths are considered to be only a kind of false consciousness that are easily eliminated by accurate scientific analysis. As if science itself, and the social sciences in particular, do not continuously sustain and create myths! Blumenberg ((1979), 34) makes the point: "To believe that the transformation of things has progressed from mythos to logos is a dangerous error, because it can lead one to a certainty that somewhere in the distant past, a leap forward was made, thus leaving a great deal behind and only steps forward to be made in the future."

It seems to me that renouncing the exclusively pejorative connotation of the concept of myth - in other words, denying the conviction that only barbarians depend on myths whereas we, the enlightened, can face the truth - can further contribute to understanding societal constructions of reality and its underlying consciousness. We, therefore, have to allow ourselves to re-mythologize takenfor-granted realities and the concepts we use in order to imagine and to perceive them (McWhinney and Batista (1988); cf. Bowles (1989); Broms and Gahmberg (1982); Fengler (1989); Ingersoll and Adams (1986)). De-mythologization and re-mythologization are, from a psycho-analytical perspective, necessarily regarded as dialectically intertwined. As various authors emphasize (e.g. Rohde-Dachser (1988), 3; Schlesier (1981), 165; Vogt (1986)),

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the psychoanalytic attempt at exploring and understanding psycho-social dynamics is bound in an inherent circle of de-mythologization and re-mythologization which Horkheimer and Adorno (1944) have described as the 'dialectic of enlighthenment'. Every attempt to de-mythologize inescapably leads into a new myth the very moment the original insight is canonized. Any attempt at a definition or a construction of social reality necessarily has to be regarded as a myth, as a continual trial to understand and conceptualize experience in an intersubjective manner. And, as for most people the times are gone in which such attempts were commonly and unquestionable, shared and regarded as objective truth, any socially accepted interpretation of reality can only be regarded as an approximation towards what previously was considered to be an objective description of reality. Such an understanding of myths as a part of our social construction of reality does not imply a social theory of relativity in the sense that, since an objective truth no longer seems to be available, it really does not matter what kind of interpretation and meaning system one is obliged to adopt. On the contrary, it means that since objective adjudication is either no longer available or no longer trustworthy, the discrimination between right and wrong interpretations has to be basically made by the individual person himself. As far as myths are concerned, this understanding does not allow us to call a myth the inadequate attempt of our ancestors to understand and define their reality or to apply it to regard exclusively one's own interpretation and constructions as reality. Being aware of the mythic quality of any attempt towards a definition of social reality, one's own as well as others', "it is important to discriminate between those systems of meaning which are designed to open up the creative possibilities of living and those which, in effect, delimit the choices available to individuals'" (Lawrence (1983), 36).

As such, the broader concept of myth based on the conviction that any reality is socially constructed does not exclude the discrimination between false myths, which prevent, and appropriate myths, which allow the perception and discovery of "the world as an open human possibility" (Berger and Pullberg (1966), 69). As far as the myths and mythologies of our ancestors or of other cultures are concerned, this understanding of myths may further enable us to explore their underlying constructions and images to discover through them views or parts of a reality which we primarily have suppressed, lost sight of or are inhibited from perceiving rather than to unmask them on the basis of our own contemporary world view as 'false consciousness'. Although we, for instance, no longer see ourselves as dependent on kings, or gods, it may very likely be that fairy-tales or ancient mythologies, despite their out-of-date quality, offer perspectives for our own struggle with reality and its meaning. In contrast to the social objectification processes of deification and reification as immunizing strategies of the social consciousness described above, the notion of myth offered here represents a subjective perception of social reality. Regarding

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social reality as a myth reconfirms its creative and created quality and emphasizes the constructive character of the social world. Such an understanding of myths can be further elucidated by referring to the concepts of social contingency and complexity as used by Luhmann in his theory of social systems (Luhmann (1984a); cf. Sievers (1971), 31 f.). Whereas, according to Luhmann, the complexity of the world as such contains an unlimited range of possibilities, the concept of contingency emphasizes the fact that any particular possibility which becomes realized through human and social action refers to the remaining range of nonchosen possibilities. This contingency of social reality is expressed in the concept of myth. "That precisely is the function of myth: not to appear as 'merely a myth', but to shape one's selection of what is rational and what is real" (Novak (1970), 100). In comparison to objectified perspectives of the social world and its underlying concepts, such a notion of myth contains and expresses the subjectivity of the underlying selection of social reality. In so far as myth as a concept expresses "the world as an open human possibility" (Berger and Pullberg (1966), 69) which allows different and deviant interpretations, myth can be understood as a homified concept. Calling that which is otherwise regarded as truth a myth is simply asserting that the social world is man-made. From this point of view deified images of the social reality as godgiven, or in its reified version as a thing, can be regarded as myths, i.e. man-made, and as such it can be asked whether they "open up the creative possibilities of living" or whether they "delimit the choices available to individuals" (Lawrence (1983), 36). Myth as a concept implies and confirms the fact that man, through his choice and selection of possibilities, is giving meaning to the world which otherwise presents itself to him as total chaos. "Men need myths in order to give meaning to their being" (Lawrence (1975), 141). "Action without myth is logically impossible" (Novak (1970), 87). And as any meaning can be regarded as a myth, this insight serves not only to remind us that we have to continuously choose meaning but also that we as individuals are ultimately responsible for the meaning we commit our actions and lives to. Since the search and the selection of meaning obviously cannot be accomplished in the monadic sense that every human being create his own meaning, but rather has to be seen as a collective search to make sense of the world as well as of one's own life (cf. Elias (1985), 54), we are also responsible for the choice of allies we make. In the context of leadership, it seems to me that the search for meaning and its connected choice of allies can be seen as a dimension of the relatedness between a leader and those who follow. If we accept that any mature search for meaning that cannot be accomplished individually, but only in common with others, is based on a relatedness and mutuality, and if we further acknowledge social differences and inequalities arising from the fact that some, because of their individual suffering in the concern and search for meaning are less insecure about the myths to which they have committed their lives, we will gain an insight into leadership very different to the views represented in the scientific literature on managerial

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leadership. Understanding leadership as a pursuit related to the common search for meaning leads further to the conclusion that the insufficiency and misery of leadership in contemporary enterprises is mainly due to the fact that leadership has not only lost this reference to the meaning of those led, but that, through its apparently objectified quality, a 'false' meaning system is imposed on the leaders, too. Since this meaning system no longer makes sense and is disconnected from the meaning they as human beings have committed their lives to, it is refused and rejected. These thoughts are based on a vision of man that sees the individual as capable of becoming and being mature which will be further elaborated in the following chapters.

The Mythology of Leadership

The interest pursued here is to clarify whether leadership as a meaningful concept can be maintained, perceived and understood and if so, how. There is no doubt that the outcome of such a venture will be nothing more than a myth, if you like, the myth of leadership this author, at least at present, regards as worth investing meaning into. For this reason, it seems appropriate and conducive to explore some of the myth in the mythology of leadership and to understand its meaning. I do not intend to develop a comprehensive historical analysis of the various myths of leadership and the changes they have undergone from Greek concepts of leadership (cf. Sarachek (1968)) to the present-day mythology in industrial enterprises (cf. Helmer (1988); Luck (1989)), but rather to deal with some images and broadly taken-for-granted notions of leadership and to outline their underlying mythic qualities and the meaning they refer to. Leadership, as any other myth, is not a value and history-free concept. Even if in everyday situations in which leadership occurs or in the theoretical concern with it attempts are made to tailor leadership to specific situations and demands, and despite the tendencies to objectify and de-historify leadership into a functional process through which means and goals are socially connected, there can be no doubt that everyone is affected by it, partly consciously, partly unconsciously by referring to earlier experiences of leadership. This latter process of referral to earlier experience with leadership draws on personal experiences in the relationship to parents or to other figures of authority in earlier life or to the images and legends of a successful leader and his followers, some of which are as old as mankind. Even in a time in which the immediate succession of leadership seem to be nearly exclusively (and primarily symbolically) limited to the few still existing royal families, it is nevertheless still true that any act of leadership is to a certain extent embedded in and represents a form of human inheritance (cf. Sievers (1989b)). Leadership as a myth cannot only be regarded as a contemporary expression of defining and selecting reality in order to reduce the present chaos of the world into managable cuts. It can also be explained "as latency of prehistoric experience of mankind" (Blumenberg (1979), 66). The concept of myth in general and that of the myth of leadership in particular offers the fascinating possibility of taking prehistoric and present experience into consideration in terms of its social constructiveness. Therefore, what, for instance, Wolf ((1983a), 57; cf. (1983b)), the

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German writer, expresses in the context of her novel 'Kassandra', equally seems to be true for modern as well as for ancient myths: "To learn to read the myth is an adventure of a special kind; this art presupposes a certain gradual alberation, a preparedness to devote oneself to the apparently easy connection of fantastic facts; a need to devote oneself to the traditions, desires and hopes, experience and techniques of magic of a respective group; in short to devote oneself to a totally different content of the concept of 'reality'."

And Campbell ((1969), 4) makes a similar point by stating: "It is a fact that the myths of our several cultures work upon us, whether consciously or unconsciously, as energy-releasing, life-motivating and directing agents; so that even though our rational minds may be in agreement, the myths by which we are living - or by which our fathers lived - can be driving us, at that very moment, diametrically apart."

If it therefore seems to be generally true that "basic myths so comprehensively shape one's view of reality that one can hardly get outside them" (Novak (1970) 31) it then appears unavoidable to take a more extensive view of what we are acting out when we are in the role of the leader or of the follower. It is an attempt to look behind "the democratic ideal of the self-determining individual, the invention of the power-driven machine, and the development of the scientific method of research (which) have so transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed" (Campbell (1968), 387).

The Divine King Becker (1975), in his posthumous book 'Escape from Evil' which is extensively indebted to the work of Otto Rank, has contributed fascinating ideas on the mythology of the leader and leadership. In his description of the historical forms of immortality power and its development in the early ages of mankind, Becker looks at the intimate unity that existed between the patriarchal family ideology and that of kingship. Whereas in primitive societies it was the entire tribe or the group which "created magical power by means of the jointly celebrated ritual" (ibid., 67) - representing as such the original unity of the producing and the product - in the ongoing process of social differentiation '"the power to create power' often fell to a special class and was no longer the possession of the whole collectivity" (ibid.). Constituted by the dual objectification of deification and reification, people were then either made into priests and divine kings who often "were solidly allied in a structure of domination that monopolized all sacred power" (ibid.) or, as was the case for most, they were converted into mere impotent subjects whose lives were either literally the personal property of the king or the father. Kings and fathers could be despotic to their vassals or children, mere objects they had given life to by granting them the role of slave or seeing to it that they inherited

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it. The divine king in the sacred city became the image according to which the father dealt with his sons in order to assure through them his own perpetuation and immortality (cf. Roheim (1972), 203 ff.). By proclaiming themselves divine, the ancient kings tried to reconstruct and reestablish inside themselves the unity of the creation of power and the power as such which previously had existed in the tribal group; like gods, they were supposed to carry the unity of experience as well as of all sources. That which Becker ((1975), 68) writes about ancient leaders may be true in general: "The leader, like the people, senses a need for a strongly focussed moral unity of the sprawling and now senseless diversity of the kingdom, and he tries to embody it in his own person." "The person of the King, alive and dead, represents" as Huntington and Metcalf ((1979), 154) state, "the prosperity and perpetuity of the political order." On a more abstract level, this need of the leader to embody a lost unity in his own person is also expressed in the way that the leader, who either himself possesses the power to create power or as a representative of a person or a class, through his leadership somehow artificially has to reestablish the previous unity the destruction of which is the precondition of his leadership; i.e. the leader, who himself is a product of the underlying societal splitting process into deified kings and priests and reified objects, has to deify himself as the new unification of experience and therefore to commute between the gods and their objects. "The history of leading psychologically starts with the creation of God or, more specifically, the rise of the individual leadership ideology first, and it synchronously mirrors itself in the development of the idea of God. But this is more than a mere parallel: the leader as we still at present understand him as an incarnation of an idea, was and is the homified, concretised God regardless of which form he may appear in, or where" (Rank (1933), 94 f.).

As I have tried to describe above in the context of participation, the gap between the immortal gods and the mortal ephemerals has to be bridged through the leader as a representative who therefore, like a messiah, has to carry both divine and human qualities. This seems to be equally true for the contemporary reality of industrial enterprises. It appears that the need for unification as a surmount of the splitting between the divine entrepreneurs at the top and the workers in their thing-hood at the bottom in our organizations from a social as well as from a societal perspective is primarily (or even exclusively) projected into those leaders commonly called managers. And as they find themselves in a bind between their human or rather reified parts on the one side and their deified divine gleam on the other side, a bind which is probably the basic and at the same time tragic fate of every 'good' leader, it would also seem that they are normally not able to incorporate this split inside themselves, so that they project it further into the organization by claiming they are managers and others are the workers led by them. To the extent that managers thus represent divinity, they no longer symbolize the (reified) humanity of the workers. They therefore tend to project it either into their

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works council or union representatives. In this sense, what is commonly claimed to be participation or democratization of a work enterprise, can, in addition to the intended re-unification of managers and workers as objectified human beings, also be seen as an institutionalized attempt at a unification of leadership in so far as it is supposed to re-unite leadership in its deified and reified versions. This fundamental splitting of leadership adds a new dimension to the observation Pym repeatedly refers to as a constituent part of the myth of the managerial elite, namely that "probably the biggest deception perpetuated by social inquiry has been the emphasis given to the manager's leadership role while underplaying his status as an employee" (Pym (1980b), 146; cf. (1982)). To raise the question of how one could sincerely expect kings to be their own servants or gods to realize their own thing-hood seems to demand the impossible. The way I have used this mythological quality of the leader as the unifier of the otherwise disconnected experience in regard to leadership in contemporary industrial enterprises must seem like a kind of scapegoating if the equally present inability to symbolize unification on the part of those led is also taken into account. It obviously is a simplification, and certainly a myth shared by many, that the leaders or the managers are primarily, or exclusively, responsible for the lack of any unification of experience as a basic function of leadership; that would be analogous to accusing the father in the ancient patriarchal family of being despotic with his son - as if he had not himself been a son before. It seems that the objectifications underlying leadership in contemporary industrial enterprises are shared by both sides as a constituent part of our culture; part of the evidence for this can, for instance, be seen in the fact that the moment a former leader has - in another context - to assume the role of the led he more often than not will be fixed to similar limitations reinforcing the same basic splitting. In addition to the leader, it is obviously also those led, too, who in the cobweb of their own as well as our societal objectifications are no longer able to contribute or to embody the needed unity. Fragmented men are supposed to lead fragmented others, and it is really quite surprising that the turbulence and chaos they create is not even greater. This is exactly what the function of leadership principles seems to be to me, namely to reduce the anxiety which is otherwise created and sustained if neither deified leaders nor their reified servants can establish and embody what is supposed to be the unity of the 'kingdom' inside themselves or mutually. Referring to what Jaques (1974) and Menzies (1970) previously have stated about the defensive quality of social structure, leadership principles therefore can be regarded as an attempt to structure social interdependency in order to decrease the anxiety to be surrendered to the chaos of unlimited contingencies. It further appears likely that the fundamental split between leaders and their subjects as well as the increasing inability of leaders to overcome the split between the deified and reified parts inside themselves in work contexts is, as it has been stated more extensively above, accompanied and enforced through an underlying

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and mutual contempt. Through such mutual contempt, regardless of whether they are members of the same organization or family, those at the top and those at the bottom are bound in a collusion which is permanently acted out unconsciously. Both sides not only deny each other, but also confirm the objectification through which the managers, and the parents, are certified in their divinity and the workers, and children, do not have any other choice than to accept the way they are seen as their own view, i.e. to be mere objects in the eyes of those who give them their bread and butter (cf. A. Miller (1981) 67 ff.). Ernest Becker further claims that a constituent part of the leadership of the divine king and the ancient patriarchal family is its implied management of immortality. Following the example of the royal family, in which the king gained immortality both through his sons and through the accumulation of property and gold, which in itself "became the new immortality symbol" (Becker (1975), 74), the new patriarchy continued to invest in their own immortality "no longer in the invisible world of power, but in the very visible one" (ibid.). As Brown ((1959), 286) writes: "these accumulations of stone and gold make possible the discovery of the immortal soul... Death is overcome on condition that the real actuality of life pass into these immortal and dead things; money is the man; the immortality of the estate or a corporation resides in the dead things which alone endure."

The inseparable connection between power and immortality as the attempt of the ancient leader to re-unite in himself what previously had been united in the tribal group is further described by Becker ((1975), 81 f.): "All power is in essence power to deny mortality. Either that or it is not real power at all, not ultimate power, not the power to increase oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance. In its power to manipulate physical and social reality, money in some ways secures one against contingency and accident; it buys bodyguards, bullet-proof glass, and better medical care. Most of all, it can be accumulated and passed on, and so radiates its powers even after one's death, giving one a semblance of immortality as he lives in the vicarious enjoyments of his heirs that this money continues to deny, or in the magnificence of the art works that he commissioned, or in the status of himself and the majesty of his own mausoleum. In short, money is the human mode par excellence of coolly denying animal boundness and the determinism of nature."

"Money" as he puts it later (ibid., 83) "negotiates immortality and therefore is God". The general perspective outlined here invites a critical look at contemporary social reality as it is manifested in the payment structure in industrial enterprises. More or less unquestionably, we adhere to the conviction that it is the entrepreneur, in his personalized or in his anonymous version as shareholder, to whom the final profit of the accumulated work of the employees belongs. It also seems to be an irreversible truth as far as work organization is concerned to assume that leadership earns a higher level of income which, in the majority of

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cases, cannot even be justified by a higher amount of work actually done by a particular leader. Traditionally, the career opportunities in enterprises are exclusively limited to a career of leadership. Sometimes, even those employees who, despite their lack of leadership competence, are outstanding experts in their field cannot be promoted and do not receive a higher income unless they are assigned subordinates, and thereby transformed into leaders. Above the immediate level of production, leadership has more or less become synonymous with management and finds its symbolic expression in a higher income; it is the money which confirms the godlikeness of the leader and his aspiration to immortality. As Martin ((1982), 130) writes: "the myth is strengthened by the fact that in many organizations, managers become symbols of order and stability, regardless of any specific functions they perform. Furthermore, managers occupy positions and claim salaries that others aspire to, and these aspirations, in combination with the symbolism, are seen as part of the 'glue' that holds the organization together. As long as these values prevail, they act to guard against, or successfully block, any alternatives that challenge them."

The Hero Whereas the previous section on leadership mythology is based on the image that a leader either creates his own power and immortality or that it is granted him in his role as representative, or governer, the heroic version of the leadership myth is based on different images. Though the hero, too, is intensively concerned with his immortality, this version of the myth, at least in its ancient form, also incorporates the conviction that the acceptance of his mortality is the inevitable precondition for immortality. As Wolf ((1983b), 115), the poet, puts it, it originally was the dead hero who was regarded as 'eternal' and infinite; it was the unattainable magnitude of the hero which let the living appear modest, "modest heroes who only can hope to attain glory after their deaths." This is the image of the hero of such mythical figures as Moses, Oedipus, Kyros, Hercules and Gilgamesh. In comparison to the myth of the divine king, according to which a man somehow ends his original human life by converting himself or being converted into a divine state of immortality, the heroic myth seems rather to be based on a 'normal' life career; it thus appears 'reasonable' that in ancient mythology the hero is often supposed to reach only half of the deity, a semideus (cf. Grimm (1953), 282). As Dunne ((1975), 14 f.), for example, writes in his interpretation of the epic tale: "the story of Gilgamesh himself ... is a story of a man's encounter with death, of his quest for life and his attainment of wisdom ... At first he knew little of death, then he met another man who became his friend, then his friend died and he realized that he too must die, then he went in search of everlasting life, but learned that it was not given to him, and then he came home again with his wisdom, his knowledge of mortality".

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And Mason ((1972), 15) expresses this in verses: "Gilgamesh was called a god and man; Enkidu was an animal and man. It is the story Of their becoming human together."

The story of the hero is a story of a man in which his youth plays an important, but only one part, in his life. "The full awareness that one is mortal usually comes later, it seems, with the passing of youth" (Dunne (1975), 62). The life story of the hero "is a story of creation, that a man's life is a becoming in which he goes from nothingness to being" (ibid., 56). From his comparative study of several hero myths Otto Rank, made the first attempt to present a kind of 'average saga' of the hero which some forty years later was admirably extended by Joseph Campbell (cf. Campbell (1968)). The 'average saga' of the hero can be written something like as follows: "The hero is the child of most distinguished parents, usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, there is a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father (or his representative). As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds), and is suckled by a female animal or by an humble woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion. He takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other. Finally, he achieves rank and honors" (Rank (1959), 65).

Though one may be convinced that the times of heroes are irrefutably gone and that we in our rational presence no longer have to rely on these ancient images of man, it nevertheless seems that the myth of the hero is still a very vivid one which occupies our thoughts as well as the images we carry of ourselves and others. Gustafsson ((1984), 4), for example, in a recent study of Scandinavian managers and students of business administration, comes to the conclusion that "it seems that the characteristics ascribed to 'a good manager' are about the same as the characteristics given any hero or leader, at any point in history". In enterprises, we tend to "select the ones who correspond to the manifest hero-myth, and those climbing on the career-ladder adopt themselves to that picture" (ibid., 17). "There is an interesting irony in relation to the manager as hero. In traditional myth, the hero is defined as 'doing his own thing', 'being h i m s e l f , with a complete disregard for convention. However, as Gustafsson (1984) points out, there is an essential contradiction between such a hero and the manager as hero. Gustafsson describes how, in an organization, the management hero combines a dual figure, that of the daring entrepreneur and, at the same time, the 'organization man', who is compliant to organizational controls" (Bowles (1989), 413).

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If we keep in mind what Rank ((1958), 14) writes about "the original hero", that "he was the one who dared live beyond the accepted 'psychology' or ideology of his time", the modern replica appears more as an 'instant hero', through which the contemporary, predominantly mechanically oriented psychology of organizations and managers seems to be reinforced rather than transcended. In so far as this psychology more or less deprives man of the 'vital experience of his own', it prevents him from living beyond the psychology from beyond which he is born and dies (cf. ibid., 16). These 'instant heroes', often carrying with them "a personality shaped after the pattern of a superman hero" (ibid., 166; cf. Schmidbauer (1981), (1987); Vogt (1987)), are far from being "the prototype of the rebellious man of action who, through the revival of lost values which appear as new and irrational, preserves the eternal values of humanity" (Rank (1958), 14). It is not surprising that, as Deal and Kennedy ((1982), 38) write, "in the vast majority of the heroes in American business life are what we call 'situational' heroes: ordinary people appointed by their peers in recognition of some aspect of their behavior. Companies with strong cultures take advantage of this natural phenomenon by making their own: the supersalesperson of the month, the elder statesman corporate president, the mavarick scientist tinkering away in the R & D lab."

There can be no doubt that the heroic vision is not exclusively and probably not even primarily a basic pattern these 'poor' managers are caught in who have devoted their lives to a managerial career. "The problem of heroics" as Becker ((1973), 7) puts it "is the central one of human life, .. it goes deeper into human nature than anything else because it is based on organismic narcissism and on the child's need for self-esteem as the condition for his life. Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning."

As he states earlier: "If everyone honestly admitted his urge to be a hero it would be a devastating release of truth" (ibid., 5). Like the myth of the divine king in which the leader is preoccupied with the establishment of his own immortality, the hero permanently struggles to overcome mortality as his natural inheritance; desperately concerned with the attainment of the same goal, only his means are different. Whereas the divine king, as the prototype of the divine leader, establishes his immortality through the objects he owns and accumulates, the heroic leader, like Hercules in his twelve works, trys to accomplish his immortality through his own acts. The hero confirms that "those who partake of the hero's aura will share his apparent immunity to death as he survives miraculously amid the slaughter. To be stronger than enemies who wish your death is to be stronger than death itself' (Hampden-Turner (1981), 66).

In the context of the objectification strategies described above, the hero therefore appears to be the type of man who has been able to continue or to reestablish the unity of the producing and the product (cf. Berger and Pullberg (1966), 61) in so

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far as it is he himself who, through his own acts, produces his heroism. But at the same time it seems worth questioning whether a man, in order to establish his heroism, does not also necessarily have to split reality into allies and enemies, i.e. the external world of his contemporaries as well as his own inner world. For the sake of our own heroism, we have to repeatedly reify others into enemies who, as such, are objects and have lost their chances of life, and to deify our own personality by expanding or posing grandeur and denying our wretchedness and meanness (cf. Richter (1979), 332). It seems to me that this basic split of the inner and outer world, which we have to create and perpetuate in order to sustain our immature narcissistic heroism, is the main precondition for the construction and perpetuation of the immense split in our social world, whether between managers and workers or between life and death itself. If, however, we are prepared to accept our own darkness, despair and even madness and the fact of our own mortality as important parts of our life and existence, we may become the hero we dream of. "As long as death is felt as a dreadful and fascinating power outside, a power that one can wield and that can be wielded against one, a force that will ultimately strike one down from the outside, then death is not yet human, is not yet seen and felt as human mortality" (Dunne (1975), 66).

The acceptance of our own death and darkness as human, as a quality of our own life we no longer escape by projecting it into other objects can be the beginning of a life as a 'homified hero', who knows that he has to die in order to attain immortality. This is a learning process which, according to the myth of the hero, can usually only be realized through the death of a 'friend'. As Furth ((1986), 6) describes "only through the identification with others, whose everlasting presence one desires, whose frailty one nevertheless has to experience, does the self loose his immortality". "In order to have death as an inner certainty in one's life, one requires another kind of experience than just self-recognition" (ibid.). A 'homified hero' of this quality could represent a leadership image well beyond the 'instant heroism' displayed by the majority of leaders in modern enterprises. In contrast to the ancient hero myth comprising a whole life-span, birth and death, tragedy and glory, the image according to which contemporary managers are shaped resembles the 'portrait of the hero as a young man' (cf. Levinson et al. (1979), 215). Only the 'homified hero' can be regarded as a mature hero. He accepts his own mortality as something which ensues not only from the final episode but as an essential part of the development of his whole life as it passes through the different seasons. This kind of hero no longer creates and sustaines his enemies in the outer world as an external threat; through his acceptance of the tragic nature of his own life he is capable of seeing the monster inside himself as his own creation which he himself nourishes by paying, like the citizens of Athens in the ancient Greek myth of Theseus, his tribute at the end of the 'great year'. If the hero can look on himself as a man he, as Dtirrenmatt has it, "will be able to override the labyrinth.

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He can overcome the image of the labyrinth" (Kreuzer (1982), 43). Nin ((1974), 362) formulates this in similar words: "The modern hero was the one who would master his own neurosis so that it would not become universal, who would struggle with his myths, who would enter the labyrinth and fight the monster. This monster who sleeps at the bottom of his own brain."

Overcoming one's own labyrinth and accepting the Minotaur inside oneself would also include querying the frames which offered by our predominant organization theories and their underlying psychology. Being prepared to live one's own life and to struggle with leadership beyond the concepts and images offered by psychology is, as Rank ((1958), 14) puts it, the precondition for original heroism.

Career as a Myth The short review of leadership mythology would be incomplete if we left out the myths that surround and sustain contemporary managerial leadership. We have already seen the extent to which the mythologizations of deified managers and reified workers are an expression of the societal split within contemporary enterprises and within work itself, and I now intend in this section to examine the myth of the career. This myth in itself seems to be a constitutional part of the myth of the managerial elite in so far as managers are the ones who have careers, whereas workers don't (cf. Bell (1956), 32). Unlike the ladder of Jacob in the Old Testament on which the angels of God climbed up and down (1. Mos. 28, 12), the myth of the managerial career is based on the assumption that there is a one way street in which those at the lower end by virtue of the mere fact that they carry a marshall's baton in their knapsacks have the potential to make it to the top, at least in principle. Although it is clear that a career - especially in companies that rely on promotions from within - is mainly managed by superiors who in various ways use those who fit their expectations to fill empty spaces in the hierarchy, the myth of the career still seems to be based on the notion that it is the individual manager himself who succeeds in his career, or fails. The fact that it is primarily the image of the 'self-made man', or the 'gamesman' as Maccoby (1976) phrases him, who is supposed to make a career, sustains the fiction that the individual manager is capable of realizing in himself the unity of the producer and the produced. "This seems", as Van Maanen ((1977), 37) states, "particularly true in Western industrialized societies where the individualistic philosophy reigns supreme. Proverbs, for example, exhort one to assume personal responsibility 'where there's a will there's a way'. Such old saws often proffer direct tips on how to deal with time - 'the early bird catches the worm'. All the while of course 'time marches on'. Ownership, not fickle fate, typifies the homiletic but ever-popular autobiography of the 'self-made' man. And such organizational development activities as 'open-system-

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planning', 'goal-setting' and 'management-by-objectives' encourage the individual to act, not react. Indeed, even therapeutic techniques such as transactional analysis are quite direct insofar as they exhort the individual to take control of his own destiny - e.g. 'pack your own chute'."

The career has somehow become the functional equivalent of what inheritance meant in the times of the divine king. Whereas royal dignity had to be hereditary in order to guarantee the survival of the king in his children, talent and ability as the bases of a managerial career have to be individual qualities which, as such, cannot be assigned to one particular successor (cf. Rank (1933), lo4). In contrast to the inheritance of the kingdom in which a son received the reversion of his father's kingship either by the fact of his birth or by adoption, the myth of the blood relationship had to be substituted by the myth of the career. In comparison to the myth of inheritance, according to which the king's successor was delivered like the ancient goddess Athene from Zeus' head, the contemporary myth of career somehow necessarily has to be based on a kind of social Darwinism through which only the strongest and the most adapted individuals will make it to the top and guarantee the survival of the human race. To slightly exaggerate the underlying image, our organizational careers have to produce and sustain legions of lower and middle managers in order to guarantee the survival of the new kingdom through the promotion of the few gifted ones with the ability to become successors. The unavoidable envy and disappointment continuously created through the 'natural selection' of the career then have to be reduced (or concealed) through the accompanying fiction of an unlimited growth of the particular enterprise as well as of the economy in general. The fiction of continuous expansion helps to sustain the hope and expectation that in the near future further leaders will be needed, recruited, and selected from the available host. Although it may often appear that the fiction of unlimited economic growth primarily is an offspring of capitalist society, from a broader mythological perspective it has to be seen as a mere equivalent and a continuation of the accumulation through which the divine king, the emperors of the times of colonialism or the 'Fiihrer' of the Third Reich created and sustained their own immortality. In so far as the myth of the career can be seen as an accumulator and a container for future leaders from which only the best, the strongest and the healthiest will be selected, it is based on a curious self-fulfilling prophecy. Similar to the members of the sect in Festinger's et al. (1956) famous case study of a religious group "that predicted the destruction of the world" and climbed to the peak of a mountain in order to receive eternal live, aspiring managers must show a high degree of selfdenial in order not to let their self-fulfilling prophecy fail. But unlike the group Festinger and his colleagues describe, managers can start out on their venture with evidence that at least for some of them the dream can come true. The reality, however, is very often as Levinson et al. ((1979), 96) describe in their study:

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"Most of the executives entered the managerial ranks in their Age Thirty Transition, without a solid basis for long-term achievement and satisfaction as executives. Their primary interests, skills and aspirations were not in the executive functions, but in their original work (such as engineering or accounting) and in non-occupational activities involving family, nature or community. Many of them became managers chiefly because the company needed large numbers of middle managers. The company stimulated their hopes and illusions about further promotion. By their late thirties or early forties, however, most managers have reached the ceiling of their upward rise. The position they hold is often beyond their competence and satisfaction. They are left with neither their original occupational preferences nor a managerial role through which they can live out important aspects of the self." The fact that the vast majority never will make it and therefore has to suffer the tragedy of failing somewhere below the top, goes to create similar dissonances to those encountered by members of the religious group just referred to when the world did not end as forecasted. This is a fate legions of managers in contemporary work organizations are confronted with again and again, yet the research on how managers manage the dissonance resulting from their failure is with only a few exceptions (cf. e.g. Sofer (1974) 65 - 70; Goffee and Scase (1992)), to be broadly neglected. Pym ((1983), 7) describes this in a similar way: "We use the myth of career to conceal the discrepancy between our expectations of employment and the reality of the tasks we find ourselves doing. Organizations grew long chains of commands to accomodate our career aspirations and so establish 'the soft underbelly of management'. Today these managers number among the most vulnerable of employees. No longer described with labels like leader, they are frequently without any other skills, lacking confidence, suffering from 'stress', 'the middle-career-crisis', 'bum-out' and all those other symptoms of impotence; wishing they had opted for something different and dreaming of escaping from it all." This tendency is also confirmed by Maccoby ((1976), 245) who at the end of his book 'The Gamesman' comes to the following conclusion: "As things stand in most companies, just as in leading universities and bureaucracies, the more successful managers live as servants to their careers and strangers to themselves and others. There are some who do not wish to pay that price. They do their work and prefer to detach themselves from the contest rather than from the self. Until work is changed, many of the most gifted individuals will have to make that choice." The comparison of the myth of the career with the previously described myth of the hero helps us to further understand how leaders are created in work enterprises. Whereas the ancient myth of the birth of the hero usually included the image of the persecution of the son by his father as well as the final overthrow of the father by his successor (cf. Rank (1979), 388), the myth of the career tends to be based on an unproblematic succession, according to which a job is taken over which has become vacant either through the promotion or the demise of decease of the predecessor. If emotions such as hate or persecution as elements of a career are taken into account at all, they are exclusively - hidden under the necessary degree

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of fair play - directed toward the competitor. In comparison to the ancient hero, who faced death as a permanent risk and who finally even had to kill his own father, the myth of the career represents the underlying culture of dependency which is so characteristic of contemporary work. With respect to the mechanisms of objectification described above, it seems that the managerial career is nourished by two different roots. For those few who finally make it to the top it is the image of the hero who incorporates the unity of the producer and the produced, while the many share the fate of the workers, i.e. they end up reified as mere subjects, as the human material out of which occasionally heroes are born or as the human resources through which the workers as intermediate products are finally converted into end-products. The contemporary myth of managerial careers resembles the former American dream of going West. For many of the immigrants the dream came true, but for legions of others the dream ended up, as is vividly described in some of John Steinbeck's works, in sad disappointment and hardship. Lawrence's observation ((1977), 24) rings true that "the postponement of the realization of career death is also a postponement of the acceptance of the fact of real death." Consequently, management development often functions to help "postpone the acknowledgement of career death" (ibid.).

Leadership as a Perpetuation of Immaturity

It has become clear that the social and the scientific use of leadership in contemporary management theory and practice is based on a limited and restricted image of man and of social reality. As a matter of fact, the emphasis on male patterns in contemporary leadership research (and practice) mirrors the presupposition made throughout history that leaders are exclusively men (cf. Calas and Smircich (1989); Dachler ((1987), 264); Kruse (1987); Neuberger (1990), 1 f.; Parkin and Hearn (1987)). As such, this is a confirmation "of the gender-blindness of malestream organization theories" (Burrell and Hearn (1989), 1). It is not just that prevalent leadership images carry "no explicit view of society and its historical development" (Hales (1974), 4), they also reduce men and women in their ability to lead and to be led into mere shadows of their genuine human potential by converting them either into things or into gods. This implicit "reduction of leadership into some few operational categories and dimensions simplifies", as Müller ((1981), 34) states, "highly complex inter-human processes into irrelevancy"; it seems that "we have sacrificed the creative aspect of leadership for its programmatic aspects" (Pondy (1978), 90). It has also become evident that, through the continuous reduction of leadership in work contexts, not only workers, as the traditional subordinates, but managers too in their leadership function, are turned from social subjects into economic objects (Hales (1974), 11). The unquestionable modern myth of a rational economic man has abandoned nearly all the ancient qualities of a leader as a mortal human being struggling for immortality and has converted men into mere homunculi. Even leadership itself, which in its original archaic sense was the process through which mankind created its relatedness to God (or the gods), has been reduced into a mere control mechanism to keep the production and consumption of goods and services going. "Unlike the hero of myth or legend, the modern leader has not developed a critical attitude towards society and its institutions, but rather values that which contributes to the rational and efficient operation of the machine. As a tool of the organization, the leader then becomes much less emotional, much less compassionate, much less humane than we would otherwise expect" (Denhardt (1981), 95).

Analyzing the degeneration of leadership as a consequence of an ongoing process of objectification and rationalization, our consciousness in contemporary institu-

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tions is both continuously exposed to and sustains and reinforces, must not, of course, lead us into a romantic re-creation of some kind of a divine kingdom or a securalized equivalent. We can, however, confront the contemporary myth of man with the potential human beings are capable of, and which is nearly completely ignored in modern work organizations. The goal I am pursuing here is not, therefore, to initiate an immediate change of social reality, but rather to contribute to a different understanding of the ongoing degeneration of men and their interrelatedness caused by leadership. The hypothesis I would therefore like to offer is built on the image of a mature human being; it entails the assumption that through the commonly shared myth of leadership in contemporary society, particularly as it is expressed in work contexts, we continuously challenge, sustain and reinforce immaturity in men and women, workers or managers alike. Through its reduction into an organizational control process, leadership then fulfills the function of a perpetuation of immaturity. Instead of arguing that managers are causing the immaturity of the workers or vice versa, this hypothesis is based on the supposition that immaturity is created and sustained through a mutual collusion of the parties involved in leadership processes. Collusion, as Laing ((1961), 90) describes it, "has resonances of playing at and of deception. It is a 'game' played by two or more people whereby they deceive themselves. The game is the game of mutual self-deception. Whereas delusion and elusion and illusion can be applied to one person, collusion is necessarily a two-or-more-person game. Each plays the other's game, though he may not necessarily be fully aware of doing so. An essential feature of this game is not admitting that it is a game."

Keeping in mind that managers, with only a few exceptions, are employees, leadership then can be seen as a social mechanism through which the immaturity of the employees is guaranteed, i.e. the immaturity of the dependents or - using concepts out of fashion - the servants or the slaves. Although Argyris (1958) does not explicitly refer to managers as employees, he does point to the immature implications of leadership and its collusive character; what he writes about the immature employee, therefore, is equally the case for managers: "The immaturity exhibited by the employees in the work situation is inevitable because of the nature of the work, the organization structure, the leadership, and the controls. These people must become apathetic, indifferent, and the like, if they are to remain psychologically stable. Many may not want to behave less maturely when they first come to work, but they very soon realize that they have no choice but to do so" (ibid., 112).

In his pioneering work 'Personality and Organization' Argyris ((1957), 66) comes to the conclusion that "we discover behavioural and psychological characteristics typical of a work situation which requires immature rather than mature participants." As Diamond ((1986), 551) stated, referring to it, "Argyris (1957) recognizes an inherent contradiction at the heart of organizational performance: an inconsistency between the nature of relatively mature people and the tendency

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of formal organizations to promote 'psychological failure', immature human relations, and ineffectiveness among organization participants."

The more or less unspoken assumption perpetuating this situation seems to be that, as the majority of men and women obviously are not independent and mature enough, and actually feel more content when they can make themselves dependent, structures of leadership have to be created and sustained that meet this need for dependence and to create something reliable. The assumption is not very different from the expectations Frederick Taylor ((1911), 63), almost a century ago, expressed when he postulated that "the man suited to handling pig iron is too stupid properly to train himself'. Before I go on to develop the hypothesis that leadership is a perpetuation of immaturity, I feel it is first necessary to take a more differentiated look at how the notion of maturity/immaturity can be conceptualized from a social science perspective.

Maturity and Immaturity

Immaturity as, for example, described by Argyris ((1957), (1958)) more than thirty years ago, is not at all a new appearance in enterprises; the immaturity of the employees, at least as far as workers and laborers are concerned, seems rather to be a constitutive part of western industrial enterprises; as such, the immaturity of the employees is only one expression of their wider interdiction and progressive deterioration. It would be misleading to assume that such interdiction and deterioration were primarily caused by industrialization; this was the fate characteristic particularly in western societies (but probably in other societies, too), of the majority of men for centuries, a fate permanently sustained by various agents, of whom the church(es) and landlords obviously played a dominant part. It should be emphasized in the present context that from the very beginning of western industrialization interdiction and deterioration was the fate of the workers and laborers employed by the owners of enterprises and their managing governors. The majority of managers now share the degradation and are themselves employees. As Braverman ((1974), 404) writes, "almost every working association with the modern corporation ... is given the form of the purchase and sale of labor power" and "almost all of the population has been transformed into employees of capital". Nevertheless the fiction seems to remain that interdiction and immaturity are primarily, if not exclusively, the fate of non-managerial employees. The belief Bendix ((1974), 332) expressed in his analysis of 'Work and Authority in Industry', published in 1956, that "the successful manager is the man who can control his emotions, whereas workers and employees are those who cannot" still seems to be the image according to which managers and managerial leaders are shaped. The quote Bendix (ibid.) presents from a book by Young ((1947), 177) describing the superiority of employers and managers does not seem to have lost its significance today, even if nobody cares to admit it: "He (the leader) knows that the master of men has physical energies and skills and intellectual abilities, vision and integrity, and he knows that above all, the leader must have emotional balance and control. The great leader is even-tempered when others rage, brave when others fear, calm when others are excited, self-controlled when others indulge."

Despite the changes managerial ideologies, particularly in Anglo-American culture, have been subject to over the past two hundred years - the Russian devel-

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opment with its "assertion of paternal authority and of child-like dependence" (Bendix, (1974), 436) is comparable - there is no doubt that, as Bendix (ibid., 438) summarizes his analysis, "ruling groups everywhere, including the rulers of developing industrial societies, justifying their good fortune as well as the ill fortune of those subject to their authority ... The fact is that all industrialization involves the organization of enterprises in which a few command and many obey."

Since it cannot be assumed that this distribution of the few commanders and the many obeyers actually mirrors the distribution of ability and potential among the whole range of contemporaries and ancestors, other explanations need to be found in order to better understand the fundamental segregation in industrial enterprises. From a theoretical point of view, there can be no doubt that the process of an inter-subjective construction of social reality, conceived as subjective productivity, is necessarily accompanied by objective processes through which men, in turn, are produced by society. As the relation between consciousness and society in general is a dialectical one (cf. Berger and Pullberg (1966), 56 ff.), this also has to be taken into regard when the relationship between leadership and maturity or immaturity is being considered. Working with the underlying hypothesis of leadership as a perpetuation of immaturity, therefore, does not imply a one-sided judgement by which either the commanders or the obeyers could be accused of creating the immaturity. Monocausal explanations (or bonds) of this kind are hardly necessary now that those who are used to command are no longer born commanders. Today, since managers and workers are drafted from nearly the same recruiting potential, they have to struggle in much the same way with their own as well as others maturation.

De-objectification and the Integration of the External and the Internal World The attempt to conceptualize maturity requires some further reflection on the interrelatedness of the inner and the outer world and some thoughts on how this relationship between the social and the psychic processes of the construction of reality is perceived. So far, this essay has primarily dealt with the external world in the following way: the process of social construction as it is created, sustained and permanently changed tends to invite a kind of amnesia as to its social process character, the social constructiveness of the external world. This means that the fundamental unity between the producer, i.e. individual human beings, and the product, i.e. the social world of society, slips from individual and from social consciousness. The process through which this unity is destroyed can be described as an objectification of the social world. It happens in at least two different forms. On the one side

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there is a process of alienated objectification, the reification of human beings into lifeless and dead things. On the other side, through sacred objectification, i.e. deification, human beings are converted, or convert themselves, into divine beings. The attempt to overcome this dual tendency of objectification and its underlying de-humanization can be tentatively termed 'homification'. The concept of homification refers to the individual as well as the social processes of reestablishing the previous unity between producer and product in order to reconstruct the formerly objectified reality, to call men, men, and things, things - maybe even to call gods, gods. In addition to this social process of dis-illusionment of the external world necessarily included in any attempt at homification (as de-objectification), similar processes in the internal world of the human being can be described. They have to be further elaborated upon in order to reach a better understanding of how a mature human being in a particular social situation can be perceived and to get a better insight of what such a struggle for maturity vis-a-vis one's own internal and external world can be assumed to look like. To develop a theoretical perspective congruent with both the construction processes of the inner and the outer world of a human being it would seem necessary to overcome the splitting and fragmentation that traditionally exists between the scientific disciplines. The puzzle which exists about "the nature of the connectedness between individuals and the organization of their employing enterprises" (Lawrence (1980a), 1) in particular, appears, to a certain extent, to be solvable by referring to the theory of a social construction of reality summarized above and its pertaining de-objectification process and to the theory of object-relations as developed by Melanie Klein and extended by authors like Bion, Jacques, Menzies and Guntrip as a heuristic frame. It appears to me that "an attempt to link social science and psychoanalytic theories" (Menzies (1965), 194) can be undertaken and further enriched with a psycho-social theory of object-relations that includes both psychic and social processes of the construction of reality and the building of objects. These two theoretical approaches can be interrelated in a specific way because each theory is based on a kind of fundamental system/environment or a dialectical perception of reality social theory perceives social reality as intersubjectively constituted, whereas psychoanalytic theory understands the individual as living in a 'double environment' which as Guntrip ((1961), 351 f.) writes, is: "internal and external, psychic and material, unconscious and deeply involved in the life of the body and also conscious and deeply influenced by human relationships and all the pressures of the social culture."

These different theoretical approaches focus on different parts of the same reality and could be connected by selecting a different focal distance or a wider frame. But before a further step towards such an attempt can be undertaken, it first seems necessary to give at least a brief outline of the psychoanalytic theory of object-relations in early infancy and its impact on adulthood.

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The Theory of Object-Relations Lawrence ((1980a), 6), for instance, in one of his attempts to outline the psychoanalytic theory of object-relations, states: "Simultaneously the individual lives in two worlds: the inner world of the mind and the outer world of relationships with others. The former can be said to be essentially the world of the past; the latter that of the present. The connection between these two worlds is often such a close one that it becomes confused and, on occasion, fused. The inner world, of which the individual is not directly aware, is a private 'society' of traces or residual images of relationships with other people experienced in the past. These have been people of influence for the individual by being the principal objects of his wishes, needs, loves, hates and angers. These 'objects', or rather images of them and what they represent, come to be lodged subjectively in the mind of the individual and constitute his psychic structure." Melanie Klein, who has developed this theory of object-relations from her psychoanalytic work with very young children (cf. e.g. Grosskurth (1986); Greenberg and Mitchell (1983), 119 - 152), sees the beginning of the construction process of the inner world as immediately connected with the infant's relationship to its mother. She has "put forward the hypothesis that the newborn baby experiences, both in the process of birth and in the adjustment to the post-natal situation, anxiety of a persecutory nature. This can be explained by the fact that the young infant, without being able to grasp it intellectually, feels unconsciously every discomfort as though it were inflicted on him by hostile forces. If comfort is given to him soon - in particular warmth, the loving way he is held, and the gratification of being fed - this gives rise to happier emotions. Such comfort is felt to come from good forces and, I believe, makes possible the infant's first loving relation to a person or, as the psycho-analyst would put it, to an object. My hypothesis is that the infant has an innate unconscious awareness of the existence of the mother" (Klein (1959), 292). Among those processes through which the infant selects and constructs its inner world vis-a-vis its external environment and builds its ego in order to defend "itself against anxiety stirred up by the struggle within and by influences from without" (ibid., 293) the processes of "introjection and projection function from the beginning of post-natal life as some of the earliest activities of the ego, which in my view operates from birth onwards. Considered from this angle, introjection means that the outer world, its impact, the situations the infant lives through, and the objects he encounters, are not only experienced as external but are taken into the self and become part of his inner life. Inner life cannot be evaluated even in the adult without these additions to the personality that derive from continuous introjection. Projection, which goes on simultaneously, implies that there is a capacity in the child to attribute to other people around him feelings of various kinds, predominantly love and hate" (ibid.). "Thus an inner world is built up which is partly a reflection of the external one. That is to say, the double process of introjection and projection contributes to the interaction between external and internal factors. This interaction continues throughout every stage of life. In

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the same, way introjection and projection go on throughout life and become modified in the course of maturation; but they never lose their importance in the individual's relation to the world around him. Even in the adult, therefore, the judgement of reality is never quite free from influence of his internal world" (ibid., 294). "Object relations start almost at birth. The mother in her good aspects ... is the first good object that the infant makes part of his inner world ... If the mother is taken into the child's inner world as a good and dependable object, an element of strength is added to the ego. For I assume that the ego develops largely round this good object, and the identification with the good characteristics of the mother becomes the basis for further helpful identifications" (ibid.). "By projecting oneself or part of one's impulses and feelings into another person, an identification with that person is achieved, though it will differ from the identification arising from introjection. For if an object is taken into the self (introjected), the emphasis lies on acquiring some of the characteristics of this object and on being influenced by them. On the other hand, in putting part of oneself into the other person (projecting), the identification is based on attributing to the other person some of one's own qualities. Projection has many repercussions. We are inclined to attribute to other people in a sense, to put into them - some of our own emotions and thoughts; and it is obvious that it will depend on how balanced or persecuted we are whether this projection is of a friendly or of a hostile nature" (ibid., 295). Another important process through which the infant creates and sustains its reality is its tendency to split impulses and objects: "Persecuting anxiety reinforces the need to keep separate the loved object from the dangerous one, and therefore to split love from hate. For the young infant's self-preservation depends on his trust in a good mother. By splitting the two aspects and clinging to the good one he preserves his belief in a good object and his capacity to love it; and this is an essential condition for keeping alive. For without at least some of this feeling, he would be exposed to an entirely hostile world which he fears would destroy him ... The process of splitting changes in form and content as development goes on, but in some ways it is never entirely given up" (ibid., 296). "In normal development, with growing integration of the ego, splitting processes diminish, and the increased capacity to understand external reality, and to some extent to bring together the infant's contradictory impulses, leads also to a greater synthesis of the good and bad aspects of the object. This means that people can be loved in spite of their faults and that the world is not seen only in terms of black and white" (ibid., 297). This brief outline of the theory of object-relations would be incomplete, without making mention of a further, related dimension. Connected to the mechanisms of introjection, projection and splitting, two primitive psychic defence mechanisms can be distinguished according to the underlying anxieties which Melanie Klein terms the 'paranoid-schizoid' and the 'depressive' position. Jaques ((1955), 5) states, that "in the paranoid position, the characteristic defence against anxiety is that of splitting all internal objects into good and bad, the idealization of the good, and the projection of the bad. The more intense the aggressive impulses, the more intense are the phantasies of

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persecution; and correspondingly, the more profound and complete the splitting, the more intense the idealization, and the greater the projection". Referring to the related social mechanisms of defence he adds: "One example of social mechanisms of defence against paranoid anxieties is that of putting bad internal objects and impulses into particular members of an institution who, whatever their explicit function in a society, are unconsciously selected, or themselves choose to introject these projected objects and impulses and either to absorb them or deflect them. By absorption is meant the process of introjecting the objects and impulses and containing them, whereas in deflection they are again projected into the same members from whom they were introjected" (Jaques (1974), 282). The depressive position is, according to Melanie Klein's hypothesis, also developed in early childhood as a consequence of the paranoid position when "the baby becomes afraid of the harm his destructive impulses and his greed might do, or might have done, to his loved objects. For he cannot yet distinguish between his desires and impulses and their actual effects. He experiences feelings of guilt and the urge to preserve these objects and to make reparation to them for harm done. The anxiety now experienced is of a predominantly depressive nature; and the emotions accompanying it, as well as the defences evolved against them, I recognized as part of normal development, and termed the 'depressive position'. Feelings of guilt, which occasionally arise in all of us, have very deep roots in infancy, and the tendency to make reparation plays an important role in our sublimations and object relations" (Klein (1953), 297). Of the many authors who have extended and applied the theory of object-relations to the social world of institutions and organizations, Elliott Jaques and Isabel Menzies have made a particular contribution to the elaboration of the connection between these original psychic defences and equivalent social defence mechanisms. Based on the assumption that "the individual is engaged in a life-long struggle against anxiety" (Menzies (1965), 194), which he more or less commonly experiences in his organizational settings, "it is, therefore, to some extent valid to say that members share common anxieties" (ibid., 195). As Menzies has extensively demonstrated in her famous study on the defensive character of social structures in a hospital (Menzies (1970)), these social "defense systems can acquire objective reality and considerable permanence because of the forms they take" (Menzies (1965), 196). Like the development of the defence mechanisms on the individual's side, the incorporation of mature and effective defences can be a very normal and important part for a system's struggle with anxieties and its survival. And similar to the individually built defence mechanisms, "social systems become operative as defences only when they are re-incorporated by individuals, become established internally as their psychic defence systems and find expression in their attitudes and behavior" (ibid., 197). The individual incorporation of the social defence system can only be accomplished if it is internalized like his psychic defences, i.e.

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"it implies repeated projection of his psychic defences into the organization and repeated introjection of the social defence system, together with constant testing of the match between them and of the social and personal results of the process. Much of the matching process is unconscious" (ibid.).

The extent to which organizations are able to construct and sustain effective defence mechanisms in a similar way to the individual determines their maturity. As the same author writes: "Certain hypotheses may be put forward about the relationship between the chosen defence system and the functioning of the organization, particularly its efficiency in performing its primary task and its viability. Analogous hypotheses about the individual have long been accepted, i.e. that psychic defences are intimately connected with the ability of the individual to function well and to cope adequately with reality. One may postulate that the same is true of organizations and indeed evidence is accumulating to support this. Organizations that incorporate mature defences tend to function well in reality and tasks. Organizations which incorporate primitive defences do not function well in reality, and carry out their tasks inefficiently. As in individuals, inability effectively to master anxiety in organizations is associated with difficulty in reality-based functioning" (Menzies (1965), 198).

The linking element I see between the psychoanalytic theory of object-relations and the sociological theory of consciousness-building is the unity between the producer and the produced. As stated above, from the perspective of the latter theoretical approach the permanent and elemental danger and temptation to destroy and to spoil human beingness lies in an objectification through which the original unity of the producer and the product is annihilated in an alienated or sacred manner. The problem from the former psychoanalytic perspective can be seen as the destruction or the prevention of the identity building or development of an individual human being through the loss of himself in external objects. In order to understand, however, what is meant by the potential loss of the individual in external objects, some further points need to be considered. As I understand the creative process of the early child as well as its further development through adulthood as presented in the theory of object-relations, the early process of establishing a human identity of its own for the infant is accompanied by an ongoing differentiation of the former oneness of the outer world, the inner world and finally between both these worlds by establishing boundaries. It seems to me that the first experience of a new born infant - the transition from the foetus to the child, so to say - is not only determined by anxiety of a persecutory nature or, as Fairbain ((1963), 225) states, 'separation-anxiety', but that the escape from the hostile forces is simultaneously directed towards the reestablishment of the former unity that literally existed between the foetus and its mother in the womb. If it is allowed, one of the first acts of a new born child is to grasp its mother's breast - not primarily because it needs food but rather to introject the good bits of its mother into itself and thus reestablish the former unity. From the observer's stance it seems as if in this very moment (and, it can be assumed for some

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time after) the infant does not yet relate to any object, but rather that it exists exclusively as a mouth through which it and its mother are united. It might seem strange to apply the concepts above to the present context, but this unique state has striking similarities to the unity already dealt with between 'the producer and the produced'. During the first phase of its existence, the mouth of an infant seems to play a dominant part in establishing first object-relations; it seems that relations to objects can only be established if the objects are taken inside, and somehow digested. Gaining strengths in primitive tribes by swallowing their enemies might be an archaic expression of the phenomenon, but the experience seems to have generally survived as one of man's artefacts. I very vividly, for example, remember a case, in which during one of our Working Conferences on leadership and authority, a member said that they, the members, had finally found their peace with the Conference Director after they had 'eaten into him' the previous night. This episode also reminds me of Cronos who, as depicted in the famous picture by Goya, ate the children born to him by his married sister, Rhea. Zeus, who later became the father of the gods, only survived his father's greed and fear that one of his own sons would dethrone him because his mother deceived Cronos by offering him a stone wrapped up in the baby's napkins. Zeus himself swollowed Metis, whom he had raped, because it was said she would give birth to a son whose fate it would be to dethrone him. As Metis, as a matter of fact, was pregnant with a girl, Zeus later gave birth to Athene, the godess of wisdom, out of his head or ear. As I understand the Kleinian theory of how the infant establishes and relates to its early objects, what is meant by the 'good' and 'bad' breast of the mother is that the infant first primarily introjects the good parts of his mother into itself as a part of its own identity, whereas the feelings of hate and persecution it also feels are projected into the outer world which, as a matter of fact, is represented by the mother. Only later, when the depressive position is added to the original paranoidschizoid position, does the infant become able to re-introject what previously was projected outside. That means that the original differentiation of the external world by splitting into good and bad objects is only later supplemented by a corresponding differentiation of the infant's internal world. The former derivation of the external world into partial objects can only be taken back if the child is able to develop an adequate sense of reality which allows it to accept the ambiguity of good and bad and of love and hate as constituent dimensions of the internal as well as of the external world. In such a state, a human being is continuously able to discriminate its own subjectivity from the objects of the outer world. This is for me the most important insight the theory of object-relations offers towards understanding adulthood and behavior in the social world of objects, namely that this discrimination between the subjective inner world and the outer world of objects is not a stable state. This relationship has to be reconstructed again and again through (de-)introjections and (de-)projections. The construction of our own identity and of the social world in adulthood is permanently, and

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fundamentally, rooted in infancy (Klein (1959)). In order to construct and sustain our internal world, we not only construct the external world according to our primal object-relations via projection, we simultaneously introject the outer world, too, whereby part of these introjected objects are our previous projections and vice versa. The result is that our 'objectivity' of the outer world in adulthood is always and inevitably derived from, and determined by, our own subjectivity. What, therefore, is regarded as the social world of objectivity - and this is the basic link to the sociological theory of the constructive nature of social consciousness can only be seen as an intersubjectively constructed objectivity, an objectivity not only based on the mutual subjectivity of contemporaries but, as it would be formulated in terms of Klein's (1959) notion of 'our adult world and its roots in infancy' in the mind, as an objectivity which is rooted in the subjectivity of each of our infancies. Both this subjectivity and the objectivity derived from intersubjectivity are fundamentally constituted through the relatedness of the self to the other. As Cooper ((1983a), 202; cf. (1983b)), for example, puts it: "We know ourselves only through the echo of the Other." From this perspective it becomes obvious that what we are used to perceive as objectivity is a fiction, a fiction which is based on the assumption that we are all alike; this is an assumption which so far as we as members of a particular culture, as a homogeneous "collective mental programming of the people in an environment" (Hofstede (1980b), 43), have some convictions in common about what has to be regarded as objective truth, but which obviously is incorrect as far as our individual subjectivity rooted in our particular infancy is concerned. To a certain extent it somehow, nevertheless, appears to be the precondition of any group, institution or society that we learn to behave and to act as if this fiction is reality. But to an equal extent, through the fact that we individually as well as collectively tend to neglect our own subjectivity, we ensure that this fiction becomes true, i.e. that we convert our own subjectivity into an objectified truth of the social world.

The Theory of Object-Relations and the Social Construction of Reality This point allows me to demonstrate the connection between the psychoanalytic theory of object-relations and the sociological theory of a social construction of reality. What has been described as social objectification, i.e. the reification and deification of human beings and their products, finds its confirmation in a correlated psychic objectification. Such a psychic objectification can be perceived in at least two ways. Firstly, it is the process through which we sustain the fiction that even our own identity is a quasi-objective and unique entity which can be improved, or even completed, through self-realization. We thereby somehow con-

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firm the notion of a monad and tend to live "as individuals totally independent of others. To further one's own interests - seen as isolation - then seems the most sensible and fulfilling thing for a person to do" (Elias (1985), 34). Through this fiction we deny that it is "a network of relations to the world ... that constitutes the self' (Novak (1970), 55) and that our own identity can only be perceived as our subjective selection and construction of relations to the external world of objects. Sustaining this monadic fiction finally leads to the realization that personal identity is lost by declaring it to be an objective fact. As Cooper ((1983b), 719) referring to Baxter (1982) indicates, such an underlying 'theoretical individualism', the individual's attempt at interpreting himself, is alienation; "alienation is the suppression of the dialectic in social life" (Cooper, ibid.). A second process of psychic objectification can be described as the process through which we cut ourselves off from our own roots in infancy. Although these roots and our relations to them are primarily unconscious, there can be no doubt that they have a major impact on our adult lives. Just as projections are a constituent part of relationships, the same seems to be the case for introjections. "Under normal circumstances, the mechanism of projective identification is an integral part of all human relations and lays the foundations of communications. It determines the empathetic link with the object by enabling the individual to place himself in the position of his fellow being and so understand the other's feelings better. In pathological cases, projective identification consists in an omnipotent fantasy through which unwanted parts of the personality and of internalised objects, together with attendant emotions are split off, projected and controlled in the object toward which the projection was directed. As a result, the object is equated with what was projected onto him. This mechanism operates with utmost intensity during the earliest periods of life" (Grinberg (1981), 346).

What is more obvious for an infant or a child is true for adults, too, namely that the boundary we learn to establish and sustain between our psychic internal and the social external world is fundamentally permeable from both sides, or rather, it has to be sustained as such if we do not want to loose all sense of reality as a basis for adult behavior. The same kind of mutual permeability can equally be assumed for those dimensions of our inner world which primarily civilized men have learned to establish and to differentiate as unconsciousness and consciousness. As our projections are related to our deeper roots, so too are our introjections. As Klein ((1959), 298) stated: "Whenever we can admire and love somebody - or hate and despise somebody - we also take something of them into ourselves and our deepest attitudes are shaped by such experiences. In the one case it enriches us and becomes a foundation for precious memories; in the other case we sometimes feel that the outer world is spoilt for us and the inner world is therefore impoverished."

Hence it may be inferred that the love and hate with which we either approach the external world, or that which we mobilize against ourselves, is not love or

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hate per se as an objective quality, but rather our subjective attempt at perceiving relevant parts of the outer world and of ourselves, an attempt which itself is impregnated with our bad and good objects of early infancy. In this sense it is true that every human act (as a product) not only pertains to its present 'producer', at the particular point of time of its enactment, but rather has to be seen as having been 'produced' by a 'produced producer', who himself on the one side is partly the product produced through the objects he related to in his early childhood, and, on the other side, is firmly anchored in the tradition of those products he has previously produced as parts of his internal world, primarily during infancy. The reflexive perspective involved here should not be a new paradigm for a reformulated economic theory (although it might well be worth the attempt) - the introduction of the notion of reflexivity rather appears to be necessary in order to elucidate the degree of the psychic awareness and consciousness an adult actor can potentially be aware of. The human capability of self-reference should be emphasized in this context i.e. the ability to relate to and to question one's own subjectivity in the context of the process through which it was historically constituted. This ability constitutes itself and its internal world vis-a-vis its environment in each new activity carried out. If the ability of reflexive awareness is destroyed, either through the negligence of the individual or through impediments posed by others, its subjectivity will be annihilated; the individual can in this case be regarded as objectified - either self-caused or desubjectified by others. And again, such an objectification can be explained by the destruction of the original unity between the producer and the produced, i.e. the annihilation of a human being as an entity who partly has inherited and at the same time sustains and reconstructs his own identity vis-a-vis other subjects in a common social world. Analogous to the process of social objectification, the process of psychic objectification can be analytically differentiated into two kinds, carrying either a reified or a deified quality. In this context, I would like to stay with the hypothesis that in both cases, in psychic as well as in social objectification, the quality of an actual objectification, i.e. whether it can be termed as reified or deified, is mainly a matter of which side of the original unity between the producer and the product is annihilated. If it is the producer side of a human being which is objectified, then his fate is to be that of a product; he can be regarded as reified. In the second case, if the product qualities of a human being are reduced to oblivion or are destroyed, he is then converted into a god via deification. Seen against the background of the theory of object-relations this hypothesis can be taken further to demonstrate that there is not only a process of splitting underlying any process of objectification through which the former unity is broken; it also appears reasonable to assume that this splitting is accompanied and sustained by simultaneous internal processes of introjection and projection. This can be stated in the following way: the human being who either deifies himself and/or is deified by others has to introject from the outer world high

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amounts of potency, youth, autonomy, success, wealth etc. in order to establish his own omnipotence and immortality. At the same time, what had been previously inside himself in terms of his own weakness, mortality, inabilities, contempt, fears etc. has to be projected onto his vassals and subordinates. In order to sustain his own divinity as an objectified producer, such a god has to convert his contemporaries into products who, by sacrificing to the god and by serving as vassals, facilitate his divinity. Since this kind of god is taken for a creature to be loved and regarded, further processes can be imagined through which previously projected qualities of the god have to be further reified in order to become again introjected by the previous originator. This example points to a further implication of the underlying hypothesis: it is a fact that deification, as the objectification of the producer, and reification, as the objectification of the product, have to be regarded as interdependent in so far as the objectification of the former seems to be accompanied by the objectification of the latter. This does not necessarily mean that reification has to be exclusively seen as having been caused by deification. An analysis of the development of western industrialization may tempt us to assume such a monocausal relation, but further tests in various situations and cases would first have to be conducted. As I have written above, it rather appears that the two simultaneous objectifications are an expression of one and the same collusion different parties to a social system are caught in. In comparison to these more social processes of objectification through which the external world is split, similar psychic processes can be assumed. The phenomenon of the double is a good current example. As, for instance, Rank (1971), at the very beginning of psychoanalysis, extensively described, the double, a prominant figure in countless novels and plays, can be regarded as the desubjectified result of a fundamental psychic splitting into the omnipotent, successful, and irresistable godlike star, and the almost incapable-of-living creature. As Rank very convincingly at the beginning of his book demonstrates by making references to Hans Heinz Ewers' novel, 'The Student from Prague', it is quite often the promise of a high sum of money which enables an individual to throw his own shadow or his mirror-image (the subjectively reified part of his identity) in order to establish his superman-like qualities through deification.

Maturity and our Adult Roots in Immaturity

The common understanding that a normal individual reaches his maturity by the time he enters early adulthood and then carries it as a personal quality till he or she finally loses it through senility has been refuted by psychoanalysis. Maturity is not a stable state. Rather, it has to be seen as an ongoing attempt of the adult to struggle with his own as well as others' tendencies to perpetuate the unconscious immaturity of the inner world resulting from the patterns of object-relationships in childhood by transmitting them into the outer world. Maturity "is not a sudden state but a painful and always jeopardized achievement" (Neuberger (1980), 41). On various occasions we all, as Guntrip ((1961), quoted in Lawrence (1982a), 7) stated, tend to "react repeatedly from the emotional life of inner reality which is immature, and not in ways appropriate to the conscious and adult appreciation of outer reality". This means, as Lawrence (ibid.) puts it, "that potentially mature human relationships with objects in the environment, such as people seen as having authority, are distorted by immature reactions from the inner world of psychic compulsions. In the biography of every individual he or she begins in a state of infantile dependence which "'is characterized by a persistence of both primary identification (the emotional state of the infant in the womb) and the oral incorporative or 'taking in' attitudes (contributed by breast feeding) as the infant's chief means of object-relationships after birth'" (Guntrip, 1961). Ultimately the individual attempts to attain maturity or mature dependence on other objects in the environment. This state is characterised by a full differentiation of the individual as a person (through the ego process) from objects which can then be valued for their own sake and as I understand it, the individual may be striving towards mature object relations but finds himself in situations where those in authority to whom he may want to relate may cause him to regress towards infantile dependence. Without appropriate or just 'good enough' object relationships, the mature ego cannot develop. Maturity, however, is not to be simplistically equated with absolute independence, although it includes that capacity. Between these two states of relationships which the individual can experience in his lifetime there are transitional forms of relationships that are the content of everyday living."

As such, maturity is an ongoing concern which has to be permanently solved in the face of our ongoing individual tendencies of regression and immature dependency as well as the attempts to apply this immaturity to the outer world

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of our enterprises and other institutions. By creating and sustaining cultures of dependency and establishing structures, procedures and regulations which are often more designed to cope with our defences of anxieties than to accomplish a common task, we contribute towards building and sustaining a social reality according to our own unconscious images, i.e. an organizational immaturity which fits with our own inner needs for immaturity. For an individual, struggling with his own maturity as a member of such an institution, it very often appears to be extremely difficult if not impossible to disentangle and to overcome the social immaturity by which he is surrounded and partly caught up in. This inability, however, mirrors the often high extent of alienation with which these organizational realities are objectified, especially as far as their work organization is concerned. From the early times of industrialization onwards, particularly workers have been regarded as un-educated, un-motivated and too immature to manage themselves in their roles in such a way as to contribute to a common task. Early on, very concrete, and later more and more abstract and sophisticated methods of control, were invented in order not to let the employees' immaturity interfere too much with the employers interest of gaining and/or maximizing his profit. In so far as nearly every work organization - and most other institutions too, be they schools, universities or hospitals - represent a high degree of immaturity, regardless of whether individual members are seen as mature or immature, the amount of organizational alienation becomes evident. As Taubes ((1970), 70) has indicated, the regression of human consciousness is not only incarnated in the contemporary work organization, but has become a constituent part of institutional and organizational theory. Power and incapacitation are "enthroned through the dominance of overwhelming institutions and celebrated as mystery by institutional theory." Although the notion of the individual, i.e. man as a subject, in itself is a result of the history of institutions, most significant institutional and organizational theories are more or less exclusively concerned with the expectations and demands the institution/organization makes of the subject (ibid., 75; cf. Luhmann (1989)). Thus, the historical and societal 'Mündigkeit' ('majority') of the individual is paradoxically turned into its opposite; through the regression of consciousness, the historically acquired 'Mündigkeit' of the individual in contemporary institutions and the related theories is reduced into 'Unmündigkeit' ('minority'). Through such a reified quality of the organization it no longer seems possible to be aware of the interrelatedness between the immaturity of one's own inner world and that of the outer world of the organization. As far as this immaturity is concerned, the former unity between the product and the producer is broken in at least two ways: Since the immaturity of the work organization on the one side is imposed on an employee, he is no longer able to perceive this outer world as being created and sustained by his own immature object-relations in the outer world; on the other side, it has become increasingly difficult for every individual member of an enterprise or any other organization to be aware of the extent to which he is

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somehow nurturing his own immaturity by introjecting into his inner world the immaturity he is surrounded by at his workplace. Since it can further be assumed that part of the introjected immaturity consists of previous reified projections from the inner into the outer world, it again becomes obvious how the alienation of our organizations and our inner worlds are interrelated, i.e. to what a high extent we unconsciously contribute to sustain an alienated social reality which, in reverse, contributes to the fact that "we are alienated from ourselves" as Nin writes (cf. Hinz (1978). 15). I have tried so far to make clear that the notion of alienation as a particular form of objectification as well as objectification in general can only be understood as far as its impact on our individual as well as on our common construction of reality is concerned, if it is conceptualized from a psycho-social perspective which enables us to take into account the dialectic process by which as human beings we "are both collective and individual. The two merge" (Nin, in: Hinz (1978), 197); or as Novak ((1970), 28) puts it: "The self and its world interpenetrate at every point. There is no part that is purely self or purely world. It may well be the case that both reality and the self are social constructs; that is, that who I am and what I imagine the world to be like are constantly being shaped for me by the society of which I am a part."

As Cooper (1989), in a recent article, further elaborated, the relatedness of people and organizations as the relationship among psychic and social systems requires "a more artful way of thinking ... in order to reflect the complex, processual nature of social life" (ibid., 484). Cooper, in his reference to the work of Jacques Derrida and Norbert Elias clearly questions Talcott Parson's concept of interpénétration. "The process of interpénétration in Parsons' work is always subservient to the separate existences of the individual and the social system. This leads to the 'spatialization' of the social field in which, for example, the individual 'ego' is somehow 'inside' the human being and the 'society' somehow 'outside' it. While we may say that 'the human brain is situated within the skull and the heart within the rib cage ... we can say clearly what is the container and what is contained, what is located within walls and what outside, and of what the dividing walls consist' (Elias (1978), 258). But such physical metaphors are completely inappropriate for the understanding of psycho-social processes since at 'this level there is nothing that resembles a container' (ibid., 259) and therefore one cannot talk about the 'inside' or the 'outside' of a human being" (Cooper (1989)). "Derrida ( 1981 ) emphasizes how the outside as the unwanted supplement plays a necessary constituting role in the formation of the inside and, far from being a mere accessory, is thus a central feature of the inside. To illustrate this, Derrida uses examples from the human body whose innermost spaces - mouth, stomach, etc. - are actually pockets of externality folded in. An outside is thus seen to be the most intrinsic feature of a system, displacing the inside" (Cooper, ibid., 487).

The inside/outside problem of the social sciences as well as its insufficient and inadequate conceptualizations and images mirrors to a certain extent similar and much older philosophical and theological problems. There is, for example, the

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differentiation/relatedness problem of male- and femaleness which in many ancient mythologies can only be expressed in its complexity through the regression to the former unity of the androgyne (cf. Zolla (1981)). Also, in Christian theology the 'problem' of the Holy Trinity has been a prominent if not the most prominent issue throughout history. Among the various metaphors and images with which theologians in the early Church attempted to grasp the 'eternal miracle', the Greek 'perichorese' had a predominant significance. 'Perichorese', which later was translated by the Latin 'circumincessio', means the reciprocal pervasion and 'inhabitation' of the three divine persons in order to express the dogma that they live in each other. Similar to Derrida's metaphor of the mouth and the stomach, the image of the 'inhabitant' is useful to grasp the relatedness of social life. Just as one is an inhabitant of a city or a state, the individual 'inhabites' social relatednesses of various kinds and dimensions - as these social relatednesses 'inhabite' in every individual. The same dialectical process has to be taken to gain a more adequate understanding of maturity. It seems to me that the meaning of maturity can only be comprehended in a deeper sense if it is regarded as a subjective and at the same time intersubjective attempt towards homification, i.e. maturity is the individual and collective quest for homification. As mentioned above I do not intend to use the concept of homification to propagate a kind of subjective idealism by which the outer objective world exclusively is seen as the result and product of our individual ideas, dreams and phantasies. The concept of homification, as I understand it, has rather to be seen as based on a kind of psycho-social realism that emphasizes the fact that we as human beings are both the products and the producers of our own individualities as well as of the society and its institutions we are living in. Both these aspects, the fact that we as individuals are products as well as producers, are basically constituted and sustained through object-relations. Object relations are those through which our individual as well as our collective incarnation occurs. As individuals, we are through our conception, birth and socialization the product of how our parents related to each other and to us as objects. As such, they as well as we represent an endless inheritance of previous object relations which, as far as the underlying patterns are concerned, are in parts as old as mankind itself. We are also the producers of what we perceive and select to be our relevant reality in so far as, through our relations with objects, we create and constitute our identity as well as our ability to have various kinds of relatedness with others. It is through object relations that we search and establish meaning; "meaning is", as Lawrence ((1982a), 7) writes, "given to our lives through object relations. When people come together in groups there will be a resonance between their inner worlds, or individual psychic realities, and the reality they collectively make." In the past the creation and the transfer of meaning was predominantly accomplished through established meaning systems maintained by religion and tradition.

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Our present societal situation is, in contrast, characterized (and determined) by more or less countless, contradictory and competitive attempts at gaining meaning, and by an increasing degree of meaninglessness. For most of us, meaning is no longer given to our lives as part of our human inheritance. The same seems to be true in the context of our present concern for maturity. Formerly, an individual was considered to be a mature member of the community by the time he got married, had children and founded or took over his parents' house, farm or business. To reach maturity today, the individual must take on a continuous struggle of questioning himself, his individual, and the social construction of reality he is surrounded by. What makes the struggle for maturity even more necessary, difficult and at times hopefully more challenging is the fact that, as a consequence of the loss of a commonly shared meaning system, our present situation can no longer be perceived as an objective reality based on objective truths. And as soon as one shares the conviction that that which is presented as objective truth rather has to be regarded as an attempt at objectification of either the alienated or sacred kind, the attempt to create and to establish meaning in life becomes a real venture. This is the starting point from which any further attempt at conceptualizing maturity has to begin. "Mature individuals" ... as Lawrence ((1980b), 66) writes, "are able to come into conflict with the political arrangements of institutions because they have the courage to be disillusioned with society, institutions and political orders. To be disillusioned is to question the events and phenomena in which people exist. To do all this, however, means entering a state of depression or despair about social life. Here, obviously, I am not concerned with trivial personal depression, say about frustrated career aspirations, but with larger, existential, social and political issues. As is well enough known, it is the healthy person who is capable of becoming depressed. Such people are able to become depressed because they are 'able to find the whole conflict within the self as well as being able to see the whole conflict outside the self in external (shared) reality' (Winnicott (1950), 177). Such people are able to differentiate between the two worlds. They are able to struggle towards an understanding of why they perceive their social world in a particular way. They can disentangle the fictions they have inherited and sustained to maintain a sense of reality within themselves from others' construction of reality. As Winnicott concludes: 'When healthy persons come together they each contribute a whole world, because each brings a whole person' (Winnicott (1950), 177). This is because they have worked through their own inner conflicts."

Immaturity thus, as Khan ((1990), 197, referring to Winnicott) puts it, is the expression of a state of nonintegratedness which dissociates the person and which, as time passes, covers the person somehow with a crust of all kinds of curious intrapsychic symptoms.

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Maturity, Meaning, and Mortality The meaning a mature person gets from working through his own inner conflicts can be well illustrated by referring to the myth of the hero above described: As Dunne ((1975), 14 f.) convincingly writes about Gilgamesh, characteristic of the real hero is, that "he went in search of everlasting life, but learned that it was not given to him, and then he came home again with his wisdom, his knowledge of mortality". The story of Gilgamesh, and possibly of any other mythic hero, is a convincing example of how, in the process of maturation, an individual reshapes his own inner world through object relations as well as through relating to a friend's death as a fact of life. The hero first went out to gain immortality, as immature image from within his inner world and of his identity, and only through the death of a loved 'object' did it finally prove possible for the hero to integrate this concrete loss of a friend as the definite loss of his own immortality. Only by giving up his own attempt at immortal deification was he able to accept his own mortality as the final precondition of his own homification and his wisdom. In comparison to our nearly endless attempts to create instant heroes as the mythic figures of our contemporary working life, the myth of the ancient hero very vividly demonstrates that any real heroism has fundamentally to be based not only on the acceptance of one's own death as a fact of life but on the conviction that one's own as well as others' death evidently is the predominant, and probably even the only truth, our individual as well as our social reality can objectively rely upon. Such an acceptance of death as an objective reality means that death itself has to be deobjectified, in the sense that death no longer can be exclusively regarded as an event at a particular point in time, which for some may occur in the middle of their lives and for others later; heroism as the mythic image of maturity rather implies accepting death as a constituent part of one's life. The acceptance of death in a homified notion means the acceptance of one's own mortality as a fundamental human quality. It is the awareness of one's own mortality which discriminates the human being from any objectified human derivative of a god in its deified, or of a commodity in its reified version. The acceptance of one's own mortality as a precondition for maturity makes clearer that maturity and meaning have to be seen as interrelated: "The acceptance of death is the beginning of the discovery of ways of giving and receiving meaning and therefore purpose and reason to life. By bringing together life and death, by making connections between the two, we begin to struggle with the tragedy of life. If you will, we take existence as being serious. The moment we do that we start to search for meaning to existence" (Lawrence (1982b), 121).

To acknowledge such an interrelatedness of meaning, mortality, and maturity seems to take up a very demanding and pretentious position, especially if it is stated in the context of leadership and organizational theory. It also seems to

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presuppose a heroic human ability to struggle for meaning based on mortality. However, as there doesn't seem to be any other serious solution other than to accept these facts of life, it seems to be this heroism and its underlying myth of the hero which makes us, the living, into "modest heroes who can only hope to win glory after their deaths", as Wolf ((1983), 115), writes in her novel 'Kassandra'. To accept this kind of heroism as the ultimate ability human beings are - in principle - capable of, the ability to create and sustain meaning in the face of one's own as well as others' death, means to take life seriously; at the same time it gives further meaning to the concept of homification. To live one's life from a homified level of subjective consciousness means on the one side to implement mortality as a constituent part of the reality of one's own inner world; on the other side it also includes the ability to regard other men and women as equally mortal - regardless of whether they themselves share (and live) this conviction or not. In this sense, maturity presupposes a continuous and serious quest of the transferences through which we again and again tend to objectify others as well as ourselves into gods or goods. It is through the projection of our own inability to cope with mortality that we define others as immortals, leaving us in the state of thinghood; and through introjection - for example, through the identification with the immortality of the firm we have devoted our lives to - we tend to establish our immortality by denying others at the same time their human ability to die. Maturity as the homified consciousness of our own inner world as well as of the outer social world can only be reached if we - despite countless contrary attempts - are willing to regard man as man and things as things, i.e. mortals as mortals and non-mortals as non-mortals. It is only possible to become a hero by accepting others in their ability to become heroes, i.e. to give up the old dream that the few are born to become gods, and renounce the violence through which the many are denaturated either into machines, servants or cannon fodder. Heroism can only be accomplished individually if we are prepared to accept the struggle for heroism as a joint venture, a quality of life which, in principal, all of our contemporaries are capable of. To accept such a general heroism as the precondition for any particular individual to become a hero means giving up some of the myths and images passed down to us from our ancestors, e.g. the ancient conception that "luck is when the guy next to you gets hit with the arrow" (Becker (1973), 2). Some may conclude that all this is mere existentialist or moralist reverie which, regardless of whether true or not, neither has scientific character nor relevance to what is seen as the reality of industrial enterprises. I am, however, convinced that we, as scientists and practitioners, do not have any choice other than to accept these facts of life as the basis from which we construct social reality; for me we have no choice but to acknowledge these facts, regardless of how we interpret them, and whether we personally try to gain meaning from them or just to ignore them.

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In the context of our outer social world, its complexity and its high amount of taken-for-granted objectifications, it would be naive to assume that maturity is exclusively a matter for the individual human being. As the objectifications of our outer world and those of our inner worlds are interrelated and mingled, any individual concern for meaning can only be accomplished collectively, i.e. in relation to other objects. Such a quest for meaning necessarily requires us to explore and to disentangle how and to what extent we tend to rely on and to perpetuate a social construction of reality which is based on the assumption that we, individually and collectively, are immortal. It somehow appears that, on an unconscious level, we all seem to be convinced that Adam and Eve, the mythical parents of mankind, have chosen to eat from the second tree in paradise, "the fruit of which would have given them eternal life" (Campbell (1973), 23). But, as a matter of fact, since "Eve and then Adam ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, which is to say of the pairs-of-opposites, and immediately experienced themselves as different from each other and felt shame" (ibid., 27), we not only have to become aware of our own mortality, we also do not seem to have any real choice other than to use this knowledge to further investigate how we, individually and collectively, tend to ignore and to deny the knowledge of death that we all have. The myths we accept and perpetuate about society and its institutions seem to continuously prevent us from facing mortality. As Campbell, the outstanding scholar of human mythology, states: "This recognition of mortality and the requirements to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology. And along with this there runs another realization; namely, that the social group into which the individual has been born, which nourishes and protects him and which, for the greater part of his life, he must himself help to nourish and protect, was flourishing long before his own birth and will remain when he is gone. That is to say, not only does the individual member of our species, conscious of himself as such, face death, but he confronts also the necessity to adapt himself to whatever order of life may happen to be that of the community into which he has been born, this being an order of life superordinated to his own, a superorganism into which he must allow himself to be absorbed, and through participation in which he will come to know the life that transcends death. In every one of the mythological systems that in the long course of history and prehistory have been propagated in the various zones and quarters of this earth, these two fundamental realizations - of the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order - have been combined symbolically and constitute the nuclear structuring force of the rites and, thereby, the society" (Campbell (1973), 2o f.).

To accept this dual concern - "the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order" (ibid.) - as the basic objective reality any individual human being as well as any social reality are faced with in order to create and sustain meaning also throws a further light on these considerations and the underlying hypothesis of leadership as a perpetuation of immaturity. It seems to me that in our contemporary concern for organizations, in theory as well as in practice,

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we not only have become used to the fiction that the endurance of social order in general and that of our work organization in particular has to be more emphasized than the inevitability of individual death; we rather seem to have created and are to continually reiterate a social order in which an individual death is no longer inevitable, and indeed, no longer seems to exist. We somehow have succeeded in splitting these two fundamental realizations into what we commonly call a working life and the remainder of it; furthermore, we devote our lives to the unquestioned myth that, as our society and its institutions are apparently immortal, we, as individuals, are immortal, too. It somehow appears that as our contemporary working places are no longer surrounded by the graves of our ancestors like in the villages or the cities of previous times, we have become used to taking for granted that we are exclusively surrounded by the living. As Guggenberger (1990) recently pointed out, according to surveys carried out by cultural anthropologists, sometimes during the last decade of this millenium, the day will come on which, for the first time in history, the actual number of living contemporaries will exceed the number of people that ever lived before. "This new majority of the living", as he calls it, "no longer acts in the awareness of its own finiteness" (ibid.). And as men and women both in the daily experience of their work and on the more global level of their experience of the world become more and more used to the conviction that only life counts, they generate a "chauvinism of a new kind" (ibid.). To the extent that this myth becomes true through our daily activities as leaders or as members of an institution led by others, we more or less have become used to and convinced of the notion that it is the primary and exclusive task of a leader to contribute towards the endurance of the social order, its growth and survival. Despite the fact that we all know that leaders have died in the past and will die in the future, they seem to be employed as agents of endurance and immortality. A fiction which, for example, is symbolically confirmed day after day in the obituary notices of our newspapers in which mainly managers, i.e. the leaders, have their eternal memory confirmed whereas workers, i.e. the subjects of leadership, are more obviously left to their oblivious fate. In so far as agents of immortality are not supposed to be concerned about the inevitability of death, neither their own nor that of others, these leaders, like the cherubims at the gate of the heavenly garden, have to introject and internalize the conviction of their own immortality. Through this perpetuation and assurance of immortality, which seems to be the primary mythical function of leaders in work enterprises, leaders tend to become the predominant agents of immaturity; agents who for themselves as well as for their subordinates have to confirm and perpetuate the basic objectification that people cannot die, be it that they are regarded as gods and godlike archangels in their deified version or as goods and dregs in their reified version. Immature leaders who are able to neglect their own individual death thus quite often are the guarantors of the survival of work enterprises. They are also our societal guarantee that an individual death looses its inevitability, falling instead into oblivion. The

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more we as employees or members of these enterprises and institutions buy into such an immaturity, not only by relating to them as objects of the outer world but as images according to which we via reintrojection shape the reality of our inner world, the more we individually and collectively sustain this immaturity by reconfirming the societal fiction of the avoidability of our individual death. The more we, from such a shared position of immaturity, sustain and reconfirm these tendencies of an objectified society, the more we are contributing towards our own objectification as individuals. Correspondingly, by supporting the societal destruction of the common social reality and, for example, according death and anxiety only a very secondary meaning, we also shape our internal worlds. Part of this objectified destruction of our inner world happens through the concepts we develop and use to describe and relate to these realities. The monotony of work, for instance, sustains the notion that, as meaning has become a more and more irrelevant dimension of a working life, work either can be interesting or monotonuous (cf. Sievers (1978)); or, as Lawrence (1987) has elaborated on another occasion, we are becoming more and more used to accepting the experience of stress without being aware that stress as a concept refers to an objectified reality built on the assumption that anxiety in general, and anxiety towards one's death in particular, does not exist. "In a mass society, the freedom to experience anxiety is removed by the conventional belief that anxiety equals sickness and is to be wished away by means of tranquillizers" (Lawrence (1979a), 248). The more we collectively succeed in excluding meaning and death through the socially reified and taken-for-granted concepts of our working life, the more we lose, as far as our lives are concerned, any sight of what we as human beings potentially are and could be; the more we succeed in establishing and sustaining an objectified quality of working life, the more we seem to fail to realize in our lives a quality of homification. To allow one's own as well as others' life a homified quality presupposes that one sees oneself and others as human beings who in themselves carry the unity of producers and products i.e. who, as human subjects, are able to relate to other human subjects as human objects. To be able to give one's own social relatedness this quality of homification also means accepting that the objects we are relating to are our products, or somehow, our creatures, just as we ourselves, in the consciousness of the inner world of the other, are also products. And as we all know, we are at different times involved in different kinds of interrelatedness with others; there are e.g. people we love and care for or others we either just cannot cope with or who we decide are our enemies, scapegoats or failures. There can be no doubt that it is also we who, by either acknowledging or neglecting our relatedness with them, are creating and producing them as our individual or collective objects. It is through homification, i.e. through our relatedness and our awareness of this relatedness to others, that we create and maintain them and us as human beings. It is through objectification that we create homunculi which are either perceived as gods or goods. If we do not want to end up in the splendid

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isolation of either monads or singletons (cf. Turquet (1975)), i.e. to declare the isolation of our own inner world as the universe, we do not have any other choice then to acknowledge this relatedness as the basic human process through which we construct and maintain the dual realities of our own identity and that of the world. From this perspective, homification is not only a neverending process which even has its effect on us after our individual death through the memory of others; it also is a process which cannot be accomplished in a mature way without the experience of confusion, chaos and despair. The journey into the inner and the outer world is an adventure which, as far as the accompanying images and myths are concerned, is as old as mankind itself. There is, for example, on the one side the mythical figure of the shaman as "a person (either male or female) who in early adolescence underwent a severe psychological crisis, such as today would be called a psychosis" (Campbell (1973), 21o), who finally - through the help of other shamans - reaches the only true wisdom in primitive cultures. And there is, on the other side, the journey of the mythical hero, which, in the case of Gilgamesh, even brought him underneath the sea, or the ten-year voyage of Homer's Odysseus, who "was a warrior returning from long battle years to domestic life, and required, therefore, to shift radically his psychological posture and center" (ibid., 234). Whereas the shaman stands for the individual, who, by relating to another object which has previously gone through similar experiences, is able to reshape his own identity through the relatedness to spirits as another dimension of objects, the hero, and in particular Odysseus, represents the human being who overcomes the chaos of his voyage by not identifying himself "with any of the figures or powers experienced" (ibid.) and finally comes home changed and matured through his experience. There cannot be too much doubt that in present western culture we have established highly efficient arrangements to protect us from shamans or Odysseus-like heros by erecting and sustaining appropriate objectifications through which the former, for instance, will end up as the inmate of a lunatic institution whereas the latter may be regarded as a kind of social fossile or as a case for social security. "The individual who explores his own subjective experiences runs the risk of being converted into the 'mad person', and then the remainder can hold the picture of being 'civilized' and 'contented'. The impotence is locked away" (Lawrence (1979a), 242).

But at the same time there are other patterns available through which we - via reintrojection - individually may succeed in avoiding the confusion and chaos of the world; there is either the escape into total regression as the inability to establish any relatedness to others or the progressive attempt to deny and neglect any confusion and chaos by relying on one's own megalomania and omnipotence. Both these patterns are equal in so far as they are based on individual objectifications, the only difference being perhaps that regression is a matter of individual reification, whereas megalomania is based on deification. In contrast to these immature

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attempts to overcome chaos and despair, any mature attempt to cope with it can only be perceived as comparable to that of untying the Gordian knot which was enviously kept for centuries by the priests of Zeus in the ancient Greek town of Gordium. To dispel the confusion and the chaos with which the reality of the inner and the outer world are confronted obviously cannot be done instantly at a certain point in time like Alexander, the Macedonian, who impatiently cut the knot with his sword. If one really wants to conquer Asia, the promised land of the oracle, as the intended dimension or the meaning of one's life, there have to be more appropriate ways to cope with a knot. It rather seems to me that confusion and chaos are unrenouncable experiences which men and women have to endure if they are prepared to live maturely the existence of human beings in a predominantly objectified world.

Mortality as a Missing Quality of Working Life From what has been stated so far about homification as the precondition for a mature human existence, it may have become evident that this notion of homification cannot be exclusively regarded as a quality restricted to our private lives. It, for instance, necessarily has to have a serious impact on what we call the quality of working life. My guess is that this concept, as far as its underlying meaning is concerned, either has to be extensively changed or given up altogether if work is really to be possible under homified conditions. Without going further into details, it seems to me that many of the concepts, programs, and intentions which have been developed and offered in the past under the label of 'quality of working life' or of its 'humanization' are primarily attempts at better adapting reified individuals to already reified working conditions, in other words, as attempts at increasing and accelerating the existing degree of objectification of contemporary work organizations by simultaneously decreasing the experience of alienation of workers and of employees in order to gain a better position in the worldwide 'search for excellence'. The solutions which have been offered so far to increase the quality of working life primarily seem to perpetuate the onesideness to which I have already referred by elaborating the organizational function of leaders. Out of the two fundamental realizations mankind continuously is confronted with, "the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order" (Campbell (1973), 21) the various attempts and results which originated from the quality of working life movement seem to be concerned primarily, if not exclusively, with an improvement of the social order. The predominant intent is to facilitate a particular enterprise's survival and immortality. Measured from the position of their potential for homification, these attempts to change the work organization of enterprises do not seem to have contributed in any way toward helping their employees, neither those at the top

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nor those at the bottom, to face the inevitability of individual death (cf. Sievers (1990a), (1990c). The impact the quality of working life or the humanization movement has had on the possible experience or realization of death rather appears to be of an unconscious kind. It seems that underlying the explicit intent to reduce the pain and alienation of industrial labour in order to make it more interesting and challenging for the individual employee as well as more effective for the employer, is the conscious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the amount of severe health damages, injuries and deaths caused by labour; it also seems that these attempts unconsciously further contributed to exclude the possibility of any death experience - at least from working life - in order to exclude death in general as a part of an employee's inner life. From this point of view it appears that these programs were not only guided by the aspiration of making employees accept their working life as the most important and challenging part of their whole life, but also of confirming to them that at least in their working life they cannot die and to give them the impression that at least as employees or as workers they are immortal. It somehow appears as if the benefit an individual employee receives from a marginally better quality in working life has to be paid for by a fundamental deterioration of the quality of life in general, i.e. to renounce and to deny their mortality. In the sense that workers are deprived or alienated from facing the inevitability of their individual death in order to confirm and sustain the immortality of their firm (and their employer), the immaturity of the employees is further perpetuated through these attempts to improve the quality of their working lives. It seems worth asking whether these initiatives to alter the working conditions in contemporary enterprises, not primarily in a particular case but rather from their underlying unconscious assumptions, are not too narrow attempts because, in addition to the working conditions, they do not take the 'living conditions' of the employees into consideration. And I hope that I have made my argument clear that by 'living conditions' I do not mean housing, public assistance, or leisure-time activities; what I mean is that it seems to me that the 'humanization of work' has not only neglected the humanization of life, but at the same time has reinforced the already existing inhuman quality of the lives of the majority of employees. In opposition to a homification of the working life, which would imply the realization of mortality as a basic quality of human beings, the humanization of working life pretends the immortality of all employees.

Management and Mortality In the previous section on the improvement of the quality of working life I used the concept of employee instead of worker. As already explained in the two previous parts of this book, I am convinced that the all too common discrimination between

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managers and workers is a fiction, a false myth, which has to be abandoned if we are prepared to give the homification of working life and of our lives in general a chance. The fictitious discrimination between managers and workers perpetuates the basic myth that despite the fact that nearly all are employees, some are more so than others. Predominantly in present German industrial mythology, but obviously in other Americanized industrial societies, too, the notion of the employee seems to express the fate of the workers whereas managers - increasingly so the higher up you go - regard themselves and are regarded as representatives of the entrepreneur and the shareholders of invested capital. This leads to the consequence that similar to the ancient Greek mythology in which some were gods and others ephemerals - managers tend to live towards the aspiration of their immortality through deification whereas the workers, via reification, are even deprived of their mortality. But despite the myth, at least in the majority of industrial enterprises, managers are employees, too; they offer their work and labour, i.e. part of their energy and lifetime, to a particular enterprise in order to earn their livelihood. In the majority of enterprises, the times are over in which managers primarily manage workers and workers exclusively handle machines, raw materials and products. Today, even the division of work according to which managers manage and workers work can no longer be preserved. In most cases an enterprise would simply collapse if managers did not work or workers refuse to manage. Even the unconscious societal division of labour according to which it was the hidden or explicit task of management to guarantee the endurance of the social order by accomplishing the firm's survival and the fate of the workers to represent the symbolization of man's inescapable mortality and to be replaced by mere countless numbers of successors no longer seem to be valid. The probability is that a work enterprise will face serious crisis and will finally go bankrupt if the majority of its employees, managers or workers, is not seriously concerned about their employing institution's endurance and survival. What has changed, however, is that the former division of labour, in which the workers predominantly symbolized mortality as a constituent dimension of human life, has become redundant. This part of reality has become unemployed in a double sense: human mortality no longer seems to be a constituent part of an institution's corporate culture, regardless of whether it is a hospital or a factory; and on the other hand, as far as the broader societal division of labor is concerned, the unemployed have been increasingly forced to represent the notion of mortality. As a matter of fact, from the point of view of a collective unconsciousness, it really is striking to what degree the total denial of death in contemporary work enterprises is interrelated with the encapsulation of death and mortality in the unemployed. It sometimes even seems as if their symbolization as well as their death does not have any meaning; their fate is expressed well by T. S. Eliot in his poem "Choruses" from 'The Rock':

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"In this land No man has hired us. Our life is unwelcome, our death unmentioned in 'The Times'."

The mythical discrimination between managers and workers may have had some meaning in earlier phases of industrialization, but is no longer in accordance with basic dimensions of the social reality in contemporary enterprises. The preservation of this traditional myth predominantly serves to perpetuate and to legitimate the underlying objectifications on which our enterprises and their cultures are based. If instead, we are prepared to emphasize the fact that the vast majority of people working in organizations are employees who are taking on an organizational role to perform work with the dual intention of contributing to the endurance of the enterprise and of struggling for meaning in their lives, we would gain a far-reaching perspective towards the homification of our enterprises, society, and lives. Through the concept of the employee, it would be possible to reach towards a new myth which would bring us some steps further towards re-establishing the former unity of the producer and the product in the sense that it would then be the people of a particular enterprise who, despite their various role specifications in the production process, are collectively producing the products (or services) sold on the market. The concept of the employee and the meaning it represents - or rather the meaning we want it to represent - would enable us to regard those who are working in an enterprise as human beings and the products they produce as well as the tools and materials they use as things. Such a concept, in its reference to a human being in a working role and his interrelatedness with others, could also provide the necessary containment for mortality as the basic human quality in the sense that the equally important notion of immortality as the endurance of the social order then could be placed more centrally in the work enterprise as a social system.

Towards a New Myth of Management

Such a concept of employee as the main identification for nearly all persons working in an enterprise, with the exception perhaps of the few real entrepreneurial individuals, families or 'bodies', would further allow the acknowledgement of the ability to manage as a general human ability which every individual is capable of in guiding himself in general as well as in the process of planning and performing his work in particular. This is the notion of the 'self-managing individual' as Lawrence and Miller ((1976), 365) have called it. "The self-managing individual ... is refusing to allow cultural assumptions to remain untested and he is disentangling the cobweb of myths and mysteries of our social institutions. He has to differentiate between what is conventionally agreed to be reality and what is reality for him. Thus, whereas it is widely accepted that the search for scientific objectivity requires the individual to suppress subjective judgement, we would turn this proposition on its head and postulate that objectivity is essentially the clarification of one's own subjectivity. But as he examines more closely what is inside and what is outside and tries to regulate the boundary between them, the individual is confronting those very cultural forms, hitherto taken for granted, that provide the defensive structures and thus confronting his own primitive inner needs that these structures satisfy. In giving up an external definition of 'reality' and substituting his own, he is therefore giving up elements of certainty and security and substituting uncertainty and insecurity. Our argument is that the resultant disorder and chaos are the necessary risks and costs of undertaking change. Social change inescapably starts with self."

This is a notion of management that goes way beyond what we traditionally understand when referring to those at the upper level of an enterprise who manage people (cf. Legge (1989), 27). The management of oneself is the ability I referred to earlier, the precondition to becoming a modest hero. And it seems to me that the decision to acknowledge it for oneself and for others as the basic human potential, or to deny it, is the critical element which ultimately determines whether one, as a social scientist or as a practitioner in a work enterprise, either supports a homified or an objectified kind of organizational theory as the cognitive map by which one conceptualizes an immense - and I would add a predominant part of social reality as well as its potential political implications. This notion of the self-managing individual may have been what McGregor (1960) had in mind

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when he developed his 'theory Y' of management by emphasizing the human side of an enterprise. But at the same time it seems to me that neither he himself nor his countless descendants really have grasped the underlying implication that it is the individual who through his interrelatedness with others attempts to give meaning to his life as well as to an enterprise. Lawrence (1979a) elaborated the further implications of the self-managing individual by referring this notion to managerial work in contemporary enterprises. By developing the concept of 'management of oneself in role' as a constituent activity through which an individual relates to the outer world in general and to his work and work situation in particular, he offers an understanding of how the relationship of any employee to his work, regardless of whether he in the traditional use of the language is called manager or worker, can be conceptualized from a perspective of object relations and the social constructedness of the outer world. Lawrence is taking "the individual in his or her roles in relation to the systems in which he or she lives and works (as) the starting point" (ibid., 243) for a new conceptualization of management and relates it to the concept of sociotechnical systems which first was developed by Trist and Bamforth (1951) more than forty years ago. Especially the concept of the semi-autonomous work group which has emerged from this approach of organizational thinking and design has contributed to regarding "every individual who takes up a role in a work group, and by extension in an enterprise" as someone who "is called upon to manage himself in his roles. This is done in two ways: by managing himself in relation to his work tasks and activities, and by managing his relationships with other role-holders" (Lawrence, ibid., 244). "To hold the view that individuals, enterprises, and indeed all institutions are systems with open boundaries is to begin a journey in organizational, political, social, and existential thinking which can cause a radical questioning of much of what is believed to be efficient organizational design. It can be postulated that if this journey were to be made it could lead to a reformulation of the nature of the relationship between the individual, through his or her role, and the work enterprise and, by extension, with society. Current ideas about bringing about compliance in enterprises would need to be overhauled so that the nature of the authority relationships between the enterprise, through its managerial representatives, and employees was redefined. My hypothesis is, however, that such a search for new meaning about that complex nexus can create such anxieties that people in enterprises very often revert to, or perserverate with, taken-for-granted modes of organizational design" (ibid).

How the notion of the self-managing individual can be related to the work group in particular and to the surrounding enterprise in general is demonstrated by the same author by presenting an example of a work group definition which was developed during a green-field site project to set up a new factory. In this case, the work group was defined as "a set of associates who jointly accept responsibility for managing operating activities, process control and correlation to achieve agreed standards within a defined task boundary" (ibid., 245).

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"The importance of the introduction of the term 'managing' in this context is not to be underestimated. In particular, it was being suggested that work groups were responsible for taking in imports across their task boundary, converting them into another state, and exporting them to the next system. This transformation process determined the primary task. Within work groups workers were to be free to allocate roles for the execution of the primary task. Management, therefore, was a collective responsibility of the work group" (ibid.).

Such a management of social roles and systems is based on at least two fundamental implications which can only be realized as a way of coping with social reality if they are acknowledged as genuine dimensions of how the individual is capable of and supposed to manage himself. A work group of interrelated employees will only be able to manage its boundaries as the regulation of its imports and exports with the necessary authority which derives from its collective primary task if every individual member of such a group is acknowledged to have his or her own authority and capability to manage his or her own boundaries as a psychic system vis-a-vis the social systems he or she is relating to in the work situation. Apart from the fact that any individual member of a work group has to commit himself or herself to the collective primary task of the group he or she is working with, a further precondition is the individual's ability "to hold the management of the work group 'in the mind'. 'In the mind', in this context, means that the individual in his role holds a Gestalt of the system as a whole with which he relates from his role, and that he can locate his work group as a system with the other systems of the enterprise" (ibid.).

As the author together with a group of colleagues stated earlier: "On the evidence we have, our hunch is that every employee of an enterprise, in whatever role, carries around inside himself some image or picture of how the enterprise is organized and managed. This image may be a sketch or well-drawn picture, or even a theory. But whatever the state of the image, the individual will conduct himself in his job or role on the basis of it. It may undergo change as he relates to others and has new experiences, or may well stay comparatively constant as it is re-affirmed by what he perceives of other's behaviour" (Lawrence et al. (1975), 71).

This implies the ability of the individual as well as the social system of his enterprise to establish meaning which transcends not only a particular work place but also the immediate social environment of a work group and its interrelatedness with the enterprise as a whole. Whether such a meaningful link between the individual and the work enterprise he is working in can be made or not is, as a matter of fact, not exclusively a question to be answered in respect of every individual employee and his ability to manage himself; it equally depends on how the enterprise as a whole is managed and whether its management provides these links as a potential and acceptable orientation or not. And there now can be no doubt that for the acceptability of such a meaning it will be crucial to establish whether it gives space to mortality, i.e. to the fact that all employees finally have

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to face death regardless of whether they individually are prepared to accept it as part of their lives or whether they deny it. It will have become evident that the concept of managing-oneself-in-roles, as elaborated by Lawrence, is based on an entirely different philosophy and a different image of man than most of the material published during the last decade primarily by American authors under the label of self-management. From a social learning theory perspective, Manz and Sims ((1980); cf. Bandura (1977)) for example, offer self-management as a substitute for leadership, but the whole exercise appears to me as to be nothing more than a sophisticated means to fit workers more effectively to the requirements of an enterprise. Not only that the conception of self-management is exclusively related to individual behavior; it appears to me that the effectivity demands of an enterprise carry a kind of super-ego function which then - quite similar to the notion of self-actualization (cf. Maclagan (1983), 416) - internalized as intrinsic motivation, cause a high degree of adaptation and efficiency on the side of the subordinates. Referring to Andrassik and Heimberg (1982), Manz (1986), in his intent to help workers "to be a good employee" (ibid., 588), does not even hesitate to rely on a "behavioral self-management program for individualized self-modification of targeted work behaviors" (ibid.; cf. Manz (1979)). The systemic perspective he refers to is very narrow and instrumentalist; it more or less equals a system of control (ibid., 586). Although the research which is presented was done in a new plant which obviously was designed according to the open system approach, Manz does not grasp the wider systemic and wholistic awareness of open systems thinking as, for example, described by Clark, Krone, and McWhinney (cf. Clark and Krone (1972); Krone (1974)). The notion of management Manz and Sims use is based on a more or less traditional hierarchy (cf. Manz and Sims (1987), 111 ff.). Guided by their interest of legitimizing an organizational philosophy of control constituted by leadership and hierarchy (cf. Wimmer (1989), 23) they do not realize that the notion of a hierarchy of influence and power is incompatible with the one of systems. To the extent that Manz and Sims in their notion of self-management and self-leadership are exclusively concerned about the fit of the working role into the work enterprise, they not only reduce the notion of self-management to a means of production, they also lose sight of the individual person, his human potential, and his capacity for meaning in the broader frame of his life (and death). Thus Manz and Sims confirm what Cooper and Burell ((1988), 105) wrote: "The role of the human subject in traditional organizational analysis has been shaped by certain functional requirements: the subject is a 'decision-maker' or a 'worker', for example; that is, the definition of the subject is dependent on the prior acceptance of a normative-rational model of organization."

An extended notion of management of oneself as a basic human quality of all members of a work enterprise appears to me to be the precondition from which any further attempt at thinking about more mature conceptualizations of leadership in

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organizations has to start. In contrast to the reduced notion of self-management sketched above, the management-of-oneself-in-roles is based on the conviction, that "the source of management is seen to be within people" (Gadalla and Cooper (1978), 377). It will have become evident that in comparison to the predominant leadership theories and approaches which I have referred to above, leadership can no longer be regarded either from the function it has in primarily dyadic relationships between one leader and his subordinate or as a controlling dimension which ultimately receives its specification through the predominant management philosophy of a particular work enterprise. If, on the contrary, one is prepared to accept the new frame presented here and goes along with its consequences, the implied new 'myth of leadership' has to be conceptualized quite differently. If we seriously want to take the notion of leadership away from the predominant objectifications through which we ourselves as well as others traditionally are converted into homunculi - which regardless of whether they are perceived as gods or goods represent the unhuman and soulless quality of the mythical antiheroes or zombies - and to look at it from a homified perspective of what human beings and human existence potentially can represent, any further thinking on leadership then has to take the two fundamental realizations of mankind into consideration to which I previously have referred: "the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order" ((Campbell (1973), 21). The search for mature notions of leadership in work enterprises in particular, but also in organizations in general, necessarily has to struggle with these dual dimensions of human existence, with the inevitability of the individual's mortality and the hoped for endurance or somehow the 'immortality' of the institutions we have inherited or created. Although these two aspects necessarily have to be interrelated in a homified notion of leadership in organizations yet to be developed, these two crucial dimensions of the search for a new notion of leadership will be discussed separately. It seems to me that the aspect of the endurance of an enterprise whereby its present and future employees experience a real opportunity of taking on their work roles can be included in a developed version of Lawrence's concept of 'management-of-oneself-in-role'. This concept of management, which obviously starts from the potential of the individual (by somehow turning traditional thought on management on its head), has to be extended in order to account for the managerial activities a particular work enterprise requires in order to perform its collective primary task and to sustain its boundaries vis-a-vis its various importconversion-export processes. This could be developed by analogy to the different levels of reference which Bateson uses to conceptualize learning. In his book 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' he presents a chapter on 'The logical categories of learning and communication' (Bateson (1972a); cf. Rieckmann and Sievers (1978)), in which he states:

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"Learning III is change in the process of Learning II. Learning II is change in the process of Learning I. Learning I is change in specificity of response by correction of errors of choice within a set of alternatives" (Bateson (1972c), 293);

and he adds that "all who think about the process ... of change in human ... relationship must use in their thinking a variety of assumptions about Learning II" (ibid., 297). What I am looking for in the context of these thoughts on management and leadership is not the obvious and important relationship between management and learning but rather the different modalities, or the meta-levels, from which a basic human process like managing can be looked at. Similar to individual and collective Learning, Managing can be seen from different logical categories. It seems that in addition to individual management, by which an individual performs his work role oriented to a task and in a certain context of social relations, not only the common management of a work group, but also the management of the enterprise as a whole, represents a further logical dimension of the basic process of managing. Similar to the different levels of Learning, various levels of management can be discriminated, too: Managing I is the authority and the process through which an individual manages himself in his various roles; Managing II is the authority and the process of the work group - as the immediate social reference system in which the work is performed - through which, as a collective responsibility, the management of its individual members is coordinated according to a collective primary task; Managing III then is the authority, process and collective responsibility of the enterprise as a whole through which, on the one hand, the collective primary task is allocated, maintained, and changed and through which, on the other hand, the various work groups as organizational subsystems are coordinated in order to accomplish and optimize the collective task. The usual frame of reference for Managing III is a particular work institution. In those cases, however, in which the enterprise itself is a part of a larger unit, e.g. a corporation or an international concern, implying a further managerial level, probably a fourth level of managing has to be taken into consideration. A Managing IV level then can be conceptualized as the collective authority, process, and responsibility of a larger unit to establish and to maintain a collective primary task and to coordinate the various enterprises and activities both vis-a-vis its internal and external environment. I am quite aware that particularly this last level, Managing IV, despite its logical relevance in the everyday activities of many work enterprises, very often causes confusion, turbulence, and even despair because of its increasing complexity and the often obvious inability of multinational headquarters to acknowledge the management, authority and responsibility of the logically lower located social systems which, in the common use of business language are very often either regarded as subsidiaries or as 'daughters' of what is called a 'mother company'. For the present purposes, however, I am only concerned with a vision of how

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management and leadership can potentially be understood and not with a further analysis of the present state, the main emphasis here will be be put on the three preceding levels of Managing. What I want to hold on to for a moment are the implications this new conceptualization has in comparison to the traditional use of the concept. The main difference, as I see it, is the reversion of the relationship which is supposed to exist between management and people, or, in terms of the concepts already mentioned, between the producer and the product. As I have stated earlier, it seems to me that the predominant management concepts and theories are, despite various assertions to the contrary, primarily based on the notion of a management of people (cf. e.g. Ansari (1990)). Those at the top or nearer to the top have been allocated the authority and responsibility to manage those further down towards the bottom who are not supposed to be competent enough to manage themselves or the task given to them. The higher the number of people unable to manage themselves, the more a necessity is felt to introduce and affirm a managerial hierarchy through which the basic inequality is differentiated into further levels of superiors and subordinates. The final consequence, well known to all of us, is that a few are managers and many are managed. The notion of management propagated here can be described as people managing themselves as well as the roles and to a large extent the social systems they are living and working in; it is the management of roles and tasks by people which, as far as the underlying ability of managing is concerned, is regarded as a basic human quality which in principle all employees of an enterprise are capable of. Whereas in the traditional use of the concept some people are the producers and others the product of management, this notion of Managing emphasizes the fact that everyone is capable of being the producer of management; regardless of their different role specifications in an enterprise, it is the employees who collectively produce management (cf. Lawrence and Miller (1982), 399). This notion of Managing further implies that it is not people who are its objects or products; what is managed through people in an enterprise are roles, tasks, boundaries, and resources. These are somehow the intermediate products through which the end-products or services of an enterprise are accomplished. Through the frames, images and expressions we are traditionally used to for describing and conceptualizing the social reality of our industrial enterprises it has become more and more difficult to imagine what the suggested change of the notion of management really implies, or rather, could imply. We, for example, have become collectively so accustomed to the idea that there has to be a top and a bottom in any organization that, to quite an extent, we have shaped our minds to accept that an organizational chart, for instance, objectively mirrors reality (cf. Chattopadhyay (1989)); we somehow have become so used to terms like foreman, supervisor, or superintendent that we, as far as enterprises are concerned, nearly seem to have exstinguished any notion of ' m a n \ 'visor', or Hntendanf

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from our language and, therefore, from the reality we perceive (cf. e.g. Elias (1983)). The distortion of the concepts we use in managerial practice and theory resembles the distortion some of the basic concepts of psychoanalysis in their English/American translation have gone through. As Bettelheim (1983) convincingly demonstrated in his book 'Freud and Man's Soul', the use, for example, of concepts like 'Ego', 'superego' and 'id' instead of their original meaning of T , 'above I', and 'it' has contributed to a mechanistic orientation of psychology and of psychoanalysis in particular. Staehle ((1989), 65) obviously is right in stating that "etymological interpretations of the English verb to manage are controversial and a reflection of the respective author's image of society". Whereas Braverman's (1974) interpretation from the Latin manus agere, i.e. 'to lead somebody by the hand' or 'to train a horse in all gaits' appears to be plausible in face of the controlling and disciplining function of management described above, it seems to me that the other equally possible interpretation based on the Latin manu agere, i.e. 'to work with one's hand, to handle or to accomplish something' (as in the Italian maneggiare) is more appropriate in the context chosen here. It is worthwhile mentioning that the term manage - although in its ancient notion it also referred to the training of a horse - for centuries did not include a managing of other people. This also appears to be the case with the term lead which derived from the Germanic laidjan, which means to make something go or drive; like load it refers to the way or the course (cf. Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology; Duden Etymologie der deutschen Sprache). - The difficulty of placing the labour and its management back into the workers' or employees' hands is well demonstrated if we take the word enterprise, which, from one of its etymological meanings, refers to the enterpriser (the enterprise somehow has become his kingdom) or at least his principality, in which the workers are reduced to vassals or bondsmen. Through the traditional frames as well as through the language with which we continuously sustain them we all collectively have become so used to these objectifications of the industrial world that any individual attempt at querying them will be regarded as so suspect that it may even provoke the reproach of either being communist or mad. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, the social madness entailed here and the way it is pushed into the questioning individual in order to let off the remainder can be compared with what, on the individual level, underlies a neurosis, which in the usual connotation of the term "is only a word for negativity" (Nin, in: Hinz (1978), 4). But if, on the contrary, one were prepared to look at neurosis from another angle, new light might be thrown on the conceptualization of reality. What Rank (quoted by Nin) wrote then makes sense: "The neurotic is the one who hides his dream from himself; the average man is the one who hides his dreams from others; the artist is the one who feels compelled to make his dreams public" (ibid., 192) or as Marc Chagall, the painter, once put it: "Our whole

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inner world is reality - perhaps even a more real one than the visible world." As individuals questioning what is generally taken for granted, we, therefore, may somehow resemble the artist in the sense that we are concerned to make the madness public which we otherwise as average men or women either hide from others or, as neurotics, are not prepared to accept for ourselves. In our roles as social scientists, it seems to me that instead of making continuous attempts at further reifying the reifications of the social world, it would more suit our role if we were more prepared to be 'above average' and accept the role of the artist, namely to talk and write publicly about the collective madness we are individually caught up in. Our scientist consciousness may then help us not only to endure but to confront the critics who call our "work far away from life because these depths do not resemble the reality in which they live" (Nin in Hinz (1978), 201). "If we are really honest" as social scientists would mean we feel compelled to make public that "there is no objectivity" (ibid., 204); it also would mean to reject the phantasy that we as scientists are "pipeline(s) to the deity" (Bail (1983), 63). It is essential, therefore, to be aware that in creating and propagating a notion of management as a basic ability and quality of every human being, and of every employee in a work enterprise, making part of our common societal madness public. One also has to be aware that in the face of the countless objectifications through which we continuously shape our conceptualizations and reduce social reality to the surrogate we want it to be, the emerging new myth of management is also a vision, or a dream. But one probably also should take into account that what obviously is true for any dream also is valid for this one: it will not come true if it is not made public and if it is not spelled out. As stated above, this new myth of management can be seen as an attempt to reestablish the previously broken unity of the producer and the product in the sense that the products of managing individuals in an enterprise are the roles, tasks, and boundaries they have to create and sustain in order to accomplish the intended end-products. As the basic level of managing, as Managing /, this means that every employed individual is capable of and, therefore, has to have the opportunity of managing himself in his roles at work. He, for himself, holds a vision of what he from his own subjectivity can contribute to and invest in his roles vis-a-vis an agreed upon common task and the relatedness to his fellow men and women in the immediate work group; the individual also contributes the ability to hold the whole, the gestalt of the enterprise in his mind, if he is not prevented from doing so by others or by the objectifications he has learned to internalize. The authority he himself correlates to the ability to take responsibility for how he approaches the outer world. Managing II refers to the process through which individual employees in a work group 'gestalt' it, i.e. shape, conceptualize and maintain or manage the gestalt for the immediate social system they are a member of. Such a gestaltung of a work group in a work enterprise is, however, not a free, independent, and arbitrary venture left to the particular employee's discretion. The gestaltung of any work group as a part of a larger enterprise

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has to be seen as limited and specified through the particular primary task it is identified with as a subtask of the enterprise's collective task. It is through this task that the boundaries the work group has to manage, somehow as its permeable skin, are specified and that its authority and responsibility is certified. The primary task and the boundaries through which a work group is specified can be understood as symbolizations which determine the space inside which Managing II is going to happen. Such a managing process, in the various roles one acts in, does not mean that the individual processes of Managing I are subordinated or paralyzed, they rather have to be seen as the precondition of any common attempt towards Managing II in a work group. The higher logical level of Managing II in comparison to Managing I implies that, through the collectively agreed upon primary task and the accepted boundaries of a work group, one's individual authority and responsibility is spatially limited. The notion of authority carries a crucial dimension in this new paradigm of management. Although it somehow appears that, especially in the last fifteen to twenty years, "authority has become a 'bad object'" (Lawrence (1979a), 235) which primarily seems to be preoccupied by the connotation 'authoritarian', it nevertheless appears worthwhile to question whether the term authority may not also include a meaning other than that of contemptous manipulation. From what I and my colleagues, for example, have learned through our work with the Tavistock Group Relations Approach (cf. e.g. E. Miller (1989); Sievers (1973)) over the last decades it rather appears to me that the concept of authority is an unrenouncable one for understanding and executing the management of oneself in roles. And again, like the underlying concept of management, the notion of authority cannot be perceived as derived from the top, from the divine king or from any of his ephemeral substitutes; it rather has to be seen as a genuine quality of the individual himself. Authority in this sense somehow is the steering and controlling ability of the individual through which he or she as a person relates from the inner to the outer world. It is his or her authority through which the individual decides what is real for himself and which part of the outer world (s)he is prepared to put meaning to. To acknowledge for oneself as well as for others such an authority does, after what has gone before, not mean that authority has primarily to be understood as an autocratic or as a monadic stance from which an individual projects his convictions in order to manipulate his objects. Insofar as individual authority refers to the individual's attempt to give meaning to his life, and as any such attempt cannot be realized independently, but rather through social relatedness, even an individual authority is created and sustained through the object relations a person previously was as well as in the present and the future is involved in; the notion of authority is built on social implications. Authority on the level of the individual, therefore, can be seen as the control through which the individual shapes his or her roles in the relatedness with others as well as to the common task as is predominantly the case in any work

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relationship. As such, authority is the individual impact on a relatedness through which a person decides what is relevant for himself or herself, has meaning and, also, is right or wrong; authority is the "exercise of capacity to contribute to performance of the task" (E. Miller (1986), 265). Despite the various conscious and unconscious attempts through which individuals and especially groups, again and again try to suppress, devalue or to deny a particular or their common authority (cf. Bion (1961)), it appears indispensible to adhere to the notion that every adult individual, even children to some extent, are potentially capable of authority. As far as the work group is concerned, I do not share the often stated belief that as a mature individual and an accepted member of a work group one either can divide one's authority or delegate it in order to establish a common authority, which is then either executed collectively or by a particular leader (cf. e.g. Chattopadhyay (1989)). As is the case with Managing II in comparison to Managing I, the authority of a work group implies another logical level than individual authority. When I think of my own experience as both director of a staff group of colleagues and as a member in the Working Conferences on Group Relations, I was generally convinced that the authority which was vested in and exercised through a leadership role was neither a deprivation of my own authority (whether I was the director or not), nor did I perceive my colleagues as having given away their individual authority. The authority a leader is given by the sponsoring institution and which is then confirmed by his colleagues is a further resource the leader and his colleagues in their various work roles can rely upon. The authority which is symbolized in the leader necessarily has to be present within and continuously confirmed by the group. Though this authority may be seen as invested in the leader, it is not delegated to him in the sense that the other group members have given part of their individual authority to him. To accept and to confirm a leader is thus not based on a loss of individual authority, and indeed it can result in confirmed and increased authority, both on the group and the individual member's level. The authority taken over by other group members in their particular roles is in this sense a prerequisite for the leader in order to act with and upon the authority such a leadership role requires. Or to put it differently, for a leader to manage effectively on the level of Managing II, he or she must be able to rely on Managing I of the members of the social system this leadership is related to. I f there is to be some meaning in the concept 'delegation of authority' it can only mean that the group as a whole is investing collectively some authority in a certain role which then enables a particular individual to act on behalf of the group, for instance, as a leader or as a delegate in an exchange with the group's environment. It is the notion of 'authority in a role' which - created by a work group in the context of its collectively agreed upon primary task - then can be vested in a particular individual; but such a delegated group-authority can only be transferred into meaningful action if it coincides with the individual authority of the particular person whom this role was transferred to. A role in a work group, therefore, as far as the authority it comprises is concerned, can be comprehended

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as a kind of communicating pipe in which the authority of the individual 'roletaker' and the authority of the group as 'role-maker' are interrelated. The fact that a particular work role is executed on behalf of a work group gives it its authority, whereas what is commonly regarded as authoritarian seems to lack this factor and is built exclusively or primarily on the inner world of an individual without any relatedness to or delegation from a group. The analysis Adorno et al.(1964) offer of the authoritarian personality seems to confirm that it is through objectification that an individual either reifies or deifies his individual authority which then, as power or as the attempt to gain power, is projected into the outer world. Power, as Weil ((1965), 508, quoted in Hodgkinson (1983), 61) writes: "by definition, is only a means; or to put it better, to possess power is simply to possess means of action which exceed the very limited force that a single individual has at his disposal. But power-seeking, owing to its essential incapacity to seize hold of its object, rules out all consideration of an end, and finally comes, through an inevitable reversal, to take the place of all ends. It is this reversal of the relationship between means and end, it is this fundamental folly that accounts for all that is senseless and bloody right through history. Human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men - oppressors and oppressed alike - the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured, and thus reduces living humanity to being the chattel of inanimate chattels."

The same seems to be true for the concept of responsibility. In management theory we have become more and more used to the idea that responsibility in an enterprise has to be located at the top just as a captain is in charge of his ship and that it, therefore, cannot be shared or divided. This conviction is well expressed by Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1977), 262): "Our view is that the manager must expect to be held responsible by his superior for the quality of the decisions made, even though operationally these decisions may have been made on a group basis. He should, therefore, be ready to accept whatever risk is involved whenever he delegates decision-making power to his subordinates. Delegation is not a way of 'passing the buck'."

Responsibility thus has been reduced to an indicator of performance criteria and accountability. "It is a dehumanized conceptualization characteristic of traditional management and administrative theory" (Maclagan (1983), 414; cf. Luhmann (1964), 172 ff.). In contrast to it, I would like rather to enforce the notion that responsibility is fundamentally held by the individual. It is through responsibility that an individual in general and through the responsibility for his role in a work group in particular that an individual becomes accountable for his authority. Authority and responsibility necessarily belong together and to one and the same system, be that system an individual or a work group. What for instance, Saint-Excupéry (1946) expresses in his fable 'Le Petit Prince': "Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé", similarly seems to be true for the interdependence of authority and responsibility; we are responsible for the

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authority we in our roles both individually as well as collectively have invested in the relatedness to others. Authority and responsibility are important concepts if we are to comprehend the difference between the three logical categories of Managing. What has been stated about the interrelatedness and differences between Managing I and Managing II analogously seems to be relevant for the difference between Managing II and Managing ///; but there are - because of the increasing complexity of the reference system - further aspects to be taken into consideration. As is the case between the two lower levels, the introduction of this third level of Managing has to be guided by the precondition that the authority and responsibility of the individual employee and of the work group (as the logically lower levels) are not reduced or negated through Managing III. The process of Managing III rather has to be seen as the guarantee that work groups as well as their particular members can manage themselves and accomplish their agreed upon primary task vis-a-vis certain boundaries. It is on the level of Managing III that the social system of a work enterprise is managed as a whole. This includes - similar to the individual system and that of the work group - as a basic differentiation the management of two interfaces, the internal world of the enterprise, on the one side, and the external world of the various environments, on the other side. It often appears as if the management of the former is a precondition of the latter. But if one, for example, is looking at the foundation process in the circuit of which, for instance, a new plant of an already existing company is planned and finally built (cf. Sievers (1983), Sievers et al. (1981)), it becomes very obvious how far the interdependence and interrelatedness between the new plant and its inner world and the existing company as one important dimension of the outer world already start to develop from the very moment the project begins to take shape. As far as the relationship between such a new and the already existing system are concerned, the constitution process of such a greenfield-site can to quite an extent be comprehended by analogy to the process through which an individual constitutes his identity of the inner world through relating to the outer world. In both cases, there are various projections and introjections going on which only to a certain degree are of the kind that can be consciously dealt with. As a matter of fact, it would be a fascinating venture to look at a particular enterprise from the perspective of how its 'early childhood' and its constitution process as a social system towards its own identity was influenced by its early 'object relations' and to what an extent these mainly unconscious images and patterns are still being acted out, even if the enterprise has since then have reached its 'adulthood'. In one particular case of a German subsidiary of an American multinational we encountered during ongoing research on the recent shut-down of a former greenfield-site, we were told by management that one explanation for the plant's early death was the metaphor that this particular plant had from its very birth onwards suffered from leukaemia. The 'parents' had done everything they believed they could to prevent their 'child' from dying, but ultimately did not succeed.

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Despite its interdependence and interrelatedness it, nevertheless seems to be admissable to look separately at the management of the inner and outer world of a work enterprise. The predominant function that has to be accomplished by Managing III is the creation and maintenance of the boundary which distinguishes a particular enterprise from its environment and at the same time establishes the precondition for further relationships beyond it. The high internal complexity necessary within a work enterprise in order to manage the import/export relationships with its environment as well as its internal conversion processes requires a further internal differentiation which, in turn, is accompanied by the creation and maintenance of further boundaries. As Luhmann ((1964), 59 ff., cf. (1976)) has emphasized, the establishment of internal boundaries has to be managed according to three organizational dimensions in order to sustain its autonomy as a system: the temporal, the material or technological, and the social dimension. (Even if on this occasion I do not follow his assignment of norms, roles, and institutions to each particular dimension, this differentiation of the three dimensions itself, nevertheless seems to be valid. Ulrich ((1985), 9f.) has developed a slightly different differentiation of managerial subtasks; he differentiates between a functional, a material, and a meaning dimension (cf. Teulings (1986), 144 ff.)). Through time boundaries a system somehow attempts to establish its own rhythm of life; at the boundaries, of the material or functional dimension are, for example, the choices about resources and the applied technology, whereas the management of the social dimension has to be concerned about what in a particular enterprise is appropriated meaning and relevance and what not. The management of these three dimensions has, as far as it necessarily is related to the collective primary task of an enterprise, to be regarded as the management of subtasks so that the boundaries of these three dimensions, therefore, can be seen as task-boundaries. The notion of the primary task, originally introduced by Miller and Rice (1970), is in this context indispensible to comprehend a work enterprise and its various subsystems as a whole. As these authors define it, an enterprise's primary task is "the task that it must perform if it is to survive" (ibid, 25). "The primary task is essentially a heuristic concept, which allows us to explore the ordering of multiple activities ... The definition of the primary task determines the dominant import-conversion-export system, and the operating, as distinct from the maintenance and regulatory, activities. It specifies the resources required and hence determines the priorities of constitutent systems. One implication of this is that there may be conflict between the way in which a constituent system defines its primary task and the way in which the superordinate system defines it. For example, the internally defined primary task of a factory department might be to maximize the output of a particular product; from the perspective of the enterprise, however, a greater pay-off might be secured by limiting the output of this department and increasing that of another, or even by requiring from it a different kind of output and modifying its resources accordingly. On a larger scale, the definition of the primary task of medical services as to save life can, in developing and overcrowded countries, lead to

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tragic consequences when what is required to sustain the inevitably increased population food, housing, and other resources - is not also made available" (ibid., 25 f.). "The primary task is not a normative concept. We do not say that every enterprise must have a primary task or even that it must define its primary task; we put forward the proposition that every enterprise, or part of it, has at any given moment, one task which is primary. What we also say, however, is that, if, through inadequate appraisal of internal resources and external forces, the leaders of an enterprise define the primary task in an inappropriate way, or the members - leaders and followers alike - do not agree on their definition, then the survival of the enterprise will be jeopardized. Moreover, if organization is regarded primarily as an instrument for task performance, we can add that, without adequate task definition, disorganization must occur" (ibid., 27 f.).

But despite the doubtless significance of the concept of 'primary task' and the acknowledgement these two authors deserve for their contribution to organization theory, their organizational approach has to be carefully reviewed before being used here because it seems to a certain extent not to be based on the same assumptions as the paradigm of a new myth of management presented in this section. It also seems to me that the heuristic function of the concept of the primary task in the Miller/Rice approach has to be further conceptualized and developed in order to adapt it to the underlying notion of managing-oneself-in-roles. Though I agree that the concept of the primary task should retain its heuristic function, I would, however, suggest that it should also include the obviously normative implications the management-of-oneself entails as well as the underlying postulate the idea of homification is based on. This, however, does not appear to be primarily a matter for the concept of primary task, but rather for further efforts at conceptualization (cf. e.g. Lawrence (1977), 23, Lawrence et al. (1975), 87 ff.; E. Miller (1986), 287). As far as the internal reality of an enterprise in the context of Managing HI is concerned, the managerial process on this logical level, however, carries further implications. It is through Managing III that further arrangements have to be managed through which, for example, the various work groups and especially their respective boundaries and subtasks can be created and sustained to such an extent that the organization as a whole provides sufficient containment, resources, and orientation that these work groups can establish and sustain their autonomous interdependency with the surrounding system as well as with the relevant parts of their external environment. In between the whole system of an enterprise and its various work groups 'solutions' finally have to be developed and offered which relate to the two basic problems of any complex organization, i.e. its differentiation into various sub-systems and its integration. On the other side, as far as the environment of the enterprise as its outer world is concerned, it is through Managing III that the most important import/export relationships are at least so far reduced in their contingency that they can be dealt with on the logically lower levels of Managing.

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If we are prepared to accept the concept of 'management-of-oneself-in-roles' in connection with its different logical levels of categorization as a new paradigm from which further attempts to conceptualize the practice of work enterprises and employing institutions can start, it has to be clear that the decision for such a new orientation of management is primarily guided by a conscious position which does not necessarily coincide with our individual or collective unconscious orientations. We have to be aware that this position and its mature implications to lay management back into the hands of those who, regardless of their role specifications, are performing the work, very often quite fundamentally will interfere with our as well as others' need for immaturity and dependency. It therefore seems that the decision for the paradigm somehow has to be endured quasi contra-factive in the sense that the logical insight of a functional conceptualization of management often appears as an antithesis to what psycho-logically and socio-logically is offered and defended as an objective reality. The critical precondition of commonly constructing a social reality and developing further organizational designs on the basis of this paradigm seems to lay in the fact that Managing fundamentally has to be perceived as a function or as an activity which is related to the concept of roles; it is neither an implication of a certain hierarchical status nor a quality which necessarily has to be allocated exclusively to particular people. The temptation to admit that every employee of an enterprise has a basic capacity of Managing I, i.e. to manage his own role in his immediate working situation, and simultaneously to deprive him of the ability of Managing II and Managing HI by shifting these to higher levels of the hierarchy appears to be obvious; it would finally only revitalize and perpetuate the former splitting between workers and managers. If, however, this paradigm is to be taken seriously, it would, as far as organizational design is concerned, mean building the various logical levels of Managing into specific roles as the containers and executors of management. In comparison to the traditional orientation according to which people are allocated to certain tasks, functions, or machines, the organizational design using this new paradigm has to be based on roles. To take the notion seriously that every employee is a comanager, means acknowledging that every comanager, in addition to his capacity of Managing I has a certain ability of Managing on the other levels. After what has been stated about the work group and its autonomy to manage itself in relation to a collectively agreed upon primary task and certain boundaries, it has become evident that as a prerequisite to take over a working role as a group member every employee must be capable of a certain amount of Managing II. And at the same time, it can be postulated, a semi-autonomous work group quite regularly has to be involved in interactions and interfaces across its boundaries both in its internal environment of the immediate plant as the enterprise as well as in the external environment of suppliers, customers, and various institutions. In one of the German plants, a subsidiary of an American international company, which we have described in our research project on greenfield sites (Sievers et al., 1981; cf. Rieckmann (1982)),

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for example, it was quite common to find that the employees of a work group traditionally called workers; technicians in this particular case - were not only involved in the production planning of the plant, but they were also, for instance, managing the interface with the external producer of the packing material in order to develop certain specifications which better fitted with the machines used in the packing line. It seems to me that managing these interfaces includes quite a capacity for Managing III on the side of these employees, i.e. the capacity to keep the whole of the enterprise in their minds and applying it to the gestaltung of the respective interface. There can be no doubt that in addition to these roles through which the employees of a work group execute Managing III, there have to be other roles through which the whole of an enterprise is managed at this third level; and, as it can be assumed, there probably are in every enterprise certain employees who, on the basis of the required skills and competence, from their respective role allocations, execute a broader extent of Managing III in the sense that they allocate, maintain, and change the primary task of the enterprise and that the authority and responsibility for the management of the enterprise as a whole is assigned to them. But the logical hierarchy in the different managerial levels also means that it is the authority and responsibility of these employees to guarantee that the managerial function of Managing III, they are performing in their roles, is primarily a service function for themselves and their co-employees, i.e. comanagers, to enable enterprise-wide processes of Managing I. In comparison to the common traditional experience, employees whose roles are primarily specified by Managing III have to be the guarants that all managers are alike and none are more so; they somehow have to sustain a reality or rather a vision of a reality which substantially differs from those 'animal farms' we are all more or less used to in so far as they have to verify that all employees are managers like themselves. The organizational framework which has been developed so far as an attempt towards a further conceptualization of the underlying managerial paradigm of this essay has, for various reasons, to remain a torso - which, nevertheless, hopefully presents some of the fascination that emanates from the sculpture as a whole. Before, I, in the concluding part, try to elaborate this new paradigm in reference to the implications it may have for further conceptualizations of leadership, a final point on this new myth should be briefly mentioned. The introduction of the three logical levels of the categories of Managing which was developed in analogy to Bateson's (1972a) categorization of Learning has, as I assume, expanded the perspective of the management-of-oneself-in-role concept from the individual as well as work group level on which it primarily was developed by Lawrence (1979a) into the wider range of the organization of an enterprise as a whole. This expansion seems to contribute evidence in favour of the new myth as a paradigm for a further development of managerial and organizational theory as well as for the respective changes of contemporary enterprises. What, primarily through the increasing abstraction of the different logical levels

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of Managing, however, has been lost in the conduct of this latter part of the argumentation is the potential relevance a notion of Managing III in particular can have in connection with the underlying concern for a further homification of the contemporary industrial world, i.e. how the previous categorization of different Managing levels can be related to the concepts of maturity, mortality, and meaning.

Leadership as the Management of Meaning

What I have written about Managing and its various logical levels so far has been primarily related to the endurance of the social order of an enterprise as one of the crucial dimensions of the fundamental realizations every human attempt at constructing a social reality and its mythology has to be concerned with. The second dimension, the inevitability of individual death, has been comparatively neglected. This is mainly due to the fact that in thinking through the previous ideas, Managing was primarily developed as a superimposed concept implying the management of the three central dimensions of an enterprise, its temporal, material, and social aspects, as Luhmann (1964), or its functional, material, and meaning aspects, as Ulrich ((1985); cf. Dyllick and Probst (1984), 13 f.) have described them. Despite the apparently different categorizations it seems to me that these two authors do not differ very much in their discrimination. Luhmann ((1964), 132 ff.), in the context of his reflections on the formalization of influence in organizations, defines formalized influence of the social dimension as leadership, whereas Ulrich ((1985), 10) describes the meaning level of management as a meaning producing and facilitating process. Although both authors do not share the managerial paradigm as described above - Ulrich (ibid.), for example, explicitly states that management is a function which has to be executed by 'managers' - it seems to me that Managing of the social dimension of an enterprise or any organization quite appropriately can be described by understanding leadership to mean the management of meaning (cf. Pfeffer (1981); Smircich (1983a); Smircich and Morgan (1982)). Leadership can thus be understood as a special kind or function of Managing. In contrast to the allocation and selection of resources in the material dimension or the care for survival of the system in the functional dimension, leadership is primarily concerned with the creation and maintenance of meaning through which individual human beings can realize their membership role in an enterprise and in their various working roles. As such, leadership in a work enterprise can only be successfully exercised if the other two dimensions of Managing are carefully and efficiently performed. Leadership can be conceptualized analogous to what we have already said about the underlying conceptualization of Managing. Like the concept of managementof-oneself-in-role Leading has to be understood as leadership-of-oneself-in-role,

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a concept which at first sight may appear as strange as the former one, especially if compared with the more common perception that whereever there is a leader there must be people who follow. If, however, we are prepared to turn our usual postulates upside down and to take the self-evident as an opportunity for questioning well-established and protected images with which we usually define our social reality, the dissonance may even lead to new images and concepts. The conviction, for example, that one has to love oneself in order to love others may add some truth to a new conceptualization of leadership. And as a matter of fact, just as I am convinced that a concept such as motivation only has meaning in the sense that one can only motivate oneself and that others can only have an impact on a person's motivation by creating certain conditions which either ease or aggrivate such an individual process instead of manipulating it, it also seems to me that a new conceptualization of Leading has to be similarly developed (cf. Rank (1933), 168). The connection Lawrence ((1979b), 46, cf. Forster (1989)) made between the psychoanalytical concept of the 'ego' and the 'leadership function' of the individual appears to be valid in this context: "Between the inner and outer world of the individual there is the ego. What is contained in the pattern of object-relations in the inner world is a reflection of the ego, and subsequent relationships with objects in the outer environment of the individual are refracted through the ego. For the term 'ego' we can substitute 'leadership function' because the ego is the boundary region between the inner and outer worlds and because it refracts perceptions from the outside in and vice versa. The ego, it can be said, leads the individual as an organismic entity."

If Leading, as the underlying quality on which a concept of leadership has to be built, is understood as a special subdimension of Managing, then it has to be referred to as the genuine ability of every mature human being to give meaning to his life in a particular work role vis-a-vis a commonly agreed upon primary task in the context of other human beings in their respective work roles. In this context, the traditional image of leader and led could make sense again, namely it then is the individual human being, as a leader, who in a particular role, as the person led, i.e. as the link to other roles as well as to the task, relates to the outer world. Analogous to Managing, different logical levels of Leading can also be further differentiated according to the various frames of references for meaning in the different social environments. As "meaning comes through contexts ... each additional context puts a wider and somewhat different meaning on the 'event' being interpreted" (Gadalla and Cooper (1978), 349). If Leading I is understood as an individual's realization of meaning in the context of establishing and maintaining a work role, Leading II then can be seen as the process of establishing and maintaining meaning on a work group level; the reference level for Leading III is the enterprise as a whole or even the wider company which the enterprise is a part

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of. This is the level of Leading on which meaning is managed as organizational or corporate culture, as the relevant value system through which the choice of specified aims, tasks, resources and actions is determined. Though obviously any organization, regardless of its time of foundation or existence, can be regarded from the perspective of its organizational culture - regardless of whether one takes the ancient city of Athens, the Catholic Church or a company like Walt Disney - the corporate culture of an enterprise is a frame of theoretical as well as managerial reference which only lately seems to have become the subject of wider interest. Jacques (1952), in his book 'The Changing Culture of a Factory', was the first social scientist to introduce this dimension as a manageable part of an enterprise's reality. Since then, and particularly during the last decade, the idea has found more and more attention in organizational theory and practice (cf. Deal and Kennedy (1982); Ebers (1985); Frost et al. (1985); Gabriel (1991); Lynn Meek (1988); Ouchi and Wilkins (1985); Peters and Waterman (1982); Schein (1985); Smircich (1983b), Smircich and Calas (1987)). In addition to the obvious trend towards social-technological manipulation, 'corporate culture' reveals three important aspects worth dealing with. First, there is an increasing insight into the significance of an enterprise's culture as a collective meaning system and its influence on the internal as well as the external environment. The emphasis on meaning as an important dimension of social systems in general (and of enterprises in particular) creates, secondly, a consciousness for the idea that the members of an organization as well as, for instance, their suppliers and customers manage their links with the institution through meaning. Finally, organizational practitioners and scientists are increasingly becoming aware that the acceptance of meaning as a critical organizational dimension leads to the conviction that the constituent meaning system of an enterprise is far less a fate which has to be endured than a matter of choice. It also appears that these three aspects, acknowledging as they do culture as a crucial dimension of any corporation, are contributing to a changing understanding of organizational and managerial theory. Rites, sagas, myths, and phantasies, for example, are seen to have an important impact on an organization's culture, and management theories will increasingly take the non-rational and unconscious dimensions of an enterprise's social reality into account. In comparison to the culture and meaning system of the enterprise as a whole, Leading II, which is primarily related to the immediate work group, can be seen as a kind of linking level on which an acceptable and commonly agreed fit between the meaning system of the corporate culture and the meaning the individual group members invest in their roles has to be managed, i.e. established, maintained, and carefully monitored. Regardless of whether it is perceived as a semi-autonomous group or not, the work group, in addition to the general implications of any membership role in an organization, is the immediate frame of reference in which the link of meaning between the individual employee and the enterprise is specified. Whether this specification of the link of meaning is

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managed from the top (in keeping with the traditional paradigm) or from the bottom, as suggested by our new paradigm of managing, is seen in the respective leadership style through which the meaning system and the culture of a work group is managed. Whereas in the former case the meaning system can be seen as imposed on the group members by their appointed leader similarly to the way it is imposed on them from the top, the creation of the relevant meaning of a work group in the latter case is more a matter for negotiation. Although it would be naive to assume that a meaning system on level II could be established randomly or arbitrarily according to the unlimited suggestions and preferences of its individual members, it, nevertheless, does give much more scope for individual and group choice. This new paradigm allows more emphasis to be placed on the creation of meaning instead of its execution. Through the creation of its own meaning, the work group confirms what Martin Buber (quoted in Holbrook (1971), 167) expressed, when he wrote that "one cannot believe in .. a meaning or a value unless one has discovered rather than invented it". Similar to Managing II, Leading II, as the management of meaning on the work group level, has - in addition to the selections of meaning made by its individual members - to take the commonly agreed primary task of the work group and its boundaries into account as constituent parts of the common social reality and its construction. Equally, Leading II has to be understood as the management of a role which is actualized on behalf of the group in order to sustain the group's meaning system through which all further roles can be linked to the meaning of its respective individual members as well as to that of the enterprise. Put simply, this results in a highly innovative situation: the work group does not lack leadership, but this does not necessarily have to 'belong' to any particular person exclusively. In principle, Leading II in a work group can be accomplished by several or even by all members of a group if they are prepared to assume this role and are able to perform it. Whether, in a particular case, this leading role is distributed to all group members or whether it is accumulated into a particular individual, can be regarded as a matter of how a particular group in face of its given primary task and its boundaries is managing itself. In addition to these organizational 'givens', which are partly selected and specified through Managing and Leading of the third level, a particular form of organization of the leading role in a work group also has to be seen as a matter of how a work group, its individual members and the organization as a whole, is, for example, managing its anxieties and the individual or collective unconsciousness. When sailing a boat, the crew needs to be able to rely on a skipper, even if he changes from time to time. Likewise, I cannot operate effectively if, in the case of a joint publication of an article or a book, the leading role is not shared by all or at least most of my colleagues. What I basically want to emphasize is the fact that, in spite of the new paradigm developed here, it is really the work group which can and has to make a choice

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as to how it organizes leadership. The choice available stretches in principle from the decision to integrate leadership and preparedness to follow in every particular member, or to split it according to the traditional notion that a particular individual is appointed as leader whereby the others are automatically followers. Even in the latter case, if a work group on the basis of a common and sincere decision accumulates and symbolizes its leadership function in a particular person, a work group as a group has to be aware and hold responsibility for the fact that Leading II is a function which belongs to the group as a collective and not to the particular individual who primarily or exclusively executes it. "The election of a person implies that the electors believe in themselves as persons, and therefore believe in the person they nominate or vote for. The person elected has the opportunity to act as a person. As a whole (healthy) person he has the total conflict within, which enables him to get a view, albeit a personal one, of total external situations" (Winnicott (1950), 180).

If this awareness is commonly shared, then the leader would be able to realize his own ability to follow through which he relates to his work group and remains at the same time linked to Leading III on the broader level of the enterprise. Even if it sounds strange, it seems to be a crucial implication that every leader, not only leaders of a work group on level II, but also those who on level III execute leadership on the corporate level, is also a follower, too, as far as his other roles are concerned. In the sense that no particular leader, regardless of his level of Leading, manages meaning in the social dimension of an enterprise exclusively, but rather at the same time manages part of the functional and material dimensions, too, he, as a follower, is interrelated and dependent on the meaning others have given to and established in an enterprise. What has been stated so far about Leading and leadership in the context of the new paradigm is primarily related to a specific kind of organization, namely the industrial work enterprise. Various additional considerations and even some alterations may be needed if this paradigm is to be applied, for instance, to educational institutions or others. These may be primarily characterized by the fact that their members, or their clients, for various reasons, are not or not yet mature enough to be able to manage and lead themselves to the same extent this can be expected from a mature employee. Though I am convinced that the new paradigm could go to make some fundamental changes in the way a school, a university or even a jail is organized, managed, and led, I would like to limit my considerations to the specific institutional type of the work enterprise as a social system in which all members, from the point of view of their human potential, can at least in principle be (and should be) regarded as mature or maturing human beings. Slight modifications have, of course, to be admitted, as, for instance, in the case of apprentices, who are a very specific part of the workforce more committed to training and socialization, but the paradigm is fundamentally based on the notion of mature managers, i. e. 'leaders' and 'followers' alike.

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It, therefore, seems obvious that thoughts about management and leadership in work enterprises cannot be built on research results (regardless of their specific value and significance) such as, for example, those got from the limited experience of Lippitt and White ((1960), cf. Lewin and Lippitt (1938); Marrow (1969), 123 ff.) who spent time leading juveniles in a summer camp; the fact that their concepts of different leadership styles - reasonable at that time - still haunt the contemporary literature on leadership and its attempts at conceptualization rather seems to be proof of the image of immature man held by many contemporary authors. In the same way as the broader concept of Managing, the concept of Leading implies the possibility and the chance to reestablish the broken unity between the producer and the product. If we give up the reified notion of a role as something imposed on an individual who is thereby also converted into a thing and if, instead, the implication inherent in Leading I is accepted that it is the individual who, through an exchange between inner world and outer world, is creating, managing, and leading his role as the medium through which he establishes the interrelatedness with other human beings, it then becomes obvious that the individual person is at once the producer and the product of his role. It is the latter aspect which was expressed by Herbst ((1974), 212; cf. Sievers (1990a)) in the phrase "the product of work is people". In addition to the fact that an individual relates to others, his role also represents him or her as a person because it is he or she who is giving his or her meaning to it. The more an individual is able to give of himself as a whole and a mature person in a particular role the higher are the chances that he is contributing to homification. And, as a matter of fact, it is only through homified individuals that the objectification, i.e. the alienation and deification of an enterprise as well as of society can be diminished. The courage to act in one's roles as a homified individual seems to be the only possibility we collectively have of succeeding in breaking the viscious circle in which the "false self (is) adapted to an alienated society" (Laing, quoted in Holbrook (1971), 186). In so far as the individual's Leading of a work role necessarily is related to other individuals as objects in the work group as well as to his primary task and boundaries, it is the work group in which the individual attempt at homification has to be tried and proven. And, at least in principle, it does not make a difference whether an individual is a leader or a follower if he feels that leadership is exercised on behalf of the group, and if he feels responsible for the process by which the reality the work group is commonly constructing implies a quality of homification. For the third level of leadership, Leading III, it has to be postulated that the corporate culture, which as a meaning system is established and sustained for an enterprise as a whole, is managed in such a way that it creates the precondition necessary for homification on the lower logical levels of Leading to occur. (Leading IV refers to the greater context of meaning as it is required in relationship to customers, politics or markets.) Obviously, this cannot happen if the leaders on the immediately lower level, traditionally referred to as 'middle managers', are

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perceived as the products that have been produced by the top leaders or executives. On the contrary, if Leading III seriously allows the homification of those individuals leading on the lower logical levels in an enterprise, it must also imply the acknowledgement of the leading ability of the individuals and subsystems on these lower levels. As such, a corporate culture or its related management philosophy cannot be imposed on the lower levels; rather it has to be seen as a broader meaning system from which all employees can deduce an important part of the meaning they themselves invest in their various work roles. It further presupposes that an organizational culture has a meaning which makes it appear worthwhile and meaningful to commit one's individual work life. In order to allow each individual employee the homification of his work role as well as of himself as a human being, a corporate culture inevitably has to have and to symbolize the potential for further homification of its employees and, indeed, of those individuals who in their various roles as suppliers, customers or even neighbors relate to it. In this sense, the rather scientific concept of homification, can, to a certain extent, be translated as the 'dignity of men'; a category which, in addition to meaning and community, was recently re-introduced into the context of work and organization by Weisbord (1987). From the broader perspective on the interrelatedness of work, death, and life itself, which I have chosen for these essays, there can, however, be no doubt that an actualization of meaning on the Leading levels I - IV is not sufficient. Although one's work in an enterprise and the meaning related to it usually will have an important impact, it cannot completely answer the question of how to lead a useful life. The meaning required for this particular form of Leading necessarily has to refer to the fifth dimension of meaning which, in the first part of the book on motivation as a surrogate for meaning, was described as a link for the individual to his life, the world and the cosmos. Leading oneself in the sense of one's own life undoubtedly goes beyond the frame of meaning an enterprise can represent.

The Democratization of Work and Life The more we elaborate the implications this new paradigm of management and leadership has, the farther away we move from traditional organizational practice and theory. By allowing these ideas we are led deeper into unknown territories that both provoke the fascination of the explorer and, as - in case of the merchant in Joseph Conrad's novel - lead further and further into the 'Heart of Darkness' (cf. Broadbent (1979)), awakening the experience of solitude, isolation, and even despair. Various defences are likely to present themselves in an attempt to reject these thoughts as either too idealistic and moral, or even as mad. Behind such an experience there may be anxiety, the components of which are, as Novak ((1970), 48) writes,

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"feelings of helplessness and loneliness; its terminus is the perception of one's own death. For by his endless drive to question a man sooner or later may perceive that all the supports offered by his culture, his social position, and his achievements do not remove the fundamental law of consciousness: he stands alone in a darkness and he must die". " T h e pragmatic, reasonable certainties are symbols by which w e keep away the feeling of darkness, and keep ourselves occupied and 'sane'" (ibid., 60).

There may also be other ways of dealing with the insight that the thinking suggested here severely deviates from our usual sense of normality and reasonableness. The decision to go further in this direction, however, does not only mean acknowledging the solitude, isolation, and despair to be expected along the journey; the pursuit of this vision would also mean accepting as mature potential what is otherwise derided as mere idealism. And adventurers on this journey will have to face the potential reproach of moral prejudice that they abuse their freedom in claiming for themselves the authority to decide what is right and false. Finally, they will need the courage to refuse to introject the madness of the outer world in order to explore the madness incorporated in contemporary society in its work enterprises. Source of hope on our adventure can be the discovery that our own hesitations and feelings of loneliness are not alone, there are other predecessors and fellow travellers who have chosen this way, too; they may not have been overburdened with honours during their lifetime, but they (probably) survived and brought some treasures home. The political impact of this new paradigm can be further elucidated by relating to Winnicott's (1950) 'thoughts on the meaning of the word democracy', which are explicitly based on his considerations about maturity. "Democracy is maturity" he states (ibid., 179). "That a democratic society is 'mature', that is to say it has a quality that is allied to the quality of individual maturity which characterizes its healthy members" (ibid., 175). It seems to me that from his thoughts on democracy the notions of management and leadership developed here could have a greater scope than has been attained, for example, with traditional attempts at 'industrial democracy' - or the 'democracy at work' movement which, to my mind, has been imprisoned in the immanent logic of what normally is regarded as political theory and argumentation (cf. e.g. Elden (1975), (1985), (1986)). Much of what is offered as an attempt to increase the democratization at the work place neither takes the person nor the enterprise as a whole into consideration and appears to me more as a turning of the wheels of the 'democratic machinery' (Winnicott (1950), 176) than as a struggle for essential changes; "it is a sense of frame without sense of picture" (ibid., 177). Winnicott's thoughts on democracy make clear the conviction that democracy is basically a myth. Democracy is a myth in so far as it is built on the assumption that all people are mature. Winnicott leaves no doubt that democracy as such is not a political conviction based on some kind of objective and empirically provable fact that the majority of citizens in a democracy fulfill the precondition

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of being mature. On the contrary, he assumes that in probably any democratic state the majority of citizens immaturely identify themselves with society either because they as 'anti-socials' show "their lack of sense of society" (ibid., 177) or as "'reversed anti-socials' (pro-social but anti-individual)" (ibid., 178) they neglect their own as well as their fellow men's personal identity and development. Democracy is a myth which, rather than being based on the actual maturity of the majority of its citizens, is built on the subjective but, nevertheless, commonly shared conviction that, as far as their human potential is concerned, all of its healthy members are mature or relatively mature. This means that the myth of democracy as a central dimension of our socially constructed reality only then becomes true when its implied 'as-if-notion is kept in consideration. As soon as the fictitious notion that, despite their actual immaturity, all citizens are regarded as potentially mature individuals, recedes into oblivion, then democracy becomes perverted either into an objectified thing, mechanism, and machinery or into a sacred form of government which can only apply to an elite few whose base is property, knowledge, status, or immortality. In the light of these thoughts it seems that industrial democracy confirms the reified notion of democracy to quite an extraordinary sense. It somehow seems to me as if industrial democracy is the reified apology that workers, as its predominant subjects, cannot be regarded as citizens because of their lack of maturity, and, therefore, not as subjects of the 'real' democracy as it is applied in the broader political context of the community or the state. If this is the case, then industrial democracy can be described as a reified democracy for that particular class of people who, as workers, are reified into its 'subjects'. As such, democracy becomes degenerated into a 'democratic machinery' for which the workers are only substitutable parts, tools, or cogs. Such a limited notion of democracy is based on a more or less generous confirmation of maturity - a construction which in itself is incompatible with the notion of democracy because "regardless of whether it is representative or direct, plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy presupposes the maturity of the citizens as its legitimation. And whoever pledges to grant or to describe certificates of maturity subsequently, i.e. after the constitution of democracy, makes himself - willingly or unwillingly - the master over democracy" (Miinkler (1988), 44).

If, however, democracy is regarded as a homified concept, we must construct the industrial part of our social reality into enterprises 'well-adjusted to their healthy individual members' (cf. Winnicott (1950), 176). The healthy or mature individual, as Winnicott describes, is someone who, as a whole person, is potentially able to realize the dual reality of his existence, i.e. the self of the inner world and "the external world outside the self' (ibid., 177). Such a mature person "is capable of becoming depressed, is able to find the whole conflict within the self as well as being able to see the whole conflict outside the self, in external (shared) reality" (ibid.). In contrast to reified individuals who through the underlying individual

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and societal process of splitting are reduced to parts or homunculi, when mature "persons come together they each contribute a whole world, because each brings a whole person" (ibid.). "In any case, the basis for a society is the whole human personality, and the personality has a limit. The diagram of a healthy person is a circle (sphere) so that whatever is not-self can be described as either inside or outside that person. It is not possible for persons to get further in society-building than they can get with their own personal development" (ibid., 184).

One could argue, however, that the underlying meaning of democracy cannot be applied to contemporary work enterprises because their actual fundamental split and the accompanying objectifications of those at the top and those at the bottom does not really allow any kind of mature human existence. There is an element of truth in this position, but it cannot be understood to mean that democracy in work enterprises must therefore be totally renounced or legitimated as a reified derivative. Holding on to the meaning of democracy vis-a-vis the obvious and ongoing splitting tendencies in work enterprises seems rather to come close to Winnicott's answer to the question of whether democracy can exist in times of war. The chances a mature person has of expressing himself in such a situation may serve as a metaphor for how mature individuals in their role as employees (workers or managers) may be able to face and to deal with the conflicts of their outer and their inner world: "The mature healthy individuals do not necessarily show up as well as the others. They are not so certain as the others are that the enemy is bad. They have doubts. Also they have a bigger positive stake in the world's culture, and in beauty and in friendship, and they cannot easily believe war is necessary. Compared with the near paranoids they are slow in getting the gun in hand and in pulling the trigger. In fact they miss the bus to the front line, even if when they get there they are the reliable factor and the ones best able to adapt to adversity" (ibid., 185).

'To adapt to adversity' in the context of contemporary work enterprises is, however, a paradox. As a career in an enterprise traditionally presupposes adaptation to the immaturity perpetuated by the dominant management and leadership patterns (which appear as an unrenouncable prerequisite to fight the daily battles of profit maximization in face of the competitors in the market), individual maturity may not only appear as non-adapted, but also as deviant. At first sight, those who in contemporary enterprises "do not necessarily show up as well as the others" (ibid.), usually are the target of disdain and contempt. Not playing the game seems to be 'spoil-sport'. The capacity of the mature individual includes, however, the competence to discriminate between games and dramas in the sense that the former can be played and produce winners and loosers whereas the latter have to be taken seriously, especially if they are regarded as a constituent part of one's life, in general, and one's 'working life', in particular. For a work enterprise to be 'mature', like a democratic society, "it has a quality that is allied to the qual-

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ity of individual maturity which characterizes its healthy members" (ibid., 175). Like a 'mature' democratic society, a 'mature' enterprise can only be built on the 'fiction' that the majority of its members are mature or relatively mature. To take the implications of this 'fiction' seriously may, in the majority of contemporary enterprises, still amount to a 'revolution', a fundamental change of the commonly shared belief-system, which is perceived to be a constituent part of the myth of democracy.

"All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death." T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

IV. The Management of Wisdom

Fundamental to this new paradigm of management and leadership are the questions of where wisdom in an organization would be located, what the institutional function of wisdom looks like and how it could be conceptualized. It is obvious that forming leadership style and its related culture cannot be left to the mavericks who, like young bulls, have no concern other then testing their competence and finding their rank in the herd. If leadership as the management of meaning and culture in an enterprise is to be exercised maturely, there has to be wisdom somewhere in an institution. Mature leadership in an organization needs a space in which wisdom can be created, sustained and maintained in order to allow its leading members to be mature and to act accordingly. It was finally only through reading Jones' and Riach's (1985) paper on 'Some thoughts on the effect of trauma on individual, group and organizational life' and through the conversation with these colleagues that I reached a perspective of how wisdom and its management could be perceived in its dual reference as an individual and a collective managerial process. These authors (ibid., 258) referring to Dan Bar-On's (1986) experience as a consultant to a kibbutz - state that "knowledge could be located in people (he or she knows that), whereas the 'wisdom' of a group could only stem from the relationships and pooled resources of the people in their environment." Based on this they redefined the primary task of their attempt to manage a highly disturbed therapeutic community "as to enable the rebuilding of the wisdom" (ibid., 260). At first glance, the attempt to choose wisdom as an approach to understanding institutions and work enterprises appears strange and curious. Wisdom is not only never mentioned in organizational theories and practice; it is also a category which seemingly does not make any sense in working life. The prevailing rationality which governs enterprises has led to the impression that the computer and computerized technology have replaced what was formerly seen as wisdom. Wisdom has, as far as our everyday life is concerned, become a residual category which exclusively applies to old people (cf. Baltes and Smith (1990); Sowarka (1989); Staudinger (1990); Staudinger, Cornelius and Baltes (1989)). It is regarded as the result of lifelong experience, as a quality which may belong to retired people but which - with the exception of the elderly statesman - has no further social and societal impact than to be benevolently smiled at on occasion. Wisdom has been reduced to a personal quality of those who have finished their working lives, are preparing themselves for death, and who are no longer supposed to interfere with the real and serious concerns of social life. Similar to the unemployed, older people possess a certain experience which, according to the societal differentiation of labour, does not imply any broader meaning or significance. Wisdom appears somehow to be outdated and displaced from society and industrial enterprises. "In our sophisticated technological era, we seem ... more readily to honour expertise than wisdom" (Dubin (1979), 231).

Excursus on the Category of Wisdom

The contemporary displacement and devaluation of wisdom is quite in contrast to the meaning and significance wisdom has had in the history of mankind. As Bloch (1969) has stated in his essay 'On the Category of Wisdom' wisdom is represented as a product of historical mediation, it is an inheritance to which countless generations and fundamentally different societies have contributed; "the determination of wisdom goes through its history" (ibid., 356). Bloch leaves no doubt that wisdom is a category darkened through any attempt to define it; it is easier said than thought. Througout its history, wisdom has overcome a development from uninvolved advice over mere theoretical forms towards navigation through the hardship of the world. "Wisdom at present, therefore, is as precisely related to previous connotations as it is separated from them" (ibid., 537). Age and maturity have always been a constituent element of how wisdom is understood and perceived; silence, concern, imperturbability, simplicity and humor have enjoyed varying importance in the past. Among the different appearances and emphases of wisdom in different historical periods there have always been some which, in the actual context of management and leadership, are of predominant significance. Among the ancient Greeks, for example, the experienced craftsman who knew his work and business was regarded as wise. "Sophos in the original meaning of the word does not mean anything more than a good craftsman" (ibid., 358). This has a quite similar etymological source to that of the word management, which originates from 'manu agere', the craftsman's skill and capacity of creating a product with his own hands. Especially in the Egyptian and Judaic tradition, wisdom was very closely related to power, leadership and the emperor in religious context. As such, for example, "the various books of wisdom of the Old Testament - The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, The Book of Job - not only are testimonies of an interesting cultural history but at the same time of a theological elucidation over the most fundamental questions of human existence, the questions of how to understand God and Man, the World, and Life itself' (Wiirthwein (1960), 17).

Although wisdom was not exclusively limited to the emperor or the king, his wisdom was regarded as divine - a notion which was perpetuated in the Christian tradition of later times as the divine right of the king and its related transcendence

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of wisdom. This equation of leadership with divine wisdom has even survived into more recent times. Adolf Hitler, by referring to divine providence, seem to have grasped at the myth of the wise ruler, as is more recently the case with the Islamic fundamentalists. With a slightly different connotation, this myth was also propagated by Spaemann ((1972), 740), a prominent German philosopher. As Habermas ((1973), 380) wrote, Spaemann's 'wise ruler', through his own altruistic wisdom, should be able to anticipate the reasonable consenses, whereas the masses are not regarded as capable of taking part in a discourse and recognizing their real interests. Despite the fact that no top executive or state leader is able to embody the myth of the wise ruler, many of them still behave and are regarded as if the myth applied to them. The omnipotence represented in the myth as seen both by the ruler and his subjects is mirrored in Orwell's 'Animal Farm': Old Major, the hog, who had initiated the revolution addresses his subjects: "Before I die, I regard it as my duty to pass over the wisdom to you which I have acquired" (Orwell (1958), 8). Despite this rather despotic connotation, it is true that this mythical wisdom is understood as part of good management and leadership as well as competence in craftmanship and in kingship. As Bloch ((I960), 359 ff.) further elucidates, Socrates' wisdom was the wisdom of the polis, the city or the community; as such it contrasts both with the isolated individual as well as with the amorphous mass. The concern about the city itself is the original concern of Socrates' questioning wisdom; it is the concern for what is useful and beneficial to all. Despite varying connotations with time and culture, wisdom was chiefly practical, "a wisdom in order to help people to master their lives successfully" (Wiirthwein (1960), 5). It is this praxis of wisdom which Bloch emphasizes. Especially now, when Marxism is generally regarded as having failed or even declared its own bankruptcy, it seems strange in retrospect that this author equates wisdom with Marxism: "Wisdom has become Marxism; ultimately through Marxism wisdom is gaining a public and active function" (Bloch (1960), 381). One must realize, however, that this was first stated in 1953, at a time when Bloch was teaching in Leipzig in the former German Democratic Republic, and was one of the leading and most controversial figures of dialectical-historical materialism in East Germany. His understanding of wisdom includes a further important element of its essence: a Utopian or visionary character. In contrast to resigned endurance, wisdom implies a 'beyond'. To strive for wisdom has always meant to go beyond the obvious, overcome the status quo, transcend the present state and be different from common sense or 'conventional wisdom'. As such, wisdom has been 'denatured' into a system of defenses against frightening insights and disillusion. In contrast to the transcendent character of wisdom predominant in the past, Bloch emphasizes the immanent quality of wisdom and the transformation of the world with the primary aims of annihilating alienation, humanizing nature and naturalizing man. This goal can only be reached through the labour of wisdom

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and the wisdom of labour (ibid., 385). It thus follows that wisdom necessarily has to be partial. There can be no doubt that this partiality negates traditional images of wisdom and reduces its inherent imperturbability to mere neutrality. This partiality of wisdom is an immediate outcome of Marxian philosophy. It is directly related to the different understanding of the summum bonnum, the most precious assets of wisdom. Whereas Augustinus and Kant claimed the knowledge of God and the Soul as the ultimate goal of wisdom, it follows from Marx that both God and the other world have disappeared; morality is no longer based on it. The most precious assets of wisdom have thus become the advancement of the working class and the socialist or communist society with its empire of freedom. The reference to Bloch's thoughts on wisdom may seem confusing or even irrelevant after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the decline of communist ideology in most parts of the western world. However, the fundamental crisis or bankruptcy of communism does not devalue Bloch's basic premise about the creation of man through labour and the incarnation of man through liberated labour (ibid., 393). The parallel to a homification of man is reconfirmed and reinforced. It is essential that wisdom be related to labour and the management and organization of work regardless of whether a society and its political system are based on a communist or capitalist ideology. What Bloch stated almost forty years ago about the enormous danger wisdom is exposed to in a capitalist society is equally relevant now. "Capitalist dynamics by no means commission wisdom, with the only exception of giving airs to those in retirement" (ibid., 370). The period of rising industrialization did not favour the 'imperturbable man'. "Instead of the wise old man the bourgeois society simply required the younger energy of the entrepreneur. The silence did not accord with capitalist business, money became the ultimate target ... Protestantism, to the extent that it ideologically mirrors the rising capitalist economy, exclusively favours endless striving which is the opposite of the former imperturbability in and through sophia" (ibid.). "But above all silence became antiquated; capital as the ultimate bourgeois target neither endures nor contains it" (ibid., 372).

The increasing differentiation of labour and its inherent fragmentation make it increasingly difficult for wisdom to teach man what is urgent and essential. Wisdom is surrounded by expertise which at present acts as a substitute. But for Bloch there can be no doubt that wisdom is not a fruit of expertise. "Wisdom, in any event, is a Super-additum to specialize knowledge, even when that specialized knowledge is deep" (ibid., 386); a conviction which was similarly expressed by Broms and Gahmberg ((1987), 150): "Leaders must exercise wisdom, others can exercise expertise". Bloch's concept of wisdom includes an immanent spirituality, a wordly piety of a secular cosmic kind. This "new cosmic piety which is called revolutionary immanence no longer makes peace with every world as a steady one flowing out of 'eternal necessity'. Wisdom contemporarily

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gives point to necessity in no other way than as a law of tendency, i.e. as one streaming into a future furnished with its objectively real possibilities. And the shelter it provides, the silence which such a real wisdom nowhere is in need of, is an active shelter, an acting silence. As an active one its appearance makes itself immediately public and not private; instead of mere self-completion its ultimate target is the completion of the world. Thus the guarantor of silence is not amor fati but docta spes, a materialistically comprehended hope" (Bloch (1960), 383).

Like philosophy, wisdom will not come to an end unless the alienation of man is annihilated and his incarnation realized. Such a "philosophy sub specie humanitatis" still has to grow extensively before it finds its end in its realization; a realization which wisdom through its joy, its essential humanity and its humor has always contributed hope (cf. ibid., 394). It is obvious from Bloch's essay that wisdom cannot be understood as an isolated category. Wisdom in itself is just an empty shell which despite its beauty is dead. As a mere category, wisdom is not more than cultural sediment. As such, wisdom equals meaning which cannot be regarded as a monadic entity but necessarily relates to surrounding others (cf. Elias (1985)). And as meaning only makes sense as a social category or relation between social systems, wisdom refers to systems of meaning in the sense that it contains a relation between meaning systems. It adds a further quality to meaning systems in so far as meaning through wisdom is put into another frame. Wisdom is thus based on and rooted in a philosophy, i.e. an understanding of the essence of man, work, life, the world and ultimately the cosmos or God. This does not necessarily mean, as Bloch stated, that every philosopher can be regarded as wise, or that every philosophy contains wisdom. The latter becomes obvious if one considers the majority of those 'meaning systems' which we now call 'corporate philosophies'; more often than not they neither reach further than the factory gate nor do they transcend the obvious, i.e. man's contribution to the aim of the production process and the means through which this contribution can be won and guaranteed. This is also the case for management philosophies. "The image of man reflected in contemporary organization and management theory is defined largely in terms of instrumental relationship with context. What is emphasized is man as a satisfier of his needs and this leads to a management philosophy which sees control of environment as dominant" (Gadalla and Cooper (1978), 350 f.).

To the extent that philosophy in an enterprise is limited to corporate or management philosophy, wisdom is expatriated and not commissioned. Real wisdom, as Bloch calls it, adds a different, farther-reaching quality to a philosophy. Wisdom can be compared to a pearl, which can both be a jewel for the finder and a foreign body for the host. And on occasion it is as difficult to discriminate between real wisdom and common wisdom as between 'natural' and cultural pearls. Like real pearls, real wisdom cannot be gained through an industrialized and instrumental production process with its primary goal of profit gain and accumulation.

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Gadalla and Cooper (1978) in 'Towards an Epistemology of Management' also contribute to a farther-reaching wisdom. Traditional management or 'regulative management' is charactarized by "purpose, technique and control which are concentrated in a single-minded effort to accomplish a set of relatively limited goals" (ibid., 354 f.). The authors, however, postulate an 'appreciative management' whose "primary concern is with managing the interdependencies between man and his ecology for the benefit of both" (ibid., 357). "Appreciative management essentially attempts two things: (1) to develop the inner capacities of people as means for organizational understanding and problem solving, and (2) to view the organization and its problems in terms of a wide spatio-temporal context in which major variables are perceived as interdependent and therefore to be managed as a system in balance. When we speak of appreciation we mean a process which directly engages the skills and values of the person and which, by definition cannot occur through the mediation of techniques outside him. In short, appreciating is uniquely a human quality. Management by appreciation, therefore, emphasizes the person as the prime source of management competence rather than external means. ... The second feature of appreciative management - the appreciation of systemic balance can be further understood in terms of contextual mapping" (ibid., 359). Mapping in regulative management is based upon an information-theoretical process, it "maps the world according to a linear structure" (ibid., 360). In contrast, contextual mapping in appreciative management "is a representation of one or more morphological fields" (ibid.) through which an act or a message receives its meaning. "Whereas regulative management consciously separates 'means' from 'ends', defining the former in terms of the latter, in appreciative management 'ends' grow spontaneously out of 'means', so ensuring a more organic relationship between organizational actors and their environments. In addition, appreciation involves the valuation of relationships as opposed to things ... Appreciation values information about relationships which maintain the vitality of the system as a whole. To think systematically is also to think synthetically, that is, to apprehend the context in its completeness ... Synthesis requires the combined operation of intellect and imagination, the former for its analytic skills, the latter for its ability to synthesize" (ibid., 361). Appreciative management as Gadalla and Cooper represent it reinforces a management-of-oneself-in-roles. In addition to its emphasis on the apprehension and the development of people's inner capacities (as a means of organizational understanding and creation through its 'ecosystemic' perspective) it represents a step towards systemic wisdom as it was first conceptualized by Bateson (1972b). The ecosystemic man-ecology model extends the individual's systemic reference and space vis-a-vis his enterprises. "In short, man is part of a living field and mis-management of any part of this field has significance for his own well-being" (Gadalla and Cooper (1978), 355). Gadalla and Cooper's 'ecological humanism',

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despite its somewhat different philosophical orientation, equals Bloch's 'philosophy sub specie humanitatisit puts "an emphasis upon management as a balance between man and his natural world" (ibid., p. 355). In contrast to mere instrumental humanism, which focusses on instrumentality, wisdom derived from ecological humanism can be comprehended as ecosystemic. Its primary target is the understanding and creation of the relation between man and his ecology in a way that gives both mankind and the world a chance to survive. Appreciative management is the management of the dialectic and paradox because it "involves the recognition of a complex field in balance, that is, that competing and often opposing elements in the field have to be understood before they can be effectively managed" (ibid., 363). The wisdom underlying it must therefore necessarily include another human quality which is not included in earlier historical concepts of wisdom. Ecosystemic wisdom in its appreciative and systemic notion must include the capacity to endure despair. Although endurance understood as imperturbability has been a constituent of wisdom throughout history, the capacity to endure despair adds an active dimension to it. Whereas imperturbability implies a certain calmness paired with hope and confidence, despair is, on the surface, hopelessness. To endure despair means to face and to bear the hopelessness. It is, as von Weizsäcker stated (cf. Meyer-Abich (1989), 168), the capacity to allow oneself to let the experience of despair reach the bottom of one's soul; it is only through such an experience that man changes. Contemporary wisdom may acknowledge the endurance of despair and the related process of 'de-illusionment' (Lawrence (1986a), 1). By de-illusionment, Lawrence means the process through which people question and test the illusions they have developed and maintained about themselves and their relationship to the environment. When these perceptions and personal truths are reframed and restated people necessarily experience de-illusionment, "which results in them re-fashioning their life story for themselves and beginning to live out their lives in a different way. If, however, external circumstances and events cause people to lose their illusions, they become disillusioned and feel they have no control over their lives. The former process people manage for themselves; the latter makes them victims" (ibid).

Whether people choose de-illusionment or disillusionment the outcome is the same: "they recognise that whatever gave meaning to their life in the past can no longer be trusted to make sense" (ibid.). The so-called invulnerable strategies and illusions which we individually and collectively, consciously and unconsciously, maintain, reflect mankind's age-old dream of protecting ourselves against mortal terror by not realizing the enormous threat our defense mechanisms represent to others (cf. Meyer-Abich (1989), 172 ff.). Just as Siegfried in the Germanic saga of the Nibelungs tried to become invulnerable through the blood of the dragon he killed, industrial society tries

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to defend itself with the ruthless exploitation of natural resources and in the enormous attempt to create and maintain peace through permanent rearmament. "The whole military, even as a defensive armament, is the most obvious example of an immunization against the consequences of our own faults. The first fault in this case is the preparedness to settle international quarrels violently. Consequently the second fault is the attempt just to immunize us with weapons against the possibility that this might happen" (Meyer-Abich (1989), 173).

In contrast to Siegfried who almost gained invulnerability through the dragon's blood, contemporary attempts to end war and find peace with nature resemble trying to find an arrangement with the dragon instead of killing it. Through our collective efforts to gain invulnerability we not only try to avoid the fight with the dragon but project the evil into others, and thus are defeated by the true evil (the dragon) or real danger of which we should be terrified (Meyer-Abich (1989), 173; cf. Sievers (1990b). Now the dragon is war and the destruction of the ecosystem; it is an enormous threat to all life. To see and to acknowledge this dragon means to face despair (Meyer-Abich, ibid.). Facing the dragon is, however, not a matter of indifference or apathy. The dragon cannot be conquered by killing the enemy who resembles it; conquering the dragon means vanquishing our preparedness for violence, which, in turn, is the terrifying expression of the unwillingness and inability to face our deep anxieties and experience despair (ibid., 174 f.). Meyer-Abich's view is rooted in Christian tradition, and leaves no doubt that man cannot triumph on his own. The only hope he has lies in Jesus Christ and the Churches. But those who do not share this belief, the hope derived from such faith may either raise envy or even enforce the despair they are prepared to face and to endure. Eventually, however, they may realize that systemic or ecosystemic wisdom cannot be attained with a single man's resources, however wise he may become. Although the metaphor of the dragon is exemplified on a large scale by the worldwide threat of war and the destruction of the ecology, it also applies to a smaller scale represented by business logic, in which the big international corporations in particular have a prominant part. In the same way a state exchanges threats with other states in the endless attempt to gain invulnerability, the majority of the big corporations and, as a consequence, an increasing number of smaller companies are engaged in a capitalistic survivalof-the-fittest struggle. Especially through the internationally increasing rate of mergers and acquisitions they provide proof that "capitalism is after all a doctrine where efficiency is supposed to be achieved precisely because capitalists declare war on one another and drive each other out of business" (Thurow (1988), 30). Despite the fact that the vast majority of these mergers ultimately fail or do not bring the expected outcome, the takeover market has become "an arena in which alternative management teams compete for the rights to manage corporate resources" (Jensen and Ruback (1983), 42). By controlling an endless amount of

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corporate resources and a share of the market, management teams of the acquiring corporations can easily defend themselves against experiencing the despair that business as usual might have become meaningless. In accordance with the myth managers gain immortality through identification with the immortality of the firm, these international battles may help the actors avoid the insight and deillusionment that perhaps entrepreneurship contains too high a risk or no longer appears to be worthwhile. There is also the threat of realizing that many of the products and services which make a profit are superfluous or worthless. Herzberg once described the emptiness and stupidity of jobs in the context of job rotation, and it may well be that many so-called management positions have also degenerated into Micky-Mouse jobs. It may take some time until the real winners among the big corporations and their management teams emerge. Their fate might resemble the outcome of a monopoly game in which the winner not only accumulates the largest portions of money and property but ultimately, through the insolvency of his competitors, finishes and destroys the game in which he has taken part. When one looks at the management teams of American enterprises, the analogy to states' invulnerability strategies is increasingly obvious. In order not to become a vassal through a hostile takeover by a bigger corporation or competitor, management teams often employ proactive strategies, of which a management buy-out may seem the most reasonable alternative. What at first seemed a reasonable solution or effective defense against the external threat, could in the long run become an internalized and undigestable terror which might result in implosion. In addition to waging the 'capitalist war' of mergers and acquisitions, the protagonists also destroy and exploit the internal resources upon which their production and profit rely. The high degree of splitting, fragmentation and segregation which characterizes the organization of work has contributed greatly to a lack of meaning and its subsequent substitution with instrumentalist surrogates. In addition, escalating international battles for corporate resources illustrate a fact which both managers and workers increasingly have to face: lifelong contracts and commitments with a particular work enterprise are no longer a given. Identification with an enterprise as a source of meaning does not pay off anymore for reasons clearly stated by Thurow ((1988), 30): "Takeovers and the resulting carnage to individual careers ... drive home the message that no one should trust his or her career to their corporation. There are no mutual obligations. If it is convenient for the firm to junk you, you will be junked. Conversely when it is convenient to junk your firm, you should junk it. When it comes to that famous bottom line, your firm is not going to help you."

The devaluation of traditional loyalty and commitment to an enterprise is demonstrated in the context of mergers and aquisitions; plant shutdowns or the layoff of larger numbers of employees are often justified by citing international competition. General Motors, which recently discovered that in order to compete

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effectively with overseas rivals it had to reduce its salaried workforce by twentyfive per cent (Raspa (1989), 2), is a good example. It confirms a general tendency in which countless men and women despair over a 'broken covenant' (ibid.). The ruthless exploitation of 'human resources' in capitalism, as Bloch ((I960), 370 ff.) described it, is an unavoidable consequence. The tendency to see people in general, and employees in particular, as "expressions of capital (manpower, human capital, 'bodies')" mirrors capitalism's interest in interchangeability, because "it is through substitutions that the flexibility is achieved which allows maximum capital utilization" (Walter (1985), 306). Thus, people who have previously been perceived as the ultimate product of work (Herbst (1974)) are turned into zombies, i.e., humanoid automatons which lack a soul (cf. Dewisme (1957); Seabrook (1932); Sievers (1990a)). To the extent that business is converted into a game in which management acts as players and other employees are pawns on the chessboard, the experience of the people involved obtains an artificial character. In the same way as inherent threat and mortal terror are no longer perceived as real, despair is diluted into stress, mere frustration or gamesmanship. This is illustrated by an American Express business joke in which a broker addresses his colleagues at year's end: "Currency scandal, stock market crash, unfriendly takeover, wasn't it fun this year?" Thus the dragon (threat) is turned into a marionette which, having lost the ability to scare and kill is no longer worth conquering. Reducing the dragon to a toy which can only be liberated from its stupor by a creative actor is only possible if the subjects, the management teams, decrease their own sensibility. The diminution of the external threat goes hand in hand with the annihilation of the conscious potential to be threatening. This cost is followed by a kind of catatonic stupor among those who define themselves as businessmen. Wisdom is thus reduced to the expertise and cleverness derived from continuously and effectively playing games. Consequently, "a wise man", so the old Jewish saying goes, is nothing more than "one who does not get into situations which a clever man cannot get out o f ' . If real or ecosystemic wisdom is still to have a chance in capitalist society, it is exactly these strategies of immunization, i.e., the unwillingness in society and business to experience disillusionment and de-illusionment, which have to be questioned. Throughout history, searching for the source of wisdom has always received special emphasis. Usually this search ended in a transcendental explanation that God or gods were regarded as either the immediate or ultimate source of wisdom. In fact, in the early history of the Church, theologians considered whether or not Sophia should be understood as a constituent part of the divine trinity (cf. Zolla (1981), 60). This Christian concept of divine wisdom also represents a convluence of at least two earlier traditions, the ancient Greek and the Egyptian/Judaic. In the former, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was born out of the ear of Zeus, the father of gods. In the Egyptian mythology Thot, the son of Re, the creator of the universe,

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was the teacher of wisdom, whereas ancient Jews understood wisdom as rooted in Jahwe. - At the origin of western history wisdom obviously was affected by a fundamental 'paradigmatic' change from matrilinearity to patrilinearity (cf. e.g. Vogt (1987), 256). The idea that wisdom refers to and is rooted in immanence was only postulated late in history. It is an explanation which, as Bloch ((I960), 383 ff.) elucidated, is closely linked to Marxian philosophy. This 'revolutionary immanence' as a new wordly piety also includes a teleological element in that this 'real' wisdom refers to the objectively real possibilities of the future; the goal it pursues is only found in the historical realization of the labour of wisdom and the wisdom of labour. Any historical concept of wisdom can only be appreciated in regard to the future of a socialist, communist society with its empire of freedom, "a future which no longer is bowed under the statics of a mere contemplative past and which as such - through a mere historicism of wisdom - remains unknown, unmastered and continuously surprising" (ibid., 380).

What both Christian and Marxist quests for wisdom, have in common is an anchorage for real and ultimate wisdom. Whereas in the former, wisdom is eternally rooted in God, in the latter it belongs exclusively to the future. In contrast to the Christian/Judaic image of a lost paradise, the Marxian perspective is based on a future and yet to be created paradise. The redemption of man in Christian tradition is found in the next world, whereas salvation in Marxian philosophy will happen in this world and as the victory of the working class. The empire of freedom upon which it is based allows space neither for an emperor nor his vassals. Despite the apparent differences between Christian theology and Marxian philosophy regarding the ultimate source of wisdom, it does seem that there is not much difference either in their transcendent or immanent imagination. Both world views and their concepts of wisdom are based upon a causal relationship of ends and means. However, in the Christian tradition human wisdom is a means to reach eternal divine wisdom, and in Marxian philosophy, real wisdom can only be attained in a dialectical way as the labour of wisdom and the wisdom of labour. Whereas wisdom in Christianity is chiefly a matter of 'ora et labora\ as in the monastic tradition, Marxian philosophy, because of its annihilation of a next world, puts the emphasis exclusively on labour. In spite of this shift of emphasis, wisdom has not lost its hold in causal rationality. The revolutionary immanence of wisdom postulated by Bloch, thus appears as a mere reaction to its former transcendence; since it no longer can be derived from transcendent sources it has to be explained immanently. Wisdom with a transcendent source equals deification; immanent wisdom with its empire of the working class and its manifestation in recent political practice has been hollowed out into a reification of wisdom. The homified concept of wisdom which, in contrast to transcendent or immanent wisdom, can tentatively be described as inherent. Inherent wisdom is not

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only based on abandoning humanity's old dream of immortality and salvation, it also emphasizes deep inspection and exploration as its potential sources. Inherent wisdom cannot be accomplished or invented, it has to be discovered. It is a matter of revelation; a revelation not in the divine sense as in the Apocalypse of St. John, but in terms of real acts of revealing, exposing and unveiling. Similar to Bloch's description of wisdom, inherent wisdom is active, it requires a process of labour which can no longer be accomplished individually, but through social and collective attempts. That does not exclude the individual ability to attain wisdom or "maturity as disillusionment into wisdom", as Ernest Becker once described it (Keen (1974), 79); it prerequires individual de-illusionment. In addition to its twofold relatedness, i.e. the relationship to others both in the present and in the past, inherent wisdom is also based on the relatedness of man and his ecosystem as it was elaborated above. According to Gadalla and Cooper (1978) and Bateson (1972b), inherent wisdom is an ecosystemic wisdom based on appreciation; an appreciation which not only acknowledges "the inner capacities of people as means for organizational understanding and problem solving" (Gadalla and Cooper (1978), 359), but which at the same time is based upon the conviction that business and the economic system cannot exclusively be comprehended by monetary and fiscal processes. Despite the fact that money in capitalist societies is the predominant communicative medium both for the economy and for single enterprises (cf. Luhmann (1984b), (1988)), meaning both in global and in economic systems is not primarily determined by monetary and accumulative processes. Appreciation of the enterprise is included in the common expression 'spirit of enterprise' and in the etymology of the word 'enterprise' itself. Originally, enterprise means not only a 'work taken in hand' but also 'daring spirit' ('The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology'). 'Spirit' is the 'vital principle in man' which implies 'values', 'spirituality' and the idea that the 'soul' exists to enable us to reflect on our existence. As recently stated (Harms, Lawrence and Sievers (1989)), these are all words that connect human beings with their environment and, indeed, the cosmos. This 'spirit of enterprise' in its original sense obviously means more than mere motivation, good personnel and operating policies, quick communication or effective organization and delegation (cf. Nordhoff (1955/56). For a business to flourish in an unpredictable commercial environment, it needs to have an animating spirit that allows people in organizations to have the courage to anticipate and make business changes rather than react to them. Business courage, then, is one element of success in a business environment which is characterized by flux and risk. But courage has to be backed by effective organization with people who are motivated to make their enterprise successful by responsibly managing themselves in their roles. Senior management animate their business enterprise. They perceive the whole of the business, and provide key orientation, by exercising leadership from their executive roles. This allows people in the enterprise to relate to the customer environments under changing, international market conditions by using their sense of responsibility and authority to contribute

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to its success. This animating spirit of enterprise adds value to the entire enterprise culture and so enriches the activities that make up the enterprise as a system. The animating spirit of enterprise is 'transcendent' in that it is above and beyond the inherent, or immanent, elements of the enterprise. If the spirit of enterprise and spirit include a connotation of wisdom, the transcendence does not cohere with inherent wisdom as stated above. However, the 'source' of wisdom I am concerned about can be described as an 'inherent transcendence'. On the one hand, such wisdom can be understood as transcendent to the extent that it is beyond the daily context which we usually construct, e.g., an enterprise as a social or an individual person as a personal system; it refers to the relatedness of man to the ecology, the ecosystem. On the other hand, however, this concept of wisdom based upon a non- objectified, homified interpretation of the world and the cosmos has to be seen as inherent, insofar as the 'source' of wisdom cannot be found in any other 'world', be it the next one (heavenly empire) or a real one in the future (empire of freedom). To root wisdom in 'inherent transcendence' expresses the underlying conviction that wisdom necessarily has to be searched for and discovered in this world (seen as the cosmos). Its revelation ecosystemically goes beyond the individual or the organization. This paradoxical description of inherent transcendence may appear as an attempt to base wisdom on spirituality without any divine reference. That is part of my intention, but goes further than that. Substituting the ancient myths of God's creation of the world and of man with the belief that man himself is the ultimate creator would be naive and an expression of megalomania. Nevertheless, contemporary men and women have no other choice in the collective search for wisdom than to apprehend what previous generations of mankind have either projected onto a divine creator or tried to explain as mere fate. This apprehension is the fundamental insight that it is man alone who has to take care of and accept responsibility for the cosmos he has populated and invaded. Since we must relinquish the old dream that adjacent to Eden there is yet another garden to which we will escape when this world is ruined, we have to take the ancient commission seriously, "to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. 2, 15). Despite the endless choices we have in general, as far as the survival of this planet is concerned, we have only one choice, regardless of whether one believes in God or not. We can no longer keep "Dieu en réserve, pour le faire entrer en scène au moment du coup de théâtre du dernier acte: le sauveur héroïque apparaissait quand les choses devenaient insontenables" (Lawrence (1986c), 5). We also have to acknowledge that in apprehending this responsibility the ultimate fate of the cosmos is beyond our influence. The myth that the world will survive till the end of time is still worth holding on to, but we also have to be aware of the fact that, once mankind has committed collective suicide, time will not be measured anymore. 'Inherent transcendence' as the source of wisdom has subsequent implications of transcendent inherence. They are primarily related to the conviction that beyond individual and collective daily experience, men and women are related to other

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levels of reality and experience, through which our perceptions of the world and the cosmos are shaped and maintained, i.e. man's and mankind's capacity for spirituality, the soul and the empire of dreams. These human qualities (not unlike related ones of maturity, meaning and wisdom) have not had an important impact on the development of the social and human sciences. It even appears that its various disciplines either openly or hiddenly offered proof of their lack of existence via ignorance. On the one hand, this mirrors the predominant orientation of science to analyze and explain the world as an objective reality; on the other hand, it is an expression of its instrumentalist notion of reducing the contingency of the world through control and order. The increasing reification of man and his behavior in the developing social sciences originated from the willingness of early scientists to acknowledge the power of the state which, in addition to its organization of prisons, found its expression in various other institutions, e.g. the military, hospitals, schools, the rising sport movement and in work enterprises. "A certain policy of the body, a certain method of pliancy and utility in regard to the masses of people required the incorporation of certain connections of knowledge into the ratio of power; it demanded a technology to entwine the subjectifying subjugation with the objectifying reification; it was attended with new procedures of individualization" (Foucault (1977), 393 f.).

To the extent that man, his body, mind and relationships to others become targets of measurement and objective explanation his non-rational dimension, subjectivity, spirituality, imagination, dreams, and the soul fall into oblivion. According to the underlying split in which science was supposed to refer to the 'natural world', "the spiritual world was something and somewhere else" (Lawrence (1986b), 3). It transcended the 'natural world' and thus was posed apart as the divine, making it an object of contempt for those who regarded their work as scientific. "Because the natural world was separated off and became alienated from what could be experienced and felt as the spiritual and the divine, man was justified in seeing and treating his natural environment as an object external to himself which he had the right to use as he decided" (ibid., 3 f.).

What Christian piety earlier regarded as the world of the flesh became instrumentalized in the now desacrated Calvinist sense of a worldly piety. Not only was the objective world of thinghood regarded as being at man's disposal, its apparent unholiness had to be transcended through the application of science, where engineering and later business administration, too, played predominant roles. Although the spiritual thought underlying this scientific perspective "has given the majority of people in the west both the concepts and the metaphors we live by" (ibid., p. 4), spirituality itself became reified into its derivates of mind and intellect.

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"Human beings have sought to understand themselves through external images provided by the scientific and technological society and have consequently dehumanized and despiritualized their essential being" (Bowles (1989), 409).

However, modern science opened up a different world view which not only displaced the old paradigm of order through disorder and chaos (cf. Cooper (1986)), but also transferred the objective character to the process and the subject of experiencing it. Thus other possibilities may be reopened for a new conceptualization and understanding of human spirituality. Spirituality thus has to go beyond the former predominant rationalism and the related reductionsm and reification of the world; it has to transcend the world made by homunculi into a man-made one. This allows new 'models' of explanation; ideas of the cosmos which, unlike their scientific predecessors, no longer search for causal explanations for either the divine or alternative origin of the world but which are expressions of the relatedness of man and his cosmos. Whereas Bloch ((1973), 1383) in 'The Principle of Hope' which he wrote in exile in America during the Second World War, sees the dialectical mediation of man and his work with the subject of nature as the central problem of communist cosmology, Lawrence ((1986c), 6) confirms that the image of the soul in its nonsacred meaning may lead to a new consciousness of participating in the humanism of the cosmos of which it itself is a constituent. Although "in academic circles it has become unfashionable to use the term 'soul'" (Elias (1991), 69), the soul can be understood as the capacity of man's spirit to be conscious of himself; it is man's capacity for self-awareness and selfreflectivity. As such it is the source of subjectivity through which we relate to the outer world and establish and maintain our relatedness and non-relatedness to others. "The soul helps us to evaluate our actions and to discriminate our possible activities into those which appear either as creative or destructive" (Lawrence (1986c), 3). To repress the soul equals man's deprivation of being radically and fundamentally surprised. The living soul contains not only the capacity to be surprised, it also represents our competence to defend ourselves against those evil genii who either represent our own forces of self-destruction or our arrogance about the total control of nature. The capacity of the soul to be totally surprised prevents us from accepting "l'inhumanité de l'homme à l'égard de l'homme" (ibid.). "The soul also represents our potential for amazement, modesty, respect and admiration towards the universe, the capacity to consider what is hidden behind the perception of the obvious, what remains open, uncertain or mysterious. L'âme nourrit une vérité qui se cherche" (ibid.).

To some extent Lawrence's postulate that we must uncover or invent a new version of the lost soul equals Rank's (1958) attempt to go 'Beyond Psychology'. We may even be afraid of beginning such a search "because what we may find may by far be too surprising" (Lawrence, ibid.).

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"In essence, soul is an unknown component that makes meaning possible. Soul gives life and death meaning and purpose, the purpose of life being the recovery of the perspective of soul. Soul 'works' through the metaphor of deepening, deepening events into experiences; and has a special relationship then with the mythical underworld and with death. Soul is communicated in love; is at the heart of religious concern; and is the imaginative possibilities in our natures - the ability to experience through reflective speculation, dream image and fantasy. The language of soul is image. Soul is the 'middle ground' between body and spirit/mind" (Bleakley (1989), 10, referring to Hillman (1983)).

Although the capacity 'to surprise the soul' is fundamentally the capacity of the individual to become surprised in his or her own quest to go beyond the obvious, discover the mysterious, the magical and the numinous in the relationship to oneself, to others (dead or alive) and ultimately to the universe, it is not limited to it. The rediscovery of the lost soul in this non-religious sense cannot be accomplished either through a revitalization of Leibniz' monad or through the reconstruction of divine myths in which God or the gods are the ultimate source of man's soul which was then breathed into man as in the Judaic/Christian myth of the creation of Adam. The fundamental social dimension of the soul to which I refer cannot be grasped at through regressing to a collecte soul as it appears either in ancient Asian religions or in collective unconsciousness on which C. G. Jung's archetypes are based. Rather, the soul, to the extent that it expresses and contains man's selfreferential capacity, also represents his capacity to refer and to relate to others; to acknowledge one's own subjectivity and one's own capacity to be surprised not only presupposes the subjectivity of others but also the relatedness to their subjectivity. That such relatedness to subjectivity by far exceeds mere comparability of various subjectivities and in itself leads to a new kind of inter-subjectivity was a powerful experience, we recently had at a venture in social dreaming in a series of dialogues on 'Social Dreaming, Consultancy, and Action-Research'. Encouraged by Lawrence's previous experience, we followed his initiative in setting up an event on social dreaming in Germany. At this event and in the social dreaming matrix, we did not follow the mainstream tradition of psychoanalytical dreamanalysis in the sense of exploring the meaning a particular dream might have for the individual dreamer in the context of his or her subjectivity and/or biography. Our primary task was instead 'to associate and interpret the potential social content and meanings of participants' dreams'. With Beradt's (1968) 'The Third Reich of Dreams' in mind, an extensive documentation of dreams which she collected in Germany between 1933 and 1939, we hypothesized "a link between the political system and the psychic state of the people within it" (Lawrence (1989), 77, cf. (1991)) on various levels: the political system of the surrounding society, the work enterprises the participants came from, and the context of the venture itself we were working in.

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The experience gained through this 'method of cultural enquiry' was quite surprising in relating to each others' dreams by associating and interpreting their potential social content and meaning, we were able to realize "that it is possible to have dreams which speak of our unconscious fears and anxieties about the society in which we live. The individual dreams around certain basic themes such as the family, work and relationships with parents and similar significant others. Society, however, exists only 'in the mind' as a construction of individuals based on their experiences of relationships with others whom they happen to be connected. By being able to disentangle the latent from the manifest content of social dreams about relationships there is a realisable possibility of identifying the unconscious relatedness of the individual to society" (Lawrence (1989), 80).

Despite the fact that on this particular occasion we did not focus on the point, this 'method of cultural enquiry' also includes the investigation and exploration of the unconscious relatedness of the individual to the employing enterprise he or she spends a predominant part of his or her active life in. But no matter whether the organizational context is a corporation, university, hospital, prison or church, the chances are good that, at least at present, such an opportunity would be disregarded because of the possible consequences; what one might discover upon such an organizational cultural enquiry may by far be too surprising for the conventional heroes of most 'corporations' to dare such a venture. Since these conventional heroes, used to relying upon conventional wisdom are neither supposed to have a dark side nor a shadow (cf. Bowles (1991); Kets de Vries (1985); McWhinney (1990)) any attempt to face the de-illusionment must necessarily appear superfluous. Because those at the top of an enterprise maintain splitting vis-a-vis those at the bottom and perpetuate a culture of immaturity, they have no other choice than to regard the remainder of employees as the dragon whom they have learned to accomodate. The underlying conviction, however, that the dragon is exclusively an expression of evil can no longer be questioned in the context of a different metaphor or a creative mythology which would allow this dragon to become an expression or an incarnation of wisdom, as this 'monster' has always been in Chinese mythology. Lawrence's idea 'to surprise the soul' and the 'method of cultural enquiry' remind me of the phrase with which Morgan (1986) introduces his 'Images of Organizations': every way of seeing is a way of not seeing. But at the same time, Lawrence's postulates reach further. Whereas Morgan invites and encourages his readers to look at an organization from a multi-metaphorical perspective - an invitation which is refreshing and liberating - Lawrence suggests an extension of the optics, i.e., a further leading methodology of 'seeing' (cf. e.g. Foucault (1983)). Lawrence's other way of seeing enables us both individually and collectively to strive for the type of vision which, for example, was ascribed to seers like Teiresias or Cassandra. They were prominent because of their vision; and the prophetic eye they were said to possess seems to have been much less their

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capability to predict the future than their individual and subjective capacity to see and understand differently what their contemporaries took for granted as facts and reality. "Wisdom emerges from the gradual accumulation of differing readings of the same situation and the accumulating overlay of new contexts" (Spence (1987), 180, quoted in Kuspit (1989), 147). The wise person "takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem" (Becker (1973), 185). "The getting of wisdom is itself a mode or process, and a consequence of a type of experience" (Emery (1986), 75). Teiresias and Cassandra possessed other qualities which set them apart from their contemporaries: Teiresias' blindness and Cassandra's 'femaleness' as opposed to the warriors of the city of Troy. But what ultimately makes them and others seers is not primarily the ability to see in another way, it is rather the ability to express what he or she sees regardless of whether others like it, disagree or are afraid of it. It is this capacity of giving voice or meaning to the vision (or the dream) which the German word Weissager(in) expresses and etymologically stems from wizago, the prophet; in English, it was turned into the pejorative wiseacre, the pretender of wisdom. Telling the vision one sees, however, requires authority, i.e., the capacity to take authorship for what one subjectively sees as opposed to the possible or obvious meaning it may have for the 'community' one is a part of. To allow one's soul to be surprised individually and in relation to others thus may help overcome those traditional myths we live by which are not only destroying us but also the cosmos we live in; it may enable us to develop more creative mythologies which go beyond the dependence on traditional ecclesiastical, political or psychological authorities. Whereas in traditional mythology, myths and symbols serve as more or less strict guidelines for the experience of its individual members, a 'creative mythology' is based upon the idea that individuals are able to 'experience their experiences' (Lawrence (1986d), 1) which "relies on the mental strength of being able to put into disorder that which has been ordered in the past. This means examining what-is-taken-for-granted and looking at it with a wondering eye" (ibid.). Similarly Campbell ((1976), 4), who introduced the notion of 'creative mythology', sees it as a constituent part that "the individual has an experience of his own order, horror, beauty, or even mere exhilaration which he seeks to communicate through signs; and if his realisation has been of a certain depth and import, his communication will have the value and the force of living myth for those, that is to say, who receive and respond to it themselves, with recognition uncoerced."

It emerges from Campbell's and Lawrence's thoughts that "in contemporary society, the clear majority of people are severely hampered in achieving any form of individual 'creative response', due to the controls to which they are subject" (Bowles (1989), 416). This applies to both society as a whole as well as to an enterprise, "because the majority have to defend themselves against the anxiety of disorder" (Lawrence (1986d), 1).

Excursus on the Category of Wisdom

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The "new kind of generativity" which underlies creative mythology and is expressed by it "is a creativity coupled with wisdom" (ibid.)- That this new kind of generativity, a constituent dimension of the contemporary possibilities of wisdom, is inseparably related to mature leadership is emphasized by the same author (ibid., p. 2): "Our working hypothesis is that the truly generative/creative manager has access to his inner world and is alive to both the tragedy and comedy of life. He has, however, also to possess the capacity of being able to manage himself between his own, private inner world and the outer one of other people. He has to be able to communicate his vision in such a way that it is understandable by the majority."

It is this quality of 'generative maturity' which enables the generative/creative managers "to regard the culture of their enterprise in the context of the world with the eyes of wisdom" (ibid.). "It is the character of the individual as a mature being which makes for long-term creativity in business" (Lawrence (1986e), 1). Referring back to Bloch, it is reconfirmed that wisdom in a capitalist society is exposed to an enormous danger, that "capitalist dynamics do not at all commission wisdom" (Bloch (1969), 370). What also has become obvious is that the 'creative mythology' or the 'new kind of generativity which is a creativity coupled with wisdom' - with the only exception of a 'real' communist society - is always in danger, no matter whether the predominant mainstream mythologies are of a deified/ecclesiastic or reified/capitalist/'scientific' kind. Contemporary wisdom, especially in business practice and theory has quite a low probability to develop because there are just too many wiseacres around who take for granted that the profit and excellence of an enterprise or corporation is the ultimate target, without recognising the auto-destructiveness these targets are based on. The time frame wisdom refers to and is based on at present has or is supposed to alter significantly. Historically (and in traditional mythologies), wisdom was part of mankind's inheritance and constituted as such a kind of 'carried-over wisdom' (Bar-On (1986)), which was partially "borne by healers, magicians, miracle-workers, dream-readers or confidants who lived in the community or who wandered from place to place" (ibid., 256). Contemporary wisdom, as it is derived from a 'creative mythology' and a 'new kind of generativity', relies much more on a re-evaluation of past wisdom. That traditional mythologies and traditional wisdom have to be reevalued and reinterpreted does not, however, mean that previous interpretations have become obsolete. What I would rather like to emphasize here is that analogous to the process in which a creative, mature individual reinterprets his own past as well as that of mankind in order to face deillusionment, contemporary wisdom can only be discovered and maintained if it allows the questioning and even the partial annihilation of conventional wisdom. And since wisdom can no longer be regarded as rooted either in God or in a goddess (Athena or Sophia) it can no longer be regarded sub specie aeternitatis. To regard wisdom instead sub specie hominis, i.e., as a quality of man and mankind

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through which 'homo sapiens' may be differentiated from the rest of nature and the cosmos he himself is a part of, is to be confronted with a time horizon narrowed by an inescapable finiteness which, in the case of the cosmos, to an increasing and critical extent relies upon mankind's awareness of this finiteness and of the impact he has on it. In the following, wisdom has to be 're-framed' in so far as it will be looked at from the narrower focus of an organization and a work enterprise. My first tentative statement on the management of wisdom (Sievers (1989a)), was largely refused by reviewers and critics. Although the idea that wisdom could or should have an important impact on an industrial enterprise was acknowledged as tempting, it nevertheless was seen as unreal if not naive (Wiendieck (1989), 58). Culture, meaning and wisdom were explicitly regarded as dimensions which had disappeared from management activities (cf. Turk (1988)). Management of wisdom appeared to be in danger of perpetuating the invasive leadership idea in a 'pedagogy of the oppressed' (Kappler (1989), 63; cf. Freire (1973)). It was not credited that wisdom could be managed (Dachler (1989)). And Nachreiner (1989) - reconfirming the traditional mythology of psychology as a science - even refused to admit any scientific quality to it. Almost without exception, these objections represent a traditional, hierarchic style of management. It is therefore important to emphasize that the conceptualization of management on which the above and the following thoughts are based is derived from the concept of a management of oneself in roles as outlined in the previous section.

Wisdom as a Modality of Experience

Despite the prevailing tendencies of contemporary western society, I would like to maintain the concept of wisdom as the symbolization of a specific kind of experience which qualitatively contains an unrenouncable impact on further development towards maturity and homification in work enterprises and in society. Therefore, I would like to claim wisdom as a crucial dimension through which the potential objectification of any culture has to be prevented. In contrast to the obvious attempts to regard wisdom primarily as a kind of useless sediment of an individual's long life, which, like the tartar in an old bottle of wine cannot be avoided but does not affect the taste, I would rather suggest again regarding wisdom as a dimension through which a life and life experience finally obtain quality for a mature adult. Wisdom is then no longer a senile attempt to remember and reconstruct one's life in the face of irretrievable times, but a qualifying process which reflects one's individual and collective experience in order to provide them with meaning. Wisdom, as Perlmutter and Trist ((1986), 24) state, "has its origin in the intuitive and affective evaluation of experience, although it requires 'reason' to complete the process of self-reflexion". In this sense wisdom can be conceptualized as a specific modality of experience through which any particular experience and experience in general is specified and qualified in comparison to its mere endurance. It was not by accident that the concept of modality was created in Bateson and colleagues' research and attempt to understand schizophrenic behaviour (see Bateson, Jackson, Haley and Weakland (1956); cf. Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (1967); Sievers (1974, 21 ff.). Seen as a modalizing individual experience resulting from an individual's specific relatedness to his or her own inner and outer world, schizophrenia apparently does not only allow a formal analogy to wisdom in the sense that it also is a modality through which experience is qualified. From the short reference to shamanism above, it is evident that schizophrenia can also be understood as a corresponding modality to wisdom which primarily differs from the latter in that the former is commonly regarded as an insane and the latter as a sane way of elaborating experience. As a matter of fact, in addition to its logical equality, wisdom is the only choice we (individually and collectively) have, if we do not want to end up either irrelevant or schizophrenic. The decision between

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a 'genius' or a 'mad' modalization of experience cannot be made rationally or unequivocally. Therefore, in the context of leadership, wisdom will be conceptualized as the mature quality of the process through which individual and collective meaning is given to the human experience primarily on a logical level (of Meaning V (cf. part one)). This surmounts the previously described levels of categorization in the sense that through wisdom, the relevant experiences on the four lower levels are qualified by the meaning which one assigns to one's life. As has already been stated, any actualization of meaning is not primarily an invention, but is also a discovery, and as such, always related to other contemporary and preceding individuals. Thus, this struggle cannot be exclusively sustained in a solipsistic manner but has to be undertaken collectively. The impact social relatedness has on the creation and maintenance of wisdom can be elucidated in comparison to its modalizing counterpart: schizophrenia. As shown in the work of the researchers mentioned above, certain constellations of the schizophrenic's family of origin contribute to or even cause schizophrenia, which pushes an individual ever deeper into isolation from his contemporaries. In contrast to the creation of schizophrenia, the creation of wisdom can be seen as a unique and therefore isolating attempt made by a mature individual to question the commonly taken for granted meaning he or she is surrounded by, which - if it does not end in madness - may finally lead to new dimensions of meaning and a relatedness to other men and women which are or have been struggling towards wisdom. Whereas schizophrenia may result in spending one's life in the isolation of a madhouse, the image of heroic adventure and journey through unknown countries is nurtured by wisdom. And as such, it can finally only be certified if it, like the role of the shaman in primitive cultures, represents a social function for those who either do not have the courage to make such a journey or who have not gone far with it yet. In order to prevent a misconception, I have to emphasize that I am not propagating a new kind of political elite or elitism through which those who claim wisdom for themselves could legitimize executing their influence over and power on others. What necessarily has to be kept in mind in any further attempt at conceptualizing and understanding the social implications of wisdom is the fact that the only result or gain which one could probably reach with it is to become a modest hero, as, for instance, Wolf (1983b) stated in her novel 'Kassandra'. To reach a certain state of wisdom together with the willingness to share it may be all any human hero can accomplish during his lifetime. The danger is not great that such a hero or heroine would become the top executive of an international enterprise or a political leader in his or her country; the chances are much higher that in contemporary western society his or her fate would rather be that of Cassandra, who in spite of her wisdom could not prevent her fellow citizens from pulling the Trojan horse inside their city walls. "It is" as Lawrence (1986e), 2) states, "the

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'rogue' manager - the one who asks the awkward question - who tends to be among the first to be invited to take 'early retirement'." But at least as far as contemporary work enterprises and other institutions are concerned, the hope cannot be relinquished that wisdom may finally contribute to the exploration and creation of more mature solutions for overcoming the battle and facing the future. I am convinced that a great deal of wisdom is needed if we want to overcome the schizoid tendencies by which many work enterprises are characterized. This schizoid reality of enterprises and institutions can be elaborated in analogy to Laing's ((1965), 17) description of the individual reality a schizophrenic is caught in: "The term schizoid refers to an individual, the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Such a person is not able to experience himself 'together with' others or 'at home in' the world, but, on the contrary, he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as 'split' in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on."

Although the question cannot be answered here to what extent the concepts we are using to describe the reality of the self in its inner and outer world can be transferred to organizational reality or whether such a transference can only be made by analogy, Laing's description of the schizoid personality nevertheless quite accurately mirrors an experience which the majority of employees have during their working lives. Because their working activity is commonly limited to a 'job' - which is usually so fragmented that it is difficult if not impossible for them to keep the whole enterprise in mind and to relate their own work to it - an individual employee often experiences the 'rent in his relation with his world'. Additionally, he has to endure a certain 'disruption of his relation with himself because he cannot establish a relatedness between himself and the thing to which he is objectified via alienation. Workplaces seem to be designed to be disconnected in such a way that an individual's experience of work conditions may resemble the isolation of an inmate in a madhouse or any other total institution. Under those circumstances the chances are low that an employee may 'experience himself as a complete person' because he or she has to live in different worlds as 'two or more selves'. And similar to the preconditioning in the schizophrenic's family of origin, the work enterprise contributes to the schizoid experience of its employees at work by the fundamental splitting processes it creates and sustains through its predominant mode of managing meaning and culture.

The Dialectical Function of Wisdom

The extent to which a work enterprise causes schizoid experiences through the split and fragmented organization of work can only be explained on the basis of the two fundamental realizations described above, i.e., the endurance of the social order and the inevitability of individual death, which any institutionalization has to take into account (cf. Campbell (1973), 20 ff.). Therefore, the main reason that employees do not have any other chance of either qualifying their own experience as schizoid or of escaping into immature defenses which may prevent them from such an experience is that the endurance of the enterprise's social order is supported and emphasized by its organizational culture, whereas the inevitability of the employees' and the employers' death is annihilated. In so far as the individual contributions of reified members are paid for in an equally objectified manner - money - the manner in which these members finally modalize their experience at the work place is regarded as more or less irrelevant. Whether they qualify their work experience as latent or manifest schizoid or whether they finally modalize it via wisdom does not really matter as long as the immortality of the firm is secured. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that employees hold on to the idea that the only part of their lives really worth living is the part outside their work. "In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self' (Berger et al. (1984), 149). This may be the only surrogate for wisdom an immense number of employees are finally capable of. If, however, an organizational culture, as the predominant pattern through which people in a social system structure and modalize their experience, is to enable the employees to struggle for and hopefully accomplish a certain amount of wisdom, then wisdom has to be incorporated into the corporate culture. To allow its individual members to be concerned about wisdom, the management of meaning on the four logical levels is not sufficient. If wisdom is understood as a modality through which individuals qualify their experiences, then it cannot exclusively be accomplished with the meaning which in an enterprise is managed in relation to working life. Because of its reference to life experience, wisdom presupposes a fifth logical level of meaning which surmounts the enterprise as a whole and the limited experience which it offers to its members.

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It has to be emphasized that this Meaning V, - the logical level on which individuals give meaning to their lives- cannot primarily be regarded as a meaning level which should be managed by the work enterprise. That would irreversably lead to a society such as Orwell prophesied in his '1984', in which institutions are finally converted into the agents of 'Big Brother'. But, nevertheless, it can be postulated that a work enterprise in particular does have a crucial impact on the possibility of Meaning V through the quality it allows its corporate culture to express. Although it finally has to be seen as being exclusively a matter of how its individual members establish meaning for their own lives, an enterprise may have quite an impact on whether its members realize the modality of wisdom for themselves or not. It is crucial to making this choice whether and to what extent an enterprise takes the inevitability of its individual members' death as an implication of its culture into account. A 'wise' organization can thus be described as an organization in which members have a reasonable chance of actualizing their own mortality and the possible 'immortality' of the firm as a part of their individual struggle to find wisdom as a quality of their life experiences. From the perspective of ecosystemic wisdom, this also means that people in an enterprise must take the finiteness of the cosmos into account. It is obvious that wisdom as a quality of a corporate culture cannot have any relevance for individual members if it is only grafted on an enterprise, for instance, through a codified management philosophy. In this sense even the discrimination of various logical levels of categorization may be misleading if it comes to the real work and life experience of human beings. To prevent a similar fragmentation of the thoughts and concepts with which we try to conceptualize and overcome the splitting and schizoid tendencies at work, it has to be stated that the discrimination of these logical levels of managing and meaning should not be misunderstood as a further attempt to fragment human experience. The use of these different levels is only reasonable if it is seen from its logical standpoint; in so far as one's own life and one's life experience are far beyond such a discrimination, these levels can only be used, based on the conviction that the experience of one's own management or that of others is not delineated, not a deliberate decision among various meaning levels. A delineation of meaning refers to, for example, the individual contribution to the production of tanks or the conspiracy with which a nurse or a physician in a hospital deny a patient's right to be aware of his own death. This can only be related to the immediate target of an enterprise's and its employees' survival as the referring meaning. Although an employee may not actualize the meaning he or she gives to life in any particular activity which he or she sustains the production process of the enterprise, such a contribution nevertheless has to be seen against the horizon of his or her life and its meaning. Whether this horizon can be seen and actualized as a part of the organizational reality or not is primarily a matter of what the culture offers as a frame of reference. The individual employer and his employees are largely unaware of the final meaning he gives to his life. It is symbolized and acted out through the

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structures which are collectively created and maintained in an enterprise. To what extent the individual and collective inability to acknowledge the inevitability of individual death can be incorporated into the structure of an institution is convincingly demonstrated in Menzies' (1970) case description, in which she looked at the organizational defense mechanisms against anxiety in a hospital. Whether a corporate culture creates and sustains room for wisdom on the corporate level and for the individual in an enterprise depends on the extent to which it allows wisdom to become 'wisdom in action' as Novak ((1970), 74) translated Aristotle's concept of 'phronesis' (in the Nicomachean Ethics). And since leadership manages organizational culture as the relevant collective meaning system, collective and individual wisdom can only manifest in an enterprise by daring, active leadership. The traditional function of leadership "helps to legitimize the unequal distribution of power in hierarchies within an order which purports to hold all men equal" (Pym (1982b), 223) and seeks to ensure an enterprise's survival by maintaining its social order. In contrast homified leadership has to fulfill a double function which can only be understood dialectically. Homified leadership must manage the paradox of enterprise which is based on its members' mortality and on the fiction of the immortality of the firm. Homified leadership on all levels therefore has to be exercised to allow individual members to realize the inevitability of their own death as well as to sustain the fiction of the firm's endurance (to which all members contribute). As a final consequence this means that homified leadership in a work enterprise has to certify the immortality of the firm on the basic realization that these leaders and managers as individuals will sooner or later die. "It is", as Winnicott ((1966), quoted by Holbrook (1971), 44) once stated, "these cultural experiences that provide the continuity in the human race which transcends personal existence". In addition, the homified leader has to incorporate the paradox that he is a mortal agent of immortality. To live with and act from this paradox takes heroism and wisdom; and even the conviction that this is a necessary human quality may not prevent such a hero from defeat, breakdown, or the experience of his own weakness. To be a modest hero and leader in a 'wise' enterprise may not appear risky because it implies that one's coemployees, in their capacity as leaders or followers, can at least potentially exercise mature leadership, which also includes the recognition of being mortal agents of immortality. However, in cases of rationalization, i.e., the creation of despair by eliminating work places or even shutting-down, when a whole enterprise or larger parts of it have to be distinguished (cf. Perucci et al. (1988)), it then may become enormously difficult if not impossible for any individual employee to hold on to the notion of wise leadership. In situations like these, not only does the fiction of immortality fail, but the awareness of one's own mortality becomes acute. If a generations-old employer, such as a shipyard (cf. Asplund (1984)) or a mine (cf. Lawrence (1984)) suddenly closes, its former employees, their families and probably even the whole community face existential fear about their future. One can only imagine what happens to leadership

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regardless of whether it is exercised by those who directly carry the consequences and burden or who execute such a shut-down.

The Experience of Nothingness

The experience of hopelessness and despair which result from such cases may be within everybody's grasp because of the tragedy of the consequences. But rationalizations and shut-downs are, from a broader perspective of human life, only very crucial experiences through which the greatest tragedy of human existence becomes evident: "that man has to live with the fact that he must die. It is such an overwhelming tragedy that man strives to fabricate fictions of life which will avoid this fact and its implications. In denying this tragic fact he, inevitably, comes to deny other tragic aspects of his existence" (Lawrence (1987), 198).

The management of wisdom could also be perceived as the explicit attempt to face inevitable tragedy in life in general and working life in particular. Wise leadership must acknowledge that life and work necessarily have to include tragic experiences, if life is to be taken seriously. Leadership can only be understood as an actualization and representation of wisdom if it includes learning through individual and mankind's collective experience. The old dream of ongoing pleasure and harmony can no longer come true since our mythical parents have been dispelled from paradise. In comparison to a mere accumulation of experience, learning from experience in the context of wisdom has to include another quality. Learning from experience in order to gain wisdom implies the preparedness and ability to appreciate new experiences as contributing new meaning to previous experiences and, therefore, to similar experiences in the future. Learning from experience includes a modalization of experience which, as it may lead to new learning, may affect what one previously has learned and since then taken for granted. As a consequence, this has to include a correction of how one previously shaped one's world view, i.e., one's own inner and the outer world. Emphasizing experience and the meaning one gives to new experience - upon which wisdom has to be established - also adds a new perspective to the function of knowledge as a contribution to our common construction of reality. The propagation of wisdom as the human basis of management does not deny the importance general and scientific knowledge have for the two managerial dimensions of the material and functional level. In the management of meaning, wisdom has to be created and maintained both individually and collectively. At work and privately, this is a

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concern which goes far beyond standard organization theories and its underlying psychology because, as Rank (1958) stated, our individual and our collective lives go far beyond psychology. It is obvious that human life goes beyond psychology but is not an idea which is propagated by most psychologists, at least not by those who have been involved in organization theory. Although there are some psychologists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers who have questioned and gone beyond the predominant degradation of the human being into a homo psychologicus, it is an experience that any mature individual will have at some time during the course of his or her life. If one is prepared to give up the fiction that one's adulthood passes on a permanent zenith and if one acknowledges the fundamental experience that everyone's life goes through different seasons (cf. Levinson et al. (1979)), one will then necessarily be confronted with the experience of nothingness (cf. Novak (1970)). Questioning what was previously taken for granted as reality, or experiencing a mid-life transition or crisis (cf. Jaques (1970)) can be a step towards individual wisdom if this experience is not avoided but accepted and modalized by referring to the meaning of one's life. The experience of nothingness and the resulting despair may, if they are accepted, also represent an opportunity to develop new hope or even wisdom and expand an individual's life. But in terms of collective wisdom as contained in the corporate culture, individual realization of wisdom is obviously not sufficient. The chances are high that an individual may have to hide the personal experience of nothingness and/or convert the resulting wisdom into a 'regressive wisdom of frustration' if he does not see any chance to give it social impact through his role as an employee. This can be avoided if the organizational culture does not condemn the experience of nothingness on the individual level as first evidence of disinterest or incompetence but sees it rather as a step towards individual maturity and thus maturity and wisdom on the organizational level. Though the wisdom of an organizational culture is not necessarily a matter of allowing its individual members to express a personal crisis in their roles as employees, the way in which a mid-life crisis is handled in the enterprise - if it is accepted as normal experience or has to be hidden and denied - is a good example of how the interrelatedness of individual and collective wisdom in an organization should be managed. Thus it can be assumed that if a particular corporate culture enforces the 'taboo of weakness' either explicitly or implicitly then the chances are low that wisdom will have any crucial impact on how such an enterprise is led and managed. As a member of a university department I am quite aware of how difficult it can be to publicly express and explore the assumption that the experience of nothingness and meaninglessness could be related to the fact that the majority of us (who have tenure) are either in their transition from early to middle adulthood or have recently gone through it (cf. Levinson et al. (1979), 117). Although divorces, frustrations, or possible career changes were occasionally discussed privately, it

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was out of the question to publicly address these experiences and the collective impact they may have had on our research and teaching. Collectively, we were unable to go beyond the imprisonment of our scientific images, theories, and concepts. Although our department is only some twenty years old, we have very persistently incorporated into our culture the traditional image of social science, in which it is a professor's task to search for and teach about the objectivity of the outer world which presupposes the neglect of the exploration of the inner world and one's own subjectivity. We have confirmed what Cooper ((1989), 495) (referring to Bourdieu and Passeron (1977)) described as the "moral economy of good behaviour that is taught and reproduced in research", in particular, and at the university, in general. This university experience also shows that on occasions 'traditional wisdom' may be inadequate or even dysfunctional. As Jones and Riach ((1985), 259) state: "The process by which the culture is transmitted is partially unconscious, the stories having intra-psychic counterparts relating not only to the collective wisdom but to how individuals took up roles in the organization. Individuals facing changing conditions therefore find it difficult to differentiate failure in the traditional wisdom from personal failure. There is a tendency for the individual under these circumstances to retreat into intra-personal despair, to limit investment in inter-personal relationships for fear of exposing inadequacy and a sense of shame. In organizational terms, these processes may manifest as an inability to co-ordinate group tasks or to organize work."

In contrast to the example described above, wise leadership has to contain not only the knowledge but also the experience of the interrelatedness of organizational culture and the way in which individual members cope with their own experience of despair. In a wise culture of an enterprise such an individual experience is not superfluous but rather is regarded as a normal experience any individual growing to maturity finally has to face. This requires further that those members who are able to exercise wise leadership have either gone through similar experiences of weakness and despair before or are potentially capable of facing them. The heroic dimension of a wise leader consists of experiencing and surviving the nothingness which he meets in the outer world as well as inside himself. The experience of nothingness is the experience of illusions, fictions, and false myths with the simultaneous experience of either not knowing how one's own myth would look or being unable to express and conceptualize it. Compared to the traditional image of omnipotent omniscient leaders, the wise leader should contain within himself a certain idea of contingency: what is normally regarded as reality and objective truth is not only the result of a merger of individual and collective assumptions and belief but quite often even a false belief. To claim wise leadership as the 'agency' through which the reality of an enterprise can be experienced as contingent is not only ambitious, it also represents a diametrically opposed notion to what is expressed in Fiedler's (1967) 'contingency model of effective leadership'. Here, various kinds of leadership behavior

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are related to different situations in order to motivate the subordinates to perform effectively. This approach of coping with the obvious contingency of social reality is an objectified attempt to locate the knowledge of and ability to experience contingency exclusively on higher hierarchical levels. Subordinates are not supposed to be capable of acknowledging and dealing with it. Representing the contingency of individual and common social reality is not the only contribution wise leadership in an enterprise has to make; even though it may appear contradictory, a wise leader also has to be the agent of reliability, so that for the time being certain organizational dimensions, such as the subtask of a work group and its boundaries or the formal allocation of the group's leadership to a particular person, can be regarded as facts which cannot be altered arbitrarily. Luhmann ((1964), 59 ff.) describes this function of leadership as the reduction of complexity and contingency on the social system's level through the formalization of its expectational structure and its selection of boundaries. Wise leadership, as far as contingency is concerned, is, therefore, confronted with a double and dialectical function: it has to challenge the taken-for-granted reality against the horizon of alternatives and at the same time guarantee that certain conditions can be regarded as facts, although they too are only socially constructed fictions or myths. Wise leadership executes homified discrimination between true and false myths. This requires that a leader has the "competence to analyze the institutional impact of social situations as well as to appraise his own action potential" (Luhmann (1969), 404). The wisdom of mature leadership is stated by Bateson ((1972b), 433 f.) as follows: "Wisdom I take to be the knowledge of the larger interactive system - that system which, if disturbed, is likely to generate exponential curves of change. Consciousness operates in the same way as medicine in its sampling of the events and processes of the body and of what goes on in the total mind. It is organized in terms of purpose. It is a short-cut device to enable you to get quickly at what you want; not to act with maximum wisdom in order to live, but to follow the shortest logical or causal path to get what you next want, which may be dinner; it may be a Beethoven sonata; it may be sex. Above all, it may be money or power."

To establish what Bateson (ibid., 434) calls 'systemic wisdom' for a work enterprise and its leadership means to acknowledge the "systemic nature of the individual man" (ibid.) and his interrelatedness with the surrounding systems of institutions. Systemic wisdom therefore also has to include the ability of a system's agents of wisdom to recognize that every member is a much more complex and meaningful entity than what is expressed in its actions. This necessarily comprises an awareness of that part of our individual and collective reality which is referred to as human unconsciousness. To postulate this awareness as an important dimension of an enterprise's systemic wisdom does not mean that its members need to undergo psychoanalysis in order to exercise wise leadership; although a

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certain amount of psycho-social-analytical training would have a significant impact on management development. What I would instead like to emphasize here is the kind of wise experience of mature leaders which equals the experience of the shaman or the ancient hero. It is the awareness grown out of significant experiences that there is a reality beyond our rational and pragmatic consciousness and its psychology which has a crucial impact on how we shape and perceive social reality. The awareness of unconscious dimensions of social reality may not only lead to other images, concepts, and mental maps which an enterprise, its individual members, and their managerial activities are perceived, it may finally even enable wise leaders to develop new ideas through which the immaturity extant in any democracy or institution (cf. Winnicott (1950)), can be recognized and managed so as to increase the chances of working more effectively. The expression 'management of immaturity' needs further explanation to avoid the mistaken idea that the mature individuals at the top should manage the less mature or immature at the bottom. Even in an enterprise which has incorporated wisdom into its organizational culture, it cannot reasonably be assumed that all its employees act and lead exclusively as mature human beings. In any organization, a good deal of immaturity is acted out by its members and is also incorporated into its structure and culture. A wise organization in comparison to its non-wise counterpart cannot be understood as an accumulation of wise individuals or wise actions. Rather it is a social system in which the experience of its members has a certain chance to be individually and collectively modalized into wisdom. Wise management of immaturity would continuously attempt to reduce the unconscious collusion of immaturity in an enterprise as well as the impact it may have on the personality of its members or on other 'stakeholders' as Mitroff (1983) calls the relevant representatives of an enterprise. Wise management of immaturity will allow the control and monitoring of the necessary defence mechanisms which obviously every organization has to establish as a part of its boundary management in order to guarantee the endurance of the social order in an often turbulent environment. As explained in Menzies' (1970) case study of the defences against anxiety in a hospital, these institutional defence mechanisms can be differentiated according to the amount of maturity or immaturity upon which they are unconsciously built. Therefore, one function of wise leadership is to create and sustain mature structures, processes, and mechanisms for organizational design, by which not the regressive but rather the mature potential of members can be activated. Insofar as mature individuals are capable of establishing mature forms of dependency with other members and the enterprise as the prerequisite to the individual and collective search for meaning, a further function of wise leadership is to develop and guarantee mature dependence. "Mature dependence", as Guntrip ((1961), 291) states,

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"is characterized by full differentiation of ego and object (emergence from primary identification) and therewith a capacity for valuing the object for its own sake and for giving as well as receiving; a condition which should be described not as independence but as mature dependence."

A first impression of what an organizational design based on more mature forms of dependency looks like is given by Walton (1985) in his overview of new orientations of management in the U.S.. To what extent these examples are built on allowing the individual employee a higher amount of maturity or whether they are primarily new means of accomplishing traditional goals more effectively cannot be decided on this occasion. It has to be left to those agents of an enterprise's wisdom who have to decide for their particular situation and according to their own vision. I hope that the preceding has reduced the probability of seeing the development and application of a more mature organizational design as merely new techniques and tools. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize that the creation and maintenance of a corporate culture of wisdom is not a matter of organizational engineering but above all a matter of symbolization. What Winnicott ((1950), 184) states for society also holds true for organizations: "In any case, the basis for a society is the whole human personality, and the personality has a limit... It is not possible for persons to get further in society-building than they can get with their own personal development."

If this is the case for a work enterprise too, it then means that any further collective step towards more wisdom cannot be enforced through techniques, signs, instructions, or rules but rather has to be attempted and facilitated by meaningful perspectives and visions. In such a context symbols and symbolizations could provide not only further impetus and dimension, they could additionally represent a broader reference of meaning through which individuals then may be able to create and establish their own individual links of meaning. To prevent further misconception, by symbolization I do not mean marketing attempts to artistically and aesthetically improve the corporate identity with new signs and images; these are primarily artificial attempts, restricted to the level of signs and emblems. In contrast, symbolization should create a mature self-fulfilling prophecy: Somewhat immature individuals should be challenged to become those mature adults they are regarded to be by the predominant culture of an enterprise. This self-fulfilling prophecy finally has to have an important impact on making a paradigmatic change by which the predominant self-denying prophecy and its consequences, i.e., the conviction that individual employees are as immature as they officially are regarded, finally has to be overcome. In this sense, wise leadership is the cultural symbolization of the myth that all employees are potentially mature and therefore capable of struggling for wisdom.

From Leadership Style to a Culture of Wisdom

The new paradigm of management and leadership-of-oneself-in-role explicated and offered here is obviously not in accordance with most of the approaches and models offered by the copious literature on leadership styles. Despite their occasional affirmation of being based on ideas of men as stated in McGregor's (1960) 'Theory Y', these attempts remind me of the boldness and arrogance of the reeducation programs with which my father's generation was supposed to be converted from Nazis or Nazi-sympathizers into democrats. The literature on leadership styles seems like an attempt to treat symptoms instead of dealing with the underlying problems. The methods which are recommended and applied vary from adapted attempts to seduce to virtual brainwashing. They are mainly based on an unconscious mutual contempt between those at the top and those at the bottom (cf. A. Miller (1981), 67 ff.). The practice of leadership styles is a far cry from what is preached in official management philosophy (cf. Müller (1987), 429). And even if leadership is exercised from the belief that the subordinates are adults, it is predominantly based on the myth that people are not competent enough to understand and conceptualize the institutions and the society in which they live. To share such a myth means that "it is believed that society is unknowable, is a 'thing', is a reification. This is one central myth of contemporary industrial cultures, and one which structures the perceived and felt relatedness of the individual to society" (Lawrence (1979a), 238).

And because this myth normally coincides with the reification of the individual or worker, it is not surprising that the primary emphasis of leadership in a work enterprise is continually attempting to overcome the myth-created and mythmaintained passivity of employees. Winnicott's (1950) thoughts on the meaning of democracy are relevant to the underlying problems which the predominant leadership styles conceal. In contrast to maturing individuals who, as Winnicott (ibid., 178) states, "are gradually becoming able to add a social sense to their well-grounded personal development", there are in any society or work enterprise quite a number of people who either "show their lack of sense of society by developing an anti-social tendency" (ibid., 177) or who as 'hidden anti-socials' are

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"reaching to inner security by the alternative tendency - identification with the authority ... This is a pro-society tendency that is anti-individual... Hidden anti-socials are not 'whole persons' any more than are manifest anti-socials, since each needs to find and to control the conflicting force in the external world outside the self' (ibid.).

These immature individuals in their role as employees who in a work enterprise like in society nurture the collusion of immaturity: "'Hidden anti-socials' provide material for a type of leadership which is sociologically immature. Moreover this element in a society greatly strengthens the danger from its frank anti-social elements, especially as ordinary people so easily let those with an urge to lead get into key positions. Once in such positions, these immature leaders immediately gather to themselves the obvious anti-socials, who welcome them (the immature anti-individual leaders) as their natural masters" (ibid., 177 f.).

The impact these anti-socials have on the conspiracy of immaturity in most work enterprises is further enforced through the myth of individual self-actualization or -realization as the wide-spread and apparently exclusive source of hope individuals have of establishing meaning for their lives and surviving the overwhelming frustrations encountered in the incomprehensible, unmanageable social and political reality. "The myth of the autonomous individual has alienated many from their fellows and led them to think of themselves as atomic bits of private consciousness, turreted and protected against the encroachments of others" (Novak (1970), 19 f.).

This myth contributes to the creation of anti-social narcissism as a widely shared life style. The relationship to other individuals at the extreme is reduced to the role the nymph Echo played in the Narcissus myth: Echo was limited to the repetition of what Narcissus said. Though one may blame anti-social narcissism primarily on the wider culture, which cannot be altered but rather has to be endured, the impact an organizational culture may have on such a myth by either supporting or questioning it cannot be underestimated. It cannot be assumed that a corporate culture which is either not or only randomly managed according to the meaning it symbolizes will finally increase these anti-social tendencies, whereas a culture which incorporates a certain amount of wisdom may open up more mature forms for its members on how to manage their relationship to others, their work, and the enterprise as a whole. There is a high probability that a wise corporate culture will not only enable its particular members to live beyond limited self-realization but also to create an awareness that institutions and work enterprises can have an important impact on the meaning of one's life. "Maturity", as Guntrip ((1961), 293) states "is not equated with independence though it includes a certain capacity for independence ... The independence of the mature person is simply that he does not collapse when he has to stand alone. It is not an independence of needs for other persons with whom to have relationship: that would not be desired by the mature."

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Whether and to what extent an organization or an enterprise has an impact on the meaning assigned by its members, essentially depends on whether the corporate culture represents the dialectical symbolization which realizes the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order. A wise corporate culture which emphasizes the interrelatedness of the members of an enterprise could further contribute to overcoming the myth that the quality and the performance of a firm is primarily a matter of some superman-like individuals at the top. This myth is perpetuated by the dismissal of top executives if certain goals are not accomplished or if the results are not as satisfactory as expected. Such an "individualistic perspective" has, as Dachler ((1984), 13; cf. (1985)) stated, "enormous consequences on the approach through which business problems are investigated and explained as well as on the limited kind of solutions which can only be accepted from the narrow basis of such a perspective". As I mentioned above, this is a reproduction of the myth of the divine king or the narcissistic hero, who, as the ultimate producer of success, converts nearly all others either into creatures of the divinity or into products of his immaturity, respectively. Insofar as a corporate culture (because of its fundamental lack of wisdom) permanently creates and enforces such a superman myth, the attempt to explain the pathology of an enterprise primarily through the neurosis or irrationality of its top executive becomes understandable (Kets de Vries and Miller ((1984); cf. Kets de Vries (1984)). If, on the other hand, this explanation is claimed as generally valid, it further reifies an already reified social reality and only propagates the superman myth. Dachler ((1984), 33 f.) outlines how a myth based on an individualistic perspective can be overcome and what a consistent alternative could look like: "If human systems on a collective level show qualities which are relevant for the controlling, design and development of the whole system which can be led back to individual members or specifically identifiable groups referred to as managers, it then appears as a false strategy to assign respective activities about the design, controlling and development of enterprises 'exclusively' to managers as individuals with the assumption that one only through it would give new impulses for improvement to the 'leading force' of human systems ... Fundamentally, ways have to be found which allow the human system to elaborate for itself a higher awareness (i.e. a clearer meaning) about basic system qualities to develop on the basis of these new conceptualizations, new controlling and developing processes as well as new forms of self-organization."

Instead of deciding in favour of anyone of the leadership styles propagated in the literature or just adding some new definitions and concepts to the already existing litany of contempt and sophisticated manipulation, I would like to contribute a further dimension to the psycho-social dynamics underlying the exercise of leadership and leadership styles in work enterprises. This can be based on the above-mentioned discrimination of the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive position as found in the work of Melanie Klein (e.g. (1959); cf. Segal (1973)).

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From such a perspective, it appears that leadership in work enterprises is predominantly based on or can be seen as an expression of the paranoid-schizoid position. As Jaques ((1953), 5) stated: "In the paranoid position, the characteristic defence against anxiety is that of splitting all internal objects into good and bad, the idealization of the good, and the projection of the bad. The more intense the aggressive impulses, the more intense are the phantasies of persecution; and correspondingly, the more profound and complete the splitting, the more intense the idealization, and the greater the projection."

The fact that immature leadership sustains and reinforces this paranoid-schizoid position in work enterprises is made obvious by the enormous amount of splitting which any leadership under the conditions elaborated above is necessarily faced with. Splitting and the related contempt cause managers and workers, as 'leaders' and 'followers', to perceive each other as bad objects. Whereas management and leadership act from the more or less unspoken assumption and anxiety that their counterparts, the workers, could finally sabotage and destroy the organization because of their immaturity and selfishness (unless they were controlled and manipulated), workers as followers and subordinates accuse management of the power, disgrace, and boldness of the control and manipulation they experience daily. Both sides are able to see neither themselves nor the other part "as people ... having authority" because they "are distorted by immature reactions from the inner world of psychic compulsions" (Lawrence (1982a), 7). Thus, managers and workers alike are unable to relate to their enterprise as a whole; their predominant object relatedness is to partial objects. Although each side may, in addition to the projective identification from the other side as 'bad', try to identify itself via introjection as a good or idealized object, the predominant objectification in enterprises, nevertheless, only seems to justify and to legitimize the splitting created by those at the top. The reaction allowed the workers is then that of schizoid withdrawal as their predominant mode of relating to the conditions of work. As May ((1969), 17) puts it: "The schizoid man is the natural product of the technological man". And as Lawrence ((1984), 8) states, such a "schizoid position is held to avoid feelings of anger and depression." It also seems that this paranoid-schizoid position, which is continuously created and sustained through the predominant leadership styles, further contributes to the individualistic and anti-social tendencies of the immature employee as they were described above. The anxiety which arises out of this position causes the isolation of singletons (cf. Turquet (1974)). If every individual is mainly concerned about holding the parts inside himself together in order to sustain the social splitting processes he himself is affected by, it then becomes enormously difficult to establish any further relatedness. To the extent that employees choose or rather feel obliged to choose this solution of regressive and individualistic withdrawal, it becomes obvious that the management feels equally obliged to enforce a kind of leadership upon them through which the withdrawal is conquered, at least as

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far as the workers' relatedness to the task and/or to the machine requires it. As Novak ((1970), 97 ff.), referring to another work of May (1959) describes it, the consequence of such leadership is that people are converted into tools. And "when tools and techniques are substituted for genuine symbols, subjectivity is lost... .The trouble with the leading and most powerful symbol in American culture is that it leads a man to think of himself as an object on which tools are to be used, or as a tool to be used on other objects. Such a symbol makes human value depend on a man's usefulness; the ascription of intrinsic worth becomes impossible. It also excludes too much reality excludes experiences of honesty, courage, freedom, and community that are not adequately expressed in the language of tools and functions".

Although from the individual's stance such schizoid withdrawal may represent the last imaginable refuge to secure one's independence, in terms of social consequences, it finally only contributes to creating and increasing the dependency through which the subordinates are imprisoned by leadership based on power instead of authority. And in the face of such a collusion, the attempt to blame the social system, either the work enterprise or society, for this alienation cannot be a solution because "alienation projected onto the system is evasion. It evades a more terrifying emptiness" (Novak (1970), 7). The predominant paranoid-schizoid basis of leadership in organizations can also be explained in the context of the previously stated two fundamental realizations which every attempt at institutionalization and mythologization has to take into account. It is the exclusive regard of the endurance of the social order which leaders traditionally symbolize and control, and which create and nurture paranoid-schizoid anxieties. If the endurance of the work enterprise is seen as the only reliable object and if its immortality has become the only goal to which the traditional manager can meaningfully contribute in order to ensure his own survival, then the possible loss of this object or its destruction must raise enormous anxieties, which, if they cannot be contained by the individual manager and his inner world, consequently have to be projected onto the workers. The more the immortality of the firm becomes idealized as an object, the less it enables the traditional manager to put any significance on the second fundamental realization: the inevitability of his own as well as of the workers' death. Admitting any individual mortality regardless of whether it is his own or others' would raise enormous depressive anxieties which finally may confront him with his own inadequacy, worthlessness, and guilt feelings. From such a perspective the traditional manager does not have any other choice but to overidentify himself with his leadership role because that is the only chance he has to actualize strength and immortality for himself by simultaneously projecting all his weaknesses and destructive tendencies onto the workers. Through overidentification, he reduces the distance between himself as a person and his role so much that he finally becomes what he represents, i.e., an object in its reified sense which only differs from the objectification of the workers as his

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counterparts by the fact that the latter may be regarded as a tool, whereas the former is more representative of the motor which keeps the machines running. If, on the contrary, the manager accepted weakness as a dimension of his identity, it would mean that he has failed as a manager, whereas acknowledging his own destructiveness could not only include an attack on the culture of the enterprise but finally even doubting the meaning of a system to which he has devoted his life. As Becker ((1973), 213) puts it: "If your god is discredited, you yourself die." Therefore, the traditional manager is only able to deny for himself the fact that "the individual is engaged in a life-long struggle against anxiety" (Menzies (1965), 194), if he succeeds in maintaining the paranoidschizoid position for himself as well as for the corporate culture. This may not be done without a permanent experience of stress, but it at least makes one superior to the weakness which comes from anxieties. If one, however, does not share the plausibility such a psycho-logic propagates and if, consequently, one is convinced of the immature implications and results this traditional myth of management and leadership sustains, then the question necessarily has to be raised how the "life-long struggle against anxiety" (ibid.) can be more maturely managed and what its consequences for organizational leadership would be. An answer to this question may be found if one takes a further look at the depressive position and the possibilities it offers for the management of anxieties. As Lawrence et al. ((1975), 98) state: "There is a good deal of evidence of managers having heart attacks in enterprises. In some firms we were given an amount of the incidence of coronaries in managers, though death is for the most a taboo subject. Coronaries are mentioned to give a sense of the demands that a firm makes on the individual: for some, the ultimate sacrifice."

As the concern of this essay is not the potential pathology of individuals but rather the psycho-social dynamics of organizations in order to get a better understanding of how mature forms of leadership can be comprehended, it needs to be emphasized that the focus of the following thoughts is not the depressive or melancholic individual in his special kind of insane entanglement with guilt feelings and self-punishment. By the depressive position, I refer to the normal phase of an infant's development as it corresponds to the paranoid-schizoid position described by Melanie Klein. I also use this concept as a frame of reference through which the majority of the members of a social system can be perceived according to the style the individuals choose and/or with which they are forced to manage their roles related to the anxieties of their lives. That it is the social role which has a crucial impact on how an individual copes with depression on the transference level between the inner and the outer world was also emphasized by Becker ((1973), 214 ff.), who sees in the "accent on social role ... the key to the syndrome ... because it is the superordinate level of the problems that absorbs the bodily level" (ibid., 216 f.).

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The depressive position or 'depressivity', as Lapierre ((1986), 9; cf. (1988)) referring to Bergeret (1976) calls it, can be described as "the ability to mourn omnipotence and magic thinking, to mourn the omnipotent control of the object, the ability to accept our faults and our limitations, to integrate these with our abilities and our assets in our practice (our faults may even transform into assets). It is the necessity to accept a human reality which is always imperfect and shaky. It is the capacity to accept oneself, to abandon oneself to what one really is, and thus it presupposes abilities of introspection and integration. It is the ability to recognize one's own psychic reality, the ability to return to and live within the real world after having lived within one's imagination, the ability to develop and to realise one's visions and projections in one's works and practice. This ability seems to me to be based in the capacity to accept the original human weakness, the prototype of all the others: that of being mortal." Whereas the paranoid-schizoid position can be related to the endurance of the social order in the immortality of the firm, the depressive position contains the management of anxieties connected with the inevitability of individual death. From such a perspective, depression and melancholy as a kind of insanity may be seen as the inability of the individual to cope in a mature way with the fact that he or she finally has to die. As Becker ((1973), 210 ff.) so powerfully described it, such depression is the fate into which the immature hero manoeuvres himself "when the average person can no longer convincingly perform his safe heroics or cannot hide his failure of depression and its terrible guilt" (ibid., 212). The psycho-logical calculation underlying such a fate is that "even if one is a very guilty hero he is at least a hero in the same hero-system" (ibid., 213). "With guilt you loose some of your life but avoid the greater evil of death" (ibid., 213 f.). Although this may be primarily the description of insanity we are all affected by it at some point. As Becker (ibid., 255) puts it at the beginning of the final chapter of his 'Denial of Death': "Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula." Again, this is the myth of the divine king through which primarily top managers establish their immortality formula. It, therefore, can be assumed that the execution of traditional leadership as the predominant mode by which the paranoid-schizoid position in a work enterprise is objectified ultimately finds its legitimation via deification. "The leader becomes a symbol to his followers of the long-sought-after, and for common mortals never attainable, state of final independence. He appears to need nobody and thus seems the possessor of the envied ability to attain complete mastery and control over his environment. The leader and his followers will have a repressive experience resembling a return to a state of childlike bliss in which fantasies of omnipotence and of being taken care of play a major role. The parallel with early childhood is striking. Power, apparently,

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not only 'corrupts' but may lead to a regression to attachment-type behavior which is itself based on early interaction patterns between mother and child ... The belief as the part of the followers in the leader's omnipotence will reinforce the leader's illusions of grandeur and will strengthen his self-love, a process which will, in turn, strengthen the dependency needs of the follower. Omnipotence becomes a 'self-fulfilling prophecy', and during the operation of this process, nothing is off limits; everything is allowed" (Kets de Vries (1980), 75).

The depressive position is then left for and taken over by the middle management and the workers in particular. Although it may sound rather silly, it is the myth of the hero which is left as their source of identification for those at the middle and at the bottom. It is, for instance, the image of the 'bookkeeper-of-the-month' or the highest daily number of pieces at a certain machine through which "poor Mr. Average Man ... (is) daily trying to negotiate a semblance of tranquil heroism by embedding himself in the power of others" (Becker (1973), 211). Though primarily the workers in an enterprise often do not seem to have any other choice than sink into a position of depression, it is supposed to be management's task to invent and to install mechanisms to prevent those at the bottom from becoming depressed. Otherwise such an experience would be dysfunctional in so far as it diminishes the performance and the effectivity of the enterprise. In contrast to the immortality formula of top management, which is derived from the immortality of firm, the corresponding formula for the workers is objectified via reification, their inability to die is based on a substitute, i.e. the non-mortality of things. And in so far as both these formulas, regardless of whether they are based on the assumption of immortality or non-mortality, are fictions, they are obviously serving its purpose well. The logic on which they are based nevertheless appears similar to the one which underlies a custom practiced by the pharaos in ancient Egypt, who were buried in the pyramids with their servants. Although they did not share the immortality of the pharao, the servants were supposed to attend him after their own physical death. But what has been stated above as the wisdom of the corporate culture in a work enterprise obviously has to incorporate another quality and be based on another vision of man and the world than that of ancient Egypt. If the wisdom of an organizational culture is certified through the dialectical representation of endurance and mortality, the predominant leadership of an enterprise then necessarily has to be based on a more mature form of integrating the paranoid and depressive positions. Since a wise culture has to symbolize the potential ability of all employees to be mature, it also has to provide the preconditions for such a maturity. As Winnicott ((1950), 177) stated: "The healthy person, who is capable of becoming depressed, is able to find the whole conflict within the self as well as being able to see the whole conflict outside the self, in external (shared) reality." Thus a culture which is qualified as wise by virtued managing leadership has to challenge the individual employees as the agents of mature leadership to become the healthy person described by Winnicott. As individuals, they therefore have to

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be acknowledged as being capable of managing both their own individual paranoid and depressive parts as well as those which are contained in the enterprise as their relevant external reality in the context of their working roles. Similar to Melanie Klein's (in: Riviere (1952), 294; quoted from Guntrip (1961), 237) statement on the development of the child, the integration of the depressive position into a work enterprise and its leadership in particular is central for organizational development: "With the introjection of the object as a whole the infant's object-relation alters fundamentally. The synthesis between the loved and the hated aspects of the complete object gives rise to feelings of mourning and guilt which imply vital advances in the infant's emotional and intellectual life."

In contrast to the emblems which traditionally decorate work enterprises, the banner that could symbolically wave over an enterprise qualified by the real wisdom of its culture has to carry two slogans: "We shall overcome!" and "We shall die!". If Wolf's ((1983b), 153) statement is accurate that we often tend to believe what we see and not what we know, then a wise corporate culture must also make visible what we know. Insofar as the management philosophy of an enterprise (as the codification of its leadership) does not limit the organizational reality to individual reality, (cf. Milgram (1974)) and if a management philosophy is to contain what it stands for, i.e. a philosophy, it then not only has to imply meaning and culture which are genuine philosophical dimensions, but the philosophy also has to be based on certain choices. Among these the most crucial decision obviously has to be made about leading itself and its relationship to following. In contrast to the traditional image of a leader which resembles the ancient warrior or commander-in-chief whose success was measured by the amount of culture he destroyed in his various campaigns, the primary goal of leadership in an enterprise is the maintenance and development of its culture. This requires that through an enterprise's culture and its meaning, an acceptable vision of what its members can potentially be must be revised. Although this may seem to be a problem which every enterprise, regardless of whether it pursues a homified concept of man and social reality or not, has to solve in order to receive the intended contributions from its members, such a reduction of social contingency requires quite different means if it is to be accomplished in a wise manner. Whereas according to the traditional orientation of management and leadership this is primarily done by selection, specification, and limitation on the basis of individual behavior and of job requirements on the workers' level or by tight hierarchical control on middle management levels, the paradigm here propagated necessitates a search for qualitatively different solutions. As Berg ((1985), 298) puts it, "by definition, a corporate culture cannot be pressed down upon a collective, nor can it be controlled or manipulated at will". In comparison to the traditional orientation which intends to eliminate any behav-

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ioral variance and redundancy as a potential factor of disorder and disturbance, leadership-of-oneself-in-role has to give much more space to individuation as "the process through which a social system develops its potential and reaches qualitatively higher levels of functioning" (ibid., 296). Whereas in the former case individual behavior has to be limited according to tight and concrete standards, individual management and leadership in the latter case, in addition to specified tasks and boundaries on the immediate work group level, requires more of a horizon of meaningful possibilities from which the individual employee can make his own choices regarding relationships to others. To establish a culture of wisdom in a work enterprise includes a strategic change which may by far surmount the effort, time span, and consequences of those strategic changes which are traditionally oriented toward the external environment of markets. Such a strategic change, however, as with any social change "inescapably starts with self', as Lawrence and Miller ((1976), 365) wrote or as Rice ((1970), 90) expresses it in the following: "It is ... unfortunately true that innovation and change seldom appear to result from democratic process. Innovation and change occur when creative men and women exercise leadership." The decision for such a strategic change cannot be made unless some wise leaders in an enterprise find the courage to initiate it; the accomplishment of such an organizational change is quite a venture. It obviously cannot be achieved with a declaration of wisdom; although it may be helpful as a first symbolic step towards new frontiers, it requires a careful exploration of an enterprise's present cultural state as well as the development of a collective imagination to discover what else might be needed in the future. One can imagine the extent of such a cultural change by considering how Jaques ((1952), 251), who was among the first social scientists to discover its significance for organizational theory and practice, describes the concept of culture: "The culture of the factory is its customry and traditional way of thinking and of doing things, which is shared to a greater or lesser degree by all its members, and which new members must learn, and at least partially accept, in order to be accepted into service in the firm. Culture in this sense covers a wide range of behavior: the methods of production; job skills and technical knowledge; attitudes towards discipline and punishment; the customs and habits of managerial behavior; the objectives of the concern; its way of doing business; the methods of payment; the values placed on different types of work; beliefs in democratic living and joint consultation; and the less conscious conventions and taboos.... The culture of the factory consists of the means and techniques which lie at the disposal of the individual for handling his relationships, and on which he depends for making his way among, and with, other members and groups."

The implications an organizational culture has for the whole reality of an enterprise may evoke resignation or even despair when considering the vision of wisdom of the corporate culture and first steps towards its implementation have to be planned and realized. But because the conscious investigation of traditional organizational culture and its underlying objectifications and contempt, including the resulting

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pain and resignation, also lead one to despair, the only other choice remaining is to get rid of experience by enforcing the respective immature defences on the individual and collective levels. On the other hand, to accept despair, even if it seems to cause pain and hopelessness, may be the first step with which mature men and women can finally establish a base of wisdom upon which new hope can be created and from which strategic change may originate. Then wisdom may prove to actually have the power ascribed to it in the biblical Wisdom of Solomon (10, 21): "Wisdom taught the dumb to speak, and made the tongues of infants eloquent."

The Range of Wisdom and its Impact on Management Development

Analogous to the differentiation of Managing and Leading into logical levels, a discrimination between levels of wisdom may be made. At first glance, one is attempted to reject dividing wisdom into levels, because the meaning of the term wisdom seems to exclude compartmentalization or fragmentation. Wisdom usually represents a holistic meta-quality and therefore seems to defy analysis and differentiation into logical categories. That wisdom is regarded as a quality or a state of existence rather than a process is reinforced by the fact that even the verb is missing to express the attempt of putting wisdom into action. I assume that the following logical categorization of Wisdom will not be regarded as coming from a wiseacre. Analogous to Bateson's (1972a) logical categories of Learning, various levels of Wisdom can be differentiated in relation to its specific system references. The logical category of Wisdom should be regarded as the specific quality which modalizes experience on a particular level, i.e., that in comparison to the logical categories of Managing and Leading the category of Wisdom has to be understood as meta-modalization through which underlying processes are further specified and qualified. (In order to be logically 'accurate' it has to be said that Wisdom is a meta-meta-modalization because the experience which is qualified through wisdom is in itself a modalization of the underlying experience through which an action is certified as experientially relevant.) Wisdom I, therefore, can be defined as the process through which a mature individual modalizes either his own experience or that of others from a dimension of meaning beyond the immediate situational context. Wisdom II is the process through which on a work group level, for instance, the experience of mutual relatedness to others, the primary task and the group's boundaries is qualified. Wisdom on this level stems "from the relationships and pooled resources of the people in their environment" (Jones and Riach (1985), 258). Wisdom III is the process through which, in the case of a work enterprise, an organization's corporate culture is qualified as wise. This refers to a further dimension of Wisdom, Wisdom IV, which relates to customers, markets, resources and politics, and Wisdom V which includes wider issues like one's own life, mankind, the world, and ultimately the cosmos. Wisdom III conceptualizes management and leadership as a vision for lower logical levels in a 'wise' enterprise. Wisdom III also contains the potential maturity

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of every employee as the predominant fiction for any further attempt to design and structure the system as a whole or its subsystems. Like democracy, as elucidated by Winnicott (1950), Wisdom III has to bridge the gap that in reality neither all employees are mature nor is every action of a mature employee necessarily mature. As far as an enterprise's leadership as the management of meaning is concerned, Wisdom III can be seen as the symbolization of the postulate that the leaders of a work enterprise - regardless of the level on which they exercise leadership and despite the fact that particular leadership activities may be more an expression of regression rather than of maturity - are supposed and sanctioned to be mature and even committed to Wisdom. Wisdom on this level has the function of establishing the meaningful paradox that though the actions of some employees cannot be regarded as mature, the organizational design and its structures, processes, etc. nevertheless have to be built and maintained on the assumption that employees are mature. Establishing a wise paradox an enterprise then would allow quite different processes of control and investigation from what is usually applied in organizations. Whereas controlling is the planning and steering function of a business' monetary and other resources that occurs in the two other dimensions of management, i.e., the material and the functional dimension with no further implications for the management of meaning, the 'control of wisdom and maturity' could add a new and probably revolutionary dimension to an enterprise's management of meaning. The 'control of wisdom' in a firm would not only allow its members to become aware of the gap which exists between the corporate culture's maturity, wisdom, and sanctions on the one side and the possible lack of wisdom and lesser maturity in specific work groups (or other subsystems) on the other side. It would also lead to further analysis and investigation of the cause of such a cultural lack and the implications and consequences it could have for other systems in the internal and external environment of an enterprise. It is obvious that 'control of wisdom' can only be pursued from a system's perspective if the control itself can be certified as wise. There can also be no doubt that such a system perspective has to be socio-technical: in addition to controlling's traditional economic and technical orientation, it not only takes the social dimension of an enterprise into account but also the interrelatedness of these and other dimensions. Further, it must include an ecosystemic perspective. Instead of explaining variation in an enterprise's performance and effectivity by the limited or missing qualities of certain individuals or employees (cf. Chattopadhyay (1989), 14), an explanation which usually leads to the scrutinization of particular persons and possibly even to their dismissal, the 'control of wisdom' is concerned with systemic interpretations which can only be produced through mutual exploration. In order to prevent misunderstanding, systemic exploration as an expression of the 'control of wisdom' cannot be accomplished rationally, as is characteristic for traditional controlling. It has to include an exploration of how a system's meaning is managed by leadership and how, therefore, discrepancies in

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its lower logical levels can be perceived and explained. This process, which itself should be qualified as wise, also has to include an investigation of how (from a system's perspective) feelings, anxieties, and hopes as individual and collective social expressions are managed. As far as the lowest logical levels of Managing and Leading are concerned, i.e., the way in which individuals manage and lead themselves in their various roles, this could - in contrast to personal scrutinization - mean that a particular role is the basis of mutual investigation and exploration and not the individual personality who occupies it. Exploration on a role level, a 'Role Review' (Lawrence et al. ((1975), 180)) or 'Organizational Role Analysis' (cf. Auer-Hunzinger and Sievers (1991); Berry and Tate (1988); Hirschhorn (1985); Reed (1976); Weigand and Sievers (1986)) puts the emphasis on diagnosis and on potential changes in the surrounding social system so that at higher logical levels (Managing II - IV, Leading II -IV), it can be owned and monitored on behalf of a collective authority and responsibility. Through systemic exploration on a role level, it can be investigated how and to what extent the allocation of this role to a particular individual is an expression of how a work group acts out its collective regression and immaturity (cf. Bion (1961)), what the impact of other immaturely managed aspects on the whole-enterprise level is, and whether they are incorporated into certain interfaces of subsystems, into the way the company's products are marketed, or into the predominant management development pattern. The emphasis on systemic exploration of lack of maturity and wisdom does not mean that the impact an individual and his or her maturity potential has on the quality which manages a specific role should be completely disregarded. This would lead the underlying paradigm, i.e. the concept of management and leadership of oneself in role, to a reductio. What will be elucidated here is that the intention to turn traditional management upside down (or what Marx stated in his controversy with Hegel as the attempt to turn the argument from its head back to its feet), finally depends on a contingent change of the reference system which explains managerial and leadership behavior. In contrast to the traditional orientation of management, where employees can advance based on particular skills, knowledge, and leadership abilities, the paradigm here propagated is based on the opposite conviction. Similar to the idea that an enterprise gets the consultants it deserves, it may be said that an enterprise will only have those managers and leaders which it deserves. That means that the maturity and wisdom with which every employee can potentially manage his or her role is primarily a matter of how maturity and wisdom are managed at the logically higher levels and from the third level in particular. As a final consequence, this requires that the maturity an individual employee can incorporate and invest in his role is primarily a matter of the collective aspirations which the work group on behalf of the whole enterprise sustains and sanctions, regarding how a particular role should be performed. This does not, however, exclude further exploration of how the fit between an individual and his or her particular role or role-set is actually managed and

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qualified. But how this will be done is again primarily a matter of how the individual management of an enterprise's employees is managed from the higher logical levels and by the collective plausibility structures. If the exploration of the particular interface between an individual and his/her role is to include more than just the scrutiny or the personalization of failures, although they were caused by mismanagement of the social system, it has to be placed into the individual's hands as his/her own authority and responsibility. This does not mean that any exploration of this fit and its possible improvements happens arbitrarily based on whether a person is mature enough to explore it with relevant others or not. It is a matter of mature 'mechanisms' and the accompanying sanctions managed from the higher logical levels whether an individual will be challenged to use such an opportunity for his/her own process of maturing or whether it will be seen as a continuation of the traditional 'cycle of arrogation', through which, as Lawrence et al. ((1975), 101 ff.) described it, immature employees are adopted like children and are either continuously reconfirmed in their childishness or are nurtured and develop until they are "ready for adult (top management) status" (ibid., 101). Although such a paradigm and its implications might be accused of utopianism, it nevertheless does not pursue the same vision outlined by George Orwell in his 'Animal Farm'. This paradigm is not based on the assumption that "all animals are equal". Homification as the underlying vision of man is based on the assumption that men and women in work enterprises have to be liberated and to liberate themselves from imprisonment by the predominant deifications and reifications. This can only be accomplished by becoming aware of their own mortality as the precondition of any humanity. The reality that we all have to die constitutes equality as it was expressed in the French Revolution, in addition to solidarity and social relatedness, the fraternity myth allows the fact that as brothers we are also different. Some or many 'brothers' are, in fact, sisters. Differences exist in age, education, training etc., and in people's aspirations and the extent to which they are prepared to devote their lives to meaning. These are some of the reasons that contribute to the fact that, as Winnicott ((1950), 184) stated, "the personality has a limit... It is not possible for persons to get further in society-building than they can get with their own personal development." Thus, analogous to democracy, the wisdom of a corporate culture cannot be built on the actual maturity and wisdom of all its employees; it is instead based on their maturity potential. That also means that human beings at different times in their lives have different capabilities, in general, and different degrees of maturity, in particular. Therefore, it must be management and leadership's responsibility, on the higher logical levels, to allocate individuals to certain roles which fit their personal development. In these roles on the second and the third levels, they should be concerned with and symbolize the authority and responsibility needed to collectively manage meaning on behalf of a particular subsystem or of the enterprise as a whole. Delegating crucial roles and the accompanying authority to people who, in their

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individual development, represent supermen, instant heroes, or mavericks rather than mature persons cannot be seen as a challenge or proof for further career opportunities. Rather, it is an inconsiderate or irresponsible risk which can easily jeopardize or destroy the maturity and the wisdom of a corporate culture. The promotion of immature individuals into roles which are crucial for the corporate management of meaning is the predominant 'mechanism' which perpetuates the widespread immaturity in many work enterprises. The predominant myth of management development perpetuates and sustains immaturity and consequently reduces or eliminates any hope in mature employees, regardless of whether they are 'managers' or 'workers' (cf. Lawrence (1977)). A corporate culture of wisdom can only be established and sustained if the promotion of employees to higher logical levels of management and leadership is accompanied by corresponding respective personal development and maturing. It also requires that the leadership roles on the higher logical levels of an enterprise be occupied by relatively mature individuals to allow the corporate culture to become wise. From such a perspective, the suggestion of a 'meta-executive system' (Lawrence et al. ((1975), 174) is fascinating. These researchers use this expression as "a term to reflect the ideal leadership role of the top management of a company as it assesses future possibilities in relation to the past and present experiences and realities of the enterprise." This expression is also relevant to 'top management' and 'top executives' as understood in the paradigm of managementof-oneself-in-roles. It "refers to that part of management which is less concerned with the day-to-day running of the plant or enterprise, but is more committed to the totality of the enterprise, both as it is and could become. It is a sub-role of our third kind of management. This management system identifies with the meta-enterprise by holding in mind the history of the enterprise, its state as it is at present, and what futures it might have. The meta-executive system will shape the history of the enterprise by assessing the realities of the enterprise in relation to its environment. The meta-executive system is analoguous to the ego of the individual and is that part of management which is consistently on the boundary of the enterprise, straddling both the inside and outside environments" (ibid.).

Especially through the reference to the future and the past of an enterprise, these authors add a further dimension to wisdom which has not been stressed enough to date. Instead of exclusively pursuing continuous growth as the goal the integration of present, past and future creates the wisdom of the corporate culture. The former may also abstract the ongoing attempts of objectification by which people are reified into human resources and as an investment for the future. The awareness of a differentiated time horizon distinguishes mortals from non-mortals. Simmel ((1911), 246), in his 'Philosophical Culture' stated: "All things inanimate only have the present moment, whereas the living incorporate in an unique way both past and future."

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The incorporation of wisdom into an enterprise's corporate culture cannot finally succeed unless the chosen role perspective of management and leadership is extended by additional institutionalization. Therefore, I would like to propagate a process of social experimentation undertaken by Lawrence (1980b) and another group of colleagues in a coating factory in the U. K.. With the support of representatives from management and the workforce, an intermediate temporary system called 'System Future' installed as a kind of forum in which the present state as well as the future of the enterprise could be explored and visioned. This would allow the development of new institutionalizations that would allow a better fit with management-of-oneself-in-role which at least some of the employees share with the external consultants. Although in this particular case the two parts of the enterprise primarily acted out their collusion, which Lawrence (ibid., 82) called 'the politics of dissociation', this experiment seems to include a further step towards new ways of institutionalizing wisdom on the corporate level. Similarly, a colleague and I worked for quite some time as consultants in a counselling and therapeutic institution towards creating and institutionalizing systemic wisdom. In addition to a longer lasting attempt of collectively exploring the institution in a large group setting (cf. Kreeger (1975)) which potentially included all of the more than fifty employees, we started to work with them on their fantasies and perspectives about the future development and design of their institution. As explicitly contracted, this collective attempt at new perspectives was made on the condition that for the limited time of exploration, no decisions on realizing these perspectives were to be made. In contrast to the past when, if there had been any collective wisdom at all, it had been exclusively projected onto the role and person of the director, a number of individuals discovered previously unthought dimensions of reality. Through an ongoing reintegration of the past and the future as well as through relating their roles to both the inner and the outer world, they individually and collectively learned to look at their experiences from a perspective of increased wisdom. A crucial precondition for the change in this particular case, however, was the fact that a considerable number of individuals had previously accepted the invitation to explore with one of the consultants their roles as the dimension through which they manage themselves in relation to the work institution. Members who had not yet done role consultation expressed that the members who had explored their roles "obviously had discovered their own authority and had found their voice as a member". The sketch of these two cases shows that mature members of an organization are capable of discovering and managing meaning and wisdom inside themselves, contrary to the traditionally biased perspective that places these qualities in the top management or its hierarchical equivalent. These and similar 'experiments' need time to individually and collectively overcome traditionally nurtured immaturity and to discover wisdom as a potential dimension of an enterprise. Further experiments may lead to more optimism that through this paradigm further leading steps can be discovered and relegated to mankind's museum of utopia.

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Instead of imprisoning ourselves in past managerial and organizational concepts of social reality in work enterprises, progress towards homification of life in general and working life in particular has to start with the willingness and courage for new social experience. If we succeed in modalizing these experiences via wisdom, this may lead us to new concepts and theories which are capable of expressing and symbolizing its implied homification. In this sense, the action research which a collective search for homified concepts and theories requires has to start from new kinds of action. The wisdom which can then hopefully be discovered to manage the meaning of a work enterprise has to be put into action before it can be incorporated either into a corporate culture or into more sophisticated theories of organization. Though in western countries and industries times may neither be very supportive for the discovery of wisdom for practitioners, social scientists, and consultants who sincerely struggle towards homification of work enterprises it has to be repeated that "social change inescapably starts with self. It requires the individual to re-examine the boundary between inside and outside and to take a different and riskier stance towards his environment. This is not to imply that he may not work for change in concert with others" (Lawrence and Miller (1976), 365).

Though even in the cases mentioned above and in most future social experiments it has probably never been explicitly stated that they aim for new ways of management development, there can be no doubt that they can also be seen as remarkable new signs in developing more mature and wiser perspectives on promoting the management of oneself in roles to higher logical levels. To what extent the contemporary myths of management development and its application actually reinforce immaturity and the cycle of arrogation has already been elaborated by Lawrence et al. ((1975); cf. Lawrence (1977)). Although this research was limited to work enterprises in the United Kingdom, there is enough evidence that their results can be generalized (with slight variations) for the majority of western management development approaches. As these researchers state, the approaches of providing career opportunities and of getting people to climb the corporate ladder are not only nearly exclusively based on the rationality of scientific management, they also propagate an image of the developmental pattern for managers which was described by one of their respondents as the 'Pygmalion Theory of Management Development' (Lawrence et al. (1975), 99; cf. Eden (1984)). According to this theory, the role of senior management is often limited to that of 'grandfathers', who through "the most often employed method of counselling for management development in organizations" (Lawrence et al. (1975), 95) attempt to convert junior managers, "like Eliza Dolittle", into their successors "as persons of talent who are able to exercise their will, make decisions, and continue to manage the enterprise into an uncertain future" (ibid., 99). The authors suppose "that the banking concept of education is the organizing model" (ibid., 93) for managing the conversion process of junior

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managers into seniors. The model is built on the accumulation of knowledge, competence, and experience. It is limited to the management of the material and functional dimensions of an enterprise with no concern for meaning. In addition, the experience which a junior manager acquires on his way to seniority is seldom if ever qualified on a meta-level. The greenhorn, as Bauer ((1985), 30) put it, just "has to learn that it is the duration of an experience which lets an experience become the principal for action." The preceding makes it clear that management development has to be conceptualized quite differently. If management development is seen as the pattern by which 'management' is supposed to be managed, it then, from the standpoint of its function, has to be understood as a further modalization of managerial action and experience on the first and the second logical levels. In comparison to traditional management development, the new paradigm implies that all employees are potentially capable of managing their own management development. Instead of providing external training and education courses, the opportunity and challenge to grow and mature with one's individual management has to be part of the work role. Management development must be regarded as a part of an enterprise's culture. It has to recognize that, as people mature, they gain the ability to manage themselves in managerial and leadership roles on a higher logical level. It obviously requires a mature and wise corporate culture to convince individuals that the development of self-management is embedded in the development of the surrounding organization towards higher degrees of social maturity and collective wisdom. The main 'mechanisms' which steer these developmental processes from the third level of Managing and Leading are institutionalized processes of deobjectifying the reified and deified realities of the inner and the outer world. They also re-examine the myths on which these realities are built and through which they are either sustained or can be altered. Whether an enterprise will finally be able to substitute the perpetuation of immaturity with a perpetuation of maturity and wisdom depends on its ability to homify the reality of its employees and of its collective social reality. The culture of wisdom therefore, finally has to incorporate what may be the ultimate source and result of wisdom: the paradox that although the social order of the enterprise theoretically endures, the death of its members is inevitable. To yet again quote King Solomon (The Wisdom of Solomon (6, 21)): "If, therefore, you value your thrones and your sceptres, you rulers of the nations, you must honour wisdom, so that you may reign forever."

That any attempt to accomplish and to manage wisdom, however, eventually appears to be risky and frightening is expressed by Otto Rank ((1958), 276): "This is the meaning of the old traditional wisdom, that he who sees the truth must die, because the truth is not only a rational comprehension or interpretation of life but includes -

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must include if it be truth - its irrational forces, which destroy the very instrument of the truth-seeker."

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Author Index

Adams, G. B. 86f„ 89,181 Adomo, T. W. 182,239 Aktouf, O. 75f. 85,90 Alderfer, C. P. 4 Anders, G. 80f. Andrassik, F. 231 Ansari, M. A. 5, 234 Argyris, C. 6, 53,162, 199, 201 Aries, P. 148f. Asplund, C. J. 284 Assmann, J. 129 Auer-Hunzinger, V. 121, 305 Bail, B. W. 236 Baltes, P. B. 259 Bamforth, K. 229 Bandura, A. 231 Bar-On, D. 10,259,277 Bateson, G. 31, 93, 232f„ 244, 264, 270, 279, 289, 303 Batista, J. 43,181 Baudrillard, J. 22 Bauer, W. M. 309 Baum, M. 83 Baxter, B. 210 Beach, D. S. 50 Beavin, J. H. 279 Becker, E. 99, 104, 110, 113 - 115, 126, 164f„ 170, 186f„ 189, 192, 219, 275, 297 - 299 Becker, W. S. 3 Bell, D. 194 Bendix, R. 201f. Bensman, J. 70 Beradt, C. 274 Berg, P.O. 300f.

Berger, B. 81 Berger, J. 42,282 Berger, P. L. 5, 24, 30, 64, 81, 166, 171, 178f„ 182, 192, 202 Bergeret, J. 298 Berham, P. 36, 68f„ 242, 297, 305 - 307, 309 Berry, T. 305 Bettelheim, B. 32,235 Bion, W. R. X, XII, 16, 66, 71, 92, 140, 203, 238, 305 Blackburn, R. M. 21 Blackler, F. 7 Blake, R. R. 122 Blanchard, K. 57, 162 Bleakley, A. 6,274 Bloch, E. 260 - 263, 268 - 270, 273, 277 Blomberg, S. 282 Blumenberg, H. 130,181,185 Bolle De Bal, M. 49f. Borneman, E. 128f. Bougon, M. G. 30 Bourdieu, P. 288 Bowles, M. L. 181, 191, 273, 275f. Bramel, D. 6 Braverman, H. 27,201,235 Breitschwerdt, W. 87 Briefs, U. 51 Broadbent, J. XIII, 41, 252 Bröckermann, R. 162 Broms, H. 181,262 Brown, C. A. 7 Brown, N. O. 22,99,189 Bryman, A. 169 Buber, M. 33,249 Buhner, R. 57

342 Bultman, R. 181 Burrell, G. 198,231 Calas, M. B. 161, 163,198, 248 Calogeras, R. C. 87 Campbell, J. XVI, 22f„ 99,186,191,220, 223f., 232, 276, 282 Campbell, J. P. 3 , 8 Camus, A. 63, 70,138,145, 147 Carlisle, H. M. 50 Carter, P. 52 Chagall, M. 235 Chamberlain, N. W. 17 Chandy, P. R. 22 Chanlat, A. 76 Chattopadhyay, G. P. 234, 238, 304 Chesler, P. 15 If. Clark, J. V. 231 Cleverlegg, G. 23 Comblin, J. 146 Comby, J. 146 Conrad, J. XIII, 40, 252 Cooper, C. L. 7 Cooper, R. 7, 84, 209f„ 215, 231 - 247, 263 - 265,270, 273,288 Cornelius, S. W. 259 Cox, C. 7 Culbert, S. A. 4 Cummings, L. L. 5 Dachler, H. P. 4, 50,160f., 198, 276,294 Dahrendorf, R. 166 Darrow, C. N. 180, 193,195, 287 De Board, R. 93 De Man, H. 30 Deal, T. E. 34, 192, 248 Deci, E. L. 3 Denhardt, R. B. 100, 110, 116, 198 Derrida, J. 216 Dewisme, C.-H. 268 Di Martino, V. 50 Diamond, M. A. 199 Dibb, M. 282 Dickson, D. 12f„ 17, 52, 78f., 125, 164 Dods worth, T. 162 Douellon, A. 30 Drucker, P. F. 117 Dubin, R. 72,259

Author Index Dünne, J. S. 22, 99, 118, 135, 141, 143, 190f„ 193, 218 Dunnette, M. D. 3 Dürkheim, E. 12,101,111 Dyllick, T. 246 Ebers, M. 248 Eden, D. 309 Eiden, J. M. 96,253 Elias, N. 24,27,36,42,96,147,154,183, 210, 235, 263, 273 Eliot, T. S. VII, 1,47, 143, 153,156, 226, 257 Emery, M. 276 Enderle, G. 161 Erdheim, M. 178f. Ewers, H.H. 212 Fairbain, W. R. D. 207 Fairfield-Sonn, J. W. 160 Fengler, J. 181 Festinger, L. 195 Fiedler, F. E. 288 Flamholtz, E. G. 80 Forster, W. 247 Foster, M. 42, 45, 50, 94, 95f., 230, 240, 243 Foucault, M. 272,275 Fox, C. 282 Freire, P. 278 French, W. 159 Frenkel-Brunswik, E. 239 Freud, S. 102,113 Freund, P. 102 Friedman, T. 147 Friend, R. 6 Fromm, E. 7, 124,179 Frost, P. J. 248 Furth, P. 193 Gabriel, Y. 248 Gadalla, I. E. 232, 247, 263 - 265,270 Gagliardi, P. 110 Gahmberg, H. 181,262 Garrison, S. L. 22 Garson, G. D. 51 Geck, L. H.A. 10 Gerver, J. 70

343

Author Index Gherardi, S. 49 Goffee, R. 196 Goffmann, E. 31,84 Gouldner, A. W. 168 Graves, R. 127 Gray, B. 30 Greenberg, E. S. 49 Greenberg, J. R. 204 Grimm, J. 190 Grinberg, L. 210 Grosskurth, P. 204 Grotstein, J. S. XII Grunwald, W. 171,175 Guest, D. 90 Guggenberger, B. 221 Guntrip, H. 203, 213, 290f., 293, 300 Gustafsson, C. 191 Habermas, J. 261 Hales, M. 10,24,27,36,198 Haley, J. 279 Hampden-Tumer, C. 192 Haney, W. H. 162 Haraszti, M. 75 Harman, L. P. 178 Harms, J. 270 Harrison, R. 44 Hartfelder, D. 36 Hearn, J. 198 Heidegger, M. 150 Heimberg, J. S. 231 Heller, R. 163 Helmer, K. 185 Henne, D. 3 Henss, K. 88 Herbst, P. G. 5,251,268 Herlihy, D. 12 Hersey, P. 52, 162 Hill, W. 28 Hillman, J. 274 Hinz, E. J. 168, 215, 235f. Hirschhorn, L. 305 Hodgkinson, C. 6,159, 164,239 Hoebeke, L. 18 Hofstede, G. 7,50,209 Holbrock, D. 6, 33, 249, 251, 284 Holler, M.J. 63,97

Hollis, R. 282 Hollway, W. 19,69,83 Hopfl, H. 116 Horkheimer, M. 182 House, R. J. 168 Huntington, R. 187 Huonder, Q. 135f. Imhof, A. E. 177 Ingersoll, V. H. 86f., 89,181 Jackson, D.D. 279 Jackson, N. 52 Jago, A. G. 90 Jahoda, M. 8 , 1 8 , 2 0 , 4 9 - 5 1 , 7 5 Jaques, E. 36f., 68, 188, 203, 205f„ 248, 287, 295, 301 Jensen, M. C. 266 Jermier, J. M. 28 Johns, R. S. 5 Johnson, S. 162 Jones, P. 36,68f., 242,259,288,297,303, 305 - 307, 309 Jung, C.-G. 32, 39,134, 160 Kahn, R. L. 13,68,73,160,169 Kappler, E. 6,278 Katz, D. 13, 160f. Keen, S. 270 Kellner, H. 81 Kelly, G. A. 8 Kennedy, A. A. 34, 192, 248 Kerenyi, K. 57,97,127,139 Kerr, S. 28 Kets De Vries, M. F. R. 66, 162f„ 275, 294, 299 Khan, M. M. R. 30,217 Kimmerle, G. 130, 150 Klein, E. B. 180, 193, 195, 287 Klein, M. 12, 93f„ 203 - 206, 209f., 294, 297, 300 Knight, K. 90 Knights, D. 169 Kocka, J. 10,88 Kreeger, L. 308 Kreuzer, F. 34,180,194 Krone, C. 231 Kruse, L. 198

344

Author Index

Kubicek, H. 161,173,181 Kundera, M. 99 Kunst, P. 61 Kuspit, D. 276 LaBier, D. 87 Laing, R. D. 59, 65, 77, 147f„ 175, 199, 251,280 Landes,D.S. 84 Landy, F. J. 3 Lang, B. 46 Lapierre, L. 298 Laurent, A. 176 Lawler, E. E. 3f., 50, 90f. Lawrence, W. G. X, 6, 9, 11, 16, 19f„ 27, 31,33, 3 6 , 4 0 - 4 3 , 4 5 , 5 0 , 6 4 - 69,77 81,91f.,94-96,98,109,148,174,182f„ 197, 203f„ 213, 216 - 218, 222f„ 228 230,232,234,237,240,242 - 244,247, 265, 270 - 277, 280,284,287,292,295, 297, 3 0 1 , 3 0 5 - 3 0 9 Lazarsfeld, P. F. 20 Leavitt, H.J. 4f. Lee, S. J. 29 Legge, K. 228 Lenk, H. 8 Leontiades, M. 32 Lessing, G. E. 8,29 Levinson, D. J. 180,193,195, 239, 287 Levinson, H. 19 Levinson, M. H. 180, 193, 195, 287 Lewin, K. 251 Lifton, R.J. 116 Lipp, C. 168 Lippitt, R. 251 Lischeron, J. A. 97, 144 Locke, E. A. 3, 6 Lombardo, M. M. 163 Louis, M. R. 248 Lück, H. E. 185 Luckmann, T. 6, 30 Luhmann, N. 7,12,61,133,183,214,239, 241, 246, 270, 289 Lukacs, G. 10 Lundberg, C. C. 248 Lynn Meek, V. 248 Maccoby, M.

87,194,196

Maclagan, P. W. 231,239 Mann, M. 21 Mant, A. 36, 68f„ 242 Mantoux, P. 85 Manz, C. C. 231 Marcuse, H. 6,10f., 22, 34 Marglin, S. A. 17f„ 84f. Marquard, O. 29 Marris, P. 22 Marrow,A.J. 251 Martin, J. 15,248 Martin, S. 23, 86, 190 Maslow, A. H. 4, 6 Mason, H. 191 Massarik, F. 50 Matza, D. 70 May, R. 13,295 McCall, M. W. 163 McClelland, D. C. 8 McDannell, C. 46 McDonough, J. J. 4 McGregor, D. 228,292 McKee, B. 180,193,195,287 McWhinney, W. 24,43,63,181,231,275 Menaker, E. 103,106 - 109 Menzies, I. E. P. 62, 68, 71f., 93f„ 188, 203, 206f., 284, 290,297, 305f. Metcalf, P. 187 Meyer-Abich, K. M. 265f. Mikos, L. 88 Milgram, S. 300 Miller, A. 15,19,43,189, 292 Miller, D. 162f„ 294 Miller, E. J. X, 15, 36, 67 - 69, 91, 228, 234,237f„ 241f„ 297, 301, 307, 309 Miner, J. B. 4 , 7 , 1 8 1 Mitchell, T. R. 5,204 Mitroff, I. J. 290 Mohr, J. 42 Moore, L. F. 248 Morgan, G. 12,21,55,246,275 Moritz, K.-P. 138 Mouton, J. S. 122 MOW 20 Miiller, W. R. 10, 28, 159, 198, 292 Miinkler, H. 254

Author Index Nachreiner, F. 278 Nadig, M. 178f. Nash, M. 89 Near, J. P. 22 Nehrbass, R. G. 50 Neuberger, O. 21,161,164,181,198,213 Neumann, E. 152 Newport, M. G. 50 Nin, A. 194, 215, 235f. Nordhoff, H. 270 Novak, M. 3, 20, 41, 43, 144, 154, 179, 183,186,210,215,252f„ 284,287,293, 296 O'Conghaile, W. 51 Odiorne, G. S. 6, 80, 83, 170 Olson, E. 116 Orwell, G. 261,283,308 Ouchi, W. G. 173,248 Papenheim, M. 146, 150 Parin, P. 179 Parkin, P.W. 198 Parsons, T. 8 Passeron, J.-C. 288 Patai, R. 127 Pederson-Krag, G. 6, 65 Perlmutter, H. 279 Perucci, C. C. 284 Perucci, R. 284 Peters, R. S. 8 Peters, T. J. 14, 30, 34, 36, 43, 54, 246, 248 Peterson, M. F. 163 Pfeffer, R. M. 75 Politzer, G. 10 Pondy, L. R. 29, 198 Price, R. 173 Pritchard, R. D. 8 Probst, G. J. B. 246 Pullberg, S. 5, 64, 166, 171, 178f„ 182, 192, 202 Pym, D. 4, 12, 19f„ 23, 69, 75, 117, 133, 1 5 9 - 161, 188, 196, 284 Ramsey, H. 4 9 , 5 2 , 6 6 , 8 4 Rank, O. 99 - 113, 115, 119f., 124, 128, 132, 164, 174, 187, 191 - 193, 195f„

345 212, 235, 247, 273, 287, 309f. Ranke-Graves, R. Von 97,126f„ 138,140 Raspa, R. 268 Reed, B. 121 Reiback, R. S. 266 Riach, P. 259,288,303 Rice, A.K. 15,241f„ 301 Richter, H. E. 169,193 Ricken, H.W. 195 Rieckmann, H. 42, 45, 50, 94 - 96, 230, 232, 240, 243 Riviere, J. 300 Rohde-Dachser, C. 181 Roheim, G. 187 Rosenstiel, L. Von 4 Roszak, B. 60 Roszak, T. 60 Rousseau, J. J. 146 Ruppert, W. 79,84,117,152 Saint-Exupéry, A. 239 Sanford, R. H. 239 Sarachek, B. 185 Sashkin, M. 50,52,91 Scanion, B.K. 50 Scase, R. 196 Schachter, S. 195 Schein, E.H. 6,248 Schlesier, R. 181 Schmidbauer, W. 192 Schmidt, W. H. 239 Schneider, B. 3 - 6 Schneider, W. 10 Schülein, J. 33 Schuller, A. 53 Schwanz, H. S. 4,23,100,110f„ 113,116 Seabrook, W. B. 268 Segal, H. 65,88,93,294 Selznick, P. 36 Semler, R. 49 Shamir, B. 3 Shisgall, O. 37 Sievers, B. X, XIV, 15f., 42, 45, 50f„ 55, 61, 80, 94 - 96, 105, 110f., 113, 118, 121,136,169f., 183,185,225,230,232, 237,240, 243, 266, 268, 270, 278f., 305 Sigrist, C. 171

346 Silverman, D. 6 Simmel, G. 12, 178, 307 Simmons, V. M. 174 Sims, H. P. 231 Sjöstrand, S.-E. 87 Slater, P. E. 24, 174 Sloan, A. P. 87,189 Smircich, L. 161,163,246,248 Smith, J. 259 Smith, K. K. 12, 174 Smith, P. B. 163 Soeters, J. 61 Sofer, C. 196 Solman, P. 147 Sowarka, D. 259 Spaemann, R. 261 Spence, D. P. 276 Staehle, W. H. 171,235 Stanley, M. 6 Staudinger, U. M. 259 Staw, B. M. 5 Stogdill, R. M. 163,168 Strati, A. 49 Sykes, G. 70 Symons, G. 6 Szell, G. 49 Tannenbaum, R. 50,239 Targ, D. B. 284 Targ.H. R. 284 Tataryn, L. 22 Tate, D. 305 Taubes, J. 214 Taylor, F. W. 14, 17, 84, 125, 200 Teulings, A. W. M. 13f„ 49, 241 Theweleit, K. 152 Thompson, E. P. 118 Thurow, L. C. 266f. Titel, E. 80 Tosi, H. J. 163f. Trewatha, R. L. 50 Trist, E.L. 229,279 Tunstall, W. B. 44 Türk, K. 5,161,278 Turner, B. A. 43,49 Turner, J. H. 3 Turquet, P. M. 73, 223, 295

Author Index Ulrich, H. 241,246 Van Beinum, H. 96 Van Maanen, J. 194 Vickers, G. 5 Vogt, R. 181,192,269 Volpert, W. 10 Vroom, V. H. 3,90 Wall, T. D. 97,144 Wallace, N. D. 22 Walter, G. A. 268 Walton, R.E. 54,291 Wasdell, D. 62 Waterman, R. H. 14, 30, 34, 36, 43, 54, 248 Watzlawick, P. 279 Weakland, J. 279 Weber, M. 54, 124f„ 168 Weick, K. E. 3 Weigand, W. 121 Weil, S. 13, 18, 27, 30, 33, 35, 39,40, 75, 77, 108, 145, 239 Weisbord, M. R. 17,252 Weizsäcker, C. F. Von 265 Westerlund, G. 87 Westwood, R. 51,76 White, R. 251 Wiendieck, G. 278 Wigglesworth, D. 162 Wilkins, A. L. 248 Williams, T. A. 12,17 Willmott, H. 30, 169 Wimmer, R. 231 Winnicott, D. W. 56, 98, 148, 217, 250, 253 - 256,284,290 - 293,299,304,306 Wirtz, R. 84 Wiswede, G. 3 Woldt, R. 88 Wolf, C. 185,190, 219, 280, 300 Worrell, D. L. 22 Wunderer, R. 171,175 Würthwein, E. 260f. Young, R. 201 Zeisel, H. 20 Ziegler, J. 10, 24, 31f„ 109, 146, 166 Zolla, E. 216,268