You said: "Please let me know if you have more experience of what you call an "image profession". How do you then use the image to encounter resistance and deal with the various forms of resistance? Thanks...D. An image profession depends on appearances rather than substance or "truth". Film acting is an image profession, for example. So is corporate advertising (this one is obvious). Okay...in Org. Development the image is used to join management. Underline join. The hope is that by adhereing to or fitting the norms of management (that is, imaging or using a false self that mirrors management behaviors and values), OD folks hope to get hired. And in fact, this is the way they get hired or receive a contract. In other words, they are then "in the door"---and you have to be in the door as the first step in facilitating change. In order to bring about real change as an OD person you have to have this joining ability--not upsetting management--even when you are suggesting strategies to management about how they can improve the organization. Keep in mind that management folks really don't want to share power; they are in the control mode as a way to define their self worth. Very few top managers see themselves as "coaches" who serve the employees; instead they want the power to fend off shame feelings inside themselves...they need to feel they are superior (learned superiority). So the Job of the OD person is to maintain rapport, join the management, while at the same time encouraging management folks to share power with people below them...as sharing power is how you really improve the organization. This is the resistance point right here: management doesn't really want to share power. That's why 95% of organizations remain authoritarian as measured by Renis Likert's SOO since the early 1930s!! The OD person's primary resistor and resistance is the top management who hires or writes a contract. That's the bind...so OD folks have to do a lot of imaging, pretending, acting...OR they have to also be into power which reduces cognitive dissonance for the OD person; that is, to actually BELIEVE they are in the same camp with management with regard to values. This is obviously a long story...but maybe this gives a bit of the idea of bind that OD types are in---where the resistance really is, and how imaging (a form of advertising) fits into the scheme of overcoming "resistance." I am of course very interested in this topic as you can see. Because, I work as a family therapist with employees who have been hurt by managment types who need to act out their power abusively...a very large and growing problem in the last five to ten years as the economy globalizes and competition for jobs increases. Well...enough for now...this is too long..
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