Confiando en la confianza Contra toda razón

The importance of trust is heavily emphasized in contemporary organization theory and management practice. Although I am convinced that trust is a good thing and necessary constituent of the social fabric, I am interested in understanding the social (and political thinking) underlying the current academic and non academic view of trust. My working hypothesis is that: management attempts to engineer trust reflect an underlying denial of the loss of hope regarding both the relatedness between organizational members and the value and meaning of organizations. The experience of non-relatedness and lack of trust cannot be acknowledged by management, therefore the loss of hope has to be hidden behind the propagation of the importance of trust (and relatedness). The denial of the loss of hope is an expression of psychotic thinking concomitant with inability to see a reality and to mourn loss. The engineered propagation of trust thus becomes a substitute for trust itself.La importancia de la confianza tiene un fuerte énfasis en la teoría organizacional contemporánea y en la práctica administrativa. A pesar de estar convencido que la confianza es buena y constituye una parte necesaria del tejido social, mi interés es comprender el pensamiento social (y político) que subyace en la visión académica y no-académica sobre la confianza. Mi hipótesis de trabajo es esta: los intentos de los directivos de las organizaciones por crear confianza reflejan una profunda negación de la pérdida de esperanza con respecto a la relación entre los miembros de la organización y el valor y sentido de las organizaciones. Los directivos no reconocen tal falta de relaciones y confianza y por tanto, la pérdida de esperanza es escondida tras el discurso sobre la importancia de la confianza (y las relaciones). La negación de la pérdida de esperanza es una expresión del pensamiento psicótico concomitante con la incapacidad para ver la realidad y hacer duelo a la pérdida. La propagación artificial de la confianza se convierte así en un sustituto de la confianza en sí misma

Más allá de un sustituto de la motivación

The image of man as presented in the predominant organizational theories of motivation does not accord with the author’s experience of working with people in organizations. This dissonance has led to a critique of the concept of motivation and its inherent theoretical shortcomings as to the reality of people in organizations. The main argument of this essay, however, stems from a metacritical perspective according to which the notion of motivation and its referrant theories can be regarded as scientific inventions. The hypothesis is offered and elaborated that motivation is a surrogate for meaning, i.e. for the meaning of work and life which is increasingly lost through the high frequency of fragmentation and splitting in our contemporary work enterprises. Any attempt towards discovering existential dimensions of meaning can be accomplished only if social scientists, managers and workers alike, both individually as well as collectively, again become aware of death as a fact of life; it is only through acknowledging mortality that humanization can occur.La imagen del ser humano presentada en las principales teorías organizacionales de la motivación, no concuerda con la experiencia que el autor tiene en su trabajo con la gente en las organizaciones. Esta disonancia conduce a una crítica del concepto de motivación y de las deficiencias teóricas inherentes con respecto a la realidad de las personas en las organizaciones. El principal argumento de este ensayo emana de una perspectiva meta-crítica según la cual la noción de motivación y sus referentes teóricos pueden ser considerados invenciones científicas. La hipótesis planteada y desarrollada es que la motivación es un sustituto del sentido, es decir, del sentido del trabajo y de la vida, cada vez más ausente debido a la alta fragmentación y división en las empresas contemporáneas. Cualquier intento por descubrir dimensiones existenciales de sentido puede darse solamente en la medida en que científicos sociales, administradores y trabajadores, tanto individual como colectivamente, se hagan nuevamente conscientes de la muerte como un hecho de la vida: solo a través del reconocimiento de la mortalidad puede ocurrirla humanización

Más allá de un sustituto de la motivación

The image of man as presented in the predominant organizational theories of motivation does not accord with the author’s experience of working with people in organizations. This dissonance has led to a critique of the concept of motivation and its inherent theoretical shortcomings as to the reality of people in organizations. The main argument of this essay, however, stems from a metacritical perspective according to which the notion of motivation and its referrant theories can be regarded as scientific inventions. The hypothesis is offered and elaborated that motivation is a surrogate for meaning, i.e. for the meaning of work and life which is increasingly lost through the high frequency of fragmentation and splitting in our contemporary work enterprises. Any attempt towards discovering existential dimensions of meaning can be accomplished only if social scientists, managers and workers alike, both individually as well as collectively, again become aware of death as a fact of life; it is only through acknowledging mortality that humanization can occur.La imagen del ser humano presentada en las principales teorías organizacionalesde la motivación, no concuerda con la experiencia que el autor tiene en su trabajocon la gente en las organizaciones. Esta disonancia conduce a una crítica delconcepto de motivación y de las deficiencias teóricas inherentes con respecto ala realidad de las personas en las organizaciones. El principal argumento de esteensayo emana de una perspectiva meta-crítica según la cual la noción de motivacióny sus referentes teóricos pueden ser considerados invenciones científicas. Lahipótesis planteada y desarrollada es que la motivación es un sustituto del sentido,es decir, del sentido del trabajo y de la vida, cada vez más ausente debido a la altafragmentación y división en las empresas contemporáneas. Cualquier intento pordescubrir dimensiones existenciales de sentido puede darse solamente en la medidaen que científicos sociales, administradores y trabajadores, tanto individualcomo colectivamente, se hagan nuevamente conscientes de la muerte como unhecho de la vida: solo a través del reconocimiento de la mortalidad puede ocurrirla humanización

Creativity out of chaos

Creativity is said to be highly desired in post-modern and post-industrial organizations Creativity and anarchy on the one hand, and managerialism, on the other, can be seen as different forms of knowledge, two opposed ideals. In many organizational as well as societal reforms we currently observe it is the managerialist ideal that wins over the anarchic. In this paper, we wonder if people fear anarchy? We reflect on the possible reasons for the fear, and we also try to explain why we believe that anarchic organizing should not be avoided or feared

Death and organization: Heidegger’s thought on death and life in organizations

Mortality has not been given the attention it deserves within organization studies. Even when it has been considered, it is not usually in terms of its implications for own lives and ethical choices. In particular, Heidegger’s writing on death has been almost entirely ignored both in writing on death and writing on organizational ethics, despite his insights into how our mortality and the ethics of existence are linked. In this paper, we seek to address this omission by arguing that a consideration of death may yield important insights about the ethics of organizational life. Most important of these is that a Heideggerian approach to death brings us up against fundamental ethical questions such as what our lives are for, how they should be lived and how we relate to others. Heideggerarian thought also reconnects ethics and politics, as it is closely concerned with how we can collectively make institutions that support our life projects rather than thwart or diminish them

The need for fresh blood: understanding organizational age inequality through a vampiric lens

YesThis article argues that older age inequality within and across working life is the result of vampiric forms and structures constitutive of contemporary organizing. Rather than assuming ageism occurs against a backdrop of neutral organizational processes and practices, the article denaturalizes (and in the process super-naturalizes) organizational orientations of ageing through three vampiric aspects: (un)dying, regeneration and neophilia. These dimensions are used to illustrate how workplace narratives and logics normalize and perpetuate the systematic denigration of the ageing organizational subject. Through our analysis it is argued that older workers are positioned as inevitable ‘sacrificial objects’ of the all-consuming immortal organization. To challenge this, the article explicitly draws on the vampire and the vampiric in literature and popular culture to consider the possibility of subverting existing notions of the ‘older worker’ in order to confront and challenge the subtle and persistent monstrous discourses that shape organizational life

Guided self-organization and cortical plate formation in human brain organoids.

Three-dimensional cell culture models have either relied on the self-organizing properties of mammalian cells or used bioengineered constructs to arrange cells in an organ-like configuration. While self-organizing organoids excel at recapitulating early developmental events, bioengineered constructs reproducibly generate desired tissue architectures. Here, we combine these two approaches to reproducibly generate human forebrain tissue while maintaining its self-organizing capacity. We use poly(lactide-co-glycolide) copolymer (PLGA) fiber microfilaments as a floating scaffold to generate elongated embryoid bodies. Microfilament-engineered cerebral organoids (enCORs) display enhanced neuroectoderm formation and improved cortical development. Furthermore, reconstitution of the basement membrane leads to characteristic cortical tissue architecture, including formation of a polarized cortical plate and radial units. Thus, enCORs model the distinctive radial organization of the cerebral cortex and allow for the study of neuronal migration. Our data demonstrate that combining 3D cell culture with bioengineering can increase reproducibility and improve tissue architecture

La competencia como prolongación de la guerra con otros medios: Una deconstrucción socio-analítica

El presente aporte surge de las experiencias del autor en el marco de una asesoría prestada a una compañía productora de automóviles. Después de varias visitas a la fábrica principal encontró evidencias del pasado Nazi y de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Este hecho originó una búsqueda más afondo de la historia inicial de la empresa. El material encontrado representa el punto de partida para un trabajo de enfoque socio-analítico. Se perfila la hipótesis que los mitos de expansión, aniquilación y dominio del mundo, presentes en la empresa desde su fundación, siguen vigentes aún después de la Guerra y marcaron de manera constante tanto la fase de la nueva fundación como la reconstrucción desde 1948. Aún en el presente, estos mitos se manifiestan a nivel macro y micro-político de la empresa. El aporte parte de la idea que la dinámica de la guerra señalada para esta empresa, se deriva de su situación histórica particular, pero que a la dinámica de la guerra misma se le debe conceder una mayor importancia, ya que la competencia en los actuales mercados globales se declara muchas veces como un eufemismo de la guerra.* Artículo presentado en Londres 2000, en el Simposio de la Sociedad Internacional para Estudios Psicoanalíticos de las Organizaciones - IPSO