Abstract
I welcome the opportunity to comment on this article and wish to share both my admiration and a degree of unease. My comments derive mainly from my long experience of working in the British National Health Service (NHS) and consulting to the NHS and other organizations.
The generalized title of this article, Group Analytic Methods beyond the Clinical Setting (Mowles, 2017), belies its importance as a description of what is almost certainly the only university-based doctoral course in the UK based on group analytic principles as applied to working / managing in organizations: the Doctor of Management (DMan). The sub-title, ‘working with researcher–managers’ is more specific and gets closer to the nub of the article and the core aim of the course, as I see it: to provide an academic framework within which organizational managers coming from a wide range of business and other environments are enabled to engage in an ongoing group-analytically informed reflective process concerning their methods of engagement in the working environment.
The importance of the article is threefold:–
Group analysis naturally lends itself to the study of organizational processes and many group analysts work in organizations and/or consult to them. But the question of applying group analysis directly to organizational processes, the why, what and how, remains somewhat confused. At one level, this is understandable, given the complexity of organizations, and the varying tasks that may be required, but more generally there is a lack of clarity about the model of consultancy, possibly deriving from the theoretical complexity and confusion of group analysis itself as a core discipline. Hence, a high-level academic course incorporating group analysis as a central approach is of great interest and importance to the field.
The literature on the group-analytic approach to organizations, some excellent contributions notwithstanding, could be described as patchy and lacking in coherence, given the potential importance of this approach. This mirrors the uncertainty about applying the model in practice, since I believe the link between theory and practice in the clinical setting is also problematic (Nitsun, 2015). The author, Chris Mowles, criticizes several of the published articles, largely on the grounds of their conventional and uncritical understanding of organizational processes. While I disagree with some of his criticisms, and I will expand on this later, he is right to confront the need for more of a more cogent group analytic approach to organizations.
As far as I know, the course in question was begun primarily by Ralph Stacey, an eminent and prolific writer who has made an outstanding contribution to group analytic theory. Although others collaborated in devising and initiating the course, much of the thinking stems from Stacey’s seminal work on complexity theory applied to groups and organizations. For some reason, this is mentioned only about half-way through the article, giving the sense of something covert about the narrative. Why give the article such a generalized title in the first place, when it deals with such a clearly focused phenomenon, and why delay mention of both Stacey’s seminal contribution to group analysis and the course being largely his initiative (especially since the article is aimed at a group analytic readership)? Stacey, I understand, has retired from practice. However, his influence is widely acknowledged and it seems timely both to highlight the important course that he helped to initiate and to consider Stacey’s approach in the light of what a current article tells us about his work.
Much of the article is a relatively straightforward description of the course, its structure and methods, as well as the impact it appears to have had on students and graduates. The course goes out on a limb to promote a way of thinking about management that departs from the conventional. It is clear that this has at times been an uphill struggle, both to establish and maintain a course that is to a large degree counter-culture and to facilitate the ongoing work of the course with students coming with diverse expectations. The programme is much more personally focused than comparable management courses, requiring a high level of personal exposure within a group reflective practice framework. A distinguishing feature is the emphasis on group process and the use of the group as a medium of study and personal reflection. Practically all the work of the course, it appears, is within groups and it is this that makes the course and its value system thoroughly group analytic.
As noted, the philosophy of the course draws strongly on Stacey’s social theory, derived from the complexity sciences and developed in a series of publications (notably Stacey, 2003). The theory positions itself up as a radical approach that strongly challenges the validity of other well-known theories, including psychoanalysis and systems-theory. This outright rejection of alternative approaches has met with controversy. The aspect of Stacey’s work that I regard as especially useful, however, is the notion of emergence: what emerges in interaction between people collaborating and competing in the production of a task and how this entails elements of surprise and paradox. Implicit in the process is an assumption of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in human communication and the creative possibilities within this. Describing the course, Mowles further highlights the narrative framework that is used to personalize students’ own development through the life and career cycle: and how this can be reinterpreted or ‘re-storied’ with the aim of new or constructive development.
I agree with most theoretical aspects of the course and I suspect that most group analysts would as well. What I have more difficulty with is the highly critical stand the author, in line with some of Stacey’s thinking, takes in relation to other group analytically informed approaches to organizational / managerial work and more generally to group analytic thinking that is seen as espousing notions of individuality as opposed to a ‘radically’ social interpretation of all development. The author also criticizes the lack of focus on leadership and power relations in group analysis. In parallel, he is critical of conventional management philosophy, highlighting its instrumental approach and emphasis on mechanistic production as opposed to human values. He sets these views, and the overall philosophy of the doctoral course, within the framework of critical management studies (CMS). These views are presented assertively at the start of the article. While it is helpful to have a clear value statement early on, it at the same time presents a challenge to the reader—and it is this challenge to which I want to respond with my own challenge. I do so under headings that reflect my understanding of what the author implies. I admit that these may be simplified or exaggerated for the purpose of communication and that my emphasis reflects my own current concerns as a group analyst.
1. The Fallacy of ‘the Individual’ in Group Analysis
I have written previously about this (Nitsun, 2006; 2015) expressing my discomfort with the degree to which the individual as an entity is denied, if not denigrated, in contemporary criticisms of group analysis. I consider it perfectly possible to endorse the power of social relationships in human development and at the same time entertain a notion of the individual, at least partly because, from an experiential / existential point of view, individuals conceive of themselves as individuals and want this to be respected, however much they might agree that they are at the same time socially constructed. As a clinician of many years’ standing, I can see no option but to consider ‘individual’ characteristics people bring to the consulting room and I consider the rejection of this notion to do more with the search for theoretical purity than an appraisal of the consensual world in which people live their lives. I have also worked in a senior capacity for decades in organizations myself and consulted to organizations. While I agree that in the organizational setting there is a tendency to isolate, and potentially blame individuals as if they function in a vacuum, I have an abiding sense that respecting the individual in this setting similarly requires an appreciation of their unique qualities as individuals, including the way they embody their personal responsibility in that setting. I highlight responsibility because we are all responsible for who we are and what we do and not simply the pawns of society.
2. There Are No Distinctions Between
I am similarly uncomfortable about the blurring of all boundaries that might exist between phenomena in the way that some post-Foulkesian critics argue (inspired by Foulkes himself). A case in point is the insider–outsider distinction. The author mentions that in a further publication he intends to ‘take Nitsun to task’ for my description of the concept of the organizational mirror (Nitsun, 1998a), my mistake being that I talk about the consultant as an outsider able to hold up a mirror to the whole organization. My response is: 1) that a consultant invited to consult to an organization is literally, and certainly to begin with, an outsider to the organization (although there may already have been contact, which complicates the situation). This is surely the reason for calling him/her in and simply a commonsensical observation; 2) the fact that s/he is an outsider is an important part of the relationship that emerges between the consultant and the organization that is different from other relationships and; 3) he/she of course then becomes entangled in the organization and is part of whatever ensues but his ‘outsider’ position hopefully does confer on him/her some ability to reflect his views to the organization, including his experience as someone who has become temporarily part of the organization. Why else invite someone from ‘the outside’? The insider–outsider difference, in my view, rather than being a spurious distinction, constitutes an important and potentially useful dimension of the consultation.
3. Conventional Management is Driven by Motives of Control, Power, Inequality and an Indifference to the Human Dimension
This is the core of the CMS perspective referred to above and the framework within which the author sets his rationale for the doctoral course. I agree with some of these criticisms and have myself written about the negative aspect of NHS management in a recent article An anti-group perspective of organizational restructuring (Nitsun, 2015), highlighting the disempowering effect repeated restructuring has on the NHS, as well as the culture of industrialization that has spread through the NHS. However, I also attempt in that article to consider some of the pressures that managers themselves are under, aiming to include managers as human beings themselves who are caught up in the complex and highly pressured process of delivering health services. Part of the pressure is in having to deal with ongoing change at many levels. The author also takes Gerard Wilke to task for suggesting that it is necessary in organizations and managers to adapt to change, Wilke’s mistake being that this reflects a passive, conformist position in relation to more powerful others. However, while I agree that the politics of fear and conformity are an important component of organizational life (and I say this in my article referred to above), I also believe that it is indeed necessary, if not essential, to adapt to change and that this is a strength not a weakness. There are many changes that are outside (really ‘outside’) the responsibility of managers and to which they have to respond, certainly in the NHS—the increasing imbalance between demand and resources, the constantly rising cost of health care, the impact of continual technological change, the effect of changing demographics such as increased longevity and the rising number of older people, the unpredictable political and economic landscape, the consequences of migration to the UK, to name just a few. Most managers I know are struggling to keep afloat in this difficult environment rather than playing power games or deliberately dehumanizing staff.
4. Evidence, Outcome Evaluation and Quantification are unnecessary Products of a Destructively Commercialized Culture
Again, I agree with this viewpoint and have similarly challenged the bureaucratic and industrializing trend in organizations such as the NHS. (Nitsun, 2015). But this is just part of the story. The idea that NHS services can do without quantification and evaluation is pie in the sky and I believe this is true of many organizations. The problem, in my view, is not that such evaluation takes place but the way it is implemented and the sometimes—uncritical interpretation of results. There is good evaluation and bad evaluation. As a manager myself of a psychology/psychotherapy service for almost three decades, it would have been inconceivable not to institute some routine form of evaluation, hopefully, in as fair and constructive a fashion as usual. How else would we have known which treatments seemed to be working, how much resources we were using / were needed, what alterations in services we needed to make? As people working in organizations, whether as clinicians or managers, we have a responsibility to the organization. This does not mean we have to forego our value systems but establish a bridge between those and the organizational environment. In any case, as Stacey would argue, we are not outside the organization: we are the organization and as much responsible for what happens as anyone else.
On the issue of evaluation, the author provides a fairly full, transparent account of the advantages of the doctoral course, its potentials and limits. He reports that the majority of students find the course valuable and strengthening of their skills as group members and managers, and several testaments from students are cited in support. He at the same time acknowledges that the course is problematic for some members: it conflicts with expectations and can be highly unsettling in relation to received management wisdom and people’s own careers. This is an honest account. But what the evaluation lacks is any account of what happens in the host organization in response to the student undertaking the course and what the organization makes of the changed student back home. Given the great emphasis on context and social process in Mowles’ account, it is surprising that this dimension is unreported.
Much of what I am arguing touches on the question of either–or, or both–and. I am by nature a both–and person. But this seems to be out of line with some contemporary group analytic writers’ understanding of the group analytic agenda. Both Stacey (2003) and Dalal (1998), for example, argue for a radical group analysis that forgoes its psychoanalytic influences, particularly in relation to the individual and intra-psychic model. They challenge Foulkes for wanting to hold onto psychoanalysis while developing a socially orientated group analytic perspective: Foulkes’ both–and position. But it is not as if any one of our theories hold some absolute truth: our theories are surely all relative, perspectival, and as much constructions / interpretations of ‘reality’ as each other. Both psychoanalysis and CBT, which are both largely ‘individual’ models, have yet been enormously helpful in settings both clinical and non-clinical. To jettison them for the sake of theoretical purity smacks of zealotry and a new form of dogma. Further, within the discourse of the radical theory itself there are no doubt issues of power and exclusion, in relation to those ‘outside’ as well as those ‘inside’ the fold of the radical community. Disagreement with the theoretical premise of the course, as the article suggests early on, is seen as a threat. The intolerance of a both–and position suggests to me a difficulty in compromise, in accepting paradox and ambiguity, even though these are tropes that the complex responsive position would particularly appear to value and promote.
Concluding Comments
I do not want to detract from the value of an organizational management course that so clearly sets out to embody group analytic principles and at the same time challenges the status quo. It is an advantage that the course has a committed standpoint, particularly at a time when instrumental management has indeed overtaken much of organizational life. But I am mindful of the risk of creating a new dogma, with all its religiosity and self-righteousness, and the tendency to close down rather than open up debate, in spite of protestations to the contrary. I am also aware of the risk of isolation that accompanies such a process. Thygesen (2010) suggests that group analysis, for all its apparent openness, has a hermetic tendency: an exclusive model of human behaviour is more rather then less likely to encourage this.
A final point concerns the author’s account of the doctoral course as a ‘case study’. Why a case study? I am probably making far more of this than is necessary. But is it possible that behind the assertive position statement, and the seemingly unswerving belief in the rightness of the approach, there is an anxiety about ‘coming out’, about being really confident? I know from my own work on the anti-group how tricky it can be to challenge orthodoxy, in my case the wish to address the idealizing aspects of group analysis. Those of us who challenge cherished beliefs run the risk of censure and exclusion. I hope that in my response to the article I have not confirmed the writer’s fears of exposure, the ‘threat’ he describes from those espousing an ‘individual’ position (which I hope to have clarified in my own response). My own challenges notwithstanding, I appreciate and admire the courage to be different that the course demonstrates and believe that it really does add value to the complex field of management studies / training.