Oedipal and Sibling Dynamics in Organizations

Abstract

In a context of rapid change, outbreaks of sibling rivalry in organizations act as a defence against the inability to mourn and feel remorse. When changes are imposed on work-teams, sibling preoccupations surface to prevent the working through of the breakdown of relations between the institutional parents and their dependants. Siblings also adopt envy-preventing strategies, engaging in collective self-idealization by forming sisterhoods or brotherhoods to protect themselves from disillusionment and individuation. Each succeeding generation has to face the fact that a primus inter pares will have to be chosen to inherit the mantle of power from the parental generation and restore the world to its `normal' state of inequality. In the context of recent structural changes in organizations the new managers have acted like borderline parents and fostered sibling rivalry. This dynamic has functioned to deny the guilt and the fear of retaliation associated with fratricide and matricide committed during the `re-engineering' process, when the youngsters sent their parents into early retirement. I want to explore the central importance of authority, disillusionment and mourning and show that the outbreak and suppression of sibling rivalry is connected with the problem of transition and succession in organizations.