Yiannis Gabriel

Freud and Marx: Final destinations*

2012-03-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

On a cloudy morning I decided to do what I hadlong wanted to but never actually got round to doing. I decided to visit thegraves of two giants of the human sciences, Freud and Marx. It had not been myintention to write about this but as I was walking back from my visit,different thoughts came to my mind, prompted by the question of whether it ispossible to write about such an experience without resorting to clichés andbanalities. Buried about 4 miles apart from each other, Freud and Marx make forsome fascinating contrasts.

Freud was buried in Golders Green crematorium, in the middleof London’s traditional Jewish district, in September 1939, as World War II wasabout to start. He had lived in Londonfor a year having escaped Vienna,a still active 82-year old, with help from influential friends. To gain accessto the crematorium’s East columbarium where his ashes are to be found, it isnecessary to ask one of the crematorium staff to unlock the door. “Security”the helpful assistant, Emma explained to me, “the remains of many famous peopleare there, including those of Anna Pavlova and others, and we must be carefulabout who we let in.”

Inside the columbarium, there is peace and tranquillity of adomestic kind. The plaques commemorating different dead, each unique but allvery similar, seem harmoniously located, obliquely lit through highly placedwindows. Freud’s ashes are contained in one of his favourite Grecian urns.There is nothing grandiose about it, yet it somehow made sense to find thefather of psychoanalysis in a time capsule of personal and public history. Everythingin the space accords with Freud’s unsentimental view of death as “the goal ofall life.” How different from his four elderly sisters who met their deaths inGerman concentration camps. No Grecian urns for them.

Bus 210 takes you from GoldersGreen to Highgate cemetery, Marx’s final resting place. He was buried there on March 17, 1883, drawing agreat oration from his life-long friend Friedrich Engels. One imagines thespeech given to masses of mourners, though we have it on Engels’ authority thata mere nine people attended the funeral. The massive granite memorial capped byMarx’s bronze bust was in fact erected in the 1950s with funds raised by theBritish Communist Party. It was then that the grave was relocated from a lessauspicious part of the cemetery to its current prime location. Once a sight ofpilgrimage for young revolutionaries from all over the world as well Communistdignitaries, on the day I visited it the grave only attracted the odd tourist.

I was surprised to find that to enter the cemetery, thevisitor is charged an entrance fee of £3. A charity, the Friends of HighgateCemetery Trust, the attendant (a volunteer) explained to me, uses the money tomaintain the site. In spite of such maintenance, the cemetery has a distinctlyGothic feel. Overgrown paths, trees, bushes and ivy intermingle withgravestones, crosses and a remarkable number of obelisks at precarious angles.“Keep left for Marx” the attendant told me, with a pleasure undiminished by thenumber of times she must have used the expression.

You find Marx after a 5 minute walk. The tomb, immenselyimposing at first, carries two epic inscriptions “Workers of the world unite”and “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”Yet, it was not as I had expected it. Initially, the sight of the granite Marxfilters out the other graves but gradually they make their presence felt, notleast that of Herbert Spencer, Marx’s great bourgeois rival, diagonallyopposite.

Towering as Marx is among the other gravestones, there issomething closed and depressing about the sight. I could not help wondering how Marx, an exile like Freud in‘liberal London’,could find a resting place in a memorial to a by-gone era rather than to hisown genius as a theorist and a revolutionary. Today, the workers, at least in the big bourgeois democracies, appear tohave forgotten his injunctions. The philosophers, immersed in their postmodernquagmires, even more. Highgate Cemetery, far fromevoking the class struggle, seems a perfect allegory for the struggle betweenhumans and nature, a struggle in which nature eventually gets the upper hand.

Two memorials, two names each placed above the names oftheir life-long and loyal wives. They each seemed fitting; Marx in his wideopen space near London’s highest point staring accusingly the quiescent massesimmersed in new found opiates, Freud in his secluded time-capsule offering anapt setting for the man who explored the unconscious as a timeless and hiddenspace.

The ideas of historical materialism no less than those ofpsychoanalysis no longer inspire the masses or even the intellectuals. In death,maybe Freud got the better deal. His is a dignified memorial that resonateswith his ideas and views. As for Marx, a more fitting epitaph might have been“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they donot make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existingalready, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all deadgenerations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living.”

* Adapted from a piece first published in The Times Higher Education

From the editor's desk: On the increasing obesity of academic papers

2012-02-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

I have recently agreed to restart my editorial activities, as Senior Editor of Organizational Studies. I shall be sharing from time to time some of my observations with readers of this blog.

Returning to an editorial role after a ten year lapse has offered me some insights into the ways the academic game of publishing has changed. Clearly, there are technological changes, familiar to all, authors, reviewers and editors. The rise of ScholarOne/ManuscriptCentral empire with its electronic submissions, electronic reviews and electronic decisions has been spectacular.

In my area of scholarship, organizational psychology and sociology, the number of journals and the number of submissions have increased dramatically. "The paper" is now the fundamental preoccupation of most academics I meet - its preparation, its submission for review and the subsequent dramas of revisions and rejections constitute a very large part of discussions among academics.

The traumatic story recounting the disappointments and humiliations in the hands of editors and reviewers is now certainly the commonest genre when academics meet each other, far outnumbering narratives about promotion, moves and so forth. Non-academics will be interested to know that they also far outnumber narratives about the research itself (i.e. the ideas and theories that the paper expounds) to say nothing about students and experiences in the classroom, which seem to have become secondary in the lives of academics. The paper rules all else.

I frequently get consulted about papers that have made the rounds of several journals and have reached a kind of limbo land, between and betwixt the peace of oblivion and the ephemeral triumph of publication. I have, sometimes, this vision of armies of homeless papers doing the rounds of journals, like refugees, only to have the door of publication firmly shut in their face.

One may imagine that, like refugees, these papers would be lean, hungry and ingenious. Far from it. The majority of these papers tend to be highly conservative and over-long. 12000 words now seems to be emerging as a new upper limit for many article journals, and authors appear intent to use every single word they are entitled. More alarmingly, reference sections are now engorged to well over 100 references.

The reasons for this are not complex. As papers go through different reviewers and editors who make different and sometimes exorbitant demands on authors, authors tend to throw more and more material into their pots - more theories, more concepts and more references. Needless to say that what emerges from these pots is often ill-digested by the authors and makes for indigestible reading for the reader.

This then is my first discovery from returning to an editorial role - papers have become fatter, more indigestible and less focused.

And this is my plea to authors: resist the temptation to comply with all of the reviewers' and editors' demands by automatically adding text. Address some demands by removing text (e.g. text that provoked critical remarks in the first instance), by re-organizing material or by tightening up argument.

Universities or finishing schools?

2012-02-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

In the past few days, several of my students wrote to me politely informing me that they could not attend my lectures because they had 'mock interviews'.

Many universities these days offer such interviews (usually provided by recruitment teams of well-known firms) to their students. It is their attempt to enhance their 'employability' and, hence, the university's own standing in various league tables, itself a vital factor in attracting future students at hefty fees.

Mock interviews along with a wide range of career advice provisions (which include a constant obsession with perfecting a cv and writing the ideal job application) are now part of the vast discourse of self-marketing that dominates the thinking of universities and their students.

The Holy Grail of self-marketing, as of all marketing, is the brand. "Get the brand right and everything else follows", is its mantra. Whether referring to a product, an organization or a person, the recipe is always the same. "Get the brand right."

For many students, getting the right qualification is less important than how they package this qualification, how they make it part of the story they tell employers. The knowledge they may get in lectures is not as important as the qualification, and the qualification is not as important as the way they present it.

This marks what Mats Alvesson calls "The triumph of emptiness" - the belief that, as long as the image is right, everything else does not matter. Packaging, presentation, jargon, in short the clever manipulation of appearances and illusions, is where the West now firmly believes that value is generated (while in the East, they are busily creating wealth by making 'things'.)

Students are advised to re-package themselves for every interview and re-invent themselves for every employer. But doesn't this undo the essential idea of branding (which, after all, takes its name from a permanent marking, an attempt at permanent signification)?

And if universities now regard mock interviews as more important than lectures could the not be accused of betraying their mission to educate and turning into finishing schools?

Aida. Callas. Mexico City. 7 March 1951. A miracle.

2012-02-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

Aida (by no means my favourite opera) has attracted much discussion for a variety of reasons. Edward Said deconstructed it as a point of entry into the orientalist mind while Thomas Mann used the final duet as one of the key musical moments in the Magic Mountain, offering an interpretation that remains unsurpassed to this day.

There are many excellent performances on record, not least by Tebaldi and Bergonzi, Caballe and Domingo, Price and Vickers. For me, however, the performance by Maria Callas recorded live in Mexico City on 7 March 1951 constitutes a musical miracle unlikely to be repeated. The performance was captured in very primitive sound, something that anyone interested in music filters out after a few minutes. This was one of those glorious occasions when Callas (not my favourite singer or even my favourite soprano) could ask anything she wanted of her voice and the voice delivered. The performance is famous for the extrapolated top e-flat with which Callas crowns the conclusion of the second act, a note sung with such total security and held for so long, that it alone has made the performance legendary.

Would she have a chance looking like this today?

This, however, is to overlook the extraordinary things that Callas does with the role, the way she draws out Aida's despair, pride and (that currently unpopular word) nobility with no trace of sentimentality or self-pity. Callas's Aida is no Pharaoh's slave as she is accused by her father, nor a woman undone by an unsustainable romance. She is a passionate, sincere and self-confident woman who knows from the start that there will be no happy end to her story. Callas's "O terra addio" entry in the final duet is enough to melt anyone's heart and to persuade anyone of music's power to elevate and ennoble. Her duet with Taddei as Amonasro is surely terrifying in its intensity making something of Aida's sacrifice to parallel Traviata's. Here is a woman who is neither bullied nor coaxed to act against her deeper desires, a woman who in sacrificing herself rises to truly heroic status.

Her Radames is Mario del Monaco (also not my favourite Italian tenor) and this, along with Otello, must be one of his greatest recordings. Radames is a character who, like Otello and Don Jose, if sung by a lyrical tenor, becomes very easy fodder for his adversary - a pitiful hero and hence no hero at all. It takes the voice of a truly heroic tenor like del Monaco, Domingo or Vickers to persuade us that Radames is a warrior every bit the match of Amonasro, as capable of leading the Egyptian hordes as he is of demanding the release of the Ethiopian prisoners. Del Monaco's contribution to the Triumphal Scene is totally thrilling and in the Nile duet with Callas he tempers his tendency and does sing softly and gently. His "Morrir, si pura e bella", the only place in the opera where he leads his partner, is sung gently and with inward feeling, almost as meltingly as Bergonzi and his final words have dignity and courage.

Oralia Dominguez who sings Amneris was an outstanding singer whom unfortunately I never heard live but who had impressed me greatly as Carmen on record. Here she duets brilliantly with Callas in the early acts, never overwhelmed by the vocal phenomenon opposite her, and rises magnificently to her fourth act scene; she is so much better than various Italian mezzos who shared the stage with Callas. A clear voice, powerful, direct with no hysteria.

Taddei was one of my favourite Italian baritones and here he gives simly blood-curdling account of Amonasro's demonic monomania. It is difficult to think that the singer who could sing such affable Figaros, Leoprellos and Guglielmos could turn his voice into such a menacing instrument ideal for Macbeths, Scarpias and, as here, Amonasro. Memorable, like the rest of the performance. I should mention that the Orchestra and Chorus of the Fine Arts Palace of Mexico City acquit themselves with much credit as does the very skillful conductor, Oliviero de Fabritis.

Listening to a performance of Aida like this one begins to understand something of the emotional punch that Verdi's operas held during his lifetime and their catalysing effect during the Risorgimento. The operas have survived and from time to time we can experience something of the frisson they have held for Italian audiences in the 19th century. Essentially, however, they are now museum pieces or even publicity stunts, primarily vehicles for imaginative and excitable directors always keen to shock, to question and to provoke. It takes a miracle of a performance like this to establish the primacy of the musical language over the all-conquering commercialization and self-destructive hype of the musical stage.

Η εξιστόρηση στην κοινωνική έρευνα

2012-02-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

(Αυτό το μεγαλύτερο του συνηθισμένου μήκους blog, απευθείνεται σε ερευνητές, δασκάλους, οργανωτικά στελέχη και άλλους που ενδιαφέρονται να διαβάσουν στην Ελληνική γλώσσα ένα άρθρο σχετικά με την σημαντική προσφορά της μελέτης της αφήγησης και της εξιστόρησης στις σύγχρονες κοινωνικές επιστήμες.)

Το 2005 ο SteveJobs έδωσε την εναρκτήρια διάλεξη του στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Στάνφορντ που τον τίμησεμε ένα πτυχίο. Η ομιλία του αποτελείτο από τρεις απλές ιστορίες. Η πρώτη αφορούσετη πρώιμη αναχώρηση του από το πανεπιστήμιο όταν ήταν δεκαεπτάχρονος φοιτητής, λόγωτο οικονομικού βάρους των σπουδών του στους γονείς του και του περιορισμένουοφέλους τους. Μπόρεσε όμως και επωφελήθηκε από τα μαθήματα καλλιγραφίας, πουπολλά χρόνια αργότερα βγήκαν χρήσιμα όταν ενσωμάτωσε πολλές γραμματοσειρές στηνApple Mac.

Η δεύτερη αφοράτον πόνο και την απογοήτευση που ένιωσε όταν απολύθηκε από την Apple, τηνεταιρεία που είχε ιδρύσει. Αλλά και αυτή η απογοήτευση αποδείχθηκε «το καλύτεροπράγμα που μου συνέβη ποτέ» κατά τον ίδιο. Του επέτρεψε να ξεκινήσει μια νέακαριέρα ως δημιουργικό πνεύμα και όχι ως διευθύνων σύμβουλος εταιρείας, δίνονταςτου τη δυνατότητα να επιστρέψει στην Apple αργότερα σαν σωτήρας της εταιρίας.

Η τρίτη ιστορίαπεριγράφει την πρόωρη ανακάλυψη ότι έπασχε από καρκίνο και ότι ο θάνατος μπορείνα μας περιμένει γύρω από κάθε γωνία. Αυτό τον ώθησε να ζήση την κάθε μέρα σαννα είναι η τελευταία του. Έτσι είδε το θάνατο όχι ως εχθρό, αλλά ως φυσικόπροορισμό της ζωής και τον βοήθησε να επιβιώσει με την αρρώστια του καρκίνουγια αρκετά χρόνια. Ο θάνατος, είπε, είναι ο φίλος που μας ωθεί να αξιοποιήσουμεστο έπακρο τη ζωή μας.

Τρεις αφηγήσεις ζωήςκαι θανάτου, με θριάμβους και απογοητεύσεις, με ελπίδες και απώλειες. Όχικήρυγμα, όχι διάλεξη, μόνο τρεις βαθιές εκφράσεις των βιωμάτων που θέλησε να συμμερισθήμε το ακροατήριο του. Ο Steve Jobs χρησιμοποίησε τακτικά τέτοιες εξιστορήσειςστις παρουσιάσεις του, όπως κάνουν σήμερα πολλοί ηγέτες επιχειρήσεων, άλλωνοργανισμών αλλά και κρατών. Στο ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο του Leading Minds: Ananatomy of leadership, ο Howard Gardner ισχυρίζεται ότι η αφήγηση είναι μιάαπό τις πιο σημαντικές ενέργειες που καλούνται να εκτελέσουν οι ηγέτες. Ο Gardnerεξετάζει τις ζωές των 11 επιφανών ηγετών του περασμένου αιώνα, που άφησανμεγάλο έργο τους. Ένα μεγάλο μέρος της αποτελεσματικότητάς και πειστικότας τουςως ηγέτες οφείλετο στην ικανότητα τους να εμπνέουν με τη δύναμη των εξιστορήσεωντους και το βαθμό στον οποίο οι δικές τους ζωές ενσωματώνονταν σ’αυτές τιςεξιστορήσεις. Αυτό βέβαια επαληθεύεται εύκολα αν σκεφτούμε τις παραβολές τουΧριστού ή τις αφηγήσεις του Οδυσσέα.

Η αφήγηση ήτανπάντα κεντρικό χαρακτηριστικό ανθρώπινων κοινωνιών, ομάδων και οργανώσεων. Οιιστορίες (ή εξιστορήσεις όπως προτιμώ να τις ονομάζω) είναι προϊόντα αυτών των αφηγήσεων, μεχαρακτήρες, πλοκές, περιπλοκές, περιπέτειες και απρόβλεπτα. Τέτοιεςεξιστορήσεις είναι γεμάτες νόημα καιεύκολα αποθηκεύονται στη μνήμη μας. Ορισμένες εξιστορήσεις είναι καθαρήμυθοπλασία, άλλες πάλι, όπως αυτές του Steve Jobs, είναι εμπνευσμένες απόπραγματικά βιώματα. Η σχέση τους με τα γεγονότα που τις εμπνέουν, όμως, είναι «πλαστική»και ανακριβής - στις εξιστορήσεις, η ακρίβεια συχνά θυσιάζεται στο βωμό του συμβολισμούή του ηθικού συμπεράσματος. Οι εξιστορήσεις εκφράζουν ηθικές αξίες και κρίσεις προςτα γεγονότα που περιγράφουν, διανέμοντας ρόλους στους πρωταγωνιστές τους, όπωςήρωας, κακός, θύμα, σωτήρας, βλάκας, ερωτευμένος κλπ. Έτσι προκαλόυν έντονασυναισθήματα στον αφηγητή αλλά και στο ακροατήριο, όπως συμπάθεια, θυμό, φόβο,άγχος και ελπίδα.

Πριν εκατό περίπουχρόνια, πολλοί μελετητές υποστήρηξαν ότι η παραδοσιακή αφήγηση βρισκόταν στηνπαρακμή της, κάτω από την πίεση νεων μορφών ψυχαγωγίας και μέσων επικοινωνίας.Η εύκολη διαθεσιμότητα των γρήγορων και αξιόπιστων πληροφοριών και η εξέλιξητων επιστημονικών, τεκμηριωμένων γνώσεων, πίστευαν αυτοί οι μελετητές, θα αποτελέσειτο τελειωτικό χτύπημα στην αφήγηση. Σήμερα όμως, οι ερευνητές, όπως και πολλοί ηγέτες, ανακαλύπτουν εκ νέου τηδύναμη της αφήγησης. Η ιστοσελίδα του Amazon περιλαμβάνει σήμερα πάνω από 26000βιβλία με «story» και «storytelling» στοντίτλο, από τις οποίες όχι λιγότερες από 3470 βρίσκονται στο χώρο της διοίκησηςεπιχειρήσεων (business administration), σίγουρη ένδειξη ότι η εξιστόρηση έχειγίνει πολύ της μόδας τόσο για τα στελέχη οργανισμών όσο και για τους μελετητέςτους. Ακόμη μεγαλύτερος αριθμός βιβλίων είναι προσωπικές εξιστορήσεις ήαπομνημονεύματα, χρονικά διασήμων ή μη ατόμων που θέλουν να εξιστορήσουν τις προσωπικέςτους εμπειρίες, για παράδειγμα, πώς επέζησαν τον καρκίνο, το πως έμαθαν μιάκαινούργια τέχνη ή το πώς ανακάλυψαν τη δύναμη της θρησκείας ή της αφήγησης.

Ποιά λοιπόν είναιη σημασία της εξιστόρησης; Απο που αντλούν οι εξιστορήσεις την μεγάλη τουςδύναμη; Να μερικοί λόγοι:

• Οιεξιστορήσεις να μας βοηθούν να κατανοήσουμετα βαθύτερα νοήματα της εμπειρίας μας, ειδικά όταν αυτές οι εμπειρίες είναι ενάντιααπό τις ρουτίνες και τις συνήθειες μας,

• οι εξιστορήσεις μας επιτρέπουν να μαθαίνουμε από ταβιώματα άλλων και να συμμεριζόμαστε τα δικά μας βιώματα με άλλους,

• οιεξιστορήσεις μας δίνουν τη δυνατότητα ναεκφράσομε τα συναισθήματά μας, οτιδήποτε και αν είναι,

• οι εξιστορήσειςκας δίνουν τη δυνατότητα να επηρεάσουμε έντονα τα συναισθήματα και τις ιδέεςάλλων,

• οι εξιστορήσεις μπορούν να κινητοποιήσουν ανανεωτικέςδυνάμεις αλλαγής σε οργανισμούς και κοινωνίες, αλλά μπορούν επίσης ναλειτουργήσουν ως εμπόδια υπονομεύοντας την ανανέωση,

• οι εξιστορήσεις είναι ζωτικής σημασίας για τη δημιουργίακαι μετατροπή της ψυχολογικής μας ταυτότητας,

• οιεξιστορήσεις δημιουργούν και ενισχύουν κοινωνικούς δεσμούς,

• οι εξιστορήσεις διασκεδάζουν, παρηγορούν, ψυχαγωγούν καιπροειδοποιούν.

Πως λοιπόνλειτουργεί η αφήγηση στίς καθημερινές μας σχέσεις; Γιατί η προσοχή μας αμέσωςαυξάνεται όταν ακούμε κάποιον να λέει "Άκου να δεις τι συνέβη όταν..."; Κατά τη γνώμη μου, η άμεση διαθεσιμότητα πληροφοριών και δεδομένωναντί να υπονομεύει την αφήγησης την τονώνει. Σε ένα κόσμο που πνίγεται στις πληροφορίεςκαι τα στοιχεία, στις στατιστικές και τους αριθμούς (πολλά απο τα οποία είναιάχρηστα ή ψευδή), η εξιστόρηση μας βοηθάει να επικοινωνούμε, όχι μόνοπληροφορίες αλλά και έννοιες και συναισθήματα και ηθικές κρίσεις, μεαξιοσημείωτη ταχύτητα και οικονομία (Gabriel, 2000).

Όταναντιμετωπίζουμε ένα επαγγελματικό πρόβλημα ή ένα πρόβλημα υγείας ή management, συχνάθα στραφούμε σε κάποιον που έχει ήδη βιώσει και ξεπεράσει ένα παρόμοιο πρόβλημα.Έτσι προσπαθούμε να μάθουμε από τις εμπειρίες των τριγύρω μας. Γι’αυτό το λόγο,πολλοί σύμβουλοι επιχειρήσεων (management consultants) έχουν γίνει παραμυθάδες,αρχίζοντας με τον Tom Peters του οποίου γνωστό μπεστ-σέλερ Αναζητώντας τηναριστεία (In Search of Excellence, σε συνεργασία με τον RobertWaterman) περιέχει ούτε λίγο ούτε πολύ 137 πλούσιες εξιστορήσεις. Πολλές απόαυτές αφορούν επιτυχίες επιχειρήσεων πούξεπέρασαν μεγάλα εμπόδια, μετά από ηρωικές θυσίες και τιτάνιες προσπάθειες.Αυτές λοιπον οι εξηστορήσεις, που εμάς ισως μας αφήνουν ασυγκινητους,σαγηνεύουν και μαγεύουν στελέχη επιχειρήσεων πού αντιμετωπιζουν παρόμοιεςδυσκολίες. Με τον ίδιο τρόπο, η εμπειρία του γνωστού κάποιου γνωστού μας πουξεπέρασε το καρκίνου προστάτου γίνεται ζωτικής σημασίας όταν και εμείςαντιμετωπίσομε την ίδια νόσο.

Αναλογισθήτε όμωςόχι μόνο την οργανική (instrumental) χρήσιμότητα της εξιστόρησης αλλά και τηνηθική της διάσταση. Σκεφθείτε τις παραβολές του Χριστού, του Μωάμεθ ή τουΒούδα, σκευθείτε επίσης τις αλληγορίεςτου Πλάτωνα ή και τις ιστορίες του Αισώπου και αμέσως διαπιστώνετε την μεγάληηθοπλαστική ικανότητα της εξιστόρησης.

Πριν από μερικάχρόνια, είχα καθυστερήσει στο διεθνές αεροδρόμιο του Ντένβερ, εξαιτίας μιαςμεγάλης καταιγίδας στο αμερικανικό Midwest. Σε ένα από τα εστιατόρια του αεροδρομίου,έτυχε να ακούσω μία συνομιλία τεσσάρων πιλότων, που όπως και εγώ περίμεναν ναπεράσει η κακοκαιρίας για ξαναρχίσουν τις πτήσεις τους. Τι λοιπόν έλεγαν; Οκαθένας τους άρχισε να περιγραφει τις πιο επικίνδυνες περιπέτειες που είχε ποτέσυναντήσει σε κακές καιρικές συνθήκες. Σε αυτές τις εξιστορήσεις, τα αεροπλάνα,747, 757 και 727s, δεν ήταν απλές μηχανές, αλλά χαρακτήρες με ξεχωριστέςπροσωπικότητες, συμπάθειες, αντιπάθειες και χούγια, που απαιτούν ειδικές γνώσειςκαι προσεκτικό χειρισμό.

Αυτές οι τρομακτικέςεξιστορήσεις δεν ήταν ιδιαίτερα ευχάριστες εκείνες τις στιγμές της θύελας, αλλάμου έμαθαν πολλά πράγματα. Σαφώς, κάθε πιλότος προσπαθούσε να εντυπωσιάσει τουςαλλους με κάποια εξιστόρηση πιο δραματική και επικίνδυνη, μιά περιπέτεια που απαίτησεμια ακόμα πιο λαμπρή μανούβρα για να αποφευχθή η καταστροφή. Σε ένα άλλο πλάνοόμως, η συζήτηση αποτελούσε ανταλλαγή γνώσεων, γνώσεων σχετικά με συγκεκριμένεςκαιρικές συνθήκες, γνώσεων διαφόρων κινδύνων, γνώσεων των απαιτήσεων καιδυνατοτήτων διαφόρων αεροπλάνων. Οι πιλότοι αποτελουσαν αυτό που ονομάζουμεσήμερα κοινότητα πρακτικής (community of practice) – ο καθένας μάθαινεαπό τις εμπειρίες των άλλων με τη μεσολάβηση της αφήγησης.

Οι κοινότητεςπρακτικής, που απασχολούν πολύ τους σημερινους ερευνητές, είναι ομάδες ατόμωνπου αντιμετωπίζουν παρόμοια προβλήματα και έχουν συμπληρωματικές ικανότητες καιγνώσεις. Είναι κυρίως επαγγελματικές ομάδες, όπως δάσκαλοι, πιλότοι, γιατροί,ερευνητές ή φορτηγατζήδες αλλά επίσης και ομάδες που έχουν ένα κοινό χόμπι ήενδιαφέρον, όπως ερασιτέχνες κηπουροί, μάγειροι ή και πάσχοντες από μιάασυνήθιστη αρρώστια. Σ΄αυτές λοιπόν τις κοινότητες, οι γνώσεις και η μεταφοράγνώσεων δεν είναι «επιστημονική» - δεν μπορεί να κωδικοποιηθεί σε γενικεύσιμουςεπιστημονικούς νόμους και όρους. Αντ 'αυτού, παίρνει τη μορφή της εξιστόρησης, τωνσυνταγών και της άμεση περιγραφής της ειδικής και όχι αυτόματα γενικεύσιμης εμπειρίας.

Μέσα σ’αυτές τιςκοινότητες πρακτικής, η κάθε αφήγηση αποτελεί το φυσικό νόμισμα. Η εξιστόρηση παρουσιάζει τα γεγονότα-σαν-βίωμα και όχι τα γεγονότα-σαν-πληροφορία.Η εξιστόρηση μέναι πάντα πιστή όχι στη αλήθεια των γεγονότων αλλα στην αλήθειατης βαθύτερης (κατά τον αφηγητή) σημασίας τους. Η γνώση που προκύπτει από τηνεξιστόρηση συχνα αποκαλείται αφηγηματική γνώση και κρίνεται με εντελώςδιαφορετικά κριτήρια από την επιστημονική γνώση.

Μια από τις σημαντικέςανακαλύψεις των τελευταίων είκοσι χρόνων είναι ότι οι ίδιες επαγγελματικές ομάδεςτων οποίων η γνώση φαίνεται να βασίζεται στην επιστήμη (οι πιλότοι, οι λογιστές,οι δικηγόροι, οι τεχνικόι) κάνουν εκτεταμένη χρήση της αφηγηματικής γνώσης στο πλαίσιοτης πρακτικής τους. Για παράδειγμα, η θεραπεία του διαβήτη ως μια γενική πάθησημπορεί να καθορίζεται από τις σύγχρονες επιστημονικές γνώσεις (βασισμένες σειατρικές μελέτες με αυστηρά προτόκολα κλπ.), όμως, η θεραπεία του διαβήτη ενόςσυγκεκριμένου ατόμου με ειδικές επιπλοκές και ιδιοσυγκρασίες συχνα στηρίζεταιστην αφηγηματική (και όχι επιστημονική) γνώση του γιατρού, βασισμένες στιςεξιστορήσεις άλλων γιατρών και στις δικές του εμπειρίες με παρόμοιεςπεριπτώσεις. Και για τον ίδιο λόγο, ο ασθενής του διαβήτη συνβουλεύεται τον γιατρό του για τις πιο σύγχρονες θεραπείεςτης αρρώστιας του, αλλά συχνά διαβουλεύεται επίσης με άλλους ασθενείς του διαβήτηγια να μάθει πώς χειρίζονται την αρρωστια, περιορίζοντας τις συνέπειες της.Αυτή η διαβούλευση μπορεί να γίνεται με τακτικές συναντήσεις, ατομικές ήομαδικές, αλλά και μέσω του διαδυκτίου (Gabriel, 2004).

Η έρευνα τηςοργανωτικής αφήγησης ανεπτύχθηκε σημαντικά τη δεκαετία του 1990 όταν οι εξιστορήσεις άρχισαν να κάνουν τακτικές εμφανίσεις ως«δεδομένα» για την ανάλυση των οργανισμών, επιτρέποντας στους επιστήμονες να εξετάσουντην πολιτιστική, πολιτική και συναισθηματική τους διάσταση. Πολλά διδακτορικάσήμερα γράφονται με βάση την αφήγηση καθώς και αρκετά έρευνες στις κοινωνικέςεπιστήμες. Πρόσφατα συμμετήχα σε δύο τέτοιες έρευνες. Η πρώτη, που χρηματοδοτήθηκεαπό μια μεγάλη επιχορήγηση του Εθνικού Ινστιτούτου Έρευνας Υγείας τηςΒρεταννίας, εξέτασε τη σχέση μεταξύ ηγεσίας και περίθαλψης σε τρία βρετανικάνοσοκομεία. Ένα μεγάλο μέρος των στοιχείων που συλλέξαμε είχε τη μορφήεξιστορήσεων γιατρών, νοσοκόμων, διοικητικών στελεχών και των ιδίων των ασθενών, για την ποιότητατης περίθαλψης και για τις σχέσεις μεταξύ των διαφόρων ομάδων των νοσοκομείων (Lökman, Gabriel, & Nicolson, 2011).

Η δεύτερη έρευνα (Gabriel, Gray, & Goregaokar, 2010) εξέτασε τις εμπειρίες ενός μικρού αριθμού διοικητικών στελεχών επιχειρήσεων (managers)που βρέθηκαν ξαφνικά άνεργοι στα 50 τους. Πώς λοιπόν ερμήνευσαν το τραυματικόαυτό γεγονός, πως το ενσωμάτωσαν στις ιστορίες της ζωής τους και κατα πόσομπόρεσαν να το ξεπεράσουν και να άνοίξουν ένα νέο κεφάλαιο στη σταδιοδρομίατους; Η έρευνα αυτή μας ανέδειξε τρεις διαφορετικές αφηγήσεις που υιοθέτησαν οιάνεργοι επαγγελματίες – την αποκατάσταση (αυτή είναι προσωρινλη κατάσταση,σύντομα θα ξαναβρώ δουλειά), το χάος (αυτή είναι καταστροφή, το τέλος της ζωήςμου), την αναζήτηση (δεν ξέρω ακόμα την σημασία αυτού του γεγονότος αλλά θαδουλεψω σκληρά για να τη βρω) και ανελυσε τα αποτελεσματα της κάθε μιάς.

Σαν ερευνητής πουέχω δουλέψει για πολλά χρόνια στην έρευνα της εξιστόρησης, έχω διαπιστώσει ότι ηεξιστόρηση μας ανοιγει πολλά παράθυρα σε βαθύτερες πτυχές των βιωμάτων μας πουπαραμένουν απρόσιτες στις άλλες ερευνητικές μεθόδους. Ακούγοντας προσεκτικά αφηγήσεις,μαθαίνει κανείς πολλά για άτομα, οργανισμούς και ολόκληρες κοιμνωνίες. Γενικότερα,μαθαίνοντας να ακούμε και να ερμηνεύουμε τις εξιστορήσεις, ενισχύουμε αφάνταστατην κατανόηση αλλά και την πρακτική μας σαν ερευνητές, δάσκαλοι, συνεργάτες ή ηγέτες.

Περισσότερες πληροφορίες

Εάν είστε ερευνητηςή επαγγελματίας ενδιαφερόμενος στην εξιστόρηση ως στοιχείο της έρευνας, θαβρείτε λεπτομέρειες για το σεμινάριο ερευνητικής αφήγησης στη ιστοσελίδα:

http://www.organizational-storytelling.org.uk/~~V

Gabriel, Y. 2000. Storytelling in organizations:Facts, fictions, fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gabriel, Y.2004. The voice of experience and the voice of the expert: Can they speak toeach other? In B. Hurwitz, T. Greenhalgh, & V. Skultans (Eds.), Narrativeresearch in health and illness: 168-186. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gabriel, Y.,Gray, D. E., & Goregaokar, H. 2010. Temporary Derailment or the End of theLine? Managers Coping with Unemployment at 50. Organization Studies,31(12): 1687-1712.

Lökman, P.,Gabriel, Y., & Nicolson, P. 2011. Hospital doctors' anxieties at work:Patient care as intersubjective relationship and/or as system output. InternationalJournal of Organizational Analysis, 19(1): 29-48.

First acquaintances, early loves

2012-02-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

Listening to Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto earlier today brought to mind the incredible frisson that I felt when I first heard this piece of music as a 6 or 7 year old. The thrill of those opening bars in the horns, the piano's huge fusillades followed by the mighty octaves and the puzzle of the theme's quick disappearance never to come back is something I can vividly remember but not re-experience.

I realised that I have very clear recollections of my first encounters with many pieces of music. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, first heard at the Athens State Orchestra's weekly concerts, left me with a sense of disbelief - surely my ears were deceiving me, there just couldn't be music as beautiful as this. I had a similar reaction with Beethoven's Violin Concerto I first heard on a recording I borrowed from the school library. Ruggiero Ricci, the violinist on that recording, became one of my early musical heroes.

Such musical encounters are not captured so well as 'love at first sight'. Rather they evoke visual experiences when meeting a person, a painting or even a landscape ou ask yourself "Surely they can't be this beautiful - a split second observation will reveal some flaws!"

I also remember my encounter with my first genuine Indian curry at the age of 17. I remember my taste buds being totally overwhelmed by the heat, the spices, the sheer outrageousness of a taste I could not remotely link to anything that had entered my mouth previously. I remember too my cousin Zoe's (the brilliant painter of New York in Love on the right) amusement at my face during that first visit to an Indian restaurant in London, Kwality, I think was its name.

Other much loved pieces of music took a lot longer to embrace. Beethoven's Op. 130 String Quartets was one of my earliest acquisitions (I had heard it in a concert played by the great Guarnieri Quartet and found it totally unfathomable) but it took many hearings before I felt that 'I got it'. I can understand well why many of Beethoven's contemporaries were totally perplexed by his late quartets, given that repetition without recordings was not open to them.

Which then of these early loves endured and which faded away? I have to confess that Beethoven's heroic, middle-period works, that had represented my supreme youthful ideals lost their ability to move me for many years. And then suddenly about ten years ago or so, I started listening again to the Eroica and the Emperor Concerto with tears in my eyes.

Wagner, another youthful love, I let go of. After many Tristans, Parsifals and the odd Ring in the opera house and innumerable recordings, he became a stranger to me. I will now listen occasionally to extracts more to enjoy Birgit Nilsson's unbelievable vocal strength or Jon Vicker's ability to evoke anguish beyond words than to engage with Brunhilde's or Tristan's angst.

For many years, Mozart operas were not long away from turntable or my CD player. They continue to captivate and enchant me in the opera house, like Jonathan Miller's devilishly clever Cosi Fan Tutte currently on at Covent Garden, but I will rarely play them, unless on my iPod on a long journey. They require the theatrical action and too much concentration to the word-music interplay to engage with them.

Schubert's mature masterpieces have always been part of my day-to-day musical fare, although I must admit that there arem some 'lieder-less' periods in my life. His G-major piano sonata (the number 894 forever linked to it in my mind) has been a lifelong companion, ever since I heard it at the Rex theatre played by the great Vladimir Ashkenazy, as are the three sonatas he composed in his last year and the String Quintet, I first heard on an old Saga recording with the Aeolians, while holding my breath as much for the beauty of the music as trying to exorcise those awful clicks and scratches, so common in vinyl days.

First acquaintances, early loves. In music as in everything else they can take many different paths, but memories of those encounters stay.

Προσοχή στις θεωρίες συνωμοσίας και τα σενάρια*

2012-02-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

Ένα από τα πιοσημαντικά βήματα στη χρήση της αφήγησης ή μάλλον της εξιστόρησης σαν βασικήέννοια της ερευνητικής μεθοδολογίας των κοινωνικών επιστημών βρίσκεται στηδιαπίστωση οτι η αλήθειας μιας εξιστόρησης έγκειται όχι στα γεγονότα πουπεριγράφει αλλά στη βαθύτερη της έννοια.

Μόλιςαντιληφθούμε ότι τα γεγονότα που τροφοδοτούν πολλές εξιστορήσεις δεν πρόκειταιποτέ να επαληθευτούν ή διαψευθούν με αντικειμενικά στοιχεία, μαθαίνουμε να τις αντιμετωπίζουμε ωςεκφράσεις εντόνων συναισθημάτων, επιθυμιών και πόθων. Μέσω της αφήγησης, οκαθένας εκφράζει ότι πιστεύει ή βιώνει σαν αλήθεια και όχι αυτό που κατ' ανάγκηνσυνέβη. Αυτό είναι σημαντικό και σχεδόν αυτονόητο.

Ακολουθούν πολλέςσυνέπειες. Μία είναι ότι πολλές εξιστορήσεις αντλούν από βαθείς συμβολισμούςκαι μυθολογικές πηγές. Σε αυτές τις εξιστορήσεις, τα μυθολογικά αρχέτυπα, όπωςο ήρωας, ο απατεώνας, ο κακός, το θύμα, εφανίζονται πολύ καθαρά – οι χαρακτήρεςτους δεν είναι σύνθετοι και περίπλοκοι σαν πραγματικοί άνθρωποι, αλλά έντονασύμβολα με αμετάβλητες ιδιότητες.

Μία άλλη συνέπειαείναι ότι η δύναμη μιας εξιστόρησης έγκειται στην ικανότητά της να«συντονιστεί» με το ακροατήριο της, να ακούγεται εύλογη και, επομένως, αληθινή,δηλαδή να είναι αληθοφανής. Αυτό ακριβώς καθιστά τις θεωρίες συνωμοσίαςσημαντικότατα είδη εξιστόρησης. Φαίνονται εύλογες στο σημείο όπου αντιστέκονταιοποιαδήποτε διόρθωση ή διάψευση μέσω προσφυγής σε πραγματικά «γεγονότα».

Οιαποτελεσματικές θεωρίες συνωμοσίας είναι τόσο ισχυρές ώστε να μπορούν ναενσωματώσουν σχεδόν κάθε στοιχείο. Μια απλή αφηγηματική τακτική γι’ αυτό τοσκοπό είναι η ερμηνεία των διαψευτικών στοιχείων σα να είναι μέρη τηςσυνωμοσίας - ότι τα έχουν φυτέψει για να καλύπτουν τα ίχνη τους οι συνωμότες.Αυτός είναι ο λόγος είναι «πιο εύκολο να σφάξει κανείς ένα δράκο παρά νασκοτώσει ένα μύθο» (Gabriel, 1991).

Ένα άλλο κοινόχαρακτηριστικό των θεωριών συνωμοσίας είναι το ερώτημα "Ποιος επωφελήθηκεαπό κάποιο γεγονός;" και στη συνέχεια ο ισχυρισμός ότι όποιοδήποτεεπωφελήθηκε ήταν η αιτία του. "Ποιος επωφελήθηκε από τις επιθέσεις 9/11;Μα φυσικά το κράτος του Ισραήλ. Απόδειξη οτι η Μοσάντ προκάλεσε τιςεπιθέσεις."

Η ουσία τηςθεωρίας συνωμοσίας βρίσκεται τότε στην ικανότητά της να:

δίνει «εξηγήσεις» για κάποιο κακό, μια αποτυχία, μια καταστροφή κλπ. αποδίδοντας το σε σχετικά απλές και εύλογες αιτίες,
αποδίδει την αποτυχία στίς ενέργειες «κάποιων», οι οποίοι κάτι κέρδίσαν από αυτήν,
αποδίδει σ’ αυτόν τον κάποιο κακόβουλες προθέσεις, πονηριά και διαβολική εξυπνάδα, ικανές να ανατρέπουν κάθε προσπάθεια αποκάληψης,
ενσωματώνει κάθε λεπτομέρεια, δράση και περιστατικό στο συνολικό σενάριο συνωμοσίας.

Μια θεωρίασυνωμοσίας, ως εκ τούτου, είναι μια εξιστόρηση που μας βοηθά να βρούμε τηνέννοια κάποιων δυσάρεστων γεγονότων, ανεξάρτητα από το αν είναι αλήθεια ή όχι.Αυτος ο αυτο-εμβολιασμός (δηλαδή το γενονός οτι είναι μη διαψεύσιμες όπως θαέλεγε ο Popper) διαχωρίζει τις θεωρίες συνωμοσίας από άλλες μεθόδους εννοιολογίας(sensemaking), π.χ. επιστημονικές εξηγήσεις, γραπτά στοιχεία, καταλόγους, αναφορέςκλπ.

Όλα αυτά λοιπόνδεν θα επείραζαν και δεν θα έβλαπταν κανένα αν οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας ήταν απλάκαι αθώα σενάρια για να γεμίζουν οι τηλεοπτικοί σταθμοί τα παραθυρα τους με διάφορουςσεναριολόγους. Δυστυχώς όμως οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας (1) δεν είναι καθόλου αθώες,και (2) γίνονται όλο και πιο συνηθισμένα στοιχεία στο δημόσιο διάλογο, στηνΕλλάδα και αλλού. Το διαδύκτιο έχει εξελιχθή σε μεγάλο φορέα τέτοιων θεωριών. Ναμερικά παραδείγματα:

Σενάρια κρίσεων διατροφής (γιαούρτια, μέλι κλπ.)
Σενάρια κινδύνων για την υγεία (π.χ. εμβολιασμοί)
Σενάρια αλλαγής του κλίματος (και από τις δύο πλευρές)
Πολιτικές συνωμοσιές και σενάρια
Συνωμοσίες συγκαλύψεων από επιχειρήσεις και διεθνείς οργανισμούς
Σενάρια συνωμοσιών από ξένες κυβερνήσεις

Πέρα από αθώαχόμπι για απλοϊικά μυαλά, οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας μολύνουν σοβαρά τις δημόσιεςσυζητήσεις και εξυπηρετούν συγκεκριμένες ομάδες και συμφέροντα. Είναι γνωστή ημεγάλη απάτη τών ‘Πρωτοκόλλων των Πρεσβυτέρων της Σιώνος’ που έπαιξεκαθοριστικό ρόλο στην αναπτυξη τουαντισημιτισμού στην Ευρώπη του 1900. Αργότερα οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας για τηδολοφονία των προέδρων της Ρουάντα Juvenal Habyarimana και του ΜπουρούντιCyprien Ntaryamira εκπυρσοκρότησαν την γενοκτονία της Ρουάντα.

Ας εφαρμόσουμε,λοιπόν, τη λογική των θεωρητικών της συνωμοσίας στις ίδιες τις θεωρίεςσυνωμοσίας; Ποιος ωφελείται από αυτές τις θεωρίες; Είναι προφανές ότι τα μέντιαωφελούνται, δεδομένου ότι κάθε πνοή συνωμοσίας και συγκάλυψης κάνει θαύματα γιατην κυκλοφορία των εφημερίδων, τροφοδοτόντας διάφορους δημόσια ηθική πανικουςκαι άγχη.

Σε πολύ βαθύτεροεπίπεδο, όμως, μου φαίνεται ότι οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας εξυπηρετούν τα συμφέρονταεκείνων που επιθυμούν να υπονομεύσουν τους δημόσιους φορείς και τον ειλικρινήδιάλογο. Στην τελική ανάλυση οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας και οι σεναριολογίες είναισημαντικά εργαλεία γι’ αυτούς που θέλουν να ανατρέψουν τη δημοκρατία και νααποσταθεροποιήσουν τους δημοκρατικούς θεσμους. Αυτό είναι που τις κάνειιδιαίτερα επικίνδυνες και απαιτεί ότι όσοι έχομε γνήσια έννοια για τηδημοκρατία πρέπει να τις καταπολεμούμε, οποιδήποτε και αν είναι η πολιτική μαςτοποθέτηση. Όταν πρόκειται για πολιτικό διάλογο, «εξιστορήσεις» μόνες τους δεναρκούν. Χρειαζόμαστε στοιχεια, αποδίξεις, αξιολογήσεις και τριγωνισμούς.

Gabriel, Y. 1991. On organizational storiesand myths: Why it is easier to slay a dragon than to kill a myth. InternationalSociology, 6(4): 427-442.

*Το άρθρο αυτό είναι μια ελεύθερη μετάφραση προηγουμένου blog.

‘Εξιστόρηση’ - Η μετάφραση των όρων story και storytelling στη σύγχρονη κοινωνιολογική θεωρία

2012-02-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

Ο πλούτος τηςΕλληνικής γλώσσας συχνά μετατρέπεται σε κατάρα, κυρίως όταν Ελληνικές λέξειςκαι εκφράσεις αποκτούν νέες σημασίες και αρχίζουν καινούργιες καριέρες σε άλλεςγλώσσες. Τότε γίνεται πραγματικά δύσκολο να μεταφράσουμε τις ξένες εξελίξεις σταΕλληνικά, αφού οι Ελληνικότατες λέξεις επιμένουν (και δικαίως) να διατηρούν τιςαρχικές τους έννοιες. Κάτι τέτοιο έχει συμβή με την λέξη ‘story’ που έχει αποκτήσειεξαιρετική σημασία στις σημερινές κοινωνικές επιστήμες και που πολυ δύσκολααποδίδεται στα Ελληνικά.

‘Story’προέρχεται φυσικά από την Ελληνική λέξη ‘ιστορία’ που προκύπτει από το ρήμα ‘ειδέναι’,το να γνωρίζει κανείς καλά. Στα Αγγλικά, η Ελληνική λεξη ‘ιστορία’ δίνει και το‘story’ αλλα και το ‘history’, η καθεμία από τις οποίες έχει πλούσια καιδιαφορετική έννοια. Η πρώτη συνδέεται με την καθημερινή αφήγηση, τα παραμύθια, τασενάρια και τους μύθους, η δεύτερη με την συστηματική μελέτη των πεπραγμένωνκαι των αιτίων τους. Η πρώτη ανήκει καθαρά στην ποίηση, η δεύτερη σε μιαπροβληματική αλλά αδιάλλακτη επιστήμη. Ιδού λοιπόν το πρόβλημα: πως θα αποδώσουμετην έννοια της story σταΕλληνικα, προκειμένου να μπορέσουμε να κατανοήσουμε τις χρησιμότατες κοινωνιολογικέςλεωφόρους που μας ανήγει;

Έχοντας περάσειπανω από είκοσι χρόνια στη μελέτη του story, συναντώ καθημερινά αυτό το πρόβλημα ότανπροσπαθώ να εξηγήσω στα Ελληνικά τι ακριβώς προσφέρει το story στην επιστήμη (βλέπε π.χ. τα blogs μου στο θέμα).‘Ιστορίες’ και ‘παραμύθια’ δεν βοηθούν – είναι και οι δύο λέξεις πολύσυνδεδεμένες με τη Χαλιμά και το μυθοποιητικο στοιχείο. Διήγηση και αφήγηση επίσης δεν βοηθούν, γιατί συνδέονταιπερισσότερο με την πράξη και λιγότερο με το αποτέλεσμα. Τελικά, η προτίμηση μουείναι για τη λέξη ‘εξιστόρηση’ που συμβιβάζει την πράξη και τοαποτέλεσμα. Εξιστόρηση μπορεί να αφορά γεγονότα που παρατήρησα χθες ή πέρσυ, εξίσου καλά με τα νέα που διαβάζω στην εφημερίδα μου ή τα παραμύθια που διηγούμαιστα παιδιά μου ή στους φοιτητές μου. Τώρα, γιατί διηγούμαι παραμύθια στους φοιτητέςμου; Αυτή είναι λοιπόν ιστορία για άλλη στιγμή...

In praise of good enough leaders

2012-02-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

"The perfect is the enemy of the good." - Voltaire

I have recently been working on the relationship between leadership with the ethics of care.

In contrast to the ‘ethics of justice’ which has long dominated the thinking of moral philosophers, ethics of care theorists argue for a different system of morality, one that does not rely on claims of universality, absolute judgements of right and wrong, and perfect virtues. Instead, an ethics of care is a practical morality that grows out of a recognition that all people are embedded in different webs of social relations. We are all dependent on others for our survival and well-being and we are capable of supporting others in their moments of need and helplessness.

It seems to me that, whatever else followers expect of their leaders, a fundamental expectation from which many others follow is that leaders should care. A leader who is perceived not to care for his/her followers (and is therefore regarded as caring only for him/herself) automatically loses any claim to moral leadership, not matter what competences and achievements he/she may be able to display.

Developing a theory of the followers' moral expectations of their leaders calls for a recognition that many leaders occupy a position in their followers' unconscious minds that was occupied in earlier life by those archetypal figures, the primal father and the primal mother. To the eyes of the helpless child, these figures are truly immense in their size, knowledge and power, features later projected onto some leaders.

Being cared for and protected by these great is fundamental to most children's experience and again it forms the kernel of later expectations of leaders. It was this realization to prompted to recall Winnicott's theory of the "good enough mother" - this is the mother who does not seek perfection in her relation with her child, but seeks to provide a safe environment, not too controlling, not too distant, in which the child can discover his/her own identity.

And this prompted me to think of a 'good enough' leader, in contrast to all the supposed super-heroes and super-villains who constantly attract the attention of media, pundits and many theorists. Enter Google. Within a minute I discovered that my old friend Aaron Nurick has just published a book entitled The Good Enough Manager - The manking of a Gem (Routledge, 2012) in which he explores this very theme. Aaron has also published a thought provoking blog, "Good Enough Can Be Great".

Nurick's argument is that letting go of the ideal of perfection is a crucial step towards mature leadership and mature followership. Perfection is a childhood delusion which, more often than not, resurfaces in quite destructive shapes to sabotage what is 'good' - hence the title of this blog. Perfection, as Aristotle realized, is for mathematics and the outer spheres of the universe. The closer we get to the earth (Aristole's meteorology), the messier things become ('complex' is today's favourite expression). Such things call neither for science nor for abstract wisdom but for phronesis (or practical wisdom).

And this brings us to the good enough mother and the good enough leader or manager - the individual who recognizes that perfection is a wish-fulfilling illusion. Destructive perfectionism often becomes a ruthless mechanism of control (think of micromanagement, think of all those benchmarks, all those 'best practices', all those cutting edges and world leaders), of disabling criticism (all those parental voices saying "You disappointed me again") and of defensiveness ("Since we cannot be perfect what is the use of trying?")

Three cheers then for Nurick. Since not everyone one can be No 1 and since No 1 itself is often a chimera let's celebrate what is good enough good enough. Good enough can be great. And let's celebrate good enough leaders and managers who care and get things done rather than pitch our hopes in messiahs and miracle-workers.

In Memory of Theo Angelopoulos, when words fail ...

2012-01-25T00:24:00.000-08:00

Farewell, thank you and bravo!

Alternative selves, might-have beens, and unlived lines in our lives

2012-01-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

It is not everyday that an academic reads an article in ascholarly journal that immediately commands attention, demanding seriousengagement and thought. Most scholarly work these days is so turgid andpredictable that coming across such an article can come as something of a shock.

This was my experience today while reading Otilia Obodaru’s “The self not taken: How alternative selves develop and how they influence ourprofessional lives” in the current issue of the Academy of Management Review.This was an article that, like the opening bars of a Beethoven piano sonata, madeits intentions clear from the very start – to change the reader’s outlook onsomething that he/she thought they knew well.

What Obodaru seeks to show is that when we talk about our ‘selves’we are not only referring to our past, our present and our future, nor are weonly referring to our ideal selves, those priceless aspirations that stretchfor ever in front of us. We are not merely referring to those ‘extended selves’that include our iPods, our cars and all the priceless possessions that soimpress consumer scholars. We are also referring,Obodaru maintains, to all those alternative selves that we never get a chanceto live out, all those counterfactuals, the might-have beens that areevery bit as important to our concept of self as the has beens, the beings andthe to bes.

These are what Rilke called the ‘unlived lines in our lives’,the careers that were cut short, the opportunities that were missed, the lovesthat drifted away, the dreams that were never realized. These unlived lines areproducts of our imagination which refuse to melt away; they continue to definewho we are every bit as powerfully as our actual experiences.

Historians sometimes consider what might have happened had adecisive factor not irreversibly decided the future – for instance what mighthave happened had Hitler died in World War I or even in von Stauffenberg’sfailed attempt in July 1944.

These are interesting thought experiments but and usually inconclusive.Yet, similar experiments have always been central to the ways we construct ourpersonal histories and have much firmer outcomes. In telling stories about ourselves we talk about whowe are and who we might have been - who we might have been but for somedecisive factor – a decision we took, an accident we had, a stroke of fortuneor misfortune. Unlike history without Hitler, our personal histories continueto be haunted by unrealised possibilities brought about by strokes of fortuneor misfortune, accidents and coincidences.

In telling our life stories we focus on various turningpoints, some of which we imagine were the products of our own actions and choices,others the result of accidents andchance. We discover blessings in disguise and poisoned chalices, reversals thatworked to the good and strokes of fortune that led to disappointment.

Obodaru’s article blows new life into current discussions ofidentity, self and narrative that, in my view, have become far too comfortableand conservative, the self reduced to an effect of different discourses anddifferent regimes of power, always managed, controlled and derivative. Shedecisively contests that the self is the product of lived experience and itsnarrative elaboration. Instead, she emphasizes that dreams, nightmares andother ‘unlived’ experiences are every bit as constitutive of the self – and suchexperiences can never be perfectly managed or controlled. They are certainlynot derivative.

A great recipe for crab

2012-01-22T00:58:00.000-08:00

Crab is a favourite of mine, whether prepared with ginger and spring onions in a Chinese restaurant or eaten cold with a suitable dip. I am not averse to doing battle with a crab in a restaurant, especially if those around me are not to put off by the spectacle; the recalcitrance of the beast adds to the pleasures of its taste.

Devilled crab is an old-fashioned recipe which draws out beautifully the character of crab. A spectacular variation which never fails to please is the addition of egg which turns it into something between a hot pâté and a soufflé. The dish is very easy to make and can be offered either as a light main course or as a delightful first course. As a first course, it is easy to accommodate with more demanding preparations, like the stuffed guinea fowl with which I had a date yesterday.

I have nearly always dressed my own crabs but regard this as one of the most tedious kitchen jobs, hence I advise you to buy an already dressed crab - dark and white meat mixed. Add a healthy dollop of mustard, some Worcestershire sauce, some paprika, chives and a small amount of squeezed garlic.

Then add between 150 and 200 ml of single cream depending on the size of the crab and a modest amount (1-2 spoonfuls) of fresh Parmesan. You may also add some a dash of brandy or some lemon peel (this is one of the few recipes that will allow lemon peel to mix with Parmesan).

Put this in the fridge, until you are ready to cook it. In this way the base of the dish can be prepared the day before you need it.

When you are ready to cook the dish, heat your oven to medium.

Separate the yolks from the whites of two to three eggs (again depending on the size of the crab - none of these quantities are critical but putting too many eggs will definitely turn this dish into a soufflé, something that you want to avoid). Mix the yolks with the base and whisk the whites. Avoid whisking them excessively - you do not want this to become a dry soufflé, hence the whites must retain a liquid consistency. Fold the whisked whites into the case which now acquires a moist and juicy consistency.

Lightly oil 3-6 ramekins (one of my favourite items in the kitchen). Fill each one 3/4 full with the crab base. For simplicity of handling, put all your ramekins in a flat pyrex dish and place in the oven. This can be done while your guinea fowl, potatoes etc, are also cooking in your oven.

The dish will be ready in about 20-25 minutes. The tops will rise and turn deep gold. Leave out of the oven for a couple of minutes before serving - they are ferociously hot. Place each ramekin on a larger plate and serve with some fresh bread and a green salad (rocket is especially good). English people are sometimes surprised, but this crab is best eaten with desert spoons scooped out of the ramekin.

There are variations to this dish. You can add cooked prawns (shelled) or use frozen or good quality tinned crab. In truth, if I get some top quality fresh crab like the one I have with my friend Helen in Cornwall or with Larry in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, I would not subject it to this treatment. It is so delicious, it is best eaten as it comes, hot or cold.

Finally - I have always struggled to find an appropriate name for this dish. It is neither a pâté and a soufflé. Suggestions welcome.

The vagaries of fortune - musings of an invigilator

2012-01-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

Invigilation. A strange, vaguely ridiculous word. A tedious duty for most academics and one which many universities are now subcontracting.

I never found invigilation to be a waste of time. Quite apart from ensuring that students do not cheat during their exams (thereby devaluing the degrees we award), invigilation offers some time to observe, to think and occasionally to discover. I remember conducting silent surveys regarding the numbers of left-handed students and the places where they prefer to sit ...

I am writing these words looking at a class of 64 final year students writing their examinations. A lot of anxiety in the room, mixed with concentration, application and hope. I try to imagine these same students in 10, 20, 30 and 50 years' time. I am trying to think of each and every one of them. A has become a museum curator, B a wine-taster, C an actor, D a community organizer, E married 3 times, inherited a fortune and never had to work in her life.

F's promising musical career was cut short by cancer. F rose to great corporate levels, but was sacked at 50, an alcoholic by then. G, never a great student, is now a government minister. H's depression got the better of him - he still lives with his mother who is dutifully caring for him. J, the genius of the class, now runs very successfully a warehouse business.

There are future furniture salesmen, stockbrokers, adventurers, soldiers, househusbands, property speculators and maybe even the odd academic in the room. And then there are those in jobs yet to be invented.

How do I know? I am looking at a room when 40 years ago I was taking my high school examinations and I know what happened to those sitting next to me in that classroom. What I didn't know then and what I don't know now is how Fortune will dispense her blessings and curses to each person.

64 students in a room. The same as the number of squares on the chessboard. 64 life stories in the making. 64 bright and promising young people in charge of their destiny. But have they consulted Fortune?

Beware of conspiracy theories*

2012-01-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

*Ελληνικη μετάφραση

One of the most significantsteps in turning stories from colourful anecdotes and vignettes into part of mainstream research methodology has been the search of the truth of a story notin its factual veracity but in its meaning.

Once we realize that manystories cannot be factually ‘proven’, we can still treat them as narratives thatexpress powerful emotions, desires and passions – they express what people wantto believe is true rather than what necessarily happened. This is important andalmost self-evident.

Several things follow. One isthat many stories draw on deep symbolism and assume mythological qualities. Insuch stories, archetypes like the hero, the trickster, the villain, the impostorand the victim emerge very clearly – their characters are not so much complexand complicated human beings as powerful symbols with relatively invariantqualities.

Another is that a story’s powerlies in its ability to ‘resonate’ with its audience, to sound plausible and,therefore, truthful, i.e. to be verisimilar. This is what makes conspiracytheories important types of story. They seem plausible to the point where theyresist correction by any appeal to ‘facts’.

Effective conspiracy theoriesare such powerful narratives that virtually any fact can be accommodatedin them. A very simple narrative technique for discrediting any counter-fact isto argue that it is itself part of the conspiracy – that the conspirators haveplanted it in order to cover their tracks. This is why ‘it is easier to slay adragon than to kill a myth’ (Gabriel, 1991).

Another common feature of conspiracy theories is to ask thequestion “Who benefited from an event?” and then argue that whoever benefitedfrom it was its cause. “Who benefited from 9/11? The state of Israel. Ergo Mossad was behind it.”

The essence of a conspiracy theory then lies in its abilityto:

explain something bad, a failure, a disasteretc. in relatively simple and plausible terms
attribute the failure to the actions of somebody(the ‘agent’) who stands to gain from the accident, disaster or failure
invest the agent with malevolent intentions,cunning and diabolical ability to subvert every attempt at unmasking.
incorporate every detail, action and incidentwithin this overall plot.

A conspiracy theory, therefore, is a story that helps makesense of events irrespective of whether it is true or not. This self-inoculating(non-falsifiable in Popper’s terms) quality sets it apart from othersensemaking devices, e.g. lists, scientific explanations, metaphors etc.

Does any of this matter? Of course it does, given howprominent conspiracy theories have become in contemporary discourses (Oreskes & Conway,2010).Here are some examples:

Food scares
Health scares (e.g. inoculation)
Climate change (from both sides)
Politics plots and scenarios
Business conspiracies and cover ups

Far from being innocent pastimes for simple minds conspiracytheories can severely pollute public discourses and serve to scapegoat particular groups. The fraudulent Protocolsof the Elders of Zion were instrumental in fuelling anti-Semitism just as the conspiraciestheories behind the assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana andBurundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira set in motion the Rwandan genocide.

So, let’s apply the conspiracy theorists’ rationale toconspiracy theories themselves? Who benefits from conspiracy theories? Clearlythe mass media benefit from such theories, since any whiff of conspiracy and cover-updoes wonders for newspaper circulation, fuelling public paranoias and moralpanics.

At a deeper level, however, it seems to me that conspiracytheories serve the interests of those who wish to undermine public institutionsand honest discourse. Ultimately, it seems to me that conspiracy theories are amajor instrument in the hands of those who wish to destabilize and subvertdemocracy. This is what makes them especially dangerous and demands that anyonewith genuine concern for democracy should beware of them.

I am not, of course, arguing for a gullible citizenry whowill believe whatever it is told. But when it comes to political discussions, ‘stories’alone are not enough.

Gabriel,Y. 1991. On organizational stories and myths: Why it is easier to slay a dragonthan to kill a myth. International Sociology, 6(4):427-442.

Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. 2010. Merchantsof doubt : how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues fromtobacco smoke to global warming (1st U.S. ed.). New York: BloomsburyPress.

*Ελληνικη μετάφραση

A follow-on letter to the markets

2012-01-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Dear markets,

It is now nearly a month since my open letter to you and I had started to give up hopes of an answer. You can imagine my surprise and delight to receive your letter, especially such a well-considered and thought-provoking one. You certainly challenged my stereotype of markets as impulsive, volatile and irrational. I understand your reluctance to respond directly to my blog with a comment of your own. Permit me then, to share some of your strongest arguments with my readers.

"You accuse us of not liking democracy", you say. "But think of it, where would we be without democracy - not much space for us in centrally planned Soviet-style economies, nor indeed in statist regimes where the state subsidises key commodities to buy popular support. We thrive on democracy, you say, societies in which people appreciate and value choice, responsibility and exercising their rights as free citizens. We thrive on pluralism and competition, surely cornerstones of democracy."

"You accuse us of bringing down political leaders, like Berlusconi and your old buddy Papandreou. But you yourself noted how unpopular these leaders had become (your fascinating blog on Greek universities had not escaped our attention) so in popular and ineffective in their countries. Without us, they would still be happily ensconced in their positions, continuing to wreak havoc in their countries. Surely, you will agree that our intervention cut short the last legs of moribund regimes."

"You accuse us of abhorring responsibility and adulating freedom. Yet, might we not accuse you of a whiff of hypocrisy. Do you, as an author and an academic, value your freedom to research whatever topic you please, to read what you please, to write about what you please and to say what you please? How much responsibility do you exercise in what you say, what you write and what you publish? Why should the freedom to choose research topics be judged as superior to the freedom to choose how to invest or spend money? And why should the latter generate additional responsibilities?"

I liked particularly your last point - obviously you are well educated in classics and the allusion to Crito is inspiring:

"Imagine, Yiannis, if we visited you in your sleep and asked you: 'Haven't we, the disparaged markets, served you well since your childhood? Did we not ensure that your parents could choose the education that you received? Did we not allow you to attend a university of your choice pursuing studies of your choice? Have we not, over the years, continued to indulge your eccentricities in classical music, which you proudly parade in your blog? Surely, even you will admit that without us you would not be enjoying six different versions of Das Lied von der Erde in your iTunes library, to say nothing of the other ones on your CD shelves. Well, Yiannis, don't you think that might reconsider some of the charges you levelled against us?"

Much food for thought from the markets, as I said earlier. I need to consider my answers ...

All the best,

Y

On perusing my iTunes library (with acknowledgement to Walter Benjamin and a warning to readers of this blog who do not share my musical obsessions)

2012-01-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has an iPod and is a lover of music will be well aware of the pleasures and frustrations of iTunes, Steve Jobs’ gift to humanity and the key to Apple’s change of role from brave David to mighty Goliath.

As a classical music lover, I gave up my old Creative Zen MP3 player with a respectable 64GB of memory for a 160GB iPod Classic some 5 years ago, since when my love-hate relation with iTunes has started.

Today was one of those awful days when I had to move my iTunes library to a different hard drive from the existing one. As anyone who has undertaken this operation knows, it is riven with dangers.

The operation was not without a hitch – I managed to transfer the ‘albums’ but not the various playlists I had created; I also lost all the data on ‘times played’, ‘date added’ and so forth. No matter, the loss is small.

Moving my iTunes library, however, brought to mind Walter Benjamin’s bewitching little essay “Unpacking my Library”, in which he describes his feelings as he peruses his beloved books which are about to find a new home. And this made me look at some of the contents of my iTunes library, or at least what had survived in the move from one hard drive to another. 1757 albums, 1019 artists and 101 genres. 23930 ‘songs’, 81.1 days’ worth of listening and a whopping 128 GB worth of iPod memory.

This is beginning to sound like Leporello’s catalogue aria from Don Giovanni – so why not? My iTunes library contains 4 versions of this great opera, to my surprise all dating before 1980. This will give you an indication of my reactionary musical tastes! I would rather have Giulini, Fricsay and even the ancient Klemperer at the very end of his days, with their old-fashioned casts, harpsichords and lack of appoggiaturas, than most of today’s star conductors, with their celebrity singers, period instruments and anxiety-provoking tempi.

And while we are on Mozart, I find in my iTunes library a total of 165 albums with his music, just behind Beethoven (169 albums) and considerably behind Bach (235). Modernists will sneer at my disregard for Stravinsky (2 albums to my shame, very rarely played), Bartok (5) et al. Of the 20^th century composers, there is only one that is truly close to my heart, much as I admire Ravel (11) – Shostakovich (51) is a composer whose music is rarely far away from my CD player or iPod.

French baroque is a favourite of mine - the great Couperin (29), whose harpsichord music is a constant companion, Rameau (12), Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (my favourite woman composer and a surpassing talent), Marin Marais and others are much loved figures in my iPod library.

And performers? Among violinists there is a spread of Oistrakhs, Heifetzs, Milsteins, Menuhins, Grumiauxs, and others. But among pianists the spread is very uneven. My beloved Rubinstein (10) unsurpassed in Chopin pales (in quantity if not in quality) in comparison to Ashkenazy (32) and Arrau (32), Above all, however, stands that erratic genius, Richter (66), whose music-making never fails to move me (even when he plays Bartok!)

So, is there any meaning in all this? Probably not. More than 90% of the music in my iTunes library was copied from my CD collection, in a piecemeal fashion. If feel like listening to something on my iPod and it is not already there, I add it to the library. Or, I am listening to something on my CD player which gives me great pleasure (as is now Michael Borgstede playing Couperin’s 12^th Ordre); when the CD finishes, I am likely to transfer it to the iTunes library.

But if there is no meaning in such statistics, there is maybe something of value. A record of somebody’s listening habits, which for somebody like me is as important as reading and writing habits. And for this record (much of which disappeared earlier today when I transferred my iTunes library), I must thank Steve Jobs.

There is, however, one more factor that is brought to light by this little exercise. There are plenty of pieces of music that demand many different interpretations, since there are so many different ways to render them. I find this especially with vocal music – this may explain why I have 6 versions of Mahler’s Lied von der Erde and only 1 of his First Symphony. Which opera lover would be satisfied with a single version of Don Carlo or Boris Godunov?

Notes towards a critical perspective on trust *

2012-01-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Given the various platitudes and banalities told and written about trust, I thought I would offer some cautionary notes to those interested in researching this topic.

1. Trust is not to be trusted, and academic literature on trust even less ;

2. Nearly all academic literature on trust, presupposes that trust is a good thing and mistrust is a bad thing. This is seriously flawed (see Democritus quote at the bottom). Most scientific effort is the product of mistrust:

a. mistrust of our senses

b. mistrust of existing authority

c. mistrust of current interpretations and viewpoints

d. mistrust of common sense

e. mistrust of other theories

3. Trust is more often than not a post facto rationalization. It can be used to explain any happy end to any story, even one built on mistrust. Hence trust is often a delusion.

4. Trust is only tested in hard circumstances – when the temptation to breach agreements is high. Everybody can trust everybody else in fair weather. Hence trust is not a fact, but a provisional disposition.

5. Trust built over repeated patterns and occurrences in not sensible. As Bertrand Russell famously said, turkeys should not trust the people who feed them until Christmas is over.

6. Trust in stories, accounts and theories amounts to little more than blind faith. Conspiracy theorists know this well, and this is why I mistrust conspiracy theories.

7. I also mistrust them because a consequence of conspiracy theories is the erosion of trust (as provisional disposition, see above) towards social institutions, without which opportunists, populists and other undesirables get the upper hand.

8. Breach of trust is itself very often a social construction (and part of a political ploy as a means of justifying virtually any subsequent behaviour).

“Do not trust all people, but trust men of integrity; the former is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.”

Democritus

* With acknowledgements to my student Paul Richards whose good work prompted these thoughts.

Kουρέματα, οικονομικά και άλλα

2012-01-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

Σήμερα είναι η ημέρα για το κούρεμα μου. Ποτέ δεν μου άρεσαν τα κουρέματα, γι 'αυτό να τα περιορίζω σε τέσσερα το χρόνο, κοντά στα ηλιοστάσια και τις ισημερίες. Έτσι το καθένα προοιωνίζει τη νέα εποχή.

Το ίδιο φαίνεται ότι κάνουν και τα οικονομικά κουρέματα. Αλλά δεν έχουν πάντα επιτυχία. Το οικονομικό κούρεμα της Ελλάδας απέβλεπε στο να ανοίξει μια καινουργια φάση, απαλλαγμένη απο τα βάρη του παρελθόντος, αλλά όπως όλοι ξέρουμε κάτι τέτοιο δεν συνέβη.

Αφού λοιπόν είμαστε στο θέμα των κουρεμάτων, γιατί ο όρος κούρεμα καθιερώθηκε τόσο γρήγορα στον οικονομικό λεξικό; Τι ακριβώς είναι αυτό που καθιστά το κούρεμα κατάλληλη μεταφορά για την αναδιάρθρωση ή την παραγραφή ενός χρέους;

Η πιο προφανής εξήγηση είναι ότι τα μαλλιά συνεχίζουν να μεγαλώνουν ακόμα και μετά το κούρεμα, ίσως μάλιστα και πιο γρήγορα. Αυτό το ξέρω πολυ καλά από προσωπική εμπειρία. Έτσι ίσως και το χρέος συνεχίζει να μεγαλώνει, όσα κουρέματα και να παίρνει. Όχι ο προσφιλέστερος λόγος για τη χρήση του κουρέματος απο οικονομολόγους και πολιτικούς, υποψιάζομαι.

Ίσως πάλι το κούρεμα θεωρείται «ανώδυνη» επέμβαση, αντίθετα από άλλες χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις. Και πάλι όμως, δεν νομίζω ότι η ιδέα αυτή θα αρέσει σε οικονομολόγους και οι πολιτικούς, ακόμη λιγότερο σε επενδυτές και τραπεζίτες.

Τι λοιπόν είναι αυτό θέλει την ελάφρυνση του χρέους να βλέπεται σαν κούρεμα; Έχοντας καθίσει για χρόνια τρεμάμενος στην καρέκλα του κουρέα, έχω μια διαφορετική γνώμη. Κουρέματα απαιτούν την χρήση αιχμηρών και επικίνδυνων εργαλείων, λεπίδες, ψαλίδια, ξυραφάκια και τα άλλα παρόμοια, σε άτομο που βρίσκεται προσωρινά σε παράλυση, ένα σκέτο σώμα χωρίς βούληση ή θέληση. Λίγο πολύ σαν αυτά που χαρακτηρήζουν την χώρα σήμερα.

Ίσως όμως η επιτυχία του όρου «κούρεμα» πηγαίνει ακόμα βαθύτερα. Όπως είναι γνωστό, στο παρελθόν το επάγγελμα του κουρέα συχνά συνέπευτε με αυτό του χειρούργου. Ίσως λοιπόν ο όρος να υποδηλώνει ότι όταν αν η περιποίηση με τη χονδρή και την ψιλή δεν επαρκέση, ο ασθενής θα χρεισαστή ίσως κάποια πιο δραστική θεραπεία;

Υ.Γ. Δέχομαι με ευχαρίστηση τις προτάσεις σας για την οικονομική έννοια της λέξης «κούρεμα». Η νικήτρια πρότασι θα κερδήσει ένα δωρεάν κούρεμα από μένα.

The perfect moussaka for 20 (including 5 vegetarians) in the time it takes to listen to Handel’s Messiah. A cooking methodology for fairly competent cooks.

2011-12-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

I am writing this listening to the Alleluia chorus from Handel’s Messiah, while three moussaka dishes are nicely cooking in the oven (along with some lentils).

I am prompted to write this because of the horrors that moussaka can inflict on my fellow cooks, especially if they follow various recipes on line. These usually involve using up gallons of oil and tons of absorbing paper, leaving a kitchen looking like a battlefield.

Yet moussaka is a delicious dish that does not need to take hours. It is also a forgiving dish – provided that you avoid some basic pitfalls, you simply cannot ruin it. Timing is not essential, quantities are not essential and even the raw ingredients you use are not rigid. You obviously need aubergines, lean mince meat and white sauce ingredients, but the rest is flexible. It would be fair to say that no two moussakas I have cooked have tasted the same, since they each benefit from the ingredients I happen to have in my fridge at the time of cooking.

First things first. The essence of moussaka is the perfect blend of the three ingredients – the aubergines, the middle layer, and the creamy white sauce at the top. Avoid trying to make one ingredient the star of the show – if fact, a good moussaka requires three elements that, by themselves, should be fairly bland. I have seen many moussakas ruined by an attempt to spice up one ingredient which then overwhelms the other – for instance, making the mince meat ultra-tasty with excessive spices or the white sauce extra-rich with copious amounts of gruyere cheese. So keep it simple.

Next – the order of cooking the individual ingredients. The first two core ingredients (aubergines and ‘middle section’) are perfect for cooking in quick alternation, leaving the third ingredient (the white sauce) for last

Aubergines

Start with the aubergines. I calculate about one aubergine per person. Peel a slim slither of skin and cut each one in two lengthwise, add plenty of salt on the skin and let them sit in a colander.

Middle section

Start by gently frying the onions in a little olive oil, adding other ingredients like celery, leak, carrots, red and yellow pepper, and towards the end a little garlic. This is what Greek cooks call ‘the base’ and it is used in innumerable Mediterranean dishes, and with small variations, many curries.

Aubergines – next stage!

Now for a cook’s secret. The best way to prepare aubergines for moussaka is to steam them before frying them. No need to strain them. Just rinse them to get rid of excess salt and squeeze them before placing them in a steamer. I do this in my pressure cooker where 5 aubergines sliced in half will take about 3 minutes of steam to soften. Today I cooked 12 medium size aubergines in three batches which took 15 minutes or so.

Back to middle section

Leaving the lovely ‘base’ to sit, brown your mince meat in a saucepan, allowing about 150 grams per person. One of the few essential aspects for a perfect moussaka is that the meat should be lean. Half beef, half lamb is fine, provided you get rid of the excess fat. Today I used 2 kgs of lean beef.

Aubergines – next stage!

While the meat is browning (this will take a good 20 minutes), take your aubergines out of the steamer and let them sit in the colander again for at least 15 minutes, to drain much of the excess water they contain.

Back to middle section

When the meat is nicely brown add the base (sautéed onions, peppers etc.), mix them nicely in the pot, add salt and enough water to cover it. Add a bit of tomato paste and some spices –pepper, a little cinnamon, some herbs. Cover with lid and let it now cook at very low temperature, while you occupy yourself with …

Vegetarian alternative

Many cooks recommend using lentils as a meat substitute and this works well. Puy lentils are especially good. Boil them for about 5 minutes, sieve them and add them to the base, before adding the liquid. However, lentils, are not necessary. I have made excellent vegetarian moussakas using gently sautéed leaks and celery, black-eyed beans or even sweet potatoes.

Aubergines – next stage!

Having soften the aubergines by steaming them, you now fry them in some good quality olive oil. You realize that you do not need much oil (unlike if you were frying them from raw). I use two large frying pan and the frying of 10 aubergines takes about 15 minutes. Once again, when the aubergines are fried, place them in colander to get rid of excess liquid. Squeeze them gently with a spatula.

Mixing the ingredients.

Turn the oven on to medium and choose a pyrex or metal dish. Place a layer of aubergines at the bottom. Squeeze them to flatten them. Then, using a spoon or spatula with holes add the meat on top. Secret 2. A common pitfall of moussaka is that it becomes too wet or indeed too oily. This is simply awful. Moussaka, properly cooked, is not a fatty, oily or wet dish and you should be able to cut in neat rectangles. Hence at every stage make sure you remove as much water or oil from the ingredients.

Layering the aubergines and the meat (or vegetarian middle part) is a rough and ready operation. A bit more of this or a bit more of that makes virtually no difference. The layers do not have to be even. But once all the ingredients are in the dish make sure they are flat and that there is enough space at the top to receive the white sauce topping.

Secret 3

Now place the dish in the oven! At this stage there is no white sauce at the top. This 1. helps dry the dish from excess moisture, and 2. saves time. During the next 15-20 minutes you will prepare the white sauce while the dish is reaching a good cooking temperature.

The top

There are many ways of doing this and I tend to alternate between the traditional béchamel sauce (that I did today) and flourless mixture of eggs, crème frèche and grated cheese. Today I opted for béchamel as I could double it with what I needed for a separate dish (a leak pie). With béchamel, I use the old fashioned method – hot butter in a non-stick saucepan, add enough flour so that it becomes crumbly but not solid, heat it gently and then add the milk (full fat here) little by little while stirring continuously. Then add some grated cheese – not too much, not too strong. A small amount of parmesan is perfect but cheddar, gruyere or gouda are fine (provided you do not yield to the temptation to put too much). When the mixture is nicely uniform, turn off the heat and crack one or two eggs into the mixture.

The final composition

Now take the dish out of the oven. This is your last chance to remove any extra liquid by tipping it gently and squeezing the top with a spatula. Spare liquid can be collected in a separate dish. Now, cover the top of the dish with the white sauce and return to the oven, raising the temperature by 10-20 degrees Celsius or so.

The moussaka will be ready in 30-40 minutes. If it looks as though the top is turning brown too quickly, cover it loosely with some foil and lower the temperature.

Serving suggestions

Moussaka should not be eaten piping hot. You should allow to sit for at least 20 minutes while the flavours settle. It is equally good (or even better) the day after it is cooked, reheated in medium oven. It goes well with a green salad and crispy roast potatoes.

On haircuts, economic and others

2011-12-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

Today is my haircut day. I have never liked haircuts, so I limit them to four per year, pretty close to the solstices and equinoxes. They augur the new season for me.

So too it seems do economic haircuts. But not quite. Greece’s economic haircut was meant to open up a new phase, but as anyone in the country will tell you, it is business as usual.

And while we are on the subject of haircuts, why has the term established itself so quickly in the economic dictionary? What exactly is it about haircut that makes it a suitable metaphor for a debt rescheduling or cancellation?

The most obvious answer is that hair keeps growing. I am too aware of it. Debt too, then, could be expected to regrow, no matter how many haircuts it gets. Not the obvious reason to use the term, either by economists or politicians, I suspect.

Maybe, a haircut is meant to be ‘painless’, unlike other forms of surgery. Again, I don’t think that economists and politicians would like the idea, to say nothing of investors and bankers who must bear the burden of the haircut.

What then is it about debt relief that evokes a haircut? As someone who has sat passively in frozen terror in the barber’s chair, I have a different idea. Haircuts evokes the use of sharp and dangerous weapons, siscors, razor blades and the like, on a subject who is temporarily out of action, who is not a subject at all.

Maybe, however, the appeal of the term goes deeper still. As is well-known, in times past the job of the barber often coincided with that of the surgeon. Would it be too much to suggest that when short back and sides will no longer do, the patient will be up for more drastic treatment?

P.S. I welcome suggestions for the economic meaning of 'haircut'. Suggestions will enter a competition and the best entry gets a haircut on me.

An open letter to the markets

2011-12-16T23:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Markets,

First indications are that, following the new EU fiscal pact, you have not lapsed into your usual panic attack. The agreement, it seems, has briefly calmed you down. A good opportunity, then, while you are calm to try having a quiet little conversation with you about your likes and dislikes.

We have always known that you hate regulation, whether it seeks to protect the environment, the workers or the shareholders; we also now understand that you really don’t like uncertainty.

You dislike sacrifices, but have no qualms about demanding sacrifices from others, notably tax-payers, consumers and politicians.

Clearly, you didn’t like Signor Berlusconi, whom you managed to get rid unceremoniously, as you did George Papandreou when he started having funny ideas about referenda. Do you like any politicians? Do you like democracy?

In fact, what exactly do you like? I am aware that you like ‘freedom’, but this is not the freedom proclaimed by the French revolution, is it? You don’t like revolutions and trouble, as we now. You most certainly like money, but then who doesn’t?

And what about responsibility? Do you think that it is right for you never to have to take any responsibilities? If so, shouldn’t somebody else, government maybe, seek to ensure that you behave responsibly?

Finally - what exactly is your view of haircuts?

Answers gratefully received.

Yours sincerely

Y. Gabriel

PS. For the markets' interesting response see A follow-on letter to the markets

Y. Gabriel's keynote presentation at the 10th International Studying Leadership Conference, Bristol, 12 December 2011

2011-12-12T04:13:00.000-08:00

The moral standing of leaders – What do followers expect?

Yiannis Gabriel

University of Bath

y.gabriel@bath.ac.uk

In this brief talk, I will examine the moral standing of leaders not from any particular philosophical or political vantage point, but rather from that of the followers. Followers expect leaders to be competent; but they also expect leaders to provide moral leadership. Followers frequently judge leaders by standards of morality that are considerably harsher than those by which they judge other people; they also forgive leaders sins that they would not forgive in others. As a result, leaders are often cast in black and white, as saints or devils. In this presentation, I will identify the origin of these standards and link them to current discourses on the ethics of care. In particular, I want to examine what it means to say that followers expect leaders to care. [PP2]

I want to start with the now accepted distinction between managers and leaders. MacIntyre and others rightly argued that the manager represents a cultural archetype whose legitimacy rests on technique alone. The manager’s morality is of no great concern to the rest, much as the morality of the dentist, the plumber and the therapist is of modest concern. Their legitimacy rests on knowhow alone. Leaders, however, are different. We expect our leaders to lead the way, to show moral courage and to embody values beyond that of efficiency. We expect leaders to talk to us and to listen to us. Rule by technique alone does not count as leadership, hence technocrats are not leaders. Sometimes, we expect our leaders to see clearly, to possess a certain resoluteness represented by the overused word, vision. Managers may be morally confused, but confused people cannot act as leaders. We also expect our leaders to have moral courage – to be prepared to stand up for what they believe, against opposition and ridicule. And then, we expect our leaders to care – not in an impersonal manner ‘about’ a project or ‘about’ the bottom line, but ‘for’ the organization and its people, indeed for each and every follower. [PP3]

Where do the standards by which we judge leaders come from? Years ago, I was studying the stories that followers tell about their leaders and was struck by the extreme views expressed in these narratives. (Gabriel, 1997) Leaders rarely featured as ordinary people. Instead they often appeared as larger than life beings – as benevolent, father-like figures, as cunning wheeler-dealers, as impostors who had attained their positions by deception and so forth – in short, as figures of fantasy.

Stories told by followers consistently revealed four clusters of fantasies which enshroud leaders. Each cluster of fantasies represents a bi-polar axis with a positive and a negative pole. These four bipolarities determine the ways leaders are experienced or constructed: [PP4]

The leader is omnipotent, unafraid and capable of anything. Omnipotence sometimes extends to omniscience, especially an ability to read the future. Conversely, the leader is externally driven, afraid and fallible. A god like leader versus a lame duck leader. [PP5
The leader has a legitimate claim to power; conversely, the leader is an impostor, someone who usurped power and whose claims are fraudulent. [PP6]
The leader cares for his/her subordinates, offering recognition and support. The reverse of this fantasy is the leader who is indifferent to the plight of his/her subordinates and only cares for him/herself. [PP7]]
The leader is accessible, can be seen when needed, even if his/her appearances constitute special occasions. Conversely, the leader is ready to disappear, abandoning his/her followers in times of stress. [PP8]

These fantasies surface not only in organizational stories, but also in numerous political, religious, mythological and other texts and, as I have shown, they are rooted in the experiences of the helpless child, whose mother and father appear as towering figures, a ‘primal mother’ and a ‘primal father’. The first two fantasies, omnipotence and legitimacy, usually refer to the father as an authority figure, while the second two, caring and presence, to the mother. [PP9]

From the father-leader, followers expect the power, wisdom and courage to promote collective ends. This leader’s power must be deployed to protect followers and to overcome collective foes; his legitimacy collapses if he fails to consistently demonstrate these qualities or if he puts them to selfish ends.

I will devote a little more time to the second two fantasies – that the leader cares and that the leader is present when required. These have received inadequate attention from scholars; yet, their importance can hardly be exaggerated, whether talking about military leaders like Nelson, political leaders like Gandhi or religious leaders like Christ. Indeed, this is exactly what is captured by the metaphor of Christ as good shepherd. [PP10] A leader who does not care can hardly be said to be a moral agent. In fact, I would go as far as to say that caring outweighs all other moral obligations of leaders in the eyes of their followers – in short, a leader may be strong, may be legitimate, may be present, but if he or she is experienced as ‘not caring’, then he/she will not be viewed as a bad leader.

The link between caring and morality is not new. I am not referring here to the care of the self which would take us along a very different path, but to the ethics of care first delineated by Carol Gilligan in her important book (Gilligan, 1982). In this discourse, caring for others is viewed as a vital dimension of most human relations. [PP11] In contrast to the ‘ethics of justice’ which has dominated the thinking of moral philosophers, ethics of care theorists argue for a morality that does not rely on claims of universality, absolute judgements of right and wrong, and perfect virtues. Instead, they identify a practical morality that grows out of a recognition that people are embedded in webs of social relations, dependent on others for their survival and well-being and capable of supporting others in their moments of need.

Care is attending to the needs of others to whom we feel close and for whom we are prepared to take responsibility. [PP12] It is not a scripted emotional performance but grows out of sensitivity and watchfulness for the needs of those close to us. A fundamental aspect of the ethics of care is that those in direct contact with us are seen as entitled to more care and attention than those distant and unknown. Another feature of care is the quality of ‘going the extra mile’ or ‘going beyond the call of duty’. These then are important aspects of what followers expect of caring leaders.

Although caring is often seen as a sign of altruistic orientation, caring leaders are by no means averse to conflict, hardness and resolution. On the contrary, the real test for caring leaders comes when they have to fight to defend those for whom they care, rather than opt for easy compromises. Far from being a soft and universally mild attitude, caring means taking responsibilities for others and being prepared to take personal risks in discharging such responsibilities.

I had ample opportunity to observe the core aspects of care (i.e. ‘going the extra mile’ and disregarding the principle of equality) during a piece of field research aimed at identifying how hospital leadership affects ‘patient care’. When asked to illustrate good leadership and good quality patient care, nearly all respondents offered examples where the clinical leader went the extra mile and offered personalized care beyond the call of duty. Consider the following example, offered during a focus group with junior doctors asked to give such an example. [PP13]

“A pregnant woman came in through A&E. She was having problems with her pregnancy. I asked the registrar what to do. They decided that the best thing to do was get the woman scanned to find the problem. However, being a night shift there were no porters to be seen and the scanning units were closed. I felt that the anxious woman could not stay in A&E surrounded by drunks and druggies. Instead of calling for porters, which would have taken time, I and the registrar moved the pregnant lady to the maternity ward ourselves where we opened up a scanning unit to find out what was wrong with her pregnancy. I was proud of the leadership I received from my registrar; not every registrar would have done this but he solved the problem and delivered good patient care in the process. The problems were resolved within an hour with only skeletal night staff.” (Junior doctor)

The contrast between the individualized care for the deserving patient expressed in this quote contrasts sharply with the indifference towards the plight of the anonymous ‘drunks and druggies’ whose treatment was negatively affected by the preferential treatment offered to the pregnant ‘lady’. This ambivalence is linked to a split between two images of the care recipient in the minds of those who care for them. On the one hand, there is the deserving patient, the patient with a human face, the individual with unique needs who evokes affection and sympathy. On the other hand, there is the faceless patient, who can wait.

We can now conclude this presentation by briefly reflecting on how leaders may behave in meeting their followers’ expectation to act as caring leaders.

Leaders who care

do not treat people as means/objects
treat people with respect
treat people as capable of changing
are watchful of the changing needs and aspirations of their followers
listen empathetically and respond
offer constructive but objective feedback
find innumerable ways of being helpful and supportive
assume responsibilities and act as toxic sponges protecting their followers from excess anxieties.

Of course, an ethics of care can neither be the sole moral compass guiding leaders, nor is it a compass without ambiguities and contradictions. Empathy, watchfulness, sensitivity to the needs of the followers, by themselves can lead to seriously flawed decisions and failing leadership, but so too can the heroic virtues, like courage, justice, prudence and magnanimity. What this presentation has sought to establish is that leaders who consistently fail to demonstrate that they care for their followers, no matter how successful they may be in the short run, are unlikely to be viewed as moral leaders or command their trust, affection and respect.

Gabriel, Y. 1997. Meeting God: When organizational members come face to face with the supreme leader. Human Relations, 50(4): 315-342.

Gilligan, C. 1982. In a different voice : psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

On organizational stories and storytelling - a very brief introduction

2011-12-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

Most people understand stories to be texts, spoken or written, that usually involve a plot of different interconnected events, binding different characters together. Stories may be based on actual events or may involve fantastic characters and incidents. Most people would look at stories as narratives, although the precise relation between story and narrative is disputed.

In the past fifteen years, interest in organizational stories has increased considerably. In particular, there has been a recognition that

a great deal of stories are told in and about organizations;
many of these stories are important in disseminating knowledge and enhancing organizational learning;
we can learn a lot about an organization by listening carefully to the stories told by its members;
stories can instigate processes of social and organizational change, for the better or for the worse;
good stories can have a profound effect on audiences, building solidarity, focusing energy and unleashing creativity;
leadership involves the management of meaning and emotions, both of which rely crucially on using stories, allegories, metaphors, labels and other narrative devices.

This current interest in organizational stories is part of a broader tendency of narrativization of organizational theory, an emphasis on language, scripts, metaphors, talk, stories and narratives not as parts of a superstructure erected on top of the material realities of organizations, such as structure, power, technology and so forth, but rather as parts of the very essence of organization. This has challenged standard views of organizations built around the themes of bureaucracy, hierarchy and authority, and emphasizes, if not the primacy, at least the relative autonomy of the symbolic dimension. This is itself part of the broader linguistic turn in the social and human sciences – a tendency to view many social and psychological phenomena as constituted through language, sustained through language and challenged through language.

There are different approaches in the study of organizational stories and narratives. At the most daring and extreme, some have argued that organizations are themselves discursive effects, sub-narratives within the grand narrative of modernity (e.g. Czarniawska (1997) and Grant (1998)). From this perspective, organizations share the fate of other effects of modernity, such as the sovereign self, the body or indeed 'facts', becoming discursive constructions. Other theorists have looked at narratives as constitutive of organizations but not as fully constituting them. From this perspective, "buildings are built, products are manufactured, services are rendered beyond (and because of) all this organizational talk. Thus discourse and talk are central to organization and organizing ... but so is non-discursive action" (Hardy, Lawrence, and Phillips 1998, p. 63). Narratives in organizations may appear in many forms, including stories (official and unofficial), advertisements, brochures, reports, and so forth, yet they do not exhaust the domain of organization. Important as it is to study them, they are not enough for an complete understanding of organizational or social practices.

Stories are frequently used interchangeably with narratives, narratives with texts and texts with discourse. In particular, there has been a tendency among numerous theorists (following the practice of journalists) to stretch the idea of 'story' so that it encompasses virtually any aspect of sensical discourse. "What is the story?" is seen as an invitation to offer any explanation. Any discursive device that generates and sustains meaning and any meaningful text is then seen as a story (Boje 1991). Such an approach unfortunately obliterates some of the unique qualities of stories and narratives that make them vivid and powerful but also fragile sense-making devices. Some authors have expressed reservations at such pan-narrativist views, arguing that not all texts are narratives and not all narratives are stories. Narratives can then be seen as particular types of text and stories as particular types of narrative. Unlike definitions, labels, lists, recipes and other texts, narratives involve temporal chains of inter-related events or actions, undertaken by characters (Gabriel 2000). They are not mere snapshot photographic images, but require sequencing and plots (Czarniawska 1997; Czarniawska 1999; Polkinghorne 1988). Narratives may differ in their relation to actual events, from fairly accurate accounts to totally fantastic ones. One of their vital qualities is that precision is often sacrificed in the interest of effect, in what is known as ‘poetic licence’. Good narratives and, in particular, good stories are memorable, pithy and full of meaning, stimulating emotion and fantasy. This is what makes them quite powerful devices in management of meaning and emotion and the diffusion of knowledge.

It is now generally appreciated that much knowledge in organizations does not assume the form of logico-scientific generalizations, theories and formulas, but has a narrative character – it amounts to a large reservoir of stories, tales, recipes and experiences (Orr 1996) that are traded in what are often seen as communities of practice. This is highly specific, informal knowledge that complements and qualifies ‘information’ available through official channels. Within different organizations numerous mutually reinforcing narratives, story-lines and other texts may coalesce in particular discourses which express the interests and concerns of specific groups. Thus, for instance, within the same organization a managerial discourse (emphasising efficiency, quality and customer service) may coexist with other discourses, such as a cynical discourse (made up of disruptive or recalcitrant stories), a nostalgic discourse (made of or idealized stories from the past) and a professional discourse (extolling professional independence). Boje (2001) refers to the space where stories may emerge from discourses as ante-narrative – the existence of a fecund narrative space and the willingness of individuals to take a bet (an ‘ante’) that what they say, individually or in groups, will shape up into meaningful stories. For this reason, Boje insists that most organizational stories are co-created by many participants as well as having many different meanings (1995).

Stories then can be seen as representing facts-as-experience rather than facts-as-information (Gabriel 1991). They are capable of rousing and communicating emotion or charging events with symbolic significance and of framing, distorting and altering aspects of events in the interest of delivering a ‘telling narrative’. The truth of the story is then not to be judged by its accuracy (the way that the truth of information may be judged) but by its capacity to express of a compelling set of meanings. Storytellers are bonded with their audiences with what Gabriel (2004) calls a ‘narrative contract’ – a deal under which the audience grants poetic licence to the storyteller in return for a meaningful narrative. All the same, storytellers can violate this narrative contract by insisting that they personally experienced events which later turn out to have been fictitious or by abusing the gullibility of their audience to deliver ‘spin’, disinformation and lies.

Increasingly stories form important part of organizational research. Even if not literally true or accurate, stories in organizations express emotional and symbolic realities revealing the participants deeper feelings towards each other, the leadership or the organizational as a whole. In this sense, they conform with Aristotle’s (1991) conception that poetry can reveal deeper truths that history (which remains tied to ‘facts’) is unable to reach.

Aristotle. 1991. The Rhetoric, Edited by H. C. Lawson-Tancred. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Boje, D. M. 1991. "The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm." Administrative Science Quarterly 36.

—. 1995. "Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara Land'." Academy of Management Review 38:997-1035.

—. 2001. Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. London: Sage.

Czarniawska, Barbara. 1997. Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

—. 1999. Writing management: Organization theory as a literary genre. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gabriel, Yiannis. 1991. "Turning facts into stories and stories into facts: A hermeneutic exploration of organizational folklore." Human Relations 44:857-875.

—. 2000. Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

—. 2004. "The narrative veil: Truth and untruths in storytelling." Pp. 17-31 in Myths, Stories and Organizations: Premodern narratives for our times, edited by Y. Gabriel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grant, David, Tom Keenoy, and Cliff Oswick. 1998. "Discourse and organizations." London: Sage.

Hardy, Cynthia, Thomas B. Lawrence, and Nelson Phillips. 1998. "Talk and action: Conversations and narrative in interorganizational collaboration." Pp. 65-83 in Discourse and Organization, edited by D. Grant, T. Keenoy, and C. Oswick. London: Sage.

Orr, Julian E. 1996. Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press/Cornell.

Polkinghorne, D. E. 1988. Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ας σταματήσουμε τη δαιμονοποίηση του Γ. Παπανδρέου και ας αρχίσουμε να παίρνουμε μερικές ευθύνες σαν ώριμοι πολίτες, παρακαλώ

2011-12-05T06:14:00.000-08:00

Να μιά δυσάρεστη ανάμνηση μετά από μία πρόσφατη επίσκεψη στην Ελλάδα. Κατά τη διάρκεια ενός σεμιναρίου στο θέμα της ηγεσίας, ρώτησα τους παρόντες τι θα συνέβαινε αν ο Γιώργος Παπανδρέου, μέχρι πρόσφατα πρωθυπουργός στην Ελλάδα, έμπαινε στην αίθουσα. Μια γενικά ευγενής και καλοπροαίρετη ομάδα ατόμων ξαφνικά σκίρτησε. Κάποιος πρότεινε οτι "θα κλειδώσουμε την πόρτα, θα του δώσουμε ένα καλό χέρι ξύλο και θα τον στείλουμε σπίτι του."

Σοβαρή συζήτηση για τη προέλευση και τη σημασία αυτών των συναισθημάτων αποδείχθηκε αδύνατη. Πράγματι, είναι αδύνατο για κάποιον που δεν έχει επισκεφθή πρόσφατα στην Ελλάδα και δεν διαβάζει τα ελληνικά ΜΜΕ να φανταστεί το βάθος της οργής κατά του Γιώργου Παπανδρέου.

Βαθιά ριζωμένα έχθρες δεν είναι, φυσικά, άγνωστες στην Ελλάδα, αλλά η ταχύτητα με την οποία πολλοί από τους πρώην υποστηρικτές και θαυμαστές του κ. Παπανδρέου έχουν στραφεί εναντίον του και το βιτριόλι που του εκτοξεύουν είναι αξιοπερίεργα. Πολιτικός που έλαβε το 44% της λαϊκής ψήφου μόλις 2 χρόνια πριν θεωρείται σήμερα ο κύριος υπεύθυνος για το δράμα που πλήττει σήμερα την ελληνική κοινωνία.

Οι πιο γελοίες κατηγορίες εκτοξεύονται καθημερινά εναντίον του από το προσωπικά επλούτησε από την οικονομική κρίση ως να παρουσιάζεται σαν ξένος πράκτορας. Γενικότερα, θεωρείται ότι πρόδωσε τους ψηφοφόρους το 2009 με υποσχέσεις που έδωσε ενώ είχε πλήρη επίγνωση της οικονομικής κατάστασης (Μήπως τυχόν πολιτικοί που εκλέγονται σε άλλες χώρες δεν δίνουν ποτέ υποσχέσεις που δεν μπορούν να τηρήσουν;)

Σίγουρα ο κ. Παπανδρέου έκανε διάφορες κακές επιλογές και λάθη στην παρούσα οικονομική κρίση καθώς και έδωσε πολλές υποσχέσεις που αργότερα δεν μπόρεσε να κρατήσει. Ωστόσο, δεδομένου οτι μέχρι πριν από λίγους μήνες θεωρείτο ως «ο καλύτερος από τους μέτριους πολιτικούς τού παρόντος και ο μόνος με ακεραιότητα», η σημερινή δαιμονοποίηση του αντανακλά κάτι πολύ βαθύτερο από τα λάθη του. Είναι το αποτέλεσμα μιας αδυναμίας της ευρύτερης ελληνικής κοινωνίας, σε κάθε επίπεδο, να αναλάβει σήμερα οποιαδήποτε ευθύνη για την δεινή οικονομική και πολιτική κατάσταση του τόπου, αντί της οποίας αναζητει συνεχώς την αλήθεια σε θεωρίες συνωμοσίας και σενάρια με αποδιοπομπαίους τράγους

Αναθυμούμενος τον άνθρωπο που μίλησε με αξιοπρέπεια και κύρος στην κηδεία του πατέρα του, τον άνθρωπο που εργάστηκε ακούραστα για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα, τον άνθρωπος που σταμάτησε διάφορες καταστρεπτικές συγκρούσεις με τις γειτονικές μας χώρες ως υπουργός Εξωτερικών, τον άνθρωπο που οδήγησε με θάρρος και διπλωματία τη Σοσιαλιστική Διεθνή, ακόμη και το παιδί που διδάχθηκε στη διπλανή τάξη από τη δική μου, βρίσκω αυτό το διασυρμό βαθιά ανησυχητικό και σύμπτωμα της συνολικής βύθισή μας στην πεποίθηση ότι έχουμε όλοι αδικηθεί.

Μίλησε σε οποιοδήποτε Έλληνα σήμερα, από τον οδηγό ταξί ως τον καθηγητή πανεπιστημίου και από το συνδικαλιστή ως τον ανεξάρτητο επαγγελματία και θα συναντήσεις κάποιον που πιστεύει οτι έχει βαθιά αδικηθεί. Αδικειται από την κυβέρνηση, θίγεται από τους ευρωπαίους ηγέτες, αδικείται από τον εργοδότη του ή τον οργανισμό του, αδικείται από τις διάφορες συντεχνίες και τα κλειστά επαγγέλματα, αδικείται από το διεθνές κεφάλαιο είτε αυτό θελήση να επενδύση στη χωρα είτε όχι, και πάνω απ 'όλα αδικήθηκε από τον Γιώργο Παπανδρέου. Είναι δύσκολο να μιλήση κανείς σε Έλληνα σήμερα που αναγνωρίζει έστω και ίχνος ευθύνης στον εαυτό του για τη σημερινή κρίση.

Κάθε κρίση δημιουργει και κάποια ευκαιρία. Αλλαγές που αλλιώς θα έπερναν δεκαετίες μπορούν να υλοποιηθούν μέσα σε λίγες μόλις εβδομάδες. Εάν η Ελλάδα είναι να δή καλύτερες μέρες θα πρέπει να συνειδητοποιήσουμε ότι όλοι θα πρέπει τώρα να συνεργαστούμε, έχοντας μάθει από τα λάθη του παρελθόντος.

Αν θέλουμε να ευημερήσουμε, πρέπει μαζί να κάνουμε μια σωστή δουλειά - να καθαρίσει ο δημόσιος τομέας, να επενδύσομε στο μέλλον, να εργαστούμε σκληρά για να ανακάμψει ο τόπος, πληρώνοντας τους φόρους μας και στηρίζοντας ο ένας τον άλλον σε ώρες ανάγκης. Τώρα χρειαζόμαστε όση βοήθεια μπορούμε να βρούμε – από τους ευρωπαίους εταίρους μας, από Έλληνες που ζουν στο εξωτερικό, από πιθανούς συνεργάτες που είναι πρόθυμοι να συνεργαστούν μαζί μας σε κάθε πρωτοβουλία, πολιτική, οικονομική, επιστημονική ή πολιτιστική. Και οφείλουμε να δείξουμε λίγο σεβασμό και ευγνωμοσύνη σ’ εκείνους που είναι πρόθυμοι να μας βοηθήσουν.

Για τον Γεώργιο Παπανδρέου θα είναι πολύ δύσκολο για να ανακτήσει τη πολιτική θέση του. Αναμφισβήτητα έκανε λάθη, όπως οι περισσότεροι πολιτικοί θα είχαν κάνει σε εντελώς αχαρτογράφητα νερά. Το σημερινό εκλογικό σώμα δεν θα τον συγχωρήσει γρήγορα. Η πιό μακροπρόθεσμη φήμη του, ωστόσο, πιστεύω θα είναι πολύ λιγότερο αρνητική, καθώς οι ιστορικοί αρχίζουν την αξιολόγηση του ρόλου του στο δράμα που έπληξε τη χώρα τα τελευταία χρόνια.

Stop demonizing Papandreou - Stop looking for scapegoats

2011-12-04T14:40:00.000-08:00

A troublesome memory lingers following a recent visit in Greece. During a session on leadership I tentatively asked the participants of an MBA class what might happen if George Papandreou, Greece’s Prime Minister until recently, were to enter the room. A normally polite, inquisitive and respectful group of students got quite animated and several suggested that they would “lock the door, give him a good beating and send him home.” Reflection on the strength and meaning of such feelings proved well-nigh impossible. Indeed, it is impossible for someone who has not been to Greece and is unfamiliar with the Greek media to imagine the depth of feeling against George Papandreou and the personal animus that he is currently attracting.

Deep-seated enmities are, of course, not unknown in Greece but the speed with which many of Papandreou’s former supporters and admirers have turned against him and the vitriol heaped on him are quite remarkable. A man who received 44% of the popular vote in Greece’s elections a mere 2 years ago is currently held responsible for much of the undoubted anguish that is currently afflicting Greek society. The wildest accusations are levelled at him from having personally profiteered from the economic meltdown to being a foreign agent. More generally, he is viewed as having swindled the electorate in 2009 by having made promises while fully aware of the economic situation (Did any politicians elected in other countries fail to make promises that they could not keep?)

Undoubtedly, Papandreou made several mistakes in the wake of the economic melt-down and many promises that he was unable to keep. Yet, remembering how he was seen until a few months ago as “the best of a bad bunch of politicians, the only one with integrity”, his current demonization reflects something deeper than his mistakes. It is the result of the wider inability of Greek society, at every level, to accept any responsibility for today’s dire economic and political state and its continuing search for scapegoats. Remembering the man who talked with dignity and distinction at his father’s funeral, the man who worked tirelessly for human rights, the man who prevented catastrophic confrontations with Greece’s neighbours as Foreign Minister, the man who led with courage and diplomacy the Socialist International, and even the boy who was taught in the classroom next to mine, I find this vilification deeply troublesome and a symptom of our total immersion in the belief that we have been wronged.

Talk to any Greek today, from the taxi driver to the university professor and from the trade unionist to the independent professional and you will be talking to someone who sees themselves as profoundly wronged. Wronged by the government wronged by the European leaders, wronged by his/her organization, wronged by various ‘closed shops’ that are lining their own pockets, wronged by international capital, and above all wronged by George Papandreou. You will find it hard to talk to a Greek who will acknowledge even a scintilla of responsibility for today’s crisis.

A crisis, however, is an opportunity. During a crisis changes that would have taken decades can be implemented in a matter of weeks. If Greece is to see better future it will come if we Greek people realize that we all had a part in what has happened and must now work together, having learnt from the errors of the past. If we are to prosper again, it must be because we collectively do a good job – cleansing the public sector, investing in the future, working hard to recover from the current misery, paying our taxes and supporting each other in hours of need. We now need all the help we can get; from our European partners, from Greeks living abroad, from potential partners who are willing to work with us in any initiative, political, economic, scientific or cultural. And we ought to show a little respect and gratitude towards those who are willing to help us.

It will be very difficult for George Papandreou to recover his political standing. Undoubtedly he made mistakes, as most politicians would have when leading in totally uncharted waters. The current electorate will not forgive these. His reputation in the longer term, however, will be much more equivocal, as historians struggle to assess his role in the calamity that afflicted the country in the last few years.

A day in the life of a Greek University

2011-11-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

Every year around this time, I visit a Greek university where I do some postgraduate teaching; it has always been a rewarding experience in many respects. For one, it is my only teaching to a mono-cultural group of students – all Greek; for another, visiting a Greek campus takes me to a universe where teaching and formal learning yields second place to politics.

This year, like previous ones, the campus was full of political graffiti and art and heated political conversations among students. Hardly surprising given the troubled state of the country and the radical new law for Higher Education that promises (or threatens) to dramatically alter the landscape. Students in Greece have, as long as I can remember, been organized along party-political lines in everything they do, including parties, elections and group outings. An increasing number of students, however, are now forming new organizations independent of political parties and many of them have attached themselves to EAAK, the ‘Unified Independent Left Movement’.

Against this background, while I was giving a lecture on ‘action learning’, much noise was heard outside the lecture theatre and through the windows we could see a group of approximately 80 to 100 young people (all male) charging in the direction of the cafeteria. Dressed in black, the majority were carrying heavy cudgels covered in red flags and many of them were wearing helmets; a handful were wearing balaclavas to conceal their faces.

A skirmish could be heard outside, including much shouting and the noise of truncheon hitting truncheon. The lecture was adjourned on the request of the students – some of them were concerned about vandalism of the cars and bikes. I went out to see what was all about. By this time, the fighting had subsided (it can’t have lasted more than five minutes) and the other side had withdrawn leaving the main area of the campus to the invading contingent. Cudgels and helmets on the ground. One or two ‘combatants’ were holding bags of ice against swollen hands.

Meanwhile, a wide group of ‘neutral’ students had emerged from their lecture theatres and were engaged in vigorous conversations with the combatants in red flags. The atmosphere was tense, but I noticed a clear determination to enter dialogue on all sides.

“Who are you?” “What are you doing here?” “What do you want?” “What business do you have on campus?” – these questions prompted heated discussions rather than insults or violence. The combatants, it seems were members of EAAK retaliating against a charge by PASOK members the previous evening. They claimed they had been attacked by PASOK students and their hoodlums who had injured several of them and, variously, ‘molested’ or ‘tortured’ a female student. The word ‘flare pistol’ was repeatedly heard. Neutral students were, meanwhile, accusing the red flags of bringing hoodlums of their own to the campus, a claim that did not require much imagination to believe.

The lecture resumed shortly afterwards as peace seemed to return to the campus, with groups of red flags drifting away. By early afternoon, there was no sign of the confrontation except for a broken cudgel I collected as a reminder.

The next day, EAAK, the independent left student organizations, distributed leaflets with photographs claiming to show PASOK supporters in helmets attacking them with truncheons including some photographs of the notorious flares.

The incident seemed to sum up the tension that grips Greek society at the moment, along with the quick propensity for violence. Yet, it also illustrated the desire for dialogue among people who disagree dramatically along with the asking of questions I had not previously heard on Greek campuses.

The next day there was more drama in the lecture theatre – a mouse was spotted before it escaped into a heating pipe. Adjournment. The disinfestations brigade (also in helmets and black overalls) had to be called.

Graffiti from inside the university

A piece of graffit about 500 metres away from the university. The Guardian liked it so much, they reproduced it in their report on Greece.

Doing psychoanalytic research in organizations

2011-11-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

The similarities of psychoananalysis with forensic investigations have long been noted. Sigmund Freud, like Sherlock Holmes, was an interpreter of symptoms; he was also an interpreter of dreams, of fantasies, someone preoccupied with the meaning of the trivial, the inexplicable, the irrational. Interpretation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis both as a research activity and as a clinical practice. Interpretation, as Ricoeur (Ricoeur, 1970) informs us, is the systematic exercise of suspicion. Our suspicion is, first, a suspicion over the truthfulness of each, second, a suspicion over the motives of the narrator, and thirdly over our own motives, as listeners and interpreters. Thus our suspicion extends to our own narratives, our own interpretations.

This then is the first particularity of doing research using psychoanalytic perspectives in and out of organizations. Instead of amassing data, we look for clues. The odd, the out of place, the single significant exception may provide far more insight than large volumes of uniform and unidirectional data. Of special interest to us is what may have been disturbed, concealed, tampered. As psychoanalytic researchers we are averse to instant conclusions. We are especially suspicious of 'innocent', straight-forward explanations, of undisturbed terrains, of dogs that do not bark.

This puts psychoanalytic research in opposition to the largest segment of researchers who use qualitative techniques, most of whom treat 'experience' as the final arbiter of truth. This includes most researchers coming from phenomenological, humanist or social constructionist traditions. Psychoanalytic researchers, on the other hand, mistrust experience, they mistrust verbatim reports and they especially mistrust early past experiences whose recollection serve as explanations of current troubles. Experience, we have learned, is tainted with desire, with fantasy, with resistance, and cannot be accepted at face value. This, of course, creates numerous moral, political and scientific dilemmas. On whose authority does the psychoanalytic researcher doubt the sincere testimony of his or her respondent? How can he or she doubt the heart-felt tears, the piercing anger, the rightful indignation? On whose authority does he or she sit listening attentively, while engaging in all kinds of speculation regarding the unconscious reality behind the lived experience? On whose authority can he or she claim to understand the narrator better than he or she understands himself or herself?

Unless psychoanalysis as exercise of suspicion, i.e. psychoanalysis as interpretation, is backed up by a sound body of understanding, an imperfect but correctable stock of concepts, theories and propositions, it lacks the moral and scientific authority to question experience. Only by maintaining its belief in the difference between truths and untruths, can psychoanalytic inquiry pursue its quest of truth in lies or fantasies. For there is no doubt, that psychoanalysis looks for the truth in lies. Instead of dismissing lies as willing falsehoods or malicious deceptions (which they can at times be), psychoanalysis engages with them at the levels of meaning and desire, i.e. the levels where lies are not cognitive untruths but true wish fulfilments.

The second thing to note about psychoanalytic research is that it is inquiry against resistance. All scientific inquiry involves resistance -- resistance to new ideas or to new ways of thinking. However, psychoanalytic inquiry works against additional resistances, which are invisible without the aid of the psychoanalytic stock of concepts and theories noted earlier. It is the psychoanalytic theory of resistance which raises psychoanalytic interpretation above the chatter of those who Sievers has appropriately referred to as merchandisers of meaning. Psychoanalysis does not seek to create attractive parcels of meaning, seductive but ultimately unfounded stories, to feed the fantasies of its constituents, but seeks to put its finger on the psychological truth, the true meaning of the phenomena it observes.

In this regard, psychoanalytic research could not be more dissimilar from postmodern research. In place of the postmodernist ironic detachment, psychoanalytic research tends to be very serious. While postmodern research assumes a stance of playful engagement with its subject matter, psychoanalytic research usually assumes the form of struggle against resistances, inner as well as outer. These resistances are a source of great strength for psychoanalytic inquiry, but they also have potentially disastrous consequences. The strength lies in the fact that in recognizing the aims of the resistance and the mechanisms through which it functions, the psychoanalytic researcher can make great strides in corroborating interpretations. The potential weakness has been well-rehearsed. It lies in the fact that all too often resistance to interpretation is mechanically taken to imply confirmation of the interpretation. Untold of damage has been done to psychoanalysis by the cliché that equates denial with truth. Furthermore, the psychoanalytic investigator is working against inner resistances -- for example, those stemming from attachments to particular ideas or theories or, even more alarmingly, those stemming from a personal stake in a particular tradition. It is not accidental that so many quarrels in psychoanalytic research end up ad hominem arguments. Even in this potential weakness, however, psychoanalytic research is keenly conscious of a problem of which many other traditions remain unconscious: the fact that as researchers we form strong emotional relations with our theories and those of others and that, at times, theories themselves become defenses against uncertainty and accompanying anxieties.

The crucial dilemma then facing psychoanalytic researchers is that of being truthful about their aims and methods, without fatally contaminating the phenomena which they study. In writing about the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, Freud wrote:

the relationship between analyst and patient is based on a love of truth, that is, on the acknowledgment of reality, and that precludes any kind of sham or deception. (Freud, 1937: 248)

In warning against premature interpretations, however, Freud acknowledged that truth must appear at the appropriate moment -- truth at the wrong moment can act as an occasion for falsehood, resistance and denial. Alternatively, falsehood at the appropriate can assume the appearance of truth, under the influence of suggestion.

The same dilemma characterizes psychoanalytic research into organizations. The researcher who goes to the field with a completely transparent brief about his or her intentions and interests is likely in the first place to be denied access. Even if access is granted, such an approach is likely either to bolster the resistances which inhibit the pursuit and acknowledgment of truth or to set in operation a suggestive chain of events, where the research is guaranteed to mirror the preconceived ideas of the researcher. Steering a path between suggestion and resistance requires the utmost skill on the part of the psychoanalytic researcher.

Yet another dilemma arises from the different interests of researcher and researched. The researcher is usually interested in the truth; the researched is often interested in solutions to problems. This creates serious, though by no means insuperable difficulties for the researcher. The same dilemma, after all, characterizes many other scientific enterprises. The engineer requires good-enough solutions which will work in practice, even if the physicist may not be able to understand exactly why or how they work. The physician will use a reliable form of treatment, even if the precise way it affects the body is not altogether clear. Psychoanalytic research in organizations, like all scientific research, is as much a craft and an art as it is an application of fixed principles or methods. Competent researchers must balance the need for truthfulness against other factors, pragmatic, theoretical and methodological. They may rely on hunches or intuitive impulses, they must be sensitive to unforeseen opportunities and prepared to deviate from their research plan when circumstances change. They must have a keen eye for detail without losing sight of their overall purpose. And they must be prepared to engage subjectively with their observations and data, trusting themselves to be able to make sense of their engagement at a later stage. They must be prepared to take wrong turnings and to develop theories and ideas which must be given up later. They must also be prepared to give up ideas, research material and earlier work, like artists who realize that some sketches must remain sketches which have to be destroyed. In all these ways, psychoanalytic research into organizations, like most research, is quite a time-consuming and even wasteful activity, one which does not easily tally with the pressures facing consultants.

Yet, the prospective psychoanalytic researcher into organizations should not despair in the face of these difficulties. Like all crafts, the craft of research is one that some people learn relatively rapidly, developing extensive competencies and skills, among which must be counted the economical use of resources. Others need longer periods of apprenticeship, while some may never actually master the craft. In a paradoxical way, it is possible for a scholar to be a very original thinker and theorist without being particularly good at field research. Even more paradoxically, some excellent theories, both in the natural and in the human sciences, can be based on flawed or problematic research material, just as some high quality research material may fail to provide any theoretical insights.

Psychoanalytic research into organizations, like all research, is a practice which is closer to an art or a craft than the practice of scientific theorizing. It cannot be reduced to a set of immutable rules of scientific method; instead, it is guided by a proliferation of practical rules of thumb. Part of the researcher's skill lies in knowing when it is worth taking a risk in departing from such guidelines and also knowing whether the risk has paid off. There are occasions when breaking a particular research guideline can offer unexpected insights.

There is one type of mistake that researchers must avoid at all costs, one type of rule which they must not break. This concerns the ethical requirements of doing research; no hoped for outcome justifies the breaking of undertakings which a researcher has given, the carrying out of research which will be harmful to those participating in it, or the dissemination of lies and distortions. Such practices, which all too frequently corrupt the practices of investigative journalists and reporters, can have absolutely devastating effect when indulged in by academic researchers. They certainly close the doors for future researchers and taint the reputation of the academic traditions and establishments to which researchers belong -- nothing can justify such a cost.

The final thing which psychoanalytic researchers into organizations must be prepared for is yet another quality of all research activity. They must be prepared to endure the anxiety and distress of not knowing, and not knowing whether they are on the path towards knowing. Acknowledging one's own confusion and puzzlement at different points of the research process can be more helpful than seeking comfort in existing answers and re-assuring platitudes. Researchers must be prepared to endure periods of uncertainty, periods of profound doubt, if they are to arrive at original and substantial conclusions. Being organized in recording one's materials, filing them and analysing them is an asset which can all too easily turn into a liability. The perfectly organized mind is unlikely to arrive at highly original ideas. By contrast, the alert mind, the mind which is prepared to improvise and change its mental and practical routines is more likely to arrive at original thinking and theoretical innovation. Above all, researchers must be willing to ask themselves questions: the hardest and most awkward questions -- those questions that even the most perceptive inquisitor, the most demanding examiner may fail to ask; but also, the easiest, most straight-forward questions which sometimes seem hardly worth asking.

Freud, S. 1937. Analysis terminable and interminable (Standard ed.). London: Hogarth Press.

Ricoeur, P. 1970. Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Stories and organizations today - Answers to some common questions

2011-11-17T14:41:00.000-08:00

What is the importance of storytelling and why are old stories and myths relevant to the world of organizations?

Stories are narratives that people, in and out of organizations, tell each other to communicate their experiences, entertain, influence or warn others. A great deal of storytelling takes place in organizations and we can learn a lot from it. In stories, the requirement for accuracy is subordinated to the need to offer a gripping narrative that stimulates emotions and keeps the attention of the audience.

Ancient myths address powerful themes of power, legitimacy, hubris, love, disappointment, and above all, the discontinuity between human intentions and the outcomes of human actions. These are the same issues that we encounter in every organization today.

2. Does an understanding of storytelling and stories help the management of organizations?

Understanding how to learn from organizations stories can help, by:

offering better communication and understanding of organizational objectives
offering examples for imitation and avoidance
allowing the generation of positive emotions, like hope, enthusiasm and commitment
allowing the containment of negative emotions, like anxiety, anger and fear
allowing the leaders to understand the concerns of followers
enabling followers to understand, share and influence the visions of leaders

3. How can and how do today’s leaders use stories?

Some leaders make regular use of storytelling in communicating with their followers. In general, some leaders make more effective use of stories than others. Effective stories are fairly simple, they have a clear message but do not appear to be ‘manufactured’ to manipulate their audiences. They are spontaneous and sincere. The leader does not use them to boast in an evident way about his own achievements.

Good leaders also learn from listening carefully to stories; instead of responding angrily to a story by saying ‘It is not true’ they ask themselves why some people want to believe such stories to be true.

4. All in all, why is storytelling relevant to our highly advanced technological society?

Most organizations today are drowning in information overload, which stops people from effectively managing knowledge. In contrast to information, storytelling cuts straight to the quick, addresses directly the problems and concerns of organizational members in their daily reality and enables them to learn from each other’s experiences. Sharing a story is a more powerful way of sharing knowledge than offering large sets of statistics, complicated theories or formalistic graphs.

An unusual recipe for mussels

2011-11-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

Mussels is, of course, Belgium's national dish. Here is a recipe which I picked up in Corsica. It is entirely unlike any other mussel recipe you have seen, it is simple and absolutely delicious.

In a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid melt some butter; throw a handsome amount of pine-nuts and some garlic and stir gently until they turn golden. Then put the mussels in the pot turning the heat to high; put the lid on the saucepan and stir the mussels every couple of minutes to ensure that they all open evenly.

When the mussels are nearly ready, place some brandy in a small saucepan and heat gently. When the brandy is quite hot, light it up by; be careful not to burn your eyebrows or any other valuable feature. You will be surprised by how long a small glass of brandy (say 30ml) will burn. When it is about to go out, throw it over the mussels and stir the mussels vigorously.

I guarantee that anyone who loves mussels will be greatly impressed by this way of cooking. The mussels end up quite dry (uusual) but full of flavour. The combination of butter, pinenuts, garlic and brandy does wonders in bringing out the mussel flavour!

"Researchers as storytellers". Y. Gabriel’s presentation at the 18th Storytelling Seminar, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, 11 November 2011.

2011-11-13T01:19:00.000-08:00

So, what kinds of stories do researchers tell? As a researcher and an academic I have listened to many stories told by colleagues in conferences, seminars, common rooms etc. What kinds of stories do researchers tell?

1. Possibly the most predictable (and boring) story is the hard luck story surrounding journal submissions. It seems to me that humiliation in the hands of reviewers and editors is one of the commonest types of stories told by researchers and one that immediately is liable to spark of several more. Academic journals are increasingly becoming battlefields for researchers, a theme I have explored in a recent piece (Gabriel, 2010).

2. Another important story academics tell is the story of their research agenda to prospective respondents and participants. It has long seemed to me that researchers do a poor job in explaining the purpose of their research to participants who may not be interested in the research and may not be familiar with the jargon.

3. A third type of story is a story of troubles with co-researchers, PhD supervisors, research assistants and so forth. Most research projects involve large amounts of uncertainty and highly unpredictable prizes; dysfunctional research collaborations are very common and the often turn into good stories.#

4. Gossip and stories about organizational politics, shifting alliances, bureaucratic incompetence and so forth (similar to those one gets in other organizations).

5. ‘Tales from the trenches’ i.e. stories about the actual doing of the research, the troubles of getting access, the triumphs and reversals of finding good data, unusual and eccentric respondents, trench (and office) romances, and so forth. Above all, these are stories researchers come across in the course of their field work that stay in their mind long after the field work is complete.

It is this last type I probe closer in this presentation by telling two stories from my own research experience, one dating back to 1984 and one much more recent. In a seminar environment, my intention is to use these as a way of sharing knowledge in a relatively ‘safe’ professional circle, hopeful that these stories will be treated with a certain respect as research material. Before doing so, I want to note that the majority of researchers do not make very good storytellers for a wide variety of reasons. As a storytelling researcher I have found far more good storytellers among the participants in my research than among my social science colleagues.

The first story concerns the suicide of an Italian cook shortly before I researched the catering department of a London hospital in 1984. The story was told be several of the cook’s colleagues who viewed it as a traumatic episode. The saw the cook as the victim of management malevolence and they saw themselves as survivors. A manager I interviewed, by contrast, viewed the cook’s suicide as the result of tribal warfare and mobbing in the kitchen. Years later, I met a relative of this manager who revealed to me that he had been a very harsh and authoritarian man.

This story has haunted me for many years. It drove home to me how an incident like a suicide becomes embedded in collective memory, acquiring mythological qualities. It becomes uncontestable and its meanings suffuses all subsequent events. It was one of the earliest stories I analysed in 1991 (Gabriel, 1991) and one that drove home to me the extraordinary power of story. No amount of managerial legerdemain could change the deeply felt experience (if not the fact) among the workers that they (the managers) had driven the cook to his death.

The second story concerns a much more recent respondent to a study of unemployed managers and professionals in the 50s. Matthew, a very confident executive, was unemployed and writing many job applications each week. Matthew dominated a focus group and bragged consistently in the early parts of an interview about his numerous achievements. Later, however, he broke down nearly in tears confessing that he is a failure, that all his early triumphs mean nothing if he cannot put bread on his family table. Matthew evoked images of a wounded soldier, sustained by his early glory but unable to find recognition or a place in the sun.

In reflecting on these stories, I invited my audience to examine the following:

· Did I tell them well? What does ‘well’ mean?

· Have the stories ended?

· Did I use them legitimately?

· How would the subjects have reacted if they were present in the room?

· Why did I choose these stories?

In conclusion, I invited participants to reflect on the chaos we encounter as researchers when faced with narrative fragments, incidents, images and experiences which are not pulled together through the magic of a plot. Narrativization (i.e. the turning of our experience as researchers into stories we can share with others) reduces the chaos of lived experience but obliterates the messiness of the field. It may relieve our anxiety as researchers but creates various risks. One of these is falling in love with our stories and failing to interrogate them and challenge them.

Gabriel, Y. (1991). Turning facts into stories and stories into facts: A hermeneutic exploration of organizational folklore. Human Relations, 44(8), 857-875.

http://bath.academia.edu/YiannisGABRIEL/Papers/814388/Turning_facts_into_stories_and_stories_into_facts_A_hermeneutic_exploration_of_organizational_folklore

Gabriel, Y. (2010). Organization Studies: A Space for Ideas, Identities and Agonies. Organization Studies, 31(6), 757-775.

http://oss.sagepub.com/content/31/6/757.abstract

The Norwegian tourist and the Greek fisherman - What has been lost in the current crisis

2011-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Since the economic and social collapse in Greece, those of us who love and care for the country have lost something precious and irretrievable. But what exactly is it that we have lost? While pondering this, a story came to mind, one I first hear from one of my Norwegian students some twenty years ago.

A Norwegian tourist, the story went, visits a Greek island and sees a Greek fisherman happily lying on the sand.

“Why” asks the Norwegian “don’t you go out to catch some fish?”

“Well, I caught several last night” says the Greek. “Why would I want to go out and catch more?”

“Obvious” says the Norwegian. “You would then be able to save some money”.

“And what would I do with the money?” asks the Greek.

“Why, you could get more boats and send them out to catch more fish” says the Noregian.

“Why on earth would I do this?” asks the Greek.

“Well, you could hire some fisherman to go out to see and fish for you, and you would stay here on the island lying on the beach,” says the Noregian.

“Well, isn’t this what I am doing now?” says the Greek.

For a while, the story enjoyed much popularity, not least in my family. I have distinct memories of my sons competing about who would tell the story of the Norwegian and the Greek fisherman to visitors. The story was too good to let one’s brother enjoy telling it …

I now realize that we have lost in the current mayhem is any ability to enjoy this very story. The story no longer brings a smile to our face. Its ability to make us laugh has gone. Forever.

Will there ever be a time when we will be able to laugh innocently at this story again?

Reflections on the 18th Organizational Storytelling seminar ‘Researchers as storytellers’, held on 11 November 2011 at Wageningen University

2011-11-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

“The doubt does not only ask the question, ‘Can your story be told?’ It also asks ‘Was it possible to experience it?’” Serendipity brought these words by Hermann Hesse my way during my brief stay in the Netherlands to attend the 18^th Storytelling Seminar. Organized by Severine van Bommel at Vageningen University and held on 11 November 2011, the seminar addressed the question of researchers themselves as storytellers and one of the issues that surfaced repeatedly was the unfinished qualities of many stories and the chaos against which research stories emerge. Like the fog of war, research generates numerous narrative fragments, incidents, opinions, information and so forth that raise fundamental questions about how they can be put together in the form of a story.

It was telling to watch the hard work of the discussion groups near the end of the day as they struggled to come up with a story that would describe their experiences of the seminar. Many interesting observations were made but a story, in my view, refused to be born. In truth, the experience for all participants was still undigested, almost raw. A story needs time to emerge and maybe different participants as they return home will start working out their different narratives of the event. This is my attempt at such a narrative.

Maybe my first observation is the urgent need felt by most researchers to make sense of inchoate experiences by putting order in the chaos by reaching as soon as possible for the safety of a plot, some characters, some units and some connections. Research projects, on the whole, are non-routine activities – the destination of the story and even the question of whether there will be a destination is unknown, as Hesse’s comment above aptly describes. In Suzanne Tesselaar’s terms, the research lies firmly in the circular space, the space where projects cannot be placed in the straight-jacket of linear time, but evolve reflexively. Some people, like Severine van Bommel’s, seek to get to the story through a very methodical and diligent approach – through systematic recording and subsequent deletion of what is irrelevant and redundant. Of course, as Severine recognized, whenever we press the ‘Delete’ button on our machine (or even in our minds), we raise the possibility of pressing the ‘Undelete button’ at some future time.

My own preference is to trust more my unconscious or my intuition to carry out the filtering, the framing and the connecting. I often find that this happens when I go for a walk, having a shower or even when I am asleep – the story presents itself with characters, turning points, context and plot fairly clearly discernible. In line with Merlijn van Huist’s observation, I would also say that the underlying narrative structure of a presentation or a paper emerge in a similar way. To the question “Do you not code your data?” my answer is that I tend not to. I find that the systematic coding of data often yields very pedantic results, dull, forgettable stories. Paul Feyerabend’s (Feyerabend, 1975) Against Method remains for me a landmark in the philosophy of science (as he himself remains a landmark educator and teacher. Method comes etymologically from “Μεθ’ Οδόν”, literally ‘with a path’ – but staying in the path leads to limited discoveries, and Feyerabend’s vital insight is that researchers must frequently throw the methodology books out of the window in order to make new discoveries (whether in physics or in the social sciences).

Noëlle Aarts’ presentation reinforced this idea, that discovery comes from discussion and interaction – which brings us to the co-construction of stories by researchers who are different and yet can find a common wavelength along which to communicate. It struck me how Noëlle’s insights apply to the relations between doctoral students, their fellow students and their supervisors – the extent to which each student’s research story is drawn out in conversation and interaction. What then, you may ask me – no solitary walks or whistling in the shower-room as an invitation to story? Well, my answer would be that the story may be conceived in interaction but is actually born when someone gets down to telling it.

A final word about Carlo Ginsburg’s (1980) marvellous article which highlights how differently narrative (and semiotic) research proceeds from research that looks for law-like statements. The semiotic researcher argues Ginzburg is not after sweeping observations and large amounts of data – his/her skill lies in identifying what is out-of-place, paradoxical or irregular and then drawing conclusions about what might have brought this about. Like the primitive huntsman, the researcher, argues Ginzburg, does not stay on the beaten path where interesting things rarely happen, but goes off course and observes the trifling, the ephemeral and the irregular. This is where the terrain that has been disturbed by the prey; these disturbances are the clues he needs to trace and identify his prey. It seems that the implication of Ginzburg’s work for storytelling researchers is that we should stop trying to ‘collect’ stories and maybe we should start hunting for them.

Thanks to everybody who made this seminar such a success.

Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method. London: New Left Books.

Ginzburg, C. (1980). Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method. History Workshop, 9, 5-36.

Beyond the Creed of Heroic Leadership

2011-10-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

A large part of current scholarship on leadership represents a questioning of the heroic model of leadership. This a model of leadership that has long dominated discourses, according to which larger-than-life leaders inspire their followers to extraordinary feats. It can be found in many different areas of leadership from political to business, from military to educational and from football to the arts. Heroic leadership is presumed capable of dramatic turnarounds, rescue missions, inspirational motivation and truly spectacular results. Based on material provided by six top leadership academics (Doh, 2003), I have parodied this model in a Creed (see Gabriel, 2005), whose main principles are:

I believe in a God called leadership
And this God is capable of everything
And, I believe that people are born with different degrees of leadership, different innate abilities and dispositions
But, all the same, many aspects of leadership can be learned
And some can be taught
And the best way of teaching leadership, always respecting different local traditions, is experiential
And the teaching of leadership must be informed by ethics and morality
In as much as they do not really interfere with the bottom line
And I believe that leadership can be taught in many places
Of which, the great business schools of the world, are the greatest.
And I believe that this God called leadership has various apostles on Earth
Of whom, X is the greatest. (X = any leader that currently seems to do no wrong.)

The heroic model of leadership is not only to be found in the regular presentation of business and other leaders in the media but suffuses a huge industry on executive development and coaching and inspires a substantial part (though not all) of leadership education. Its essential qualities, the emphasis on the leader’s traits, on the extent to which such traits may be standardised and cultivated continue to preoccupy many scholars. A corollary to heroic leadership is inspirational leadership, a softer version, but still one that lionizes the leader and credits him/her with the ability to inspire followers by listening and responding, teaching and explaining, shows respect and cares for his/her subordinates.

What are the main challenges to heroic leadership? Foremost, the realization that even when leaders appear to deliver miracles, they fail to repeat them on demand. This leads to the realization that success attributed to leaders is often the product of diverse factors including the qualities of followers, situational factors and even luck. Hence the importance of the leader-follower relation assumes greater significance than the qualities of the superman/leader. The psychological contract between leaders and followers becomes very important. Emotion is a crucial dimension of this contract, hence emotional intelligence is greatly discussed in connection with leadership today.

The management of emotions is closely linked to the management of meaning. This is currently being discussed in connection with the way leaders communicate, the words they use, the metaphors they deploy and the stories they tell, in short, narratives. Management of meaning can and often does backfire, so power, control, politics and contestation remain major issues in leadership scholarship. The management of meaning (and its dark twin, spin-doctoring) is also linked in our culture with the management of the media and leaders’ ability to come across effectively to television and other audiences.

Uses and abuses of power by leaders remain a very major area for scholarship. In the wake of Enron and other corporate scandals, a wide range of leadership dysfunctions is currently pre-occupying scholars. Toxic leaders who may be authoritarian or narcissistic personalities can, for a time, appear to deliver results, when in effect they are covering up for decay and failure. Leadership dysfunction is also discussed in connection with political, military, business and other failures.

The increasing emphasis accorded to followers has raised the profile of distributed leadership. Originally used in connection with education, the idea that leadership may suffuse an organization at all different levels instead of being located at the top is gaining some attention in different areas.

An area of scholarship that appeared to hold the promise of major break-throughs but, in my view, has rather slowed down concerns the differences between leadership and management. Following well known arguments by Burns, Zaleznik, Bennis and others, it was argued that leaders and managers are fundamentally different in terms of their:

• Attitudes to change, restlessness, turbulence

• Attitudes towards efficiency and waste

• Attitudes towards details and grand picture

• Emphasis on logic, plans and rationality as against hunches, intuition and gut feeling

It seems to me that, following the work of Bass, the extreme polarization of leaders and managers has given way to more convergent views, i.e. those that regard management and leadership at least as partially overlapping social practices.

One area of scholarship that has impressed me is the attempt to bring the concept of negative capability into the study of leadership. This concept, originally used by the poet John Keats, suggests that there are times where inaction is preferable to impulsive (and potentially reckless) action. The Chinese concept of wu wei has sometimes been used to the same end.

Finally, it seems to me that the area of management of diversity is one that will increasingly dominate many studies of leadership. In a diverse and heterogeneous world, the management of difference will assume increasing attention. Diversity can be a force towards creativity and innovation but it can also lead to break-downs of communication, rancour and acrimony. Leadership, in all spheres of social activity, will be confronting issues of maintaining unity within highly diverse and differentiated domains and creating synergies across different types of boundaries. Hence, the management of boundaries, organizational, psychological, moral and others, will assume great significance in both the theory and the practice of leadership.

Doh, J. P. 2003. Can leadership be taught? Perspectives from management educators. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2(1): 54-67.

Gabriel, Y. 2005. MBA and the education of leaders: The new playing fields of Eton? Leadership, 1(2): 147-163.

Η σκόνη του χρόνου - ένα σχόλιο στην ταινία του Θόδωρου Αγγελόπουλου

2011-10-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Τι μεγάλος καλιτέχνης είναι ο Αγγελόπουλος! Όταν απελπίζομαι για τη χώρα μας, βρίσκω στις ταινίες του τόσο δικαίωση για την απελπισία μου αλλά και κάποια ελπίδα ή τουλάχιστο κάποιο ενθαρρυντικό μήνυμα. Η κάθε ταινία του σου κάνει την καρδιά κομμάτια και μετά σε προκαλεί να ανασκοπίσεις και να συλλογιστείς.

Η πιο πρόσφατη ταινία του, Η σκόνη του χρόνου, είναι ένα ελαττωματικό αριστούργημα. Ελαττωματικό οπωσδήποτε, αλλά αριστούργημα σίγουρα. Κατ' αρχην, η αγγλική γλώσσα που διάλεξε για το έργο δεν συμβιβάζεται καθόλου με την αισθητική του Αγγελόπουλου, ειδικά όταν ομιλείται από ηθοποιούς για τους οποίους δεν ειναι η μητρική γλώσσα. Εξίσου ανεπιτυχής μου φάνηκαν οι ερμηνείες των τριών από τα τέσσερα μεγαλα αστέρια του κινηματογράφου που πρωταγωνιστούν, της Irène Jacob, του Willem Dafoe και ιδιαίτερα του Michel Piccoli. Και οι τρεις, μεγάλοι ηθοποιοί, είναι, κατά τη γνώμη μου, ακατάλληλοι για τους ρόλους τους, έξω από τα νερά τους, κάτι που υπογραμμίζεται από τη συγκλονιστική ερμηνεία του τέταρτου, του Bruno Ganz. Παρά τις ελλείψεις της ηθοποιίας, στο τέλος της ταινίας βρήκα τον εαυτό μου εντελώς στραγγισμένο. Αλλά και παράξενα ενεργοποιημένο - σε τέτοιο βαθμό, που χρειάστηκα να κάτσω και να γράψω αυτές τις γραμμές, ενόσο η ταινία ήταν ακόμη νωπή στη μνήμη μου.

Τι κάνει τον Αγγελόπουλο τόσο μεγάλο καλιτέχνη; Κατ’αρχήν, με όλες τις ταινίες του, ο Αγγελόπουλος έχει δημιουργήσει μια «νέα» Ελλάδα, μια Ελλάδα εντελώς αντίθετα με τις συνηθισμένες στην «τέχνη», τη λογοτεχνία, τη φωτογραφία και τα τουριστικά έντυπα. Είναι μια χώρα βυθισμένη πάντα σε αγωνία, μια χώρα της οποίας ζοφερή και ομιχλώδη αισθητική ταιριάζει με τις θλίψεις, τη ντροπή και την απελπισία των χαρακτήρων του. Είναι μία Ελλάδα που τώρα, ιδιαίτερα τις ημέρες που περνάμε, αναγνωρίζομε ολοι μας: μία Ελλάδα σε συνεχή πόλεμο με τον εαυτό της.

Η τελευταία ταινία γυρίστηκε εξ ολοκλήρου έξω από την Ελλάδα (στη Γερμανία, στο Καζακστάν, στον Καναδά και αλλού), αλλά ο Αγγελόπουλος συνεχίζει να καταπλήσει με εικόνες που δεν μαγεύουν μόνο το μάτι αλλά προτρέπουν το θεατή να γεμίσει τα κενά, τις ελλείψεις. Όρια και σύνορα δεσπόζουν σε όλες τις ταινίες του, και ιδιαίτερα στη Σκόνη του χρόνου, όπου οι χαρακτήρες συνεχώς ταξειδεύουν από χώρα σε χώρα, από ήπειρο σε ήπειρο και κυρίως από τον ένα χρονοτόπο στον άλλο, από μία κουλτούρα στην άλλη. Ποια είναι τα σύνορα του Αγγελόπουλου; Είναι τα ποτάμια, οι τοίχοι, οι μπάρες που χωρίζουν τις χώρες, τα σημεία ελέγχου των αεροδρομίων και κυρίως η τεράστια συναισθηματική και ψυχολογική απόσταση που χωρίζει τους χαρακτήρες του. Κι όμως - χαρακτήρες του, ακόμη και όταν άσχημα παιγμένοι, είναι χαρακτήρες με ιστορίες και ιστορικά. Δεν είναι απλώς πολυδιάστατοι, σε απελπισμένες σύγκρουσεις με τον εαυτό τους, τα ιδανικά καί τις αρχές τους αλλά και με τον κόσμο γύρω τους. Οι χαρακτήρες του Αγγελόπουλου χαρακτηρίζονται από το πνιγμένο πάθος, τη βουβή και παράξενη ευαισθησία τους. Η τελευταία αλλά και οι παλαιότερες ταινίες του (Ταξειδι στα Κύθηρα κλπ) είναι πραγματικά μοναδικές στο καιρό μας σαν ταινίες στις οποίες οι γέροι (και όταν ακόμα δεν είναι καλοπαιγμένοι) δεν εμφανίζονται σαν καρικατούρες (με λιγότερο ή περισσότερο προηγμένο Alzheimer), σαν αντικείμενα γήρατος, αλλά σαν πραγματικές οντότητες με πάθη, πόθους, ιστορίες και υλικό που συνεχώς τους ενώνει και τους χωρίζει μεταξύ τους. Και τα πάθη τους; Όχι απλώς «συναισθήματα», αλλά ζωντανά, καυτά και συχνά καταστροφικά πάθη, όπως βέβαια σε κάθε τραγωδία.

Βλέποντας τις ταινίες του Αγγελόπουλου συνειδητοποιώ πόσο γρήγορα οι Έλληνες ως έθνος έχουμε ξεχάσει πώς να υποφέρουμε και πως να υπομένουμε. Ο πόνος τώρα πρέπει να βρει άμεση εκτόνωση και συνεχή έκφραση. Και φυσικά πολλαπλασιάζεται, όπως σε κάθε τραγωδία. Ο Αγγελόπουλος έχει πολλά να μας διδάξει, ιδιαίτερα τώρα, πριν από το μεγάλο σκοτάδι μπροστά μας.

The Dust of Time - A comment on Theo Angelopoulos' most recent film

2011-10-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

What a master Angelopoulos is. When I despair about Greece, I turn to his work and find my despair validated. But I also find hope. He tears your heart to pieces and then he invites you to reflect.

His most recent film, The Dust of Time, is a flawed masterpiece. Flawed to be sure, but a masterpiece all the same. To start with, the English language sits very uneasily with Angelopoulos aesthetic, especially when English is spoken by various non-native speakers. Equally uneasy seem to be three of the four stars of the film, Irene Jacob, Willem Dafoe and especially Michel Piccoli. All three are badly miscast and truly out of their depth, something underlined by the shattering performance of the fourth star, Bruno Ganz. In spite of this, by the end of the film I found myself totally drained but also strangely energised – so much so, that I felt I should sit down and write these lines while the film is still fresh in my mind. What is so great about Angelopoulos? Throughout his films, Angelopoulos has demonstrated an uncanny ability to create a ‘new’ Greece, a Greece entirely unlike that of conventional ‘art’, literature and tourism brochures. It is a country that is always in agony, a country whose bleak and misty aesthetic matches the sorrows, the shame and the despair of his characters, a country constantly at war with its present and its past, a country at war with itself – but a country all the same.

This latest film is shot entirely outside Greece (Germany, Kazakhstan, Canada and elsewhere) but Angelopoulos continues to come up with images that do not merely bewitch the eye but prompt the mind to fill the spaces, the gaps. Boundaries are everywhere in Angelopoulos’s films, frontiers, rivers, walls, as well as vast emotional and psychological distances between his characters. And yet – his characters, even when played badly, are characters with histories; they are not just multi-dimensional, in desperate conflict with themselves and the world around them, but they display passion and an uncanny sensibility. It is truly brilliant to see a film in which old people are portrayed not as caricatures, objects of old age, but as genuine subjects with agency, subjects that carry a history wherever they go. It is this history that constantly tears them apart but also brings them together. And they have passions too! Not mere ‘emotions’, but vibrant, burning and, as in all tragedy, destructive passions.

Seeing his films made me think how quickly the Greeks as a nation have forgotten how to suffer and hence how to endure. Angelopoulos has much to teach us in advance of the great darkness ahead.

A definition of leadership

2011-10-25T02:25:00.000-07:00

“Leading is imagining, willing, inspiring and driving”. This emphasises leaders, when engaged in relations with others, as agents for change. In the first instance, leading is imagining. Without imagination, no leadership. And imagination means being able to envisage new possibilities, new products, new ideas, new methods, new alliances, new ways of using words and language and even new needs and desires. Leaders then are dreamers, drawing on their unconscious wishes to conjure up what to others may seem, unrealistic, impossible or absurd possibilities. But leaders are not just dreamers. Many people have powers of imagination, creative artists and scientists, for example. While dreaming is an essential part of leading, it is not enough. In order to lead, a man or a woman must also have a strong will, a burning desire to see the dream become reality, the vision become fact. Willing means that the dream is not an ‘idle’ fantasy but becomes a strong motivator towards action. Imagining and willing together are essential for leadership. But again, they are not enough. An aspiring athlete may have the vision of herself climbing the podium of the Olympic Games to receive a golden medal; she may have the drive to train and practice with dedication to get there. But she is not a leader if she does not engage with others, if her vision does not become a shared vision, if it does not inspire and drive others. A leader will drive others by emotionally engaging with them, being able to communicate, elaborate and share a vision, inspiring them and winning them over, but also occasionally by cajoling and exhorting them. Engaging with others is a feature of all aspects of leading, including imagining. Leaders do not just sit and dream waiting for a vision to arrive. Still less do visions arise from vision statements carefully prepared by hired consultants. Instead visions emerge from active engagement with others, understanding of collective aspirations and wishes and flights of imagination that push the bounds of possibility.

It will be noted this definition is one that runs against the current tendency to emphasise dispersed, diffused leadership. While acknowledging the relational aspect of leadership, in the last resort, the relation between followers and leaders is asymmetrical. It is a relation that can never escape from the template of someone being set apart from the others, someone taking charge and responsibility for others, and someone who, ultimately, through words and actions, is capable of providing the basis on which the others identify with each other as followers.

It will also be noted that this definition does not lionize leaders as people who can consistently perform miracles. Leaders can and at times do inspire others to achieve what appear like miracles. But such 'miracles' can hardly be delivered consistently on demand. Hence, all too often, yesterday's miracle-man or -woman turns out to be tomorrow's rejected leader or, worse, tomorrow's tyrant.

Stories and today's organizations - Yiannis answers some common questions

2011-10-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

What is the importance of storytelling and why are old stories and myths relevant to the world of organizations?

2. Does an understanding of storytelling and stories help the management of organizations?

Understanding how to learn from organizations stories can help, by:

offering better communication and understanding of organizational objectives
offering examples for imitation and avoidance
allowing the generation of positive emotions, like hope, enthusiasm and commitment
allowing the containment of negative emotions, like anxiety, anger and fear
allowing the leaders to understand the concerns of followers
enabling followers to understand, share and influence the visions of leaders

3. How can and how do today’s leaders use stories?

4. All in all, why is storytelling relevant to our highly advanced technological society?

Consumerism, fragmented consumption, unmanageable consumers - by Yiannis Gabriel

2011-10-24T02:01:00.000-07:00

The twentieth century may rightly come to be known as the century of the consumer. It was the century which saw consumption change its meaning – from its associations with withering away and decay to a source of vibrancy, pleasure and life. Throughout the century, industrialized countries saw standards of living increasing, vast new ranges of products came into existence, and consumption moved constantly away from a mere survival activity into a pleasure activity, a meaning activity and an identity activity.

The century started with the Fordist Deal, a far-reaching social arrangement which married mass production with mass consumption, inspired by Henry Ford’s deal to his employees -- quiescent, monotonous work in exchange for unimagined consumer delights, comforts and riches. Of course, Ford's outrageous arrogance towards the customer "You can have any color you wish, so long as it is black" gave way to a far more deferential attitude, where pleasing customers, pampering to their every whim and offering them choices became de rigeur.

Today's organizations as well as Western societies are dominated by the cult of the consumer – the consumer is not longer an outsider to the world of organizations, but a palpable presence, whose desires and tastes dominate what goes on in most workplaces. Nor is the consumer absent from the world of public sector organizations, hospitals, universities, schools and even government bureaucracies, as they increasingly address their constituents as customers, seeking to offer them excitement, pleasure and choice. Our society is gradually dominated by what Ritzer calls cathedrals of consumption, settings which "allow, encourage, and even compel us to consume so many of those goods and services." (Ritzer, 1999, p. 2). These settings include theme parks, cruise ships, casinos, tourist resorts, hotels, restaurants and above all shopping malls. The idea of cathedrals of consumption suggests their quasi-religious, enchanted qualities of spiritual renewal, accomplished in spaces where children and adults can allow fantasy to run free, to become reality.

Contemporary management has redefined itself in a major way – shifting its attention from the toiling worker to the fantasizing consumer. What management does is to furnish, in a highly rationalized manner, an endless stream of consumable fantasies linked to specific products, inviting consumers to pick and choose. Thus the grey, rational and impersonal world of modernity becomes re-enchanted in post-modernity, through mass festivals, riotous colour, wild flights of imagination and a pandemonium of temptations. In the new cathedrals of consumption, consumption is constantly advocated promoted, enhanced and controlled, not so much through direct advertising, as through indirect means such as spatial arrangements, uses of language, festivals, simulations and extravaganzas, as well as the cross-fertilization ('implosion') of products and images. Thus consumption gradually colonizes every public and private domain of social life, which become saturated with fantasizing, spending and discarding opportunities. If Henry Ford was the manager who epitomized mass production, Walt Disney has posthumously become the emblematic figure of our time – the manager redefined from agent of rationalized production to orchestrator of mass fantasies.

Yet, as the as the consumer assumes centre-stage in contemporary societies, his/her image becomes less distinct, his/her desires less comprehensible and his/her thinking less predictable. Like those furtive images caught by surveillance cameras, the face of the consumer is indistinct and his/her motives opaque. Many claim their consumer as their turf -- economists, sociologists, social psychologists, cultural critics, postmodernists, advertisers, journalists, pop-semioticians, marketers and marketeers, historians of ideas, environmentalists and activists. Yet, each of these groups all come up with their 'own' visions and images of who the consumer is, and what he stands for and there is little agreement about it. In my own work with Tim Lang (Gabriel & Lang, 2006, 2008), we identified various conflicting images of contemporary consumers, each highlighting different features and disguising others.

Dominant among them are

1. Choice-maker versus habit-forming. Choice is possibly the biggest trademark of contemporary consumption. The profusion of choice confronting today's consumer is prodigious. Equally, when consumers are denied choice, for example by state organizations, private monopolies or occasionally other organizations, there are anguished howls of 'foul play'. No organization, private or public, can today appear to oppose consumer choice. Yet, choice is a double-edged sword. Too much choice is confusing and frustrating; choice between identical alternatives is easily perceived as meaningless; and choice without information is valueless. The cost of exercising choice is formidable; and like customers at a Chinese restaurant, many consumers give up trying to exercise choice and opt for ready-made combinations which alleviate the need for choice. They form habits, appearing to be displaying loyalty towards specific brands, when in fact they are only seeking refuge from the hailstorm of alternatives. Don't get me wrong. When alternatives are not available, consumers are the first to rebel.

2. Conformist versus rebel. If choice is the trademark of contemporary consumption, cool is the ultimate objective for many of it practitioners. "Cool" is a beloved word of advertisers and traders. As Pountain and Robins argue, cool means living on edge, skirting with danger and disaster. "Cool is still in love with cigarettes, booze and drugs. It still loves the sharp clothes and haircuts, but has discovered a preference for winners over losers. It still loves the night, and flirts with living on the edge. … Everyone is a rebel now, no-one is ordinary, no-one wants to be a face in the crowd, everyone wants intense experiences: indeed everyone wants more intense experiences than their friends and neighbours" (Pountain & Robins, 2000). And yet, this rebel, this unique and obstinate individualist appears incapable of resisting the endlessly mutating trends of fashion, compulsively imitating his neighbours, those same Jones with their irritating habits of being a step ahead in their tastes of clothes, holiday destinations and even venues for children's parties. When is rebellion not rebellion and becomes merely following a crowd, all wearing identical badges reading 'rebels'?

3. Individualist versus tribalist. Even if not a rebel, the consumer still will maintain that he is an individualist, possessing unique tastes, desires and styles. In short, the consumer according to many experts surrounds himself with objects which fashion his identity. Identity – that mark of uniqueness, individuality and continuity – is crafted through hard working of appropriating and intermingling commodities, discovering unique combinations which reflect what is a personal style. Yet, those same identities are derivative of those real or imaginary groups, referred to by Maffesoli (1995) as neo-tribes. Tribalism rather than individuality provides, in the view of many experts, the basis for identities which are too fragile, unstable and provisional to withstand the next wave of tribal upheavals.

4. Sovereign versus dependent. The sovereignty of the consumer is taken for granted – the consumer is the only figure in contemporary societies free to exercise prejudice, bias and discrimination towards that which he likes and against that which he dislikes, without having to feel guilt or account for his prejudices. It is on this freedom that the success of capitalist economies is seen to be founded. The obliteration of the old Soviet economies offers proof evident that only markets can generate economic growth, reconcile demand and supply and generate innovation, creativity and progress. And markets rest on the absolute sovereignty of the capricious consumer. Yet, if the consumer is sovereign, why is he in constant need of support, help, education and protection? Why is there no shortage of advocates and spokespeople ready to take on his cause, defend his rights and act on his behalf? And what type of sovereignty is one founded on shopaholism, addiction, compulsion and ignorance? Why is every company seeking to discover a niche where dependent consumers may be cheerfully provided for?

5. Meaning-seeker versus spectacle-devourer. The objects we use communicate meanings about their owners and users. This has always been a feature of consumption, yet never as prominent as today, when it is possible to make more inferences about a person from the brand of car they drive than from any amount of self-professed views and opinions. The views we profess can easily be lies, the objects which we use may mislead but they do not lie. Moreover, consumption has moved in a big way to fill the meaning-vacuum created by the decline of religious, political and other large-scale ideologies and meaning-systems. As McCracken (1988, p. 136) has argued goods are "both bulletin boards for internal messages and billboards for external ones." But how much meaning do such messages carry, when any codes needed to decipher them fragment and mutate daily? As Baudrillard has argued, the quest for meaning becomes futile in an era of flying signifiers, whose message are at best spasmodic, intermittent and fuzzy. Meaning-seeking, according to this view, represents a quaint relic of the days before the rise of the new cathedrals of consumption, which replace the search of meaning with the enjoyment of pure spectacle.

6. Rational versus emotional. Rationality does not get a good press these days. Cold, constipated, masculinist and hopelessly old-fashioned, it yields the ground to the easy sway of emotion and its displays. Whim, caprice, gut feeling and cool emotion become the guiding forces of the consumer, according to these views. And yet, rational considerations of utility, value and economy are far from dead. One need look no further than the majority of press advertisements, the success of value-for-money mega-stores and the persisting consumer delight in obtaining more for less to realize that requiems to consumer rationality and parsimony are exaggerated and premature. Far from the hurly-burly of street spectacle and cathedral consumption, lurk armies of sober, quiet and methodical consumers counting pennies and comparing prices.

7. Explorer versus comfort seeker. Whether seeking spectacle, meaning or value-for-money, contemporary consumers are portrayed as living on high adrenaline, seeking the excitement of the new. Malls, high streets, shops, magazines and internet locations, all become arenas for exploration, affording thrills akin to those of tourism and travel. This is the spice of consumer society. Consumer explorations frequently take the form of a quest of difference, which stands in direct opposition to the comforts of uniformity. Comfort calls for familiarity, sameness and absence of risk. "No surprises" proclaims the logo of a famous hotel chain, making plain the dilemma. Who wants to travel to far away places, visit different people and experience different cultures, and yet meet no surprises? Comfort-seekers, of course.

These are by no means the only conflicting images of the consumer that we can observe, though they suffice to suggest that the consumer has become a hotly contested terrain, the point where so many contradictions of contemporary society converge. Many claim to understand the consumer, speak on his behalf or address his needs and desires, yet the picture that emerges is fuzzy, self-contradictory and ultimately unsatisfactory.

Of course, much hinges on the consumer, whether for example, he or she is seen as sovereign (requiring no self-appointed spokespeople to defend his or her interests) or victim (easily manipulated and outwitted by the apparatuses of capital), explorer (thirsting after new experiences and meanings) or activist (campaigning on behalf of collective rights), communicator (using objects as bridges to relate to fellow humans) or rebel (using objects to express rejection and rage), identity-seeker (trying to find a real self in the objects which he or she consumes) or hedonist (concerned above all with personal pleasure). These are all attempts to frame the consumer, and, more often than not, to sell particular self-views to the consumers themselves, either by flattery, by cajoling, by moralizing, by seduction or by straight manipulation.

But while all these battles are raging above and around the heads and wallets of the consumer, people get on with their everyday lives, trying to make the best of them, whatever their lot, and also to make sense of them. It would be plausible and attractive to envisage consumers in this way, i.e. as oblivious to the consternation they are causing to the chattering classes and discourse makers. At a stroke, this analysis would halt any systematic attempt to understand people's behaviour as reflexive, self-conscious consumers, leaving the terrain to those who have an interest in defining them in particular ways. However, consumers themselves would be unwilling to allow themselves to be talked about, without voices of their own. For better or for worse, many of us think of ourselves, at least part of the time, as consumers. Whether reading the consumer pages of newspapers, listening to exhortations from politicians or consumer organizations, visiting theme parks and supermarkets, or trying to stretch the family budget at the end of a week, we unavoidably have to confront ourselves as consumers, and make decisions as consumers. Why else do individuals become so pre-occupied with what they buy, give and eat? Why do they seek advice, turning to consumer agony aunts which fill the media? One cannot opt out of being a consumer, living in a non-consumer fashion, in a non-consumer landscape. Consumerism has become part of our daily reality.

But consumers themselves are divided up and set against each other. Inequalities among them are already sharp, leaving substantial numbers of them window-shopping with only restricted opportunities to make a purchase and many, in the Third World, without even windows to window-shop. This is contributing to the fragmentation of consumers' experiences. It accounts, at least in part, for the diversity of images of the consumer pursued by intellectuals and cultural commentators. While some consumers, in the First as well as in the Third Worlds, may spend inordinate amounts of time deliberating whether to invest in a new swimming-pool, a new yacht or a second home abroad, others have to choose between feeding their children or buying them a new pair of shoes. Given such social chasms, it is difficult to talk about all consumption and all consumers as coming under the same ethos or constraints, i.e. as being uniform entities or acting as a unified force. We can now see why the fragmentation of images of consumption is itself a symptom of the malaise of contemporary consumerism. Under the accelerating influence of environmental factors, growing Third World anger, and increasing social fragmentation within the West's own backyard this malaise is likely to get worse.

The same fragmentation of the consumer may keep academics busy, since each tradition can claim the consumer for itself, exaggerating those features which fit its arguments, while blatantly disregarding the rest. But this stops them from recognizing the overall historical trend. Just as most Marxists were censorious about consumption, many cultural theorists have tended to celebrate it. Neither is adequate. We recognize that the fragmentation of consumption is itself a feature of contemporary society. But the matter does not rest there. The weakening of the Fordist Deal suggests that Western consumerism as we have known it may have entered a twilight phase. During the high noon of consumerism, its Golden Age, the face of the consumer was clear, as was the significance of his or her every movement. The pursuit of happiness through consumption seemed a plausible, if morally questionable, social and personal project. Today, this is far more problematic. The economic conditions have become fraught, the social inequalities have once again widened, insecurity is experienced across social classes, poverty and homelessness have resurfaced on a massive scale. Cultural fatigue threatens to overcome even the well-off. The brashness has been knocked off the consumer society. To many, experimenting with drugs may be more exciting than the wares of the fashion industry. Downshifting and a move against brands and logos cannot be ignored. (Klein, 2000; Schor, 1998) Proponents of consumerism live in the belief that tomorrow will see another bright day. This vision may well be the product of wishful thinking, at least for the West.

A more realistic picture is that casualization of work will be accompanied by casualization of consumption. Consumers will lead precarious and uneven existences, one day enjoying unexpected boons and the next sinking to bare subsistence. Precariousness, unevenness and fragmentation are likely to become more pronounced for ever increasing sections of Western populations. Marginality will paradoxically become central.

In a world where everyone claims the consumer for her or him self, the consumer must now be deemed unmanageable, claimed by many, but controlled by few, least of all by consumers themselves. The notion of unmanageability seems to be entirely appropriate for an era where the capacity to plan must give way to opportunism. In a world where future labour is exhorted to be flexible, multi-skilled, taking each day as it comes, what calculations can consumers make about the day after?

To retailers and producers of goods and services, this may not be a terminal difficulty. We are not for one minute suggesting that people will cease to consume, that they will stop furnishing their houses, clothing their children and enjoying themselves. We do, however, think that such consumption will become increasingly spasmodic, ad hoc and reversible. So long as a certain proportion of the population at any one time is in a position to consume with energy and gusto, there will be markets for the most unusual of goods. To increasing numbers of consumers, however, a future based on mortgages, careful husbanding of resources and long-term financial commitments will become problematic. Opportunism will feature on an ever increasing scale.

Unmanageable consumers behave in arbitrary, unpredictable and inconsistent ways. They may reject what seems sensible, alluring and rewarding for what appears inferior, decrepit and second-rate. They may be ridiculously amoral one minute and overwhelmed with moral considerations the next. The may seek comfort while they claim to desire excitement, may seek solace in the familiar or look for the dangerous. To producers, advertisers and marketers they represent quite simply a chaotic environment, an environment in which connections between causes and effects melt away or become increasingly ad hoc and unpredictable. An off the cuff remark, like that made by Gerald Ratner, may bring down a company, just as a bunch of disenchanted petrol consumers may threaten the stability of a government. Within highly complex environment, successes and failures cease to be explicable – they become chance outcomes of the endlessly rotating wheel of fortune. Any attempt to play the game by rational rules and calculations become doomed. Uncertainty becomes endemic.

One thing is certain, the consumer of tomorrow will not be the same as the consumer of today. The endlessly mutating meanings of 'the consumer' - now destroyer, now generator of waste, now creator - suggest that for all we know the consumer may vanish altogether.

Gabriel, Y., & Lang, T. 2006. The Unmanageable Consumer. London: Sage.

Gabriel, Y., & Lang, T. 2008. New faces and new masks of today's consumer. Journal of Consumer Culture 8(3): 321-340.

Klein, N. 2000. No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. London: Flamingo.

Maffesoli, M. 1995. The time of tribes: The decline of individualism in mass society. London: Sage.

McCracken, G. 1988. Culture and Consumpton: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Pountain, D., & Robins, D. 2000. Cool rules: Anatomy of an attitude. London: Reaktion Books.

Ritzer, G. 1999. Enchanting a disenchanted world: Revolutionizing the means of consumption. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Pine Forge Press.

Schor, J. B. 1998. The overspent American: Upscaling, downshifting and the new consumer. New York: HarperCollins.

Stories and storytelling in organizations and research

2011-10-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

In 2005 Steve Jobs delivered his commencement address at Stanford University which had honour him with a degree. It consisted simply of three stories. The first was about dropping out of college as a 17-year old, aware that his education was costing his parents the earth and offered him little. He did, however, benefit from a course in calligraphy, which many years later came handy when he incorporated multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in the Apple Mac. The second story relates the pain and disappointment he experienced when he got sacked by Apple, the company he had founded; yet, his sacking turned out to be ‘the best thing that ever happened’ to him. It allowed him to start a new career as a creative spirit rather than as company CEO, enabling him eventually to return to Apple as its saviour. The third story describes his early discovery that death may be around the corner and his determination to live each day as though it is his last. This led him to see death not as an enemy but as the natural destination of all life and helped him to survive cancer. Death is the friend who prompts him to make the most out of life. He concludes by invoking the words of a creative publication that, in its final issue before closing down, urged its readers to ‘Stay hungry, Stay foolish’.

Three stories of life and death, achievement and disappointment, hope and loss. No commentary, no sermon, just three deep expressions of his life experiences he wanted to share with his college-going audience. Steve Jobs regularly uses stories in his presentations, as do numerous leaders in business, politics and every other field of social endeavour. In his thought provoking book Leading Minds: An anatomy of leadership, Howard Gardner (1995 #3047} argues that telling stories is one of the most important things leaders do. Gardner examines the lives of 11 men and women from the last century who left their marks as leaders and argues that much of their effectiveness in inspiring others came from the power of their stories and the extent to which their own lives embodied their story.

Storytelling has long been a feature of human societies, groups and organizations. Stories are pithy narratives with plots, characters and twists that can be full of meaning. Successful stories have beginnings, middles and ends. While some stories may be pure fiction, others, like those told by Steve Jobs at his commencement, are inspired by actual events. Their relation to events, however, is tenuous – in stories, accuracy is often sacrificed for effect. Stories pass moral judgements on events, casting their protagonists in roles like hero, villain, survivor, fool and victim. They are capable of stimulating strong emotions of sympathy, anger, fear, anxiety and so forth. A hundred years ago, many scholars argued that traditional storytelling was on its way out, silenced by the rise of different forms of entertainment, of electric light, and different media of communication. The easy availability of quick and reliable information and the advance of scientific, evidence-based knowledge, it was thought, would strike the final blow to stories. Today, however, many scholars, like many leaders, are rediscovering the power of storytelling. Amazon currently lists over 26000 books with ‘storytelling’ in the title, of which no fewer than 3470 are located in its business department, indicating that it has become another fashionable fad for many managers. A far greater number of books are themselves personal stories or memoirs, many relating the stories of ‘ordinary people’ who want to relate a personal experience, for example, how they made their first million, how they survived cancer or how they discovered the power of storytelling.

Why do stories matter?

stories help us make sense of our experiences, especially when these draw us outside routines and habits;
stories enable us to learn from the experiences of other people and to share our experiences with others;
stories are powerful at influencing hearts and minds;
stories enable us to express our emotions, ranging from admiration to anger and from pride to disappointment;
stories can be effective triggers of change, but can also act as stumbling blocks undermining change;
stories are vital ways in which we construct our individual and group identities, and sustain our bonds to our communities, whose stories we share;
Stories entertain, console, divert and warn us.

So where does storytelling draw its power? Why does our attention get instantly alerted when someone says “Now let me tell you what happened when …”? And why do stories influence hearts and minds in a way that the cold power of logic, science and facts fail to do? It seems to me that the ready availability of information and data, far from undermining the power of storytelling, has reinforced it. In a world where many of us are choking in information and data, facts, figures and PowerPoint slides, stories cut through and communicate meaning with remarkable speed and economy. If we have a professional problem or a management problem we will often turn to a person who has experienced and managed to overcome a similar problem, seeking to learn from their experience. Many consultants have turned storytellers, starting with Tom Peters whose famous best-seller In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert Waterman) contains no fewer than 137 pithy stories of business success and failures and whose presentations to business people amount to little more than strings of stories. If business gurus have turned to storytelling it is hardly surprising; think of Christ’s parables as a set of stories that, even among non-believers, have lost none of their power through the centuries. Stories enable us to share not only information and knowledge but also moral views and emotions with others in an economic and memorable way.

A few years ago, I was stuck in Denver’s international airport due to a storm brewing in the American Midwest. At one of the airport restaurants, I was overhearing the conversation of four pilots, like me stranded due to bad weather and waiting for their flights to resume. And guess what they were talking about? They were each describing the most dangerous escapes that they had had while flying their planes in bad weather. In these stories, the planes, 747s, 727s and 757s, were not just flying machines but characters with distinct personalities, likes and dislikes, that required special and careful handling. Listening to such scary stories was the last thing I needed just prior to taking off, but it taught me many things. Clearly, each pilot was competing with his peers in recounting a more dangerous situation and a more brilliant escape. At the same time, however, they were all sharing knowledge, knowledge about particular weather conditions, knowledge about different planes, knowledge about different risks. The pilots were what we refer to as a community of practice, learning from each other’s experience through the medium of storytelling.

There is much talk these days of communities of practice, groups of people who share similar problems and have complementary skills and outlooks. They are mostly occupational and professional groups, like pilots, managers and academics, but they can also refer to people sharing hobbies or interests, like plane spotters or amateur gardeners. Within such communities, a great deal of knowledge is transferred and this knowledge is not scientific; it cannot be codified into generalizable laws and formulas. Instead, it assumes the form of stories, recipes and direct accounts of experience. Within communities of practice, storytelling is the natural currency, and stories present facts-as-experience rather than against facts-as-information. Stories delve in the subjective, the intimate, and sacrifice accuracy for effect. Learning from other people’s stories is what we now call narrative knowledge. One of the fascinating discoveries of the last twenty years is that the very professionals whose expertise rests on the authority of their scientific disciplines (the pilot, the medic, the accountant, the lawyer, the technician) also make extensive use of narrative knowledge in their professional practices. For example, the treatment of diabetes as a general condition may be determined by the up-to-date scientific knowledge available to a physician (based on randomised control trials and so forth), yet, the treatment of a particular person’s diabetes with specific complications and idiosyncrasies may well be informed by stories of how other physicians treated similar cases. And by the same token, the diabetes sufferer will consult his/her physician for the most up-to-date treatments for his/her condition, but will also consult other diabetes sufferers to find out how they learnt to live with their condition, tame it and manage it.

Research on organizational storytelling accelerated considerably since the 1990s when stories started to make regular appearances as ‘data’ for organizational analysis, allowing scholars to delve into the cultural, political and emotional lives of organizations. Numerous PhDs are currently based on storytelling research as are some major projects in social research. I am currently involved in two such projects, one major and one small one. The former, funded by a major grant of the Service Delivery Organization of the National Institute for Health Research has looked at patient care and leadership in three British hospitals. A large part of the data we collected was in the form of stories, told by clinicians, administrative and other staff, about the quality of patient care in their hospitals and about their relations with their organization’s leaders. The latter, a much smaller project, looked at the experiences of senior managers and professionals who found themselves unemployed in their 50s, trying to establish the most suitable type of coaching that will help them resume their lives after a traumatic event. Like the other project, it relied on the stories told by these people as a way of understanding the way they made sense of their experiences, trying to incorporate them into their life stories sustaining their sense of self and identity. As someone who has carried out research using stories for many years, I must say that I have found they open windows into profound aspects of our experiences as humans that other research methods cannot emulate. Listening carefully to stories can teach us a lot about different organizations, their cultures, politics and challenges. More generally, learning to work with stories, to listen to them, tell them, question them and translate them can be a powerful way of enhancing our practices as managers, leaders, communicators and researchers.

(Adapted from http://www.bath.ac.uk/management/news_events/pdf/Perspective16.pdf)

More information

If you are a scholar, a PhD student or a professional interested in story-based research, you may wish to attend a storytelling seminar, details of which can be found at

http://www.organizational-storytelling.org.uk/

Unemployed at 50 - End of the line or temporary derailment? by Yiannis Gabriel

2011-10-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

[Being unemployed] it’s a bit like walking on ice, when the water’s frozen and you know at some stage that ice could melt, and the thing about that is that you know you can swim but don’t know where the land is so it’s like a sense of drowning really.

Robert – Senior Systems analyst, unemployed at the time of the interview

The much awaited first report of the massive UK household longitudinal study [1] confirms that the current economic crisis has hit young people disproportionately, raising talk of another ‘lost generation’ in the labour market. Unemployment rates are highest at 15% among workers under 25. This has rightly prompted calls to help young people as they try to enter the labour market. An equally interesting finding of the survey, which drew data from 40,000 UK households, however, was that being out of work by itself does not substantially affect the happiness of young people. By contrast, unemployment has a severe effect on the reported physical and mental well-being of people over 55. While these people are less likely to be directly hit by the recession, when they lose their jobs, the effect can be catastrophic for their personal and family lives.

Prompted by concerns about the effects of unemployment on this age group, the government has sponsored a number of coaching programmes aimed at helping mature professionals and managers cope with unemployment and re-enter employment. Research undertaken by Bath and Surrey universities [2] looked closely into the experiences of a small group of mature executives and professionals who had lost their jobs. These were people who had recently held powerful positions and enjoyed high salaries, but were then dismissed under more or less acrimonious conditions. We talked to them repeatedly over two years, listening to stories they told about their plight and seeking to find out whether the type of story they each told related to how well they coped with the experience of unemployment.

Some of our results were predictable. Each one of our unemployed professionals viewed their job loss as deeply a traumatic event which had left long-lasting scars. None of them sought to make light of their predicament or minimize its effects. All of them had an overwhelming sense that the labour market was biased against them due to ageism and institutional factors that favour younger employees. All of them saw themselves as having much to contribute but being unable to find an employer who could make use of their experience and expertise.

Well you know, at sixty, fifty six years of age – I keep calling myself sixty, I don't know why – it's not pleasant to be not working, it's not pleasant to have to watch every single penny, and, I mean, there's millions of people in this country that have to do that, but you know, what use is a [queen’s decoration] if you can't afford to put bread on the table? What use is it having, you know, a glorified past if you can't actually front up and do a day’s work? You know, I find, you know, and these are sort of conversations I don't have with people very often you know, I find it terribly distressing to actually think of, you know, am I going to be in this situation for the next ten years? And it's not a very pleasant thought.

Matthew, unemployed senior executive at the time of this interview

Yet, the stories they told were different. Unemployed managers may create stories in which they cast themselves in different roles – from wronged casualty to dignified survivor to dejected victim, from angry and rebellious fighter to resigned and apathetic sufferer. Their accounts followed three main storylines, each representing a different way of coping with their situation. The first of these, described as temporary derailment, was to view their current unemployment as a short-term disruption, a setback, but one from which their career would soon recover without serious implications. A different strategy was to see their job loss as marking the end of their career and the beginning of a new, post-career phase in their life – this was described as end of the line. Finally, there were some who cast themselves in a kind of limbo-land, not knowing what lies ahead, whether the disruption of their career is a permanent or temporary one, but seeking to make the best out of their current situation, through part-time jobs, voluntary work, self-employment and a substantially reduced pattern of consumption.

Individuals expressing the most profound despair (those for whom job loss was the ‘end of the line’) were those whose stories had achieved ‘closure’. In contrast, most of those who maintained more open-ended narratives, were better able to contain their emotions, either by holding on to the belief that unemployment was a temporary career aberration or by abandoning the idea that life is the same as career and by moving on to a new stage by making the best of their situation. The crucial issue was not whether the story had a compelling or completed plot (however distressing) but whether they could fashion a story which allowed them to discover their voice as a person who is unemployed but whose identity is not defined by their unemployment.

Over the two years of the study, all of our unemployed executives and professionals had worked at some point but only four of the thirteen re-entered the fast lane with high-paying corporate jobs and one of them had subsequently been made redundant again. The others had ‘downshifted’, accepting less well paid jobs or done casual, part-time or voluntary work. A couple had started their own businesses but they were both struggling in the current economic downturn. Some, after two years, were still experiencing the most profound distress, either still troubled by the circumstances of their dismissal or desperately seeking to regain high-paying jobs by writing literally hundreds of applications and having no success.

By contrast, there were those who had accepted that life may or may not return to what it was. None of them could be described as ‘broken’, though the philosophical attitude proclaimed by several could be seen as a front for resignation. These were people who had successfully stopped defining themselves in career terms. They did not feel that life without a career was meaningless or empty. Instead they tried to make the best out of the opportunities that came their way without despair or anxious urgency. Financially, they made the best out of their resources, having no major debts and moderating their aspirations as consumers. Their attitude might be described as one of bricolage, making the best out of the resources available, being on the look-out for opportunities, living within their means and, within these terms, feeling in control of their lives.

In the years and decades ahead we are likely to find more and more ‘successful’ professionals in late career confronting the reality of unemployment, vastly reduced income, power and status. What can coaching do to help? Our study reveals that coaching can play a modest but significant part in helping such professionals come to terms with their predicament, realize that there is life outside the corporate iron cage, that happiness is not synonymous with riotous consumption and corporate success.

[The coach] stretched my thinking or my concept of myself, he helped me to gather all the bits and pieces I think and to fit them together so that there was substance to it rather than kind of being fragmented by my life experience. Heather, unemployed manager mid-50s

Some people are far too badly traumatized by job loss to be much helped by coaches. Coaches can hardly take over the role of professional counsellor or therapists. What they can do is offer emotional support to the unemployed professionals and help them clarify the options available to them. Most importantly, however, effective coaches seem to help the unemployed professionals redefining themselves. Coming to terms with unemployment, we discovered, requires more than a talking cure, more even than the construction of a plausible, gripping or completed story to account for trauma. Instead, it is more likely to happen when unemployed professionals can construct a protagonist for their story which enables them to move on as a person who has experienced trauma, endured trauma, but is no longer defined by trauma.

[1] (Understanding Society: Early findings from the first wave of the UK’s household longitudinal study, available from http://research.understandingsociety.org.uk/findings/early-findings)

[2] http://oss.sagepub.com/content/31/12/1687 - Gabriel, Y., Gray, D. E., & Goregaokar, H. (2011). Temporary Derailment or the End of the Line? Managers Coping with Unemployment at 50. Organization Studies, 31(12): 1687-1712. For full journal article contact the author.

Μια Νεα Ελληνικη τραγωδια

2011-10-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Απο τις διάφορες συνιστώσες του σημερινού δράματος της χώρας, ούτε τα βάσανα τού λαού, ούτε ο πανικός της δεθνούς οικονομικής κοινότητας μπροστά στη προοπτική της κατάρευσης του ευρώ, ούτε καν η αδυναμία Ευρωπαίων και Ελλήνων πολιτικών να αποτρέψουν την επερχόμενη καταστροφή αρκούν για τον χαρακτηρισμό της κατάστασης σαν τραγωδία. Αυτό που χαρακτηρίζει αληθινά την κατάσταση της χώρας ως πραγματική τραγωδία είναι μια γενική ανικανότητα να βρεί μία συνεπή αφήγηση, μια «ιστορία» ή καλύτερα πια εξιστόρηση για τα αίτια της σημερινής κρίσης, τους υπαιτίους της, και για το τι πρέπει να γίνει τώρα. Όπως ο Οιδίπους, που αποφασισμένος να ανακαλύψει ποιος έχει φέρει το μίασμα στην πόλη του χωρίς να ξέρει ότι είναι ο ίδιος ο δράστης, όλοι, φαίνεται, ψάχνουν τον ένοχο και πολλές εξηγήσεις ανταγωνίζονται η μια ενάντια στην άλλη, χωρίς καμμία να γινεται πιστευτή. Στην Ελλάδα, αντίθετα από το τι συνέβη στην Ιρλανδία και την Πορτογαλία, καμμία σαφής αφήγηση δεν έχει προκύψει ακόμα που να αποκαλύπτη πειστικα το νόημα της κρίσης.

«Όλοι φάγαμε μαζί» δηλώνει ο Θεόδωρος Πάγκαλος, υπονοώντας ότι όλοι έχουμε ίσες ευγήνες για την κρίση, αγνοώντας την απελπισία εκείνων που απέτυχαν να πλουτίσουν όταν φαίνεται ήταν τόσο απλό! Ο ίδιος και άλλοι πολιτικοί με τη σειρά τους κατηγορούνται εύκολα από τους αγανακτισμένους (πολλοί από τους οποίους μέχρι προ τινος υποστήριζαν φανατικά κάποιο πολιτικό κόμμα), οτι έφεραν την καταστροφή στη χώρα, ανοίγοντας δεκαετίες ξένης κυριαρχίας. Η τρόικα, με τη σειρά της, που φαίνεται να κρατάει τη μοίρα της χώρας στα χέρια της, παρουσιάζεται ως νέος εισβολέας, χειρότερος από οποιοδήποτε άλλον του παρελθόντος, ενάντια στον οποίο καμία αντίσταση ή αντάρτικο δεν είναι εφικτό. Ακούγονται συνεχώς διάφορα σενάρια και θεωρίες συνωμοσίας. Τα πιό ισορροπημένα κεφάλια, όπως εκείνα του οικονομολόγου Paul Krugman και άλλων, προειδοποίησαν από την πρώτη σύσταση του μνημονίου, ότι οι όροι των περικοπών, της λιτότητας και της φορολογίας εγγυούνταν τη βύθηση της χώρας σε βαθύτερο οικονομικό τέλμα. Για πολλούς Γερμανούς και άλλους βόρειους Ευρωπαίους, όμως, φαίνεται ότι όλοι εμείς οι Έλληνες είμαστε τα παράσιτα της Ευρώπης, πού σήμερα ζούμε μόνο χάρη στην φιλανθρωπία των Ευρωπαίων, και που απειλούμε να γκρεμίσουμε ολόκληρο το ευρωπαϊκό οικοδόμημα. Αντίθετα, για πολλούς ουδετέρους, ο τρόπος με τον οποίο οι ευρωπαϊκές και άλλες τράπεζες δάνεισαν τα χρήματα στους Έλληνες μεχρι το 2009 ήταν περίπου σαν να δίνει κανείς φθηνό ουίσκυ σε αλκοολικό. Τέλος, για μία μερίδα Ελλήνων, η χώρα μας θυσιάζεται τώρα από τους αλλοδαπούς στο βωμό του ευρώ.

Αυτές και άλλες πολλές εξιστορήσεις, άλλες περισσότερο και άλλες λίγο εύλογες, ανταγωνίζονται τώρα για να δώσουν κάποια εξήγηση στη κατάσταση της χώρας και το μέλλον της. Κάθε ιστορία τροφοδοτεί διαφορετικά συναισθήματα, συμπεριλαμβανομένου του φόβου και της οργής, της ντροπής και του φθόνου, της περιφρόνηση, της απελπισίας και, προ πάντων, του άγχους. Μια βαθειά σύγχυση βασιλεύει ακόμη και μεταξύ εκείνων που υποστηρίζουν ότι ξέρουν τι συμβαίνει, είτε επειδή έχουν ανακαλύψει τον αληθινό ένοχο είτε επειδή καταλαβαίνουν τις αόρατες οικονομικές δυνάμεις, ή τις βουλήσεις των Θεών που κυβερνούν τα γεγονότα στο έδαφος. Αυτό που έχουμε τώρα στην Ελλάδα είναι μία χαώδης εξιστόρηση, μία αφήγηση που δεν περιγράφει απλά μία χαώδη κατάσταση αλλά που είναι χαώδης στην ίδια της φύσης της. Είναι μια αφήγηση σε πόλεμο με τον ίδιο τον εαυτό της, με τις διαφορετικές πλοκές που η μία καταβροχθίζει την άλλη. Τέτοιες αφηγήσεις χάους προκύπτουν όταν άτομα, ομάδες ή και κοινωνίες έρχονται αντιμέτωποι με ξαφνικές καταστροφές που εξαντλούν τις ικανότητες τους να βρούνε κάποιο νόημα στα γεγονότα και τις δυνάμεις που τους απειλούν.

Άτομα που χτυπιούνται απροσδόκητα από μια ανίατη αρρώστια, ομάδες που εκτίθενται ξαφνικά σε οικονομική καταστροφή, έθνη ή οργανώσεις που εγκαταλείπονται ή προδίδονται ξαφνικά από τους ηγέτες τους, συχνά βρίσκονται ανίκανοι να αρθρώσουν την εμπειρία τους και βασανίζονται από συναισθήματα χάους. Μπορούμε λοιπόν να φανταστούμε τους γηγενείς λαούς της Αμερικής που ερημώθηκαν από την ευρωπαϊκή κατάκτηση να υποφέρουν από μία παρόμοια εμπειρία συνολικής απώλειας και ακατανοησίας. Ετσι και εμείς οι Έλληνες, λαός που γνώρισε πολέμους, κατοχές, δικτατορίες, πτωχεύσεις, σεισμούς και πλημμύρες, βρισκόμαστε σήμερα σε μια κατάσταση εντελώς διαφορετική από όλες τις προηγούμενες καταστροφές, αντιμέτωποι με μια συνολική εμπειρία κατάρρευσης και χάους. Καμία περασμενη κληρονομιά δεν μας έχει προετοιμάσει για αυτό, καμία προηγούμενη σελίδα της ιστορίας μας με ένα ευτυχές τέλος δεν μπορεί να μας φέρει ελπίδα και φως. Από τη σημερινή κατάσταση μας φαίνεται αδύνατο να βρούμε κάποια διέξοδο ή κάποια λύση. Η αναζήτηση αποδιοπομπαίων τράγων είναι ένα από τα πρώτα συμπτώματα της εμπειρίας του χάους. Ο Οιδίπους γύρίσε ενάντια στον Τειρεσεία. Οι κάτοικοι της νήσου του Πάσχα, όταν βρέθηκαν αντιμέτωποι με την οικολογική καταστροφή που οι ίδιοι προκάλεσαν στο απομωνομένο νησί τους, προσπάθησαν αρχικά να εξιλεώσουν τους Θεούς τους στήνοντας τεράστια πέτρηνα αγάλματα (moai). Αργότερα όμως, οταν είδαν οτι η σωτηρία δεν ερχόταν, ανέτρεψαν τα αγάλματα αποδίδοντας στους Θεούς την ευθήνη για τα δεινά τους. Άν η αρχαία τραγωδία μας διδάσκει ένα και μόνο πράγμα είναι ότι οι προσπάθειες να απομακρύνουν το μίασμα για να καθαρίσουν την πόλη ή την κοινωνία (π.χ. με θυσίες και υποσχέσεις) ενισχύουν το μίασμα και επιταχύνουν την τελική καταστροφή. Φοβάμαι ότι η τρέχουσα απελπισμένη αναζήτηση των αποδιοπομπαίων τράγων για τα δεινά της χώρας θα έχει την ίδια έκβαση.

Τι λοιπον μπορούμε να πούμε για το μέλλον; Εάν η σημερινή κατάσταση προσεγγίζεται πράγματι ως αρχαία τραγωδία, τα παλαιά κείμενα μας λένε οτι όταν οι πρωταγωνιστές πιστέψουν ότι έχουν φθάσει στο πάτο, ανακαλύπτουν οτι υπαρχουν ακόμα χειρότερα δεινά στο μέλλον, ότι ένα αμυδρό φως της ελπίδας συχνά επιδεινώνει την τελική κατάρρευση. Οι αρχαίοι Έλληνες δεν ανακάλυψαν ποτέ απλές ή ενθαρρυντικές λύσεις σε αυτό που είδαν με απόλυτη σαφήνεια ως την τραγική μοίρα των ανθρώπων. Άν είχαν βρή τέτοια λύση, ίσως να είχαν αποτρέψει τις διάφορες καταστροφές που επέφεραν το τέλος της αίγλης τους. Αναγνώρισαν εντούτοις κατι σημαντικό: ότι το χάος μπορεί μόνο του και για δικούς του λόγους να οδηγήση σε νέες μορφές ζωής, δημιουργικότητας, γνώσης και, τελικά, τάξης. Εάν οι σημερινοί απόγονοι τους μπορέσουν, με ή χωρίς τη βοήθεια των Ευρωπαίων φίλων τους, να ανακαλύψουν μία νέα αφήγηση αποκατάστασης, θεράπευσης και ανανέωσης μόνο το μέλλον θα δείξει.

A modern Greek tragedy - by Yiannis Gabriel

2011-10-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

It has taken Greece to reclaim the word ‘tragedy’ from a tired popular cliché to one of the most profound descriptions of certain core human experiences. Of the many ingredients that constitute the current Greek drama, not the suffering of its people, not the panic that grips the economic community at the prospect of a Greek default, not even the seeming paralysis of European politicians to prevent a catastrophe widely foretold qualifies it as a tragedy. What truly marks the situation in my country as a real tragedy is a general inability to come up with a coherent narrative of why today’s situation has come about, who is to blame, and what is to be done. Like Oedipus, determined to find out who has brought the miasma to his city little aware that he is its cause though not its perpetrator, everyone, it seems, is looking for the culprit and many plot-lines compete against each other. Yet, unlike the situations in Ireland and Portugal, no coherent narrative has yet emerged.

“We all ate together” declares Theodor Pangalos, one of Greece’s deputy prime ministers, implying that everyone must take an equal share in the blame, little acknowledging the despair of those who failed to enrich themselves when it must have been so easy to do so. He and other politicians, in turn, are readily blamed by the ‘indignant’ ones (many of whom were until recently ecstatically supporting one or other political party), as having brought disaster on the country, opening up years of serfdom and foreign domination. The troika of international institutions (EU/IMGF/ECB), now meant to hold Greece’s fate in their hands, is cast as a foreign invader worse than any of those of the past, one against whom no guerrilla resistance or opposition can be staged. Cooler heads, like those of economist Paul Krugman and others, warned since the first package of aid was signed over a year ago, that the terms of the package, austerity, cuts and taxation, were guaranteed to drive Greece into ever deeper economic mires. For some Germans and other Northern Europeans, it seems, Greeks are the parasites of Europe, until recently living it up on the beneficence of their partners and now, ungrateful they, threatening to bring down the entire European project. For many neutrals on the other hand, the readiness with which European and other banks lent money to the Greeks prior to 2009 was little short of fortifying an alcoholic with cheap shots of whisky. For some Greeks, their country is now being sacrificed by foreigners at the altar of the Euro.

These and many other storylines regarding the troubles of my country, some more plausible than others, now compete for supremacy. Each feeds different and competing emotions, including fear and loathing, rage and shame, envy and contempt, despair, guilt and, above all, anxiety. A deep confusion reigns even among those who claim to know what is going on, either because they have identified the true culprit or because they understand the invisible economic forces, the will of the gods, that govern events on the ground. What we have here is Greece as a ‘chaos narrative’, a narrative that is not just about chaos but is chaotic in its very nature. This is a narrative at war with itself, with different storylines devouring each other. Chaos narratives emerge when people, groups and societies are confronted with sudden calamities that stretch their sense-making capacities to breaking point. Individuals unexpectedly struck by an incurable disease, groups abruptly exposed to economic destitution, nations or organizations suddenly finding themselves betrayed or abandoned by their leaders can all experience utter bewilderment and chaos. They are stunned, unable to articulate their experience.

One imagines that the indigenous peoples of America ravaged by European conquest must have had such experiences of total loss and incomprehension. In a similar way, the Greeks, a people who have known wars, occupations, dictatorships, bankruptcies, earthquakes and floods, find themselves today in a predicament that defies any of the earlier calamities and confronts them with an experience of total collapse and chaos. No earlier legacy has prepared them for this, no earlier story with a happy end can act as the bringer of hope and light. Out of the current situation they can see no way out, no hopeful storyline of recovery or restitution. The search for scapegoats is one of the first things to which people facing chaos turn to. Oedipus turned against Teiresias. The Easter islanders, confronting ecological catastrophe in their isolated land, first tried to expiate themselves by raising immense stone statues or moai to their gods and then sought salvation in toppling them. But if Greek tragedy teaches us one thing it is that attempts to remove the miasma, to cleanse the city and the society, through ill-thought out sacrifices, expulsions and scapegoating, reinforce the miasma and compound the final calamity. I fear that the current desperate search for scapegoats, whether by desperate Greek ‘indignants’ or upright European taxpayers can only have the same outcome.

What then of the future? If indeed the Greek situation is approached as a real tragedy, then we can learn from the old texts that when the protagonists believe that they have hit rock bottom, they discover that there is worse to come, that when they see a glimmer of hope it is only to exacerbate the final collapse. The ancient Greeks did not discover any simple or encouraging solutions to what they saw with laser clarity as the tragic fate of humans. Had they found a solution, they might have forestalled the various calamities that brought about the end of their civilization. The did however recognize that chaos can sometimes, for reasons of its own, churn out new forms of life, creativity, knowledge and, eventually, order. Whether today’s Greeks will be able to discover a narrative of restitution, healing and renewal with or without the help of their fellow Europeans remains to be seen.