Rochester Creative Research Group

environment, ritual

"When work, the productive process, becomes display, its meaning becomes lost. Its performance as part of the organizational drama becomes the only meaning it has. Accordingly, the parts it plays in the organization's transactions with the world become irrelevant. When this happens, work loses its adaptive function and becomes mere ritual. At the same time, the rituals that serve to express the individual's identification with the organization ideal, especially those connected with rank, come to be infused with significance for the individual. They become sacred. Thus, reality and appearance trade places. The energy that once went into the production of goods and services of value to others is channelled into the dramatization of a narcissistic fantasy in which the organization's environment is merely a stage setting." (p. 61)

see also: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

conformity

Loss of Creativity
"The delegitimation of one's sense of what is important gives rise to a special case of the ritualization of work--the loss of creativity. Schein (1983) describes the condition of 'conformity' that follows from an insistence by the organization that all of its norms be accepted as being equally important. Under that condition, the individual 'can tune in so completely on what he sees to be the way others are handling themselves that he becomes a carbon-copy and sometimes a caricature of them.' Consequently, Schein notes: 'The conforming individual curbs his creativity and thereby moves the organization toward a sterile form of bureaucracy.' " (p. 63)

see also: [18] [19]

organizational totalitarianism

"This is the fundamental dynamic of totalitarianism. It alienates people from themselves and gives them over to others. Whatever victories ensue must be pyrrhic. Whatever happiness is to be attained here is not the happiness of the individual. Indeed, it is not happiness at all. It is the drama of happiness attaching to a role that the person performs in a play that is written and directed by others." (p. 16)

References