Psychologie analytique et Organisation. Le symbolisme organisationnel à l'aune de la systémique archétype.

  • Sylvain Luc

    Student thesis: Doc typesDoctor of Economics and Business Management

    Abstract

    Referring to the last 30 years literature, we can notice a consensus aiming to define the organizational culture as the expression of set of significations, symbols, assumptions, comprehensions and functioning modes, values, knowledge and conventions shared and held by the members of the organization (PETTIGREW, 1974 ; SCHEIN, 1985 ; TRICE & BEYER, 1993 ; LOUIS, 1983) and existing also outside the scope of consciousness (MITROFF, 1983 ; SCHEIN, 1985). These unconscious aspects of the organizational culture could be the root of its most obvious aspects on the conscious level. Unconscious elements are considered by some authors, including Mitroff (1983), as constituting the very essence of the culture. Reaching out to them, even if it isn’t an easy task, could get the organization to increase its potential for adaptation and reduce its inertia to change (KILMANN et al., 1985 ; SMIRCICH, 1983). Indeed, despite its positive effects on the organization, e.g. on productivity (DEAL & KENNEDY, 1982), identified by most authors interested in organizational culture, it can also be the origin of dysfunctions endangering the survival of the organization. (TRICE & BEYER, 1993). The purpose of our research is at that unconscious level of the organizational culture and could be the following question: how could one represent the basis of an organizational culture and thus better understand the differential between the cultural image that the organization made of itself and its essence? This thesis proposes to answer that question at the outset of the theory of analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung and of his concepts of archetypes. We will highlight how the values shared by the members of an organization emerge from a systemic of the collective unconscious that each individual participated in. We show the benefit of such a perspective in the study of the organizational culture. On the one hand, we place the Jungian theory in the scope of organizational theory. On the other hand, we compare it to the other psychoanalytic theories already used in such scope and we fixed it in the General system Theory. We also present two longitudinal case studies performed on a jazz band and all its administrative structure and on a public administration. We strive to describe the archetypal systemic, in which these organizations participates unconsciously. These results derive from an applied psychoanalysis method to three types of data: semi-direct interviews, non participating observations and documents collected in the field of investigation.
    Date of Award31 Jul 2009
    Original languageFrench
    Awarding Institution
    • University of Namur
    SupervisorJean-Marie JACQUES (Supervisor), Anne Wallemacq (Jury), Michel MERCIER (Jury), Marc Poumadère (Jury) & Dominique Drion (Jury)

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