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This is an intriguing book. Diamond and Allcorn have constructed a view of organizations and organizational actors that moves beyond the structural or functional approach. They look inside not only the organization but also the metaphorical selves that inform the reality of organizational operation; and, in so doing, they shed fascinating light on both the ability of organizations to function and their all too frequent moments of dysfunction. Diamond and Allcorn look at organizations that reflect “dis-ease,” that are not “well,” where individuals, groups and units within organizations work at cross-purposes and as a consequence impair the ability of the organization to operate in whatever environment or marketplace it inhabits. The authors approach this clinical task of disentangling sick organizations with a unique and penetrating use of contemporary psychoanalytic theory.
Diamond and Allcorn examine that aspect of human experience which Michel Foucault called “unreason“; they argue that it is not technical “rationality” that holds the key to understanding how to fix injured organizations, but a grasp and knowledge of both the theory and the practices of psychoanalytic observation. Theirs is an implicit argument against the Weberian notion that rationality defines bureaucratic operation. Diamond and Allcorn make clear that, although the organizations examined in their complex and informative case studies are built on “bureaucracies,” to approach an organization only from the standpoint of functional rationality and fixing bits and pieces of “function” ignores key psychodynamic factors that motivate actors. It is not the surface structures of “reason” (however the organization defines them) that hold the keys to a healthier organizational environment. Rather, the consultant's task is to unearth and make visible the complex undercurrents of the “nonrational” (unreason) as it works its way through the organization in unconscious phantasies, in psychological operations