Abstract
Excitement, elation and even joy—these are not the sentiments that one often has as one reaches the end of a management monograph or indeed most management research texts these days. And yet, these were precisely my feelings as I reached the end of this generous, imaginative and spirited book. It is clearly a labour of love and it shows in every page which is full of with energy and ideas.
In this book, Monika Kostera seeks to rekindle our enthusiasm for organizational stories as pulsating narratives that trigger deep emotions and open up powerful new possibilities for imagination and thought. Not for her the anorexic proto-stories, the withered narrative scraps that (not without reason) fascinate many theorists of organization today. She is after inspiring stories, which is not the same as inspirational stories; she is after stories that stir up thought as much as action. Managers, she claims, unlike artists and poets ‘do not have their own Muse. Therefore they have to learn from these traditionally creative groups or, through archetypes, look for a muse of their own’. And she adds with characteristic modesty ‘this book may be, if the reader wishes it so, a first tiny step on their path to finding such a Muse’ (p. 35).
Following Jung’s seminal discovery that archetypes represent deep-seated categories of the human unconscious, Kostera uses a variant of Jung’s method of ‘active imagination’ to seek deeper truths. ‘Active imagination’ for Jung ‘is a method … of introspection for observing the stream of interior images. … These visions are far from hallucinations or ecstatic states; they are spontaneous visual images fantasy’ (1968: 190). Starting from different archetypes such as the shadow, the trickster, the sage, the king, the eternal youth and so forth, each chapter offers a profound disquisition into its organizational expressions and manifestations. Thus, prompted by the archetype of the shadow, she examines the dark underside of the prestigious organizations and their glamorous brands. With judicious references to works of authors like Bauman, Sennett, Sievers, Naomi Klein and others and the use of examples from her own research, she demonstrates that attempts to deny the shadow or to ‘disqualify’ it lead to its exacerbation. By contrast, acknowledging the shadow and discovering avenues for its reintegration in organizational life, minimizes its adverse effects and the human suffering that accompanies it. Acknowledging the shadow means that we acknowledge that no organization is perfect, no leader is perfect and no employee should be expected to be fault-free.
A particularly fine chapter is the one that addresses the archetypes of animus and anima, the deeply embedded and unconscious symbols of masculinity and femininity. Eschewing essentialism by demonstrating that each man has his anima (the woman in him), just as every woman has her animus (the man in her), she offers some superlative reflections on the masculine principle of control, order and reason that dominates most of the world’s organizations, suppressing feminine principles of passion, spontaneity and caring emotion. Equally impressive is the discussion of contemporary marketing techniques in connection with the archetype of the persona, the actor’s mask that is often taken for the face but is actually concealing the face, the consulting profession in connection with the archetype of the sage and entrepreneurship in connection with the adventurer archetype. Once the entrepreneur has been understood to be an embodiment of a deeply embedded and immutable figure, many of his/her strengths and weaknesses become apparent, as does the impossibility of separating them.
Other chapters in the book deal with the archetypes of the trickster (which quickly leads to piracy and all types of organizational mischief), the eternal child which leads to an ingenious discussion of play and serendipity, the king which prompts some very well-taken observations on the nature of organizational leadership and its artificial separation from management. The last three chapters address a cluster of not strictly Jungian archetypes which touch on the notion of eternal rebirth and regeneration—the Gaia, cosmogony and redemption/rebirth, all of which invite reflections on the future of the species and the future of the planet. Kostera is, of course aware, that mythology alone cannot save the planet and, like James Lovelock (2006) she believes that science must play a major part in forestalling the potential for disaster. But science itself is not enough—the cold scientific logic by itself cannot stimulate the political will or the international collaboration necessary to address the ecological challenges of the future. Only by drawing together the powerful symbols of mythology rooted in archetypes and the analytical tools of science can these challenges be addressed.
Like Jung in his inner explorations and ‘active imagination’, Kostera’s exploration in this book has called for an engagement with her own unconscious desires and fears. In this regard, I would say that the book represents a combination of animus and anima—the male and female principles in the author coming together in an example of authorial syzygy. The sharp analytical qualities and the deep theoretical understanding come together with sudden flashes of imagination and intuition and almost unfailingly hit ‘a’ mark, even if not the mark that the reader always expects. As a storyteller, Kostera excels herself in this book, offering us her renditions of numerous stories from Plato’s Er to Perceval and the Holy Grail to Astrid Lindgren’s girl heroine Pippi Longstocking. Equally impressive is her re-‘presentation’ of a wide range of organizational theories in terms that, if anything, improve on the originals. Unlike many of her colleagues, Kostera reads and reads well—overall, the reader has many occasions to be thankful for insightful and critical readings of many seminal thinkers, including several Polish ones who have hitherto remained untranslated.
Does the book succeed in persuading the reader to connect with the world of archetypes and use them as the point of departure for her/his own adventures in active imagination? Here I am not too sure. Many readers will shy away from the obvious risks of this approach. ‘Is it scientific?’, ‘Is it rigorous?’, ‘How can it be defended against pedantic reviewers?’. The author willing to engage with his/her own unconscious in public risks censure and even ridicule. It is far more reassuring to stay on the straight and narrow of agreed academic formulas and conventions rather than to plunge into the uncertain depths of primal symbolism. It is possibly for this reason that some outstanding earlier contributions to the approach taken by Kostera, most notably those by Martin Bowles (1989, 1990) and Paul Moxnes (1998, 1999) have never received in academia the attention that they merit. This is daring and dangerous theorizing (as is Jung’s own) that at times sails perilously close to the wind, but when, as here, it succeeds, it restores one’s faith in true scholarship and one’s joy of reading academic text. Nothing demonstrates this better than the book’s magnificent conclusion:
We, organization researchers and participants, need to recognize and talk about the most fundamental issues of what it means to be human and part of a living planet. Only then can we hope for a healing of ourselves and our environment and address some of the most serious and damaging problems of our times. We are not helpless in the face on an impersonal omnipotent Invisible Hand, nor fated to live bleak lives where only standards, quotas, rates, indexes and other figures count, but such things as goodness, happiness, compassion and responsibility are irrelevant because of a lack of language and mindset. This language exists and is there for us to use. It is accessible and free for us to obtain—from the humanities. (p. 254)