Group Relations, Management, and Organization

This book brings together a timely collection of new and important essays by an international group of well-known authors. It provides reflections and insights on the past, present, and future of the "group relations" approach, as well as its impact on management, organizations, and institutions.

Group Relations, Management, and Organization brings together a timely collection of new and important essays by an international group of authors. The authors represent different cultures, roles, and institutional backgrounds, as well as a variety of perspectives on the past, present, and future of group relations and its current impact on management, organizations, institutions, and societies. The importance of the book is in the perspective that it offers on the traditions of group relations and the changes that are currently taking place within this field. It is essential reading for those currently involved in the practice of group relations, for management educators and students, and for organizational consultants. The book provides the reader with reflections and insights which are highly relevant to an in-depth understanding both of the role of manager and to the dynamics of organizing.

Introduction; Learning, Managing, and Organizing: The continuing contribution of group relations to management and organization; Theorising Practice in Group Relations; Grouping; A Mind for Business; Systems Psychodynamics in Service of Political Organizational Change; A Political Visionary in Mid-Life: Notes on leadership and the life cycle; Managing the Unconscious at Work; Dependency, Alienation, or Partnership? The changing relatedness of the individual to the enterprise; A Fresh Look at Authority and Organization: Towards a spiritual approach to managing illusion; On Being Frozen in Time; Practising Theory in Group Relations; The Recovery of Meaning; From Envy to Desire: Witnessing the transformation; In the Nick of Time: Reactivating an organization through leader-initiated interactions with members of staff; Mental Health Under Fire: Organizational intervention in a wounded service; The Inner Drama of Role Taking in an Organization; Isolation, Autonomy, and Interdependence in Organizational Life; Team as a Sponge: How the nature of the task affects the behaviour and mental life of a team; After the Conference is Over; Bibliography

Russ Vince is Professor of Organizational Learning at the Business School, The University of Glamorgan. Robert French is Senior Lecturer in Organization Behaviour at Bristol Business School, The University of the West of England.