In 1996-1997, the author conducted research at the Hanson Institute of Psychiatry, a large psychiatric research hospital in a North American city. The author came to understand that there was a desire on the part of some senior managers to cultivate a loyalty and a sense of responsibility among staff to a singular institutional identity. This issue frames this article, drawing on anthropological understandings of the idea of culture, Martin’s fragmentation model, Maffesoli’s ideas of the social imaginary, and Goffman’s discussion of the individual perspective of an organization from “in the cracks.” The author discusses the nested imaginings that any individual would have if one considers the institutional; professional, departmental, or occupational; and individual imaginaries that fuelled employees’ ideas of the institution. There could be no real imagining of “the Hanson” because individuals imagined they worked for “a Hanson,” each imagining a slightly different institution from “in the cracks.”
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