Nothing Personal, Just Business: A Guided Journey into Organizational Darkness

191 Pages·2001·0.8 MB·English

by  Howard F. Stein

Nothing Personal,
Just Business
A Guided Journey into Organizational Darkness
HOWARD F. STEIN
QUORUM BOOKS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stein, Howard F.
Nothing personal, just business : a guided journey into organizational darkness /
Howard F. Stein ; foreword by David B. Friedman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–56720–442–2 (alk. paper)
1. Organizational behavior—United States. 2. Violence in the workplace—United States.
3. Job stress—United States. 4. Work environment—United States. I. Title.
HD58.7.S744 2001
158.7—dc21 00–051760
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 䉷 2001 by Howard F. Stein
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–051760
ISBN: 1–56720–442–2
First published in 2001
Quorum Books, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.quorumbooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
TM
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright Acknowledgments
The author and publisher are grateful to the following sources for granting permission to
reprint from their materials:
Adapted material from Howard F. Stein, “From Countertransference to Social Theory: A
Study of Holocaust Imagery in American Business Dress,” Ethos 28(3), Fall 2000: 1–33,
courtesy of the American Anthropological Association.
From “Downsizing, Managed Care, and the Potlatching of America: A Study in Cultural
Brutality and Its Mystification” by Howard F. Stein, Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture
& Society, Volume 4, Number 2 (Fall 1999). Copyright 1999 by The Ohio State University.
All rights reserved. Pp. 209–227.
Howard F. Stein, “The Holocaust as Trope for ‘Managed’ Social Change,” Clio’s Psyche 6(3),
December 1999: 119–122, courtesy of Clio’s Psyche.
Howard F. Stein, “Adapting to Doom: The Group Psychology of an Organization Threat-
ened with Cultural Extinction,” Political Psychology 11(1), 1990: 113–145, courtesy of Black-
well Publishing Company.
Howard F. Stein, “Massive Social Change and the Experience of Loss: A Study in the
Cultural Psychology of Mourning in a North American Great Plains Community,” in L. B.
Boyer, R. M. Boyer, and H. F. Stein, eds., The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, volume 19
(1994), courtesy of The Analytic Press. Pp. 273–310.
To the memory of Charles Dignan Stein
(1906–1996)
Father, Teacher, Violinist, Friend
“Without Windows, Without Light”
by Howard F. Stein
This place is without windows,
Without outside light,
Without outside air.
The seasons are changing,
But we would not know.
We work at our stations.
We imagine autumn.
We wear all varieties
Of religious amulets
To simulate the sun.
This place is all brick,
Dark glass, and metal.
It does not have windows;
It does not need windows.
There is nothing to see.
Contents
Foreword by David B. Friedman xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgments and Roadmap for This Book xxiii
1. Introduction: “Don’t Take It Personally, It’s Just Business” 1
2. Countertransference as Tool in Organizational Theory:
The “Use” of Self to Understand Workplace Violence 21
3. Downsizing, Managed Care, and the Potlatching
of the Workplace: A Study in Cultural Brutality and
Its Mystification 51
4. The Holocaust as Trope for Managed Social Change 79
5. Ordinary Brutality at Work 87
6. “How Long Can We Circle the Wagons?”: A Study in the
Sense of Doom at Work 105
7. Rupture and Reconciliation: A Case Study 117
Conclusions 155
Index 161
Foreword
It is a privilege and an honor to have been asked to write the foreword
for this extensive scholarly book on a challenging topic. The way in
which the request evolved was indeed unusual. Every morning at five
o’clock for the past several years I have seen another hardy soul waiting
for the bus to go to work. After months of silence we struck up a con-
versation. I learned that he was a publisher and mentioned that I was a
psychoanalyst on the faculty of New York University School of Medicine.
We were both fascinated by the other’s profession.
One morning he asked me to explain the concept of countertransfer-
ence and I obliged with a mildly pedantic reply. He was very interested
in the subject and told me that he was in the process of editing a work
by an anthropologist, Howard Stein, who had published previous works
with his firm. In this work one of the chapters focused on the concept
of countertransference, and indeed, much of Dr. Stein’s new book
seemed to be built on that. Since I seemed to be knowledgeable about
the concept, he wondered whether I would read that chapter (and maybe
the entire manuscript) and offer my viewpoint as a fellow professional
and academic. He also inquired whether I would be willing to exchange
views directly with Dr. Stein.
The die was cast. After conferring with Dr. Stein he produced a full
draft manuscript. I not only read the chapter on countertransference but
found myself intrigued by the topic and scope of the entire book. It was
shortly thereafter that the author and I were engaged in telephone con-
ferences. I was seduced by the novel ideas he advanced and impressed
xii Foreword
by his courage to take a stand that questioned so many of the orthodox-
ies of organizational life. Here was a teacher and scholar who boldly
ventured into hostile territory, a land of desired quick wealth, bounded
by Wall Street, the Internet, and especially television.
While individuals and corporations were caught up in achieving “the
bottom line,” he focused his attention on the insidious degradation of
the human spirit within corporations. He saw a parallel between what
was going on there and what went on in the Holocaust, an event without
precedent in the history of man’s inhumanity to man. The Crusades and
the Spanish Inquisition were but ripples compared to the flood un-
leashed in the Holocaust. Avoiding the temptation to see it as “business
as usual,” Dr. Stein took on the enormous task of plunging into an at-
tempt to understand what was really happening in organizations, and
in fact, to all humankind as well.
He sounds an alarm, calling attention to our alienation from ourselves.
Although others have previously written about some aspect of this, he
utilizes the Holocaust as a symbol to illustrate his perspective and ap-
prehension. He reminds us of the sense of helplessness felt by the
“downsized” workers deemed irrelevant or unnecessary, and equates
them metaphorically to the unwanted victims of the Holocaust genocide.
In one case it was a sense of helplessness. In the other it was actual
helplessness before the gas chambers. Dr. Stein brilliantly makes us feel
the metaphor. In effect, if one senses helplessness, is it not “reality” for
the moment? Are we not often carried away by our feelings? Does this
not affect our thinking and behavior?
I wondered how Dr. Stein became interested in this area. When I
learned that most of his paternal ancestors perished in the Holocaust I
believed that the personal impact played a significant role in the origin
and development of this book.
Dr. Stein cautions us about the power of denial. He alludes to its op-
eration when we are confronted by the unbelievable. We are lulled into
the comfort of believing “business as usual,” and we do not believe that
such things have happened and are happening or could happen to us.
For the moment, ignorance is bliss, but the future demands that the piper
be paid.
This is a powerful book, and it promises to be controversial. I urge
the reader to suspend incredulity. If you can do that, you may learn
more about human behavior and attitudes than you ever believed pos-
sible. Even more important, you may have a peek into some of your own
unbelievable and unacceptable impulses which were formerly hidden in
darkness. Dr. Stein has forged ahead in his determination and incredible
motivation to educate those of us who would rather imagine that what
is euphemistically described as “progress” may camouflage the destruc-
tion of human togetherness, which in the opinion of many people flour