CROSSROADS
When I read the first draft of this manuscript it provided a genuine " aha" experience. I felt that "tempered radicalism" was a concept that had been waiting to be invented. Meyerson and Scully, in my view, have grasped an important idea and have written about it in a careful and an illuminating way. It's one of those papers, I suspect; that some people will react to by thinking: "I wish I had written that!" Further, I can see others I know well in the field as fitting'the description of the tempered radical, at least in some circumstances and at different times. The reviewers, while suggesting changes, as reviewers do, were also very taken with the paper. It is intellectually interesting, and evocative. It provides us with a perspective on organizational issues that is typically glossed. It opens an arena for organizational analysis that is missed in r most theoretical frameworks. Tempered radicals, Meyerson and Scully argue, are individuals who identify with and are committed to their organizations and also to a cause, community or ideology that is fundamentally different from, and possibly at odds with, the dominant culture of their organization. Their radicalism stimulates them to challenge the status quo. Their temperedness reflects the way they have been toughened by challenges, angered by what they see as injustices or ineffectiveness, and inclined to seek moderation in their interactions with members closer to the centre of organizational values and orientations. The paper is a scholarly treatment of a complex concept. It is radical in its charge to us to see new possibilities in the study of organization. It is tempered, even hopeful, in its prescriptions for harnessing participants who are often on the margins of organizational life and who have much to offer to enrich and sustain positive change in organizations. It is a very appropriate contribution to Crossroads.
Peter Frost

Tempere& Radicalism and the Politics of Ambivalence and Change
Debra E. Meyerson* • Maureen A. Scully
School of Business, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 and Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 (visiting, 1995 and 1996) Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

*Please address correspondence to the first author at the Stanford address or through email (fineyerson@gsb-peso.stanford.edu).
1047-7039/95/0605/0585/$01.25

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Abstract "Tempered Radicals" are individuals who identify with and are committed to their organizations, and are also committed to a cause, community, or ideology that is fundamentally different from, and possibly at odds with the dominant culture of their organization. The ambivalent stance of these individuals creates a number of special challenges and opportunities. Based on interviews, conversations, personal reflections, and archival reports, this paper describes the special circumstances faced by tempered radicals and documents some of the strategies used by these individuals as they try to make change in their organizations and sustain their ambivalent identities.
(Organizational.Change; OrganizationalActivism; Women in Management; Minorities in Management; Ambivalence; Identity; Fit; Feminism in Organizations; Marginality)

A woman executive can identify with feminist language that is far from commonplace in corporate life and challenges the very foundations of the corporation in which she holds office. She 'can also be loyal to her corporation, earnestly engaged by many of its practices and issues, and committed to a career in a traditional, male-dominated organization or profession. A male business, school professor can hold an identity as a radical humanist and embrace values directly in contest with capitalist corporations. He can also be committed to his job in the business school and teach practices that, in effect, enforce the tenets of capitalist organizations. An African-American architect can identify with her ethnic community and be committed to creating a more equitable and healthy urban environment. She can also identify with a professional elite and be committed to an organization that perpetuates the decay of urban neighborhoods. These individuals do not easily fit within the dominant cultures of their organizations or professions. However, despite their lack of fit, or perhaps because of it, they can behave as committed and productive members and act as vital sources of resistance, alternative ideas, and transformation within their organizations. These individuals must struggle continuously to handle the tension between personal and professional identities at odds with one another. This struggle may be invisible, but it is by no means rare. Women and members of minorities have become disheartened by feelings of fraudulence and loss as they try to fit into the dominant culture. Some leave the mainstream. Others silence their complaints and surrender their identities.

However, separatism and surrender are not the only options. While frustration may be inevitable, individuals can effect change, even radical change, and still enjoy fulfilling, productive, authentic careers. We write , this paper about and for the people who work within mainstream organizations and professions and want also to transform them. We call these individuals "tem" pered radicals " and the process they enact tempered radicalism." We chose the name "tempered radical" deliberately to describe our protagonist. These individuals can be called "radicals" because they challenge the status quo, both through their intentional acts and also just by being who they are, people who do not fit perfectly. We chose the word "tempered" because of its multiple meanings. These people are tempered in the sense that they seek moderation ("temper blame with praise," Webster's New World Dictionary, 1975). In the language of physics, they are tempered in that they have become tougher by being alternately heated up and cooled down. They are also tempered in the sense that they have a temper: they are angered by the incongruities between their own values and beliefs about social justice and the values and beliefs they see enacted in their organizations. Temper can mean both "an outburst of rage " and "equanimity, composure," seemingly incongruous traits required by tempered radicals. Tempered radicals experience tensions between the status quo and alternatives, which can fuel organizational transformation. While a great deal of attention has been devoted to issues of organizational "fit," change often comes from the margins of an organization, borne by those who do not fit well. Sources of change can give organizations welcomed vibrancy, but at the same time, the changes that the tempered radical encourages may threaten members who are vested in the status quo. Is this transformation "good for " the organization? The answer may change as standards of judgment change, for example, when an organization shifts from a stockholder to a stakeholder model. Many people ask us "what exactly" the tempered radical can change, and "how much." One dilemma for the tempered radical is that the nature and effectiveness of change actions is elusive, emergent, and difficult to gauge. The yardstick for change frequently changes metrics. In this paper, we will not focus on whether the tempered radical ultimately wins the battle for change, but rather on how she remains engaged in the dual project of working within the organization and working to change the organization. We focus on the individuals themselves, the perspectives they assume, the challenges they face, and the survival strategies they use. It
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is important to understand these individuals as central figures in the battle for change because if they leave the organization, burn out, or become coopted, then they cannot contribute fully to the process of change from inside. Writing this paper is an example of tempered radicalism. We discuss our own and others' radical identities and implicitly critique professional and bureaucratic institutions. We draw from formal interviews and dozens of informal conversations with tempered radicals, first-person accounts from related literatures, and descriptions of tempered radicals in the popular press. We experiment with modes of scholarship as` we attempt to weave personal narrative into our paper. The content of our stories illustrates substantive dilemmas of tempered radicalism; the form of the stories, which makes our subjectivity explicit, is an example of tempered radicalism insofar. as it pushes traditional notions of social science writing and draws inspiration from feminist approaches to scholarship (e.g., Krieger 1991, Reinharz 1992). The first section below paints a portrait of the tempered radical. The second and third sections discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of ambivalence as a cognitive and political stance. The last section describes some strategies used by tempered radicals to sustain their ambivalence and work for change.

change, they reshape the context into one where it is a bit easier to sustain their radical identities. Untempered, this approach may alienate those in power and threaten the tempered radical's professional identity and status. The tempered radical may therefore coolheadedly play the game to get ahead, but does not want to get so caught up in the game that she violates or abandons her personal identity and beliefs. In this sense, tempered radicals must be simultaneously hotand cool-headed. The heat fuels action and change; the coolness shapes the action and change into legitimate and viable forms. Who Are the Tempered Radicals? This paper has been difficult and exciting for us to write because we view ourselves as tempered radicals, struggling to act in ways that are appropriate professionally and authentic personally and politically. Both of us are feminists and radical humanists; we strongly believe in eradicating gender, race, and class injustices. We are also both faculty members in business schools and members of a discipline known as "management," although we teach about a variety of stakeholders other than managers. Both of us identify with our profession and want to advance within it. Yet we also believe that the business schools in which we work reproduce certain inequalities systematically, if unintentionally. We find ourselves in the awkward position of trying to master the norms of our profession in order to advance and maintain a foothold inside important institutions, but also trying to resist and change the profession's imperative and focus. Often people keep such feelings to themselves lest they undermine their credibility. Tempered radicalism can be lonely and silent. Nonetheless, we have learned to articulate this experience, first by talking with each other, and then by talking with, interviewing, and reading about others. who have influenced us deeply. In the words of one of them:
I've often felt that it's extremely difficult to be a critically oriented scholar within a business school and that I'd fit better someplace else on campus. Is it possible to talk about underlying values, assumptions, hopes and fears, and question the ultimate purposes of organizations when the dominant ethos is focused on the technical, the instrumentally rationale, and that defines values and purposes as outside the scope of "the problem." ... And finally, is it possible to be a feminist and live in a business school? Can I still be me and survive in this profession? I've."asked myself these questions many times (Smircich 1986, p. 2).

Tempered Radicalism: The Process and Practitioners
Tempered Radicalism Individuals come to work with varied values, beliefs, and commitments based on multiple identities and affiliations that become more and less salient in different circumstances; they have situational identities (Demo 1992, Gecas 1982). The tempered radical represents a special case in which the values and beliefs associated with a professional or organizational identity violate values and beliefs associated with personal, extra-organizational, and political sources of identity. In the tempered radical; both the professional and personal identities are strong and salient; they do not appear alternately for special situations. In most situations, the pull of each identity only makes the opposite identity all the more apparent, threatened, and painful. Threats to personal identity and beliefs can engender feelings.of fraudulence, misalignment (Culbert and McDonough 1980), and even passion and rage. (hooks 1984). These feelings can bring about change. For the tempered radical alignment and change are flip sides of the same coin. When tempered radicals bring about 6, No. 5, September-October 1995

Women of color in professional positions have articulated the tensions of tempered radicalism quite clearly, 587

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perhaps because their history is marked by their struggle with multiple injustices (e.g., Bell 1990, Collins 1986, Gilkes 1982, hooks 1989). Bell (1990) found that Black women professionals face significant pressure to conform to professional standards and the dominant culture of the organization as well as to live up to expectations, values, and identities based in the Black community. They must also overcome stereotypes by passing extra tests of competence and loyalty at work. Sutton (1991) describes the tension she experiences each day as an African American architect:
With part of our selves, we work to achieve power and authority within the traditions of the dominant culture. We hoist each other toward personal success through an invincible network of friendship, economic support, mentoring, information exchange... . No matter how little we earn, we join the costly American Institute of Architects and make our presence felt in that organization. With another part of our selves, we reject the competitive, elitist mentality of architectural design which differentiates professionals and clients, professors and practitioners, designers and builders, and builders and users. We reject this segmentation because it reflects the segmentation that exists in the larger society between men and women, rich and poor, young and old, colored and white (Sutton 1991, pp. 3-4).

gay men and lesbians, but they certainly do exist. For example, a white man from the Boston area was coached by a colleague on how to lose his class-based accent, but was ambivalent about abandoning his working class origins precisely because he thought he could use his managerial position to lobby for working class employees during economic downturns. He also knew that adopting a higher class accent could help in that lobbying effort, and th s he experienced "status inconsistency" (Lenski 1954). We speak in this p er about some of the shared experiences of tempere radicals. At the same time, we acknowledge that diffe nt groups experience different identity challenges. ey undoubtedly respond with different strategies as well, using the distinctive types of insider knowledge they acquire. We hope that this paper encourages tempered radicals to share their experiences with one another and to add to the general strategies described here.

The Advantages of Ambivalence
The dual nature of the tempered radical's identity creates a state of enduring ambivalence. In this section we detail some of the advantages of ambivalence and challenge the predominant view that ambivalence is a temporary or pathological condition to resolve (e.g., Merton 1976). Weigert and Franks (1989) summarize the sociological understanding of ambivalence:
Insofar as ambivalence creates uncertainty and indecisiveness, it weakens that organized structure of understandings and emotional attachments through which we interpret and assimilate our environments (Marris 1975)... . Clearly experienced emotion is an important cue to the formation of coherent inner identity (Hochschild 1983, p. 32). Without firm feelings of who we are, our actions are hesitant, halting, and incomplete (Weigert and Franks 1989, p. 205).

For men of color who try to succeed within predominantly white institutions, the experience of tempered radicalism is "substantively as much a part of the minority professional in this country as baseball and apple pie" (African American law student). This same student argued:
Struggling to get ahead in white dominated society—while struggling desperately to maintain what little we were "allowed" to develop and espouse as a black identity—has been a mainstay of the very fabric of black culture for over a, century.

Gay men and lesbians who work within traditional, heterosexual institutions also experience the tensions of tempered radicalism. They must game how much to disclose, how much to risk, how much to trust. Those who attempt to hide their sexual orientation from colleagues report feelings of fraudulence and shame, which get exacerbated when they are accused of selling out by their more "out" gay and lesbianpeers. Because gay and lesbian professionals can choose to hide their source of difference, however painfully, they face, perhaps more than any group, constant decisions about the politics of identity. The conflicting identities faced by white heterosexual men may not be as visible, predictable, or stressful as those faced by women of all colors, men of color, or
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Ambivalence stems from the Latin ambo (both) and valere (to be strong) (Foy 1985); it can be tapped as a source of strength and vitality, not just confusion and reluctance. We suggest that individuals can remain ambivalent and quite clear about their attachments and identities. In contrast to compromise, ambivalence involves pure expression of both sides of a dualism; compromise seeks a middle ground which may lose the flavor of both sides. Cooptation—eventually espousing only the voice of tradition—might be averted by clever compromises, but might be better fended off by the clear oppositional voices retained in a posture of ambivalence. Because both parts of a duality are repreORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 6, No.

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sented, ambivalent responses can be more responsive to equivocal situations than compromises (Weick 1979). The tempered radical's ambivalence resembles the experiences of marginality and biculturalism, which others have described as a tenuous balance between two cultural worlds:
A marginal person is one who lives on the boundary of two distinct cultures, one being more powerful than the other, but who does not have the ancestry, belief system, or social skills to be fully a member of the dominant cultural group (Park 1928, Stonequist 1937). (Bell 1990, p. 463.)

Like marginal people, tempered radicals experience ambivalence in three interrelated forms, each of which has its own advantages. First, and most fundamentally, tempered radicals are "outsiders within." They can access the "knowledge and insight of the insider with the critical attitude of the outsider" (Stonequist 1937, p. 155). While insider status provides access to opportunities for change, outsider status provides the detachment to recognize that there even is an issue or problem to work on. Merton (1976) described a result of this dual cognitive posture as "detached concern," where one is both objective and subjective. We suggest that the tempered radical may also experience "passionate concern," which involves dual subjectivities. Memories of being outside of the center can become a source of creativity and transformation:
Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the center as well as the margin. We understood both... . Our survival depended on an ongoing public awareness of the separation between margin and center and an _ongoing private acknowledgment that we were a necessary, vital part of that whole... . This sense of wholeness, impressed upon our consciousness by the structure of our daily lives, provided us with an oppositional world view—a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppressors, that sustained us.... These statements identify marginality as much more than a site of deprivation; in fact, I was saying just the opposite, that it is a site of radical possibility, a space of resistance.... It offers one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternative new worlds (hooks 1984).

their validity, and to undertake innovative theory building and research. Being free of existing professional paradigms has enabled him to develop new bodies of knowledge now recognized as important to the profession." In interviews, others echoed the importance of remaining "independent." Tempered radicals may also critique a more radical approach to change.. Tempered radicals have chosen to work for change from within organizations, although their career path may be as much a default, a playing out of the usual route through the education and career system, as an active political choice. In any case, because of their location, they may critique some forms of radical change for provoking fear, resistance, and backlash. Pamela Maraldo, president of Planned Parenthood, has stirred controversy among feminists by taking a tempered approach to the. risks of being too radical:
I don't believe in a strident, radical approach to things, because right away you lose many of your followers... . I think that "feminist" plays differently in different circles. Many people in mainstream America have vague, radical associations with the term. I do not; so I apply it easily and comfortably to myself. But I think that to present myself as a feminist would be to lose the attention early on of a lot of the important public... . Whatever we choose to call [feminism], the important thing is that it work (quoted in Warner 1993, p. 22).

Third, in addition to being critics of the status quo and critics of radical change, tempered radicals can also be advocates for both. Their situation is therefore more complex than that of change agents who act strictly as critics of the status quo. As advocates for the status quo, tempered radicals earn the rewards and resources that come with commitment and (tempered) complicity, and these become their tools for change. Sutton (1991) envisions this dual posture:
From this admittedly radicalized perspective, I imagine an alternative praxis of architecture that simultaneously embraces two seemingly contradictory missions. In this alternative approach we use our right hand to pry open the box so that more of us can get into it while using our left hand to get rid of the very box we are trying to get into (Sutton 1991, p. 3).

Second, tempered radicals can act as critics of the status . quo and as critics of untempered radical change. Stonequist (1937) praised marginals for being "acute and able critics. " In Hasenfeld and Chesler (1989, p. 519), Chesler claims that his marginality (or the ambivalence inherent in his marginality) has allowed him to be critical of the status quo: to "break away from dominant professional symbols and myths to question 6, No. 5, September-October 1995

Tempered radicals can and will be criticized by both radical and conservative observers. Radicals may suspect that tempered radicals' agendas are futile or retrogressive. Audre Lorde wrote, in words now famous among feminists, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Defenders of the status quo find ways to exclude suspected deviants from full entry into the institution. Jackall (1988, p. 54) quoted 589

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two managers speaking candidly about invoking group conformity pressures to silence radical voices. One ' said, " You can indict a person by saying he s not a team player," and the other noted, "Someone who talks about team play is out to squash dissent." Faced with pulls toward more radical and conservative stances, and with voices of uncertainty in their own heads, tempered radicals must deal with the disadvantages of ambivalence discussed in the next section.

The Challenges of Ambivalence
Despite the benefits of an ambivalent stance, a number of social and psychological forces work to persuade tempered radicals to forfeit one side of themselves or the other. Below we discuss pressures against an ambivalent stance. Most of these are forces of assimilation. We begin with a discussion of the painfulness of being seen as a hypocrite, of feeling isolated, and of being tempted to abandon the fight. We then tell a story of our own gradual cooptation from a feminist to a more mainstream research agenda. We identify from within this story several forces that can lead a tempered radical to resolve the inconsistency of her identities by trying to become an insider. Perceptions of Hypocrisy Tempered radicals speak to multiple constituencies, which poses the problem that they will be seen as too radical for one and as too conservative for another. An even more complex problem for a tempered radical is receiving mixed feedback from within a single constituency, particularly one she thought she understood and represented. The headline on a front page article in the London Herald Tribune— " [Jesse] Jackson is a Symbol to Some U.K Blacks and Sellout to Others" — speaks to this difficulty.
At the mention of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, they (a group of Black, working class "Brits") began, grudgingly at first, to show interest. "If he's gone that far," insisted one, "it must be because he's White inside." ..."Listen, man" said a third (man), "A Black man running for president of the United States. It's important." In London's Black ghettos, Mr. Jackson is a curiosity, a symbol of success and to some, a sellout. It is the latter view, held by many of this generation of British-born Blacks, that is most worrying to those who believe, like Mr. Jackson, that the way to equality is to win power within the institution... . Yet few Black Britons seem to share Mr. Jackson's faith in the concept of pushing from within and some of these see him as a sellout (DeYoung 1988, P. 1).

That some Black, working class "Brits" viewed Jackson as a "sellout"while others viewed him. as a sign of hope and change may, ironically, reflect his effectiveness as a tempered radical. If the issue were only that some people see a tempered radical one way and others see her another way, then the tempered radical could simply manage these images separately and sequentially. Theories of managing multiple constituencies counsel letting each side see that which is most favorable to its interests (Goff man 1959). However, some people can see both images simultaneously. In this situation, tempered radicals may be accused of being hypocritical, that is, of trying to act in a situation like they are different from or better than who they in fact really are. "Liberals are particularly likely to be charged with [hypocrisy], because they are given to compromise" (Shklar 1984, p. 48). Some.observers may be confused about who the tempered radical is or what she "really" stands for. Her activist friends may think she lets them take the heat from conservatives while she wins favor and the perquisites of being an insider. Her friends inside the organization may wonder if she is secretly more critical of them than she lets on. The problem is that the tempered radical does not have a single identity that is "true " and another that is "staged." The ambiguity of having two identities may cause others to believe the tempered radical is strategically managing impressions and trying to win approval from two audiences. Once impression management is suspected, observers give less credibility to the person who appears inconsistent (Goffman 1969). Some of the tempered radicals we interviewed experienced significant stress from being labeled hypocritical or from worrying about such impressions. In the words of an . anonymous tempered radical, "The worst is feeling like people who I care about think I am being fickle. I've been called a hypocrite. It stinks." The social stigma of hypocrisy is painful. Combined with the psychological discomfort of dissonance (Bem 1972, Festinger 1964), it might drive a tempered radical to want to seek the relief of consistency and a more consonant identity. This adaptation would require forfeiting one side of her ambivalent stance or the other. We feel that most pressures point toward assimilation and surrendering the "outside" identity and commitments. Though forces of assimilation are powerful, one tempered radical pointed out to us that we overemphasized how " easy''. it was for a tempered radical to become coopted and end up fully an insider. She cautioned us that, for her and others, one of the main No. 5, September-October 1995

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challenges of a professional- career was to be accepted as an insider at all:- The insiders were insistent` on seeing her as different and on treating her as such in a variety of obvious and subtle ways. The number of help books that try to teach women how to fit in (e.g., Harrigan 1977) attests to both the appeal of learning the rules of the game and the high hurdles to succeeding. Isolatooz} Perhaps a tempered radical can never go home to one community and identity or another. Tempered radicals are often lonely. A tempered radical may fear that . affiliating too strongly with an identifiable group, either outside or inside the organization, may push her too close to one side and jeopardize her credibility with the other side. One tempered radical described her fear:
In my field (forestry), if you are seen with women you are viewed as unprofessional. Real professionals talk to men about forestry, not to women about recipes. So if you talk to other women you are seen as either a lesbian or not professional. U am] terrified to be seen with a group of women

dates for further advancement. With respect to lower level employees, her high status created an awkward social and emotional distance. She hoped that junior employees with radial and idealistic beliefs would come talk to her, yet,. because of her status, they did not assume she was like-minded or approachable. Because she did not advertise her outsider affinities, precisely so that she could be more effective, she experienced the pain of not being taken seriously by those whom she would have liked to reach. Pressures of Cooptation A number of pressures :push the tempered radical away from the "outsider"piece of her identity and more fully toward the "insider" piece. The remainder of this section describes in detail the ways in which compromises can lead to cooptation. Since we experienced a variety of these coopting mechanisms over the course of this project, we tell our story as an illustration. We began what we now call the "tempered. radical" project as graduate students with a concern about the problems of feminist executives and academics. We wondered where those with the radical voices heard in the 1960s and 1970s had gone to work in the 1980s and whether they had found ways to change institutions. We were warned by faculty members that asking questions about "radical" or "feminist" change within organizations was itself radical and risky; particularly for graduate students who had not established secure positions within the academic or business communities. In addition, our identification and 'emotional investment threatened our perceived legitimacy as " objective" .researchers. We were advised to conceive of this problem, not as a problem for feminists or radicals; but as a more general problem: effecting change from within a system. This approach, would allow us to detach ourselves and, most important, avoid being labeled `°radicals"—or worse, "feminists"--so early in our careers. The advice. to detach ourselves. and cast the problem in the more abstract and conceptual terms of the field seemed like a _ reasonable compromise and like an intellectual exercise from which we might learn. We planned to come back to the feminist executive as a special case after we had developed theory about the general case. We hoped we could avoid the two painful pulls we were beginning to study: being dismissed as radicals or, indefinitely deferring our true interests. As we searched for comparable change agents inside organizations, we were presented with an opportunity to study corporate ethics officers, who were charged with implementing possibly controversial ethics pro591

Given this fear; some tempered radicals become vague about their identification with various coalitions in the hopes of not threatening their legitimacy and affiliation with insiders. The feeling of isolation may cause the tempered radical to look for acceptance and companionship in the organization. Some try to prove their loyalty by conforming, sometimes emphatically, to dominant patterns of behavior or by turning on members of their outside group (Kanter 1977). Feelings of isolation may intensify as the tempered radical advances within the organization. Ironically; just as a tempered radical approaches a higher position from which she hopes to effect change, she experiences more intensely the feelings of isolation that could pull her away from her change agenda into a position of One feminist executive recomfortable be ported to us that once she had become well established in a conservative organization; the few women who had been her peers along the -way had dropped out; been dismissed, or been completely' 'assimilated . into the mainstream. As a relatively high-status insider (with strong ambivalence), she: was structurally and institutionally closer to the center of her work organization and profession and therefore: felt even more distance between her professional and person al> identities. Among peers, her gender, still kept her distant from male colleagues perceived a$more< promising can&
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grams within corporations. Corporate ethics officers, unlike feminist executives, were accessible and easy to study. Ethics programs had recently been mandated and the ethics officers were negotiating immediate change, so we seized the moment. The research involved extensive traveling, interviewing, and data analysis. We found that the topic interested academic and nonacademic audiences and could easily attract research funding. When we were asked about our research interests, it became easier for us to talk about corporate ethics programs in a vividly illustrated, theoretically compelling, and not too provocative way than to talk about the touchy subject of feminist executives. No one suggested that we try another topic or bundle this study into another research package. Our language, audience, and ultimately our research problem gradually changed. Our study took on a life of its own and resulted in several papers about corporate ethics programs in the defense industry. This story illustrates how compromises in (1) language, (2) timing, and (3) emotional expression can lead to cooptation. We discuss each of these in detail below. Diverse literatures dealing with change recommend using insider language to package, "sell," or legitimate a change program (e.g., Alinsky 1972, Dutton and Ashford 1993). The use of insider language may ' be even more essential when proposed changes intervene at a deep level to challenge the assumptions and values of the organization (Frost and Egri 1991). Catchy specifics in the language of the status quo can catalyze cooptation. For example, as our study progressed, we talked more about "corporate ethics officers " in place of internal change agents and "defense industry ethics programs " in place of organizational change efforts. Our language shifted, in a direction and with a speed, that suprised us. To reflect our insider knowledge of the world of ethics programs in the defense industry, we spoke of "ethics hotlines," "fraud, waste, and abuse," and the "defense industry initiative. Before we knew it, the "feminist executive" had faded in our memories and was filed away for "future research." The role of language in coopting participants has been vividly portrayed in Cohn's (1987) study of the world of defense intellectuals. In a world where men (almost exclusively) spend their days matter-of-factly strategizing about "limited nuclear war," "clean bombs," "counterforce exchanges," and "first strikes," Cohn assumed the role of participant observer to ask the question: "How could they talk this way?" To gain legitimacy in the system, she learned to speak the language of insiders. As Cohn learned the language, she became less shocked by the cold-bloodedness of
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the talk, and eventually engaged by it:
The words are fun to say; they are racy, sexy, snappy... . Part of the appeal was the power of entering the secret kingdom, being someone in the know .... Few know, and those who do are powerful.... When you speak it, you feel in control (Cohn 1987, p. 704).

The more proficient she became in the language, the easier it became to talk about nuclear war and the more difficult it became to speak as a critical outsider. As her language shifted to "defense-speak," the referent shifted from people to weapons. Human death became "collateral damage."
1 . found that the better I got at engaging in this (insider) discourse, the more impossible it became for me to express my own ideas, my own values. I could adapt the language and gain a wealth of new concepts and reasoning strategies—but at the same time the language gave me access to things I had been unable to speak about before, it radically excluded others. I could not use the language to express my concerns because it was physically impossible. This language does not allow certain questions to be asked or certain values to be expressed (Cohn 1987, p. 708).

Thus, the power of language was not in the ability to communicate technically, but rather in its capacity to rule out other forms of talk, thought, and identity. The temptation to defer radical commitments adds another pressure toward cooptation, as we learned in our own experience. Our ethics officer study was intended as a short deferral, but we strayed from our original concern further and for longer than we planned. Early invitations to talk about this topic at conferences took us deeper into this line of research, which forced us to learn more, which led to more opportunities and papers, - which generated more knowledge and questions to be researched. Such is the course of a " research stream." Compromise behaviors create environments that require more of the same behaviors (Weick 1979). Like other compromise solutions, the strategy of deferring radical commitments until a foothold is established seems reasonable. From the tempered radi-cal's perspective, it might seem less risky to advance more threatening agendas from a position of power and security. She might be tempted to wait and collect what Hollander (1958) calls "idiosyncrasy credits" by initially conforming to and exemplifying the organization's norms. Later, when she accumulates enough credibility, trust, and status, she would " spend" these credits to reshape organizational norms. However, this deferred radicalism may stall the change effort in two ways. First, when "later on" arrives, the tempered
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radical may have lost sight of her initial convictions. Second, it may become impossible to tell when "the moment" has arrived to cash in credits. It is always tempting to wait until one has yet more formal power and security and can really effect change. As individuals wait longer to disclose their identities and agendas and spend. more time investing in their careers, it becomes more difficult to resist cooptation on material, psychological, and political grounds. Ferguson (1984) doubts that women can transform traditional bureaucracies from within them:
They (liberal feminists) hold out the hope that once women have made their way to the top, they will then change the rules: "When they get to be dealer-they can exercise their prerogative to change the rules of `dealer's choice"'.... They see women as the hope for humanizing the work would and convincing men of the need for change. By their own analysis, this hope is absurd. After internalizing and acting on the rules of bureaucratic discourse for most of their adult lives, how many women (or men) will be able to change? After succeeding in the system by those rules, how many would be willing to change? (Ferguson 1984, pp. 192—193.)

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In addition, it becomes difficult for the tempered radical to turn her back on, or even criticize, those who were part of her career success. Individuals confront extreme backlash and resentment when they suddenly speak out against injustice after years of quietly tolerating it. Anita Hill is a compelling recent example. Reactions are particularly severe if the people involved have succeeded in the system. They are asked: "If the system is so sexist, why has it treated you so justly and well?" "If you have been quiet in the past, what's the motive for your sudden fuss?" Fear of such accusations cause many to silence their frustrations indefinitely. . Deferral poses one source of cooptation. Tempted radicals can also be coopted by the process of tempering their emotions to appear rational and cool-headed, to be "the reasonable feminist." Hot-tempered emotion fuels a tempered radical 's desire and impetus for change, but this hot side of the emotional balancing act may often lose out to the cool organizational persona, particularly because real, spontaneous emotional expression is far from the norm in most organizational contexts (Mumby and Putnam 1992). Again, our project may be illustrative. We have tried to make this paper, in form and content, an expression of our own tempered radicalism. As such, we have struggled with the balance between making it legitimate for publication and making it true to the lived experience. As we read and re-read interview transcripts, we began to think of our allies and colleagues as "data." In our September—October

effort to get the paper published, part of the "balance," " we consistently have "over-tempered. Our tempered radical began to appear as a highly rational strategist who at every turn attempts to reach a balance, appeal to multiple constituencies, and optimize impressions. Many of our tempered radical colleagues complained that our description missed the essence of the experience: the heat, passion, torment, and temper that characterize the experience of being a tempered radical. Some argued that in our effort to construct a theory about tempered radicals, we overcategorized and overrationalized the phenomenon and, in doing so, unwittingly made our protagonist and paper complicit in maintaining traditional constraints. Other reviewers, however, complained that the paper lacked a coherent theoretical strategy, was not sufficiently grounded in a single literature, and was too inconsistent in its style. The interweaving of self-reflective narrative and theory in this paper represents our ambivalent and somewhat unsatisfying response to this problem. As we tried to satisfy some readers, we inevitably lost others. This very experience heated up the frustration of tempered radicalism for us. Emotional Burdens As sociologists and pyschologists remind us, ambivalence generates anger plus a variety of powerful, unpleasant emotions, which also contribute to the difficulty of sustaining this posture. Among others feelings, a tempered radical's ambivalence may result in guilt and self doubt (Weigert and Franks 1989), which arise when people cannot live up to their own ideals (Goffman 1963), An assistant to the Chancellor of a major university revealed to us her continuing anguish: There are qualified people who get turned down (for tenure) just because they are women. And my job is to make sure that doesn't happen. Sometimes I feel like I have hit a grandslam, but my team was already behind by seven and so ... there's no victory forme and there's no victory for her. There's only the lingering feeling in both of our minds that I didn't do it good enough. If I had just done a little more or done it a little better, done a Ittle differently, played my cards a little better or viewed it from a slightly different angle or made a slightly different argument.... I find that it is impossible for me to suffer enough to absolve myself when we get done. It's extremely difficult for someone to deal with that because my energy has nowhere to go. And so I find myself flagellating myself. in most extraordinary and creative ways when the problems are institutional and it didn't matter what I did... . The pressure I feel because I know the pain that they are in. I don't sleep.

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For those with a history of being outsiders, the self-doubt arising from ambivalence can be particularly debilitating, as illustrated in this depiction of Black students' experiences:
Students who strive to assimilate while covertly trying to remain engaged with Black experience suffer extreme frustration and psychological distress ... Maintaining this separation is difficult, especially when these two contradictory longings converge and clash ....On the surface, it may appear that he has coped with this situation, that he is fine, yet his psychological burden has intensified, the pain, confusion, and sense of betrayal a breeding ground for serious mental disturbance (hooks 1989, pp. 67-68).

Strategies of Change and Ambivalence
In general, tempered radicals create change in two ways: through incremental, semi-strategic reforms and through spontaneous, sometimes unremarkable, expressions of authenticity that implicitly drive or even constitute change. In this section, we discuss two change-oriented strategies—small wins and local, spontaneous, authentic action—and discuss how they relate to change, with the additional benefit of sustaining tempered radicals' identities and purposes. The other two strategies we discuss—language styles and affiliations —work in the reverse fashion. They are directed at authentic identities, but also implicitly provoke and redefine change. The process and politics of change in organizations has been addressed extensively in a variety of literatures, including work on radical change and community organizing (e.g., Alinsky 1972), innovation (e.g., Frost and Egri 1991, Kanter 1983), "championing" (e.g., Howell and Higgins 1990, Kanter 1983), upward influence (e.g., Kipnis et al. 1980, Mowday 1978), ".issue selling" (Dutton and Ashford 1993), and impression management (e.g., Goffman 1959, Rafaeli and Sutton 1991). These literatures issue prescriptions that might be useful to the tempered radical as change agent. However, none of these literatures focuses on how problematic and painful identity politics are for the change agent, in part because they do not assume a change agent who is dissident with the organization's fundamental premises. Steering a course between assimilation and separatism is a central and defining issue for the tempered radical. The tempered radical bears some semblance to the boundary spanner role described in the organizational literature (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978, Scott 1984, Thompson 1967), who must bridge two organizations that have different goals and resources. The tempered radical is different from this classic boundary spanner in the important sense that part of her core identity is threatened by or threatening to the dominant coalition of either or both of the organizations. Even so, tempered radicals may usefully employ some of the strategies of traditional boundary spanners, such as buffering the core aspects of their function in the organization from their change agent role (tempered radicals may be found in roles that are not explicitly chartered to deal with change) or creating bridging strategies with critical external groups. The change agents in the organizational literature generally do not have broader visions of change in mind. Although terms like "revolutionary" and "deep"

One tempered radical says, "It is corrosive to constantly feel disrespected by the system-... It has been a struggle for me to feel good about myself in the face of collegial disapproval and disrespect. " Another interviewee admitted that she continually worked in an environment in which "people act as if I am not here." If sustenance for tempered radicals comes from artfully working the system to make changes, this feeling,of being devalued can make them wonder whether they are effective and whether it is worth carrying on. Many choose not to and leave, including those who might be important contributors to the organization (Kolb and Williams 1993): Several features of tempered radicalism can produce stress. Tempered radicals frequently experience role conflict and role ambiguity, which can lead to stress and strain (e.g., Kahn et al. 1964). The tedious rate at which change occurs further frustrates tempered radicals, many of whom report periodic battles with burnout. Because tempered radicals must learn to suppress or temper emotions at times or, worse, hide their identities, they may feel additional stress and frustration from "bottling it up" (Bell 1990, Coser .1979, Worden et al. 1985). As symbols of a marginalized cultural community, they may also worry about how their performance will affect others in their cultural group (hooks 1989; Kanter 1977). We do not want to end this section on such a pessimistic note. In addition to the pain of loneliness, guilt, self-doubt, and . shaky self-esteem, some tempered radicals also report feeling authentic as a result of having a "rather unorthodox, complex identity" (McIntosh 1989), and -feeling encouraged by others who can relate to the complexity of their commitments (Gilkes 1982, hooks 1989). We turn now to a discussion of strategies that help tempered radicals effect change and simultaneously sustain their ambivalent identities despite the pressures described above.

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are sometimes used to describe change, those terms rarely refer to system change that challenges the embedded assumptions of the status quo (Alinsky (1972) and Frost and Egri (1991) are exceptions). In our review of strategies for tempered radicals, we refer occasionally to these literatures but also break with them. Small Wins A small wins approach (Weick 1984, 1992) addresses several problematic aspects of tempered radicalism and seems to be a viable strategy for change and identity maintenance. First, small wins reduce large problems to a manageable size. Big, unwieldy problems produce anxiety, which limits people's capacities to think and act creatively (Weick 1984). A colleague created a small win recently when she convinced the dean of a business school to delay the start of the tenure clock ' until new recruits dissertations were complete. (For a variety of systemic reasons, women begin jobs before completing dissertations more frequently than men). While this policy change goes only a short way toward ending gender-based discrimination, it is a tangible first step with potentially large ramifications. Second, small wins can be experiments. They may uncover resources, information, allies, sources of resistance, and additional opportunities for change (Weick 1984). Small wins often snowball as they create opportunities and momentum for additional small wins. Weick argued that the real power of small wins as a strategy for social change comes in the capacity to gather and label retrospectively a series of relatively innocuous small. wins into a bigger "package" that would have been too threatening to be prospectively adopted. For example, a multipronged work and family policy could have been envisioned in the 1970s but might have been too sharp a departure and perhaps even too radical a label to propose then. However, a gradual accretion of different aspects of the program — from flex-time to on-site child care—has resulted by the 1990s in many companies (almost a quarter of a representative national sample) having or discussing what are now labelled "work/family programs" (Osterman 1994). A series of small wins is " less likely to engage the organizational immune system against deep change" (Frost and Egri 1991, p. 242). As experiments, small wins act as a system diagnostic. With relatively minor visibility,. risk, and disruption, small wins can test the boundaries of an organization's capacity for change. Even "small losses " can be a source of discovery (Sitkin 1992). Alinsky (1972) warned

that reformers could miss change opportunities not only by "shooting too high" but also by "shooting too, low." The tempered radical never really knows what too high means until she steps over the line or what too low means until she learns of opportunities lost. Moreover, the line between too. much and too little is constantly shifting. Third, a small wins approach encourages picking battles carefully. Tempered radicals possess a limited amount of emotional energy, and they have access to limited legitimacy, resources, and power. The Chancellox's assistant described this problem:
I have to choose very carefully when I's going to go against the party line... . Like when there's a woman up for tenure and she's been turned down I'm the last person, to comment before it goes to the Chancellor. I have to decide who to fight for. Because if every time a woman comes along who's been turned down I say, "Oh my God, what a horrible injustice" then I won't have any credibility with the Chancellor. So I have to take my shots carefully when it's close, because the Chancellor is a very choosy constituent.

Of course, often the tempered radical does not have a neat menu of battles from which to select rationally. To quell rage even temporarily in a way that feels inauthentic can be neither desirable nor possible. The tempered radicals we most admire are those who have been able to draw courage from their anger and sometimes pick battles with fierce drive_ and reckless abandon. Fourth, small wins are therefore often driven by unexpected opportunities. To be poised to take advantage of opportunities, the tempered radical's vision of the specific course of change must be somewhat blurry. Relatively blurry vision and an opportunistic approach enable an activist to take advantage of available resources, shifting power alliances, lapsed resistance, heightened media attention, or lofty corporate rhetoric to advance a specific change (Alinsky 1972, Martin et al. 1990). We are reminded of a story told by one tempered radical of another. After receiving an invitation to a corporate Christmas party to which spouses and significant others were invited, a lesbian executive (who had not yet come out at work) informed her boss that she was going to bring her girlfriend. Her boss refused to accept this guest. Enraged, she took the issue (along with samples of corporate rhetoric about diversity) to the CEO, who welcomed her guest and "talked to"her boss. Born out of range and frustration, this woman's courageous act turned out to be a signifi-

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cant intervention that produced real and symbolic change in the organization. While a small wins approach can help a tempered radical push change while maintaining her identity, we should point to some risks associated with the small wins approach. First, tempered radicals in high positions may lose sight of the fact that, for lower level employees, some changes may be urgent, or the order of changes may matter a great deal. Although it may not matter in the long run which type of change comes first, employees may be desperate for child care solutions, but able to live quite easily without a policy about delayed partnership reviews. Second, being driven solely by opportunity may mean that tempered radicals follow, rather than lead, change. They may achieve only those small wins that were there for the asking. Efforts that are too tentative or small may set a change process backwards by making people feel an issue is closed—"OK, we have a day care facility and have solved the ` work/family problem."' Small wins may distract people from a more fundamental issue, provide a premature sense of completion, or steer a change effort off course. Even taking these cautions into account, the small wins approach is attractive.. Immediate action means that commitments are not being deferred. The accumulation of small wins changes the organizational landscape for later battles, as "outcomes of current political activity form the basis of the future deep structure of interaction " (Frost and Egri 1991, p. 282). Furthermore, as the organization gradually changes, the tempered radical's alignment struggles also shift. The only way for the tempered radical to locate the appropriate degree of resistance is to push continuously against the limits and keep the organization in flux. Smircich's notion of aligning as ongoing, local actions avoids reifying the organization and its limits:
There isn't really "an organization" out there that I am aligning myself to, rather my actions of aligning are doing organizing for myself and others... . [The organization is not] some independent, hard separate reality, imposing itself on us, somehow disconnected from the very patterns of activity from which it is constituted (Smircich 1986, pp. 6-7).

attuned to the environment. An advantage for the tempered radical of being an insider is precisely to learn the dynamics of the local system and be able to act more confidently within it. As several tempered radicals have reminded us, enacting and celebrating small wins help sustain tempered radicals. Local, Spontaneous, Authentic Action A second way that change takes place—local, spontaneous, authentic action—is less strategic than small wins. It happens when tempered radicals directly express their beliefs, feelings, and identities. For example, a female surgeon explained how she changed her work environment by behaving more authentically. When she treated each member of her surgical team with respect and displayed compassion toward patients on her rounds, she demonstrated an alternative style of professional behavior. Her treatment of nurses in the operating room modeled new ways for the residents to behave toward nurses and may have helped alter the nurses' and residents' expectations of how teams share power and how surgeons should treat nurses. By acting in a way that was simply authentic, she created resistance to the authoritarian model that others on her team had taken for granted. Acting authentically, as simple as it sounds, counteracts many of the disadvantages of sustaining ambivalence that we discussed earlier. The tempered radical who behaves authentically, even if this means inconsistently, may not feel dissonant. She and others may be able to accept her ambivalence as complexity (in the person and situation) rather than as insincerity or hypocrisy. The authenticity with which she behaves minimizes the possibility that she will experience feelings of fraudulence, self-doubt, or guilt. Language Styles Earlier we described how tempered radicals, forced to adopt the language of insiders to gain legitimacy, risk losing their outsider language and identity. In this section, we describe some strategies that can be used to counter the cooptive power of insider language. First, speaking in multiple languages and to multiple constituencies can help. While it is easy to imagine how one might speak different languages to different constituencies (e.g., academic to academic audiences, applied to applied audiences), it is harder to see how one might speak multiple languages to the same constituency. For example, some individuals choose to do "diversity work" because of their commitment to social justice, their identification with a marginalized group, and their insights into the dynamics of disadvantage and privilege. Those who work in corporations learn to

Because it involves continuous pushing, a small wins approach sustains the tension between what it means to be an insider and what it means to dissent. In our discussions with tempered radicals, we have heard of few instances in which tempered radicals who "pushed too hard " were not given a " second chance, " even if they did push beyond what was organizationally appropriate. If small wins are used as an experiment, then successive tactics can become bolder and better

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speak the language of insiders; in. this case, to talk about diversity in "bottom line" terms (e;g., recruitment and retention in a changing labor market, innovations born of diverse approaches, >access to a broader customer base). However, tempered radicals may be most effective if they speak to each constituency in both languages. They do not channel their language so that business people hear only bottom line rationalizations, nor so that community organizers hear only the social justice reasons for proposed changes. Unexpected internal allies can be discovered in using the language of social justice inside the corporation. The tempered radical might counter the cooptive power . of , insider language by using her insider knowledge and facility with the language to deconstruct it and then reconstruct alternative worlds. A few scholars in the management field have begun to deconstruct the traditional discourse in an attempt to expose assumptions, question what has been left unsaid, dislodge the hegemony of the traditional texts, and make room for alternative conceptions of organizing and management (e.g., Calas 1987, Calas and Smircich 1991, Gray 1994, Kilduff 1993, Martin 1990, Meyerson 1994). As a provocative illustration of this genre, Mumby and Putnam (1992) deconstructed the concept "bounded rationality" and then used this deconstruction to recon" struct organizing in terms of "bounded emotionality. A linguistic strategy that helps avoids eooptation by harnessing the dominant language is captured in the metaphor of jujitsu, a martial art in which the defender uses the energy of the attacker against itself. Tempered radicals can effect change by holding those in power to their own rhetoric and standards of fair play. In our study of corporate ethics officers, we observed this "linguistic jujitsu." Lower level employees appropriated the language of ethics to bolster their claims for more ethical treatment.. This tactic worked particularly well in those companies that defined ethics broadly. in terms of "treating each other fairly, with dignity and respect." Once such language was publicly espoused by management in ethics training sessions, employees could use it — to push for more responsive and accessible grievance channels and other changes consistent with "fairness, " ' dignity, and respect. Managers fear of: losing credibility persuaded them to be responsive to claims that invoked their own language (Scully and 'Meyerson 1993). Affiliations # , Another approach tempered radicals may fin helpful epz;esent is to maintain affiliations with people.who ra both sides of their identity. Almost all of the tempered
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radicals we interviewed emphasized the importance . of maintaining strong ties with individuals, commum ties, or groups outside of their organization. These outside affiliations act as sources of information, resources, emotional support, and, perhaps most important, empathy. Affiliations with communities, organizations, and people help mitigate against the difficult emotions associated with ambivalence. Affiliations help keep the tempered radical from suppressing her passion and rage and from acting in a way that makes her. feel fraudulent or guilty. They keep her fluent in multiple languages. The tempered radical's understanding of oppression and injustice can only be preserved by continuing to identify with outsiders. Identifying as an outsider reminds her of her own privilege as an insider (Worden et al. 1985). Bell (1990, p. 463) argues that a Black woman professional can access her bicultural experi" ence as a source of inner strength and empowerment, giving her a feeling of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual wholeness." Affiliations help tempered radicals guard against losing their losing their ability to speak as outsiders. For example; hooks (1989) cautions Black women against losing sight . of how their minds have been "colonized, " and furthermore, warns against viewing identity politics as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end. Ties to the community are part of " "the struggle of memory against forgetting (hooks 1989). In our own experience as organizational scholars we have learned to treasure our outside affiliations. For example, our ties to women's studies programs and women's political organizations have served as sources of emotional and intellectual vitality. Our ties to friends and colleagues who are more radical in their approaches have sustained our ambivalent course by encouraging our commitments and nurturing our radical identities. We know two or three people who have taken more radical courses, arid we try to imagine them reading our papers. Imagining as well as receiving their feedback helps us to sustain our commitments. Outside affiliations can also provide a sense of independence. One tempered radical claimed that his outside activities as an activist had become a crucial source of self-esteem when he felt alienated from his profession. In addition to outside, ties, connections to likeminded people inside the organization are a source of sustenance., Sometimes tempered radicals are hard.to find "precisely because their public personae are tempered. Reformers who think the system needs only minor, changes and tempered .radicals engaged in small wins en route to more massive changes may be difficult
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sometimes to distinguish. However; sometimes tempered radicals find each other and can build coalitions. Some tempered radicals report that they experience joy and connection because they have a strong sense of community inside as well as outside the organization (e.g., Gilkes 1982, Worden et al. 1985). Even if membership and energy are in flux, there may be a collective momentum that outlives individuals ' lulls. In a study of collective action inside organizations (Scully and Segal (in progress)), one member of a grassroots coalition reported its importance to her for maintaining organizational and personal attention to diversity issues:
[The diversity issue] tends to peak and valley. It's not consistent energy, even from the grassroots: I think it goes up and down. I think because of the grassroots efforts, it hasn't been dropped .... The grassroots efforts have been instrumental even during the lower periods in bringing it back up to a peak, so I don't think you can do without the grassroots efforts.

We have seen each other through peaks and valleys and benefited from our long-standing collaboration on this project and on projects that grew.out it. When one of us felt confused or pulled by the tension inherent in our ambivalent stance, the other could help redefine the tension in terms of excitement or challenge. We did "cooptation check-ins" by phone. When we listened to each other talk about our joint project, we could hear the other's, and sometimes our own, language. We could hear in each other the changes in how we described and thought about our project. We should admit, however, that despite our efforts to keep each other on course, we sometimes failed and became complicit in each other's "digression." Yet, we can without hesitation recommend collaborating with another of like heart and mind.

Conclusion
This paper has focused on the tempered radical as an internal change agent quite different from those more commonly portrayed in the literature. Although tempered radicals face many of the same challenges, they also confront unique challenges associated with their ambivalent identities and their broader definition of ultimate change. This paper contributes to the literatures on change from within organizations by introducing a fundamentally different type of change agent than the protagonists of these other literatures. We hope that this paper also gives tempered radicals a kind of legitimacy, inspiration, and sense of community.

The labor of resistance may be divided among those who push for change from the inside, from the outside, and from the margin, each effort being essential to the others and to an overall movement of change. The i mportance of maintaining affiliations with colleagues and friends who are more and less radical than oneself may be crucial for tempered radicals, not only as a means to sustain their ambivalent course, but also as a way to make their struggles collective. Tempered radicals may be playing parts in movements bigger than themselves and their organizations. In the course of effecting change, they are helping prepare for bigger changes that more radical outsiders may be better positioned to advance. Tempered radicals can also support insiders who push for big changes from positions of power. Thinking in terms of a collaborative division of labor among activists helps resist the counterproductive tendency, particularly among liberals and radicals, to judge who is being the best and most true advocate for change. Our effort to recognize tempered radicals comes at a crucial time. Those who do not neatly fit—mostly white women and people of color—have been fleeing mainstream organizations at a high and costly rate (Cox 1993). Some leave because they can no longer tolerate the seemingly glacial pace of change, others leave because they are tired of being devalued and isolated, and still others leave simply because they no longer have the energy to "play the game."This exodus has serious repercussions for organizations. Tempered radicals represent a unique source of vitality, learning, and transformation. Particularly as organizations attempt to become more global, multicultural, and flexible, they must learn to nurture those organizational members that will push them through a continuous transformation process. As the tempered radical's own survival depends on transforming the organization to achieve alignment,. so too the contemporary organization may well depend on aligning with new voices and players in a diverse, global environment. I Acknowledgements We would like. to thank all of the tempered radicals who have so generously shared their experiences and insights with us and we dedicate this paper to one special tempered radical. We also appreciate the thoughtful comments of our colleagues, Ruby Beale, Mark Chesler, Jane Dutton, Robin Ely, Peter Frost, C. V. Harquail, Carol Hollenshead, Susan Kaufman, Deborah Kolb, Brenda Lautsch, Richard Locke, Joanne Martin, Louise Parker, Anat Rafaeli, Amy Segal, Linda . Smircich, Barry Staw, Nicole Steckler,. Karl Weick, Janet Weiss and anonymous reviewers.

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Endnote
Tempered radicals often cannot find each other. If you identify yourself as'a tempered radical, and if you are interested in creating links among us and mobilizing isolated activists, please send email to either author (fineyerson@gsb-peso.stanford.edu or Scully@mit.edu).
1

References
Alinsky, S. D. (1972), Rules For Radicals, New York: Vintage Books. Bell, E. L. (1990), "The Bicultural life Experience of Career-Oriented Black Women," Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11, 459–477. Bern, D. J. (1972), "Self-Perception Theory," in L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,. New York: Academic. Calas, M. B. (1987), Organizational Science /fiction: The Postmodern' in the Management Disciplines, Unpublished doctoral .dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. _ and L. Smircich (1991), "Voicing Seduction to Silence Leader ship," Organization Studies, 12, 567-601. Cohn, C. (1987), "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12, 4,687–718. Collins, P. H.,(1986), "Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance_ of Black Feminist Thought," Social Problems, 33, 6, 514-532. Coser, R. L, (19791. "Structural Ambivalence and. Patterned Mechanisms of Defense," Training in Ambiguity: Learning .Through Doing in a Mental Hospital, New York, Free Press. Cox, T. (1993), Cultural Diversity in Organizations: Theory, Research Practice, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Culbert, S. A. and J. McDonough (1980), "The Invisible War. Pursuing Self-Interest at Work," in J. Frost, V. F. Mitchell and W. R. Nord (Eds.), Organizational Reality.- Reports from the Firing

Line, 202–211.
Demo, D. H. (1992), "The Self-Concept over Time: Research Issues and Directions," Annual Review of Sociology, 18, 303-326. DeYoung, K. (1988), "Jackson is Symbol to Some U.K. Blacks and Sellout to Others," London Herald Tribune, 1. Dutton, J. E. and S. J. Ashford .(1993), "Selling Issues to Top Management," Academy of Management Review, 18, 3, 397-428. Ferguson, K E. (1984), The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Festinger, L. (1964), Conflict, Decision and Dissonance, Stanford, CA: Stanford. Foy, N. (1985), "Ambivalence, Hypocrisy, and Cynicism: Aids to Organization Change," New Management, 2, 4, 49-53. Frost, P. J. and C. P. Egri (1991), "The Political Process of Innovation," in B. S. Staw and L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 13, Greenwich, CT: JAI, 229–295. Gecas, V. (1982), "The Self-Concept," Annual Review of Sociology, 8, 1–33. Gilkes, C. T. (1982), "Successful Rebellious Professionals: The Black Woman's Professional Identity and Community Commitment," Psychology of Women Quarterly, 6, 3, 289-311. Goffman, E. (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Doubleday.

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Meyerson, D. E. (1994), "From Discovery to Resistance: A Feminist Read and Revision of the Stress Discourse," Working Paper, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Mowday, R. (1978), "The Exercise of Upward Influence in Organizations," Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 137-156. Mumby, D. K and L. L. Putnam (1992), "The Politics of Emotion: A Feminist Reading of Bounded Rationality," The Academy of Management Review, 17, 3, 465-486. Osterman, P. (1994), "Explaining the Diffusion of Employer-Based Benefits: The Case of Work/Family Programs," unpublished paper, Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Park, R. E. (1928), "Human Migration and the Marginal Mari," American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881-893. Pfeffer, J. and G. R. Salancik (1978), The External Control of Organizations, New York: Harper and Row. Rafaeli, A. and R. I. Sutton (1991), "Emotional Contrast Strategies as Means of Social Influence: Lessons from Criminal Interrogators and Bill Collectors," Academy of Management Journal; 34, 749-775. Reinharz, S. (1992), Feminist Methods in Social Research, New York: Oxford University Press. Scott, W. R. (1984), Organizations. Rational Natural, and Open Systems, 2nd ed,. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Scully, M. and D. Meyerson (1993), "The Separation of Law and Justice: The Implementation of Ethics Programs at Two Companies in the Defense Industry," Employee Responsibility and Rights Journal, 6, 4. _ and A. Segal (1994). "Passion with an Umbrella: The Mobilization of Grassroots Activists in Organizations," unpublished paper, Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Shklar, J. N. (1984), Ordinary Vwes, Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Sitkin, S. (1992), "Learning Through Failure: The Strategy of Small Losses," in B. Staw and L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 14, Greenwich, CT: JAI, 231-266. Smircich, L. (1986), ` ,`Can a Radical Humanist Find Happiness Working in a Business School?" Paper presented in the symposium. Alignment in the Development of Social Science—Towards a New Role for Organizational Development, Annual Meetings of the Academy of Management, Chicago. Stonequist, E. (1937), The Marginal Man,. New York: Russell and Russell. Sutton, S. E. (1991), "Finding Our Voice in a Dominant Key," unpublished paper, University of Michigan. Thompson, J. D. (1967), Organizations in Action, New York: McGraw-Hill. Warner, J. (1993), "Mixed Messages," Ms 4, 3, November/December, 20-25. Webster's New World Dictionary (1975). Weick, K E. (1979), The Social Psychology of Organizing, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. _ (1984), "Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems," American Psychologist, 40-49. _ (1992), "Wisdom in the 90s: Adaptation Through Small Wins," Hale Lecture #4, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Weigert, A. and D. D. Franks (1989), "Ambivalence: A Touchstone of the Modem Temper," in D. D. Franks and E. McCarthy (Eds.), The Sociology of Emotions, Greenwich, CT: JAI. Worden, O., M. Chesler and G. Levin (1985), "Racism, Sexism, and Class Elitism: Change Agents' Dilemmas in Combatting Oppression," in A. Sargent (Ed.), Beyond Sex Roles, 2nd ed., St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 451-469.

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Chapter 4 Workplace Development, Gender and Communicative Competence
Marianne Ekman Philips Kerstin Rehnstrom

Introduction p7 Within the LOM program, one initiative made an effort to merge the development strategy of the program with a consideration of the gender issue, in the form of a cluster project within three organizations: a paper factory; a mechanical assembly plant and the service office of the Swedish Savings Banks.' It proved possible to follow this effort up, however, when the State Renewal Funds decided to support the development of a project covering 17 state institutions in the Jamtland region, where a main focus was to be on the work situation of the female employees. This project came to take on some of the characteristics of a r egional development network.2 Among the spin-offs of this effort is a project in the B irth Clinic of the Jamtland regional hospital in Ostersund, which forms the basis for this contribution, which presents and illustrates the application of a cor nrnunicationally oriented approach `in the field' when it is shaped to apply sp ecifically to the issue of equalization between the working roles of men and W omen. Before turning to this there is a need to briefly recapitulate some th eoretical and methodological aspects.

t,

;

R Some issues of methodology The LOM program was based on the thesis that a restructuring of communication can be an efficient approach to change in working life. 3 The key concept in this p rogram was ` democratic dialogue,' which came to play the role of a somewhat mo dified and more pragmatic version of the idea of free communication between e qual actors found in Habermas 4 This idea was supported by a number of more

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rameters, such as the intensive use of di conferences, dialogue-driven project work, etc. In addition, the idea alogue-based of a total, or de general, velopment within each or ganization was e mphasized rather than the more limited, semi-experimental a place de pproaches that had been common in workvelopment in Western culture, and which at the time were being challenged by the more total, co-ordinated dev Furthermore, e mphasis was placed on coelopment drives of Japanese industry. 5 llaboration between organizations at cluster and network levels in order to allow each o rganization access to a broader range of experience than could be a ccumulated within its own ranks. This also served to prepare the ground for a knowled ge-generating type of social organization ( ` network'), with the potential to combine ` ` character. The various action parameters were f critical mass' with a local' urthermore structured to accommodate the view that a process of change must be viewed in terms of phases d which differ in respect of the problems that need to be dealt with, with ensuing ifferences in the way the various action parameters should be applied. From the beginning, one of the main points of the projects which focused on the gender issue was to bring women into the discourses on an equal footing with men. For instance, in the first conference between the three o participated in the cluster under the LOM program, each organizations that r rganization was epresented by a project group of 10 people with equal numbers of women and men, drawn from a vertical slice through the o rganization. drawn from the lowest level of the hierarchy: these orThe women were not all women in m anagerial positions and could co ganizations all had some nsequently provide two vertical slices. This pattern was carried through into the Ostersund network. Some of the work procedures and results of this network are presented in Engelstad and G ustaysen. 6 This approach is based on certain as sumptions, central among which is the idea that, on the first level of analysis, possible work-related d ifferences between men and women are found in the way they speak — in the way in which relevant experience is defined, con ceptualised and played into discourses with others. Several studies actually indicate major discussion gaps in or ganizations hierarlinked to the gender issue, although this issue overlaps with the issue of that are chy. For instance, in hospital or ganizations it is common that the coffee break se talk between the doctors is about medicine, nurses talk about the patients, and the mi-skilled and unskilled personnel discuss their families.' When women enter the medical profession they also enter the medical discourse, and if a man should happen to be among the cleaning staff of a hospital he would probably `talk family,' since he would hardly find an audience tion. Not withstanding this, gender forms an im for any other type of contribumost types of or portant part of the discourse in ganizations. The fact that the pattern is s indicates that there are no absolute necessities for these ometimes broken simply d ifferences; women can potentially participate in discourses on medicine, d iagnoses, or hospital a dministration with as much profe ssionalism, creativity and impact as men — provided

specific means, or action p a

that certain conditions are present. Furthermore, in restructuring discourses in hospitals, the point is not to turn all discourses into discourses on medicine and hospital administration, neglecting both the discourse on the patients as well as the discourse on the family. Rather, the issue is to open up the discourses, letting them mutually enrich each other. When the discourses become linked, the bearers of the different types of knowledge and insight become visible to each other and some steps are taken towards a more democratic type of organization. The Birth Clinic Project: An overview The Birth Clinic is part of a hospital which serves the reglin of Jamtland. It employs about SO people; medical doctors, midwives, children's nurses, assistant nurses and service personnel. Before the project, the clinic was organized in a very traditional way. The hierarchical element was strong, with doctors and administrators at the top, various categories of nurses in the muddle, and the rest of the personnel — assistant nurses, cleaners, and so on — at the bottom. In addition, there was a strong element of functional specialization, exemplified by a split between the birth department and a baby care department. Formally, the mothers were assigned to the birth department while the babies belonged to the care department. Professional roles were practized in a traditional way, with the nurses in the baby care department actually nursing the babies while the parents were assigned the role of spectator. In line with more modern tendencies, the hospital management wanted to create an organization in which the care for the new-bom babies was left primarily to the parents. The hospital personnel were to adopt more advisory and supervisory roles. Letting the mothers (and even the fathers, who are today encouraged to participate in the process) take care of the babies would develop their baby caring competence, allowing mother and child to return home earlier. The `parents in focus' strategy would imply a change in the work roles of the staff in terms of their relationships with the parents as well as internally. The nurses who assist with the birth (the midwives: a specially trained group of nurses), for instance, would have to co-operate with the children's nurses (another special nursing category with a somewhat shorter training period than ordinary nurses) in new ways, each contributing from their special field of competence. The relationships between the parents and the personnel of the clinic, as well as the relationships between the various categories of personnel, are not only influenced by the relationship between the various relevant categories of professional knowledge, but also by the way the relationships are defined between professional knowledge and the knowledge associated with general human experience, which often has its base in tradition. There is a great deal of such knowledge since childbirth, after all, it is one of the few events that can with

;_1

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certainty be said to be as old as mankind. What role can this type of knowledge play within the framework of a hospital based birth process? Of course, the new style of organization would have an impact on the hierarchical clinical organization. An emphasis on a supportive role in relation to the parents meant that the clinical organization would acquire a more supportive and less directive character. It is in the hierarchical dimension that the menwomen issues are emerging in their most explicit form. Although birth clinics are generally dominated by women, in the sense that women occupy most of the work roles, the administrators and the department heads have generally been men. Even when men are absent and the roles are filled by women `the male discourse' lingers on, in the sense that when a woman becomes administrator or head doctor she adopts the linguistic performance of her male predecessors. Beginning with medicine and diagnoses at the top of the hierarchy, the nurses are located in a field where expert jargon is necessary to communicate upwards — a tendency that has been strengthened by creating an expert-oriented educational system in which nursing is seen to be as parallel to medicine as possible. A supportive role in relation to the parents, however, implies an ability to communicate differently in this relationship. Along with differences in conceptualization and modes of communication there is a tension between different sources of knowledge. For the nurses, the type of knowledge that grows out of practical experience is not only a knowledge that fills in and supplements medical knowledge in those fields which are not directly covered by it: it also happens that knowledge based on experience can be critical in deciding on the correct medical procedure in certain types of situations, such as the ability to understand the signals inherent in the way a baby cries, in the color of its skin, in the way it breathes, etc.: in knowing when something is wrong. While practice generated knowledge is of major importance it may, at the same time, be a more static type of knowledge than that generated by the rapidly advancing field of medicine. While patterns of work and collaboration should not underestimate practical knowledge it should, on the other hand, not ossify traditions within fields where new and better solutions are available. These are only a few examples of issues, problems and areas of tension that emerge when a hospital department is to be reorganized and that have to be dealt with through the development strategy that is created to bring about the reorganization process.

The development organization To specify and carry through a change, one needs actors and bodies to perform this task. Today, it is common to call such actors, bodies, etc., a development organization.

The development organization in the Birth Clinic consisted of the following elements: Conferences in which all employees participated. The purpose of the confer$ ences was to set up the overall framework for the development process. Altogether, five conferences were organized; since a Birth Clinic is never closed, conferences were split in the sense that two conferences were run in sequence each time to cover all the personnel. The main responsibility for action was carried by a vertical slice project group consisting of the head of the Clinic, department heads, representatives of the various professional categories and levels in the organization, together with the project co-ordinator and the external researcher. This group, as a whole, can be viewed as the project leader. The group met 17 times. After the first year, the head of the clinic, who was also the initiator of the project, delegated his tasks to the department heads The project co-ordinator has already been mentioned. The person in this role was responsible for co-ordination, external contacts and for keeping up some of the initiatives in the day-to-day work. The same person was responsible for equalization, measures within the regional state organization that is also the formal owner of the Ostersund regional hospital. The job was defined as an activity occupying 50% of the time. Homogeneous groups are arenas in which people with the same type of background and organizational position get together. Four such groups were established: one for managerial and administrative personnel, one for midwives, one for children's nurses, and one for assistant nurses and service personnel. Meetings were held once a month on average. Heterogeneous groups were also formed. These are defined as arenas in which people with different professional roles discuss issues with one another. There were five of these, with an average meeting frequency of once every six weeks. Departmental meetings are a permanent part of the co-determination system in the clinic and occur once a month. These meetings are chaired by the department head. Issues arizing from the development project were sometimes discussed in these meetings. Altogether five study tours were undertaken to other hospitals and clinics to gain experience with what happened elsewhere. Mixed groups participated in these tours. 9 Finally, an external researcher was linked to the project as part of the 1, development organization. This was a part time job (50 7o) for the first year, reduced to 25% in the second. The main task of the researcher was to work with the vertical slice project management group to provide some of the ideas for the project and act as a general discussion partner. The researcher also provided those

Ft=

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HAPTER 4 GENDER AND COMMUNICATION Previously, there were no discussions about work and perceptions of work. There were no discussions about the relationship between caring for the ill and caring for healthy people. Due to the project, we have had to rethink and start listening to each other. Listening to the midwives may not be such a stupid thing to rlo. We dare to talk to each other now — to discuss and say what we think. Previously, we talked with people from our own group only. Personally, I now have a totally new view of the relationship between mother and baby. Previously, I did not think in terms of the mother and baby as a unit. I have developed a better understanding of this relationship and how it functions. Now, the baby is allowed to be with the mother and is not brought directly into the baby care room. And how we deal with each mother and baby is not decided by administrative rules, but by a knowledge of the relationship between mother and baby. (Children's nurse) A midwife with many years in the profession described the previous situation in the following way: I wondered what we were about. The children's nurses reported about the babies only. The reports on the mothers — body or soul — came from other personnel. Nobody looked at the whole picture. The mothers noticed this. They were shuttled between different personnel. Even though we might know the answer to their questions, we could not tell them (if the right to answer belonged to someone else). This was because of the way in which the clinic was organized. Everything was based on routines. We did not have to do any planning. Whatever new things we needed to learn, we learned from the doctors' lectures. Now, the work is organized in such a way that we are forced to communicate. (Assistant nurse) Now, I talk more about my work when doing my job. Earlier, everything followed a regular course. There was no need for any discussion. (Assistant nurse) The often complex relationship between different types of knowledge is illustrated in the following: When bathing babies there is a nurse who tells a mother that there should be oil in the water. The next time she goes to bathe her baby another nurse tells her not to have oil in the water until after she has washed the baby's hair so as to avoid the baby getting oil in it. I tried to tell this nurse that the mother was given conflicting advice, but then she exploded. This is very typical. To say something is very sensitive. (Assistant nurse) In the beginning of the project we did not know what we were supposed to talk about. When we started, everything was supposed to be very grand. Discussions were to be conducted. However, we could not discuss such issues as coffee making. This was too trivial. In our discussions, we felt we had to discuss something medical, almost as if we had to attack the world's problems. But it was really coffee making we needed to discuss. Now, nothing is seen as too odd to be a subject of discussion. Previously, we were quiet. Now, when we're taking part in a discussion, and have an opinion, we come out with it. Before, there was talk in the corridors. If you can't express your views in one place, you 59

chaired all the conferences. This c ontribution will not give a step-by-step pr and dynamics of esentation of the ev olution the project, since this falls outside the scope focus will of the paper. Our rather be on how a communicational approach was ex people from the professional groups i perienced b nvolved, as illustrated by r interviews . esponses during At the same time, such an approach is interviews were c also illustrated `in action.' The onducted by Marianne Ekman Philips 10 the project. after the c onclusion of
Pe

rceptions of work in the Birth Clinic spondents pointed out that it is more e ncouraging and less epressing to work in a birth clinic than in an ordinary hospital de partment: It was care d stressful to work as an ordinary hospital nurse — depressing. In a baby epartment you work with people who are healthy. The work is positive and gratifying. A birth clinic is not a sick-room. (Nurse) Another factor c ontributing to a positive view the fact that it does not call for an emotional inv of work in the birth clinic is over into non-working time: olvement with effects that spill This is a job that you can leave behind when you go home. Pr worked in a surgical de eviously, partment, I often kept thinking about the job when I came home. I do, h when owever, have a family of my own. I want to be with myI s and have familytressful the energy for it when I'm at home. I have heard from others with work that they often brin g such as I have it is true that onehave problems relating to their family In a job s much of the ho usewife role into the work situation. I do odds and ends jobs; help the mothers, organize their things, help them in the (Assistant nurse) shower and clean up after them when they have gone home. This is a happy place. In the rest of the hospital there are sick people. In with sick people one easily comes to share their t working demanding. Previously, ragedies. This is heavy and to. I worked in a general medical d nobody there to talk (M idwife) epartment and there was Before (and after) the project Although the birth clinic is a unique de partment within the hospital, since it deals inv with people who are not ill, there are nevertheless demands for e motional or olvement. Before the project, there were no arenas for discussion within the ganization in which work e x up: perience and emotional problems could be taken A number of the d re 60

CHAPTER 4 have to find another. Now people dare to say what they think and believe; they dare stand up for their opinions. (Midwife)

GENDER AND COMMUNICATION

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Statements of this type illustrate the pattern of started; a pattern built on specialization and a c organization before the project orresponding lack of discussion across professional and departmental boundaries. Moreover, it is also built on regulation and routines, in an effort to imitate a machine-like production process with little need for discussion.' [ The statements also illustrate (some of) the results of the project. Analytically speaking, one should separate ` before' from ` after.' This, however, is hard to do in a co mmunicational approach. Here, the point is that how things were ` before' can only be seen in the light of how they are ` after.' The patterns of the past become visible only in the light of a new pattern.
The homogenous groups

steering group is primarily that these groups are larger and provide inputs into the change process rather than carrying the managerial responsibility of the vertical slice. These groups met every sixth week on average. Groups of this kind are not as common in development work as homogenous groups. Here, however, there was a great need for groups in which issues dealing with the relationships between the professional groups could be taken up and discussed as openly as possible. It must also be born in mind that the participants in the heterogeneous groups could relate back to their homogenous groups. In this way, the heterogeneous groups became bridge builders between the professional groups and the integrative process. We have met once a month. Our group has functioned well. We were nine persons from the beginning. Our topics of discussion have been questions about breast feeding and group organization. In this type of group there is a feeling that we need to achieve something and not - just indulge in small talk. We know that what we conclude is to be fed into the change process. We have made a decision about group based work organization. When we made this proposal it was discussed in the homogenous groups first, and then at the departmental meeting. At this meeting decisions can be made if we agree. I experience no gap between the discussion in the heterogeneous group and in the department meeting. Nor has it ever happened, in the homogenous group to which 1 belong, that we have gone against a proposal developed in the heterogeneous group. ( Midwife) My group works well. Everybody has a say and has participated in the discussions. In the beginning we did not really say much, but now we have warmed up and dare to discuss things and take a stand. In the beginning 1 was negative about the meetings — 'how dreary to have to go this meeting.' I felt as if the midwives wanted to overrun us. It felt as if they had decided in advance how the discussions should proceed. So we children's nurses showed our teeth. It took some time for us to reorient ourselves. It took almost a year before I understood the new way to work with mother and baby and that what the midwives had to say was reasonable. (Children's nurse) Everybody can talk about the mother-baby relationship since we all have a stake in it. In addition, we get new perspectives. We get to know about things we have not thought about before. The leadership in the group depends on what is being discussed. Sometimes it is difficult to see the links between the discussions in the groups and new forms of practice. Real change is taking place. I have an example in the form of a discussion in our group which was fed into the homogenous groups and later into the department meeting and led to a change in the handling of blood test tubes. (Midwife) Here we empty ourselves. The children's nurses started by arguing that changing the organization is wrong. There is also a threat that children's nurses be removed altogether. After such confrontations it becomes easier to discuss things and get work done, although there is still talk in the corridors. To address a conflict across the table in a group discussion is something new. The discussions have improved. I no longer feel that the children's nurses experience me as a threat, in the way they used to. They were afraid of my taking over their job.

In development work, homogenous groups are generally applied to create a familiar and safe e nvironment for each participant since these groups are made up of people with identical backgrounds and work roles. For this reason, such groups also provide arenas for raizing issues emerging out of shared interests. There were four such groups in the Birth Clinic project: management and administration, midwives, children's nurses, and assistant nurses and service personnel. There was an average of one meeting a month, each meeting lasting between one and two hours. The meetings are positive experiences. It is easier to come to agreement with people in the samevsituation as oneself. Things are simple and s elf-evident when we talk. We think ery much alike. Everybody dares say what she thinks. If one wonders about something, one asks. We want to keep this group. There is a need to talk. (Midwife) We mostly discuss routines, how to organize the work. (Children's nurse) In the h omogeneous group the otherwise silent girls are willing to talk. Everyone's view can come out. (Assistant nurse) Such groups are generally intended as elements of more co mprehensive systems of development organization. As illustrated by the statements, they have certain positive functions, but in themselves they often lack the learning potential and dynamism needed-to create change.

I i ,

The heterogeneous groups

There were five of the heterogeneous groups, all groups being composed of all types of personnel. The difference between these groups and the vertical slice

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HAPTER 4 GENDER AND COMMUNICATION 63

There are, an We

h

owever, critical voices, too: what we need to bring up in the homogenous and heterogeneous groups. One gets to hear where all the different groups are at. We always try to have a meeting in the homogenous group after the meeting in the vertical slice since one gets such good ideas. (Assistant nurse) Critical comments occur: The meetings in which I have participated do not generate much. Few decisions are made. Some of the participants are negative and afraid. It is up to them what they make of the project. Some are enthusiastic. The vertical slice is too ambitious construction, too many representatives who have too little to contribute. (Doctor) This illustrates some of the key elements of project management, such as the complex interplay between giving a project shape and contour, the making of actual decisions, and the arguing of these decisions in relation to those concerned.

talk about the same issues as in the homogenous group, but we never get ywhere. p e a meeting sWe mostly quarrel since we have such very different views. We had cifically to discuss what to discuss. We agreed on e training. It was possible to conduct a d ducation and iscussion about this. Several people have made study visits to look at new fu forms of training and then we could discuss this. I do not find that the group nctions groups and the vertical slice project ma so well. I hope that the homogenous project. (Assistant nurse) nagement group will remain after the These s tatements illustrate the n itty-gritty details of professional in of opening up a relationship, learning to u tegration: nderstand each other, creating some elements of common ground to reach decisions and p r su pported by ev oposals which can be erybody. It must be re membered that breakin g pro fessional barriers in the health services is generally more difficult than in other areas, due to the very strong e mphasis placed s professi pecifically on ary drawing in this type of or onalization and boundganization.

The vertical slice project

ma

nagement group

Results After two years, the results of the project, as defined in an evaluation conference, are as follows: The previous, rather static type of organization and work situation has been replaced by a more developmentally oriented work situation and surrounding patterns of organization. All categories of personnel are involved in development work in a way which is integrated with their ordinary job. A new communication structure has evolved. One of the consequences is that all categories of personnel are now involved in communication about work and working roles: an assistant nurse, returning from parental leave, expressed it in the following way: How odd. You no longer talk about how things are at home. Nobody asks me about that any more. You talk about other things now — more about the job. The vertical slice project management group has to a great extent taken over as the decision making body of the clinic and is seen as a much more democratic system, due to its link with other groups and arenas. The two different departments are integrated, on the whole, and corresponding professional dividing lines have been overcome. A better co-operation has evolved between the children's nurses and the midwives. The organization has become more supportive in relation to the mothers and less directive. There is a greater recognition of the mother-baby unit and the need to deal with both together.

The more specific role of such a group depends on the cha project and what elements exist in the total development orracteristics of the development organization is thin ganization. If the slice group only — — it may, in some cases, consist of the vertical then a great deal of work and decision making group. With a comprehensive development or ganization like that in the Birth Clinic project, the burden on the project ma nagement group was much less. This is reinforced by the point that, in creating integrative and su a hospital or ganization, it is not so much a question of d pportive structures in And in doing it, it was the w eciding, but of doing it. idespread net of d iscussions in the various types of groups and bodies that carried the burden. erstanding of the project h as improved through my m group. I get to know more and exert more influence. The otherembership of the group m listen to me. In the vertical group the d embers to be carried out. We are also re iscussions focus on how the changes are sponsible for informing the rest of the organization about what has been decided in the vertical group. To be able to do this its we have to clarify our own thinking —. what is the project about; what are aims? For instance, when we make a decision about training in the vertical d group, I have undgo out and give a 'pep talk' for training. In this way I have eveloped an to erstanding sions in the ho mogenous and of the project. Earlier I did not raze. The discusthe hete itself, rogeneous groups relate more to the work nurse) procedures and problems in the baby room, and the like. (Children's
Pa In

My

und

the meeting rticipation is vwe go through what has happened since the last meeting. ery gratifying. We talk about what we need to talk about and

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Learning and competence development no longer occur solely through lectures, but have become an integrated part of ordinary work and the ongoing surrounding discussions. The ability to deal with conflicts is judged to be better, although this is still a difficult field. Perhaps of primary importance: there is a recognition of dialogue as a tool in the efforts to create a better workplace. The development organization which was created as a part of the project is continuing and is increasingly taking over as the regular clinical organization. To end with an evaluating remark from the clinic manager: Since care is the important function in a Birth Clinic, communication between doctors and nurses has to be good. The patients are not ill and their status cannot be measured by the use of instruments. This means that good communication between all the professional categories and between them and the. mothers is necessary for high quality care. Today we have an organization in which communication can be described as two-way. The doctors get information from the staff and the staff dare to take up initiatives with the doctors. Previously the staff even averted their gaze from the doctors.
~t

Concluding remarks A case of this kind illustrates some major aspects of workplace development and associated issues and problems. A ` project' as a specific series of events occurring at a certain period in time always has a past and a future. The project enters a stream of events and leaves a stream behind it — its function has been to influence this stream in certain ways. Unlike certain redesign and management turnaround projects reported in the literature, 12 the type of project evolving in the Birth Clinic rarely gives dramatic results in brief periods of time. Such projects nearly always build on some forces, trends or elements that are present before the project begins, to help make these trends more clear-cut, forceful and strong relative to other trends. Hence they seldom constitute major discontinuities. When the project is over, the processes continue to generate still further changes — actually, more substantial changes often occur well after a formal project has been concluded. (Evil tongues may argue that the tumaround projects reported in the literature are just literary phenomena — but this is a debate we shall not enter here.) In terms of theories of knowledge, projects of this kind indicate a complex relationship between knowledge, which is not only made explicit, but which is also mutually and officially recognised in the organization; and unrecognized, non-verbalized knowledue..All the personnel in a unit like the Birth Clinic are bearers of 'large amounts' of knowledge, insights and skills of various kinds, of which only a part is operative in the clinic as it functions at each voint in ti mf-

The purpose of a dialogue-based development approach is less to create new knowledge — although this sometimes happens — than to restructure the particular pattern of knowledge which is operative in a specific organization. As a part of this reconfiguration, there will be changes in terms of how knowledge is made explicit and perhaps also some transformation of knowledge from a nonexplicit to an explicit level. The sum total of operative knowledge in an organization will have to change over time and the main point of a dialogue-based approach is to improve the ability of the organization to continuously put such changes into effect. What about the gender issue: the role of women in the organization? Absent from the quotations above is one from a male department head who, red in the face, tells an assistant nurse to go home with her folk tales and start reading some medicine. Such situations may occur, but they are rare. The problem is not primarily one of irrational personal encounters, but of established discourses. The problems attacked in this project had to do with the routinization, functional specialization, semi-industrial production philosophy and lack of human centred dialogues with the mothers that had emerged as salient features of the prevailing i3 hospital organization — and not only in this Birth Clinic. These features are `carried in discourse ' in the sense that when they materialise it is because there is a complex web of concepts, arguments and reasons that tell those who build and run hospitals that this is how it should be done. Against this we find a more patient-centred approach, a more complex mixture of medical knowledge, practices of nursing, administrative demands and experience-based insights. Here it must also be remembered that much knowledge is not simply `medicine or not'; a discipline like medicine has a large interface with various forms of practical experience where knowledge is produced all the time. There is also a need to generate discussions with the patients, aimed at helping the patient master his or her own problems and where patient operationality is the chief criterion. Although there is no absolute dividing line in the sense that it is men only who have developed the (now) traditional `discourse on hospital organization,' while women represent the opposition, such a dividing line still has a strong link to the gender issue since, on the whole, it is women who present and argue those alternatives which are now gradually modifying such examples of hospital organization as the Birth Clinic. Consequently, there are often strong links between the gender issue and the language issue. Inasmuch as the issue of gender is linked to discourses and the legitimation of knowledge, it follows that the work relevant characteristics of, respectively, men and women become context bound — depending on the type of organization, its historically given structure, and associated problems and performance needs. The type of approach pursued in the Birth Clinic project . does not support a `fundamental difference ' thesis: such a thesis has to be founded on a ntk— t'-- of avnar— i?'tk— 4- --t;nI -- I;ru 1—t„r- - -A ,....

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as human beings is emphasized, while historically given patterns of language, legitimation of knowledge and organization of work are seen as the sources of inequality. As noted in the Introduction, it can also be added that underlying a strategy such as the one pursued in the Birth Clinic project, one finds a limited belief in the potential of improving the conditions of women — at work or elsewhere — solely through written contributions to a presumed `process of enlightenment:' there is so much doubt concerning the existence of a societylevel process of enlightenment, where contributions from research enter and exert an influence, that it is a problematic strategy to pursue — at least if it is the only strategy pursued.

Notes
1. Rehnstr6m, K. and Drejhammar, I.B. 1990. Organisationsutveckling och Jdmstdlldhet: [Organizational development and equal opportunities]. Stockholm: Arbets mi1j6fonden. Gustaysen, B. 1990. Vdgen till bdure arbetsliv. [The way to improve working life] Stockholm: Arbetslivscentrum. Engelstad, P. and Gustaysen, B. 1993. `Swedish network development for implementing national work reform strategy.' Human Relations, 46(2), 219—248. Gustaysen, B. 1992. Dialogue and development. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum. For a broad evaluation and discussion of this thesis within a Swedish as well as a broader international context, see Naschold, F. et al. 1991 Constructing the New Industrial Society. Assen/ Maastricht: Van Gorcum. Habermas, J. 1984/87. The Theory of Communicative Action, vol, I, II. London: Polity Press. McCarthy, T. 1976. The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, see also Chapter 10 of this book. Womack, J. er al. 1990. The Machine That Changed the World. London: Macmillan Rawson Associates. Helling, J. 1991. Vdrldsmdstarnd. [World Champions] Stockholm: Sellin & Partner forlag AB. Engelstad, P. and Gustaysen, B. 1993. loc. cit., op. cit. Lindgren, G. 1992. Doktorer, systrar och flickor. [Doctors, nurses and girls] Stockholm: Carlssons. Regarding the role of broad-based conferences in development projects see Gustaysen, B. and Engelstad, P. 1986. 'The design of conferences and the evolving role of democratic dialogue in changing working life. ' Human Relations, 39(2), 101—116 and Gustaysen, B. 1992, op. cit. K. Rehnstr6m, one of the authors of this paper. The other author of the paper. Garden, B., Gustafsson, R.A. 1977. Sjukvdrd pd ldpande band. ]Line production in health care] Stockholm: Prisma. Thatis, Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R_H. 1982. In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row cop. Garden, B., Gustafsson, R.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

A. et al. 1977. op. cit.

® Academy of Management Executive,

2000, Vol. 14, No. 1

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The next frontier: Edgar Schein on organizational therapy
Interview by James Campbell Quick with Joanne H. Garvin Executive Overview

This marks the debut of Crosstalk, a collaboration between The Executive and European Management Journal created to encourage dialogue and exchange of ideas among leading management scholars in North America and Europe. We have designed Crosstalk to span the two journals, and the content of each journal complements, rather than duplicates, that of the other. We plan to feature Crosstalk periodically. In this inaugural Crosstalk, Edgar Schein from the U.S. and Manfred Kets de Vries from France discuss their contributions to the field as well as their current thinking on important new concepts. An interview with Edgar Schein appears in The Executive, followed by a commentary by Dr. Kets de Vries and a reply by Dr. Schein. The February 2000 issue of European Management Journal uses the same format and includes an interview with Dr. Kets de Vries, a commentary by Schein, and Kets de Vries 's reply. Abstracts of the interviews and biographical sketches are published in each journal. To gain a full perspective of the in-depth interviews, thoughtful dialogue, and lively exchange of ideas, readers are encouraged to read the Crosstalk in both journals. Edgar Schein has made many outstanding intellectual contributions over his long and distinguished career to our contemporary understanding of human behavior in groups and organizations. He was born in Switzerland of Czech and German parents and arrived in the United States at the age of 10. He considers himself thoroughly Americanized, his identity is clearly American, and at the same ti me he is able to draw on and empathize with European experiences. He is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, where he has taught since 1956. 1 He has written a seminal text in organizational psychology, a specialty that he helped to frame with Bernard Bass and Harold Leavitt. He was also a founder of the field of career dynamics, developed the concept and practice of process consultation, conducted and published work on clinical research, and has more recently concentrated primarily on organizational culture and leadership. a Dr. Schein 's latest activities include extending and deepening his focus on the dynamics of organizational subculture, developing a survival guide for organizational members, as well as revisiting his early research on brainwashing and coercive persuasion in the context of organizational learning. 3 The following interview integrates Dr. Schein 's ideas about culture, communication, dialogue, and interpersonal relationships, with the central focus being on pathology and health in organizational settings. His latest book is reviewed in this issue. ...................................................................................................................................................................................... Would you tell us a little about your background? I am mostly American because from age 10, English and American culture were the only things I needed until later in life. I had learned two other languages but they are gone. But I do think having gone from Switzerland through three other countries, namely Russia, Czechoslovakia, and the United States by
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age 11, has certainly colored my personality and my professional outlook. Having to adjust successfully to different cultures made me a very cautious, careful observer because the price of mistakes was very high. I do not think it ' s accidental that in my philosophy of process consultation and working with organizations I have put a tremendous emphasis on being a careful and sensitive observer of what is

going on before having any kind of reaction. Yet it is paradoxical because I have, in recent years, pushed the idea that data gathering and diagnosis as. a stage in working with groups or organizations is illogical because the process of gathering data is in itself an intervention. My current thinking is that we have to develop models and a science that credits intervention and observation as being parallel and simultaneous processes. They are not sequential. If I go into an organization to observe something, my presence there, what questions I ask, and everything I do is an intervention in that organization ' s life. Intentional or unintentional? Intentional or unintentional. So the notion that I can go in there and " gather data in order to plan an intervention later" is, I now realize, one of the most nonsensical ideas in the field of consulting. Yet there are a lot of consulting theories built on the notion that there is this period where you diagnose and gather information before you intervene. I think a therapeutic model works much better. The therapist has to start thinking about his or her behavior visa-vis the client from the moment the client calls and says: " Can you see me?" The very next thing the therapist says is already an intervention. At the same time, the way the client responds provides the data for an ongoing diagnostic process. The rules of behavior that I go by are more guided by what kind of intervention I am making than the question of will I get valid data or will this reveal the right kind of information? Those are secondary priorities. Primary considerations are what will be the impact of how I answer the telephone, and how I deal with the client's questions or how I relate moment to moment to the situation. That too comes out of cultural learning. Entering a new culture, you have got to think about how you are acting even as you are trying to gather data about what is going on here. So it is a simultaneous kind of adjustment process? Yes, with the priority being on thinking about the consequences of your actions. On the other? Yes. If I understand your concept of dialogue correctly, that also requires an internal process of self-observation of what is going on with me at the same time I am interacting with the other. Yes. The reason why dialogue is an important concept in the whole theory of communication and

listening is that it redresses the balance between observing the other and observing oneself. I think a lot of the listening theories that are floating around put way too much emphasis on intense observation and listening to the other, of watching their facial expression and their body language. In that process you get so preoccupied with the other that you pay very little attention to what is coming out of your own head and your own mouth. Dialogue gets you to say, " Wait a minute! Before you are even in a good position to figure out what this other person is doing, you have got to get acquainted with your own filters, your own assumptions, and your own biases. " So by putting the focus on self-analysis and self-observation, I think it leads to much better ultimate listening. Listening to the other is secondary to listening to the self.
Listening to the other is secondary to listening to the self.

So dialogue has a dual focus? Yes, it has a dual focus with the priority being on what I am doing and what the consequences are of what I am doing. You mentioned the therapeutic model as your preferred model. Do you see a single therapeutic model or different ones, such as for medicine, psychology, and social therapy? I can answer that question best by recounting some experiences when I was first stimulated by Doug MacGregor, way back in 1956, to go to Bethel, Maine, and get involved with the leadership training groups or T-groups. I had learned a great deal about groups and social psychology at Harvard from George Homans, Robert Bales and other theories. When I actually got into a T-group, it was like a whole other world opened up that I had never seen before. Real people doing real things in somewhat of an emotional context made visible stuff that none of the textbooks, none of the experiments, none of the formal research even got close to, with the possible exception of the Tavistocktype research. So, I went through a transition of seeing that there are really two ways to experience something. You can read about it and look where the correlations are and what the formal science teaches you in the way of concepts and constructs, or you can experience those same things directly. There is often a huge gap between what you expe-

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rience and what you know conceptually from research. Then the whole concept of the trainer of the group being a low-key facilitative interventionist to help the group to learn about itself was a role model that was brand new to me. It is a way of teaching, stimulating, and influencing, while, at the same time, learning. Those were formative experiences. I discovered that there is a way of working with groups that is different from the formal social psychological models and is much more related to what group therapists talk about, what the Tavistock researchers talk about, and what the family therapists talk about. So the therapeutic model that begins to emerge is not the individual psychiatric model, but one that draws on those therapies that from the beginning had to deal, for various reasons, with more complex human systems. I had the sense that the Tavistock group in their coal mining studies, and the European groups that were experimenting with the therapeutic communities, had a much better sense of social systems and the complexity of working with those systems. My own experience as a consultant showed me that the reason organizational consulting is as complex as it is, is because you have to use different kinds of therapeutic approaches with different client systems. When I spend time with an individual manager, that has a lot of elements of individual counseling. When I get into a meeting, I have to draw on models and skills that have to do with how to work with a group. Or, if I get involved in planning a cultural change program that is going to impact multiple layers in the organization and hundreds of people, I now have to draw on still other models or theories of what sort of a thing would work on that systematic scale and how you get that implemented. What makes me talk about it as a clinical process, is that it is always geared to the organization feeling that something is not right, that it is always trying to fix something or improve something. It is never pure research. It is never pure inquiry. It is always biased toward some improvement process. There is always, by implication, some pathology someplace. Something is not right and you are trying to fix it or improve it. So you need to acknowledge that you are working as a clinician and there is pathology, and pathology not in a sense of dead carcasses and postmortems. Rather, it is more like clinical pathology where you are working constantly with toxins and with residues the organization creates, and you are trying to help the system to become more healthy.

Is the pathological element coming mostly from the medical model? Is that the piece of your emerging concept of organizational therapy that is causing the rub with some people? Let me answer that by talking a little bit about Peter .4 Frost ' s new ideas He has recently come up with a formulation that organizations produce toxins, and one of the ways one can analyze organizations is to see what happens to these toxins. Who deals with them and how? That metaphor really hit home with me, particularly the notion that one should not label whole organizations as either toxic or non-toxic, as Jeffrey Pfeffer does, but should recognize that in all human systems toxins are a normal by-product of a process of growth and development. But the normality includes the remedial action of systems like the liver, the kidneys, and the immune system that deal with the toxins in such a way that the system stays healthy. So the stress levels and anxieties that are produced by organizations in the normal course of working can be thought of as social toxins. And you can then ask, "Where are the kidneys and the liver in the organization that are helping to detoxify so that the organization can continue to function? Where is the organizational immune system and how is it operating? " Someone the other day said "Our organization has a low-grade fever. " I thought that was a wonderful metaphor. The point is that some level of toxicity is normal. That really has to be hammered home rather than thinking' of toxicity as abnormal. The body is producing toxins all the time. Peter Frost points out that in organizations, the equivalent of the liver, kidneys, and the immune system is a set of humans who are the processors of those toxins. They absorb anxiety and compensate for some of the pathological things that other people in the organization are doing. The system breaks down only when either those people are not available, or they themselves get overloaded and get sick. So these people he is talking about metabolize the anxiety or the toxins? Right. In other words, when he says they absorb them, they do not necessarily internalize them to the point that they become dysfunctional themselves. On the contrary, he argues that such internalization happens all the time and causes some of the individual sickness that people in organizations experience. He came upon this idea because he himself got cancer after being an associate dean,

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which he considered to be an exhilarating but very stressful period. He is seriously speculating whether the reason he got sick was because he was not able to metabolize the organizational toxins, or in some other ways discharge them. So this is some of his thinking in response to his personal cancer. Absolutely. And the cancer treatments actually involve introductions of toxins, right? Are not most of our pharmaceutical therapeutic interventions based on toxic materials? I have not heard him talk about this aspect, but it is in itself an intriguing idea. The organizational equivalent might be living through stressful times in order to toughen the system. Many organizational theorists argue that a period of intense competition is good for an organization in that it learns to be more efficient through that process. Or going through a near bankruptcy might make an organization stronger, tougher, and more able. I think one could say, yes, we often introduce toxins. We give people " stretch assignments" that we know will be stressful in order to toughen them up. I do not know how literally one can work the cancer thing because you could also talk about heart attacks and other forms of disease that result from stress and then think of remedial measures that are more analogous to surgery, bed rest, antibiotics, and so on.

tients. 5 They talk it through, very actively, with other psychiatrists and try to figure out some way to rationalize what happened and why, usually to show that there was not much they could have done, it was not their responsibility, and so on. If they had no outlet, they would get sick. As a medical student, my grandfather s always marveled at how Adolf Meyer would seem so calm when he brought psychiatric patients to the medical class at Johns Hopkins, and say, "Well, well, what is your mood today?" Meyer never seemed to get excited.' It was not until my grandfather ' s own psychoanalysis in the 1940s that he learned from his analyst, Dr. McCord, that Meyer went home at night and pounded the piano for an hoi;r. That ' s right. He put his energy into that. When I was a consultant with Digital Equipment Corporation for many years, I probably spent a lot of time just being the depository of different managers ' stresses. They would tell me about all their troubles, and that relieved them. I dealt with my stress and fatigue from having to listen attentively and help by translating their stories into interesting data that I could learn from. I wonder how much consulting serves that kind of stress-relieving function, particularly at the higher executive levels, where a consultant would have regular meetings with senior managers. I think those meetings often have less to do with formulating concepts or strategy, and more to do with catharsis and anxiety reduction. Leonard Moss, apparently, did a fair amount of that with senior Mobil executives e The paradox, or the thing I have the hardest time getting across in my process consultation workshops, is that we have the model pretty well worked through for dealing with an individual, but we have very few models for how to do stress reduction or therapy with groups and larger systems. We can sit down with individual executives and counsel them. We sort of know how to do that. However, in dealing therapeutically with a larger system, an organization, because we use individual or small group models, we are surprised when we can only improve the functioning of the individual or the small team. The ' larger system does not improve. Peter Senge s work on the learning organization is brilliant in turning on people, and even small groups, but then it often fails

Many organizational theorists argue that a period of intense competition is good for an organization in that it Iearns to be more efficient through that process.
But Frost' s further notion, which I think is very interesting, is the observation that the stress absorbers need their own stress reduction therapeutic system. So the boss who contains the anxiety of his department, who keeps encouraging people even though times are tough, is taking home a lot of stress every night. He or she has to have an outlet in the form of a particularly helpful colleague, spouse, or a group of people with whom to share frustrations. The analogy that comes to mind is psychiatrists or consultants who share the stress of dealing with their clients by telling war stories to each other during informal or formal meetings. There was even a study done on this by Don Light about how psychiatrists deal with suicides of pa-

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to influence the larger organization. The organizational culture immune system prevents innovative ways of working from spreading, and we realize in restrospect that we should have been considering the larger culture in the first place. But we don ' t yet know how to systemically intervene in the larger culture. So some of these organizational learning concepts work at the first two levels of analysis, as you sense. But at the organizational system level, what process is happening? Does the organization see whatever is going on there as kind of a foreign agent? That has been my experience with several projects. It happens in this way: The small group that really latches on to the new concepts and really gets enamored with the power of a better way of doing things finds that learning is exciting and wonderful. But they get so enthusiastic that they begin to make the other levels anxious, and probably envious, to the point where those other levels react defensively. Sort of like the Hovey and Beard Company case that Alex Bavelas wrote. 9 A group of women employees on a paint line lobbied to be given control over the speed of the line. The engineers said the women would -not work up to the engineers ' calibrated speed. Well, the women actually worked faster, on average, over each day than the engineers ' calibrated speed. They would start out slowly and speed up. They got more pay as their control increased, and that created anxiety on the part of the engineers and managers of other systems. So ultimately the larger system responded by killing off the women 's control. I have quoted that story and remember Bavelas telling that story. I encountered him at MIT when I was a graduate student. In fact, he is one of the reasons I came to MIT. He is one of my heroes. I have added another wrinkle to the story that may have been my invention. I thought that both the supply unit and the sales unit balked because, if the intermediate production unit worked faster, that would mean they would have to work faster too. There is a further issue that the unit that gets excited, equivalent to the women doing the paint production, begins to look at the rest of the organization as being pathological. Why cannot everybody work in this wonderful new way that we are working? I think that perception begins to get across to others and causes defensive reactions. The classic case from our learning center is the

auto company case, which is going to be published soon as a learning history. 1D The task force working on the project worked with the MIT learning center and used many of the learning organization tools, resulting in their bringing the car to a final design stage much quicker and way under budget. They had successfully opened up communication channels inside the design group which allowed problems to surface early and simultaneously so they could be worked on systemically instead of sequentially. In the old system, the norm was that you brought up a problem only if you had a solution, causing sequential problem solving that resulted in a much slower process, because every time one problem would be solved another would be created. If the car needed more computers, that would require a bigger battery, which would add weight to the car, which would require bigger tires, which would cause more vibration, and so on. However at one point, the new simultaneous system of problem identification created a pool of problems so large that higher management panicked and said, "You guys are out of control. You have got to get this thing under control. " The team ignored the message and did its own thing and did it successfully. But when the car did come in finally under budget in a shorter time, senior management attributed that to the fact that they had gotten the group under control. The wrong lesson was learned, but that is perhaps typical and should be expected. There is no reason to believe that the larger culture is going to be cheerfully accepting some skunk works experiment or some innovation that threatens its own value system. So my point is: When are we going to learn to work with the whole system, the whole culture, and with the power centers? We do not have very good models for that.
11 And why is that? In a recent set of papers you pointed out that all organizations have subcultures and that three critical subcultures that have very different assumptions are operations, engineering and design, and the executive subculture that is all about financial survival. Is it possible that the helping professions have a culture of their own and that they are concerned with people, but those values are not necessarily shared by executives and engineers? Is part of the dilemma that we make our own assumptions about what ought to be happening in the system without, as you say, working through the power centers?

I think you are right. Our value system of having a fuller, richer, more fulfilling life may be subcultural within the helping professions and we may

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need to face up to the possibility that something we want for the human condition generally is not congruent with how large systems, corporations, and government bureaucracies define their values. Introducing those humanistic values may be an unrealistic task. Maybe they can function only by aligning the operational, engineering, and financial subcultures, granting that each subculture is needed for a large system to function, survive, and grow. If you are trying to run a global organization of multiple cultures operating with different technologies and in different political systems, can you give primary emphasis to OD values? We are kind of naive if we think that. If we were in their shoes, we might organize just the way they do. Suppose we said, instead, that the OD consultant should help engineers become better designers and help executives to become better financial managers. Suppose we assumed that any system 's effectiveness ultimately depends on the alignment of effective design, operations, and financial management. One of the things that seemed to surprise Sheila Puffer as a graduate student at Berkeley working with Barry Staw, given his behavioral research interest, was learning that his master ' s degree was in finance. His father apparently was an entrepreneur. He had a whole economic perspective that seems to me somewhat atypical given his behavioral side. Actually OD tends to badmouth the economists and the financial people instead of trying to understand them. When we confront them with their oversimplifications of psychological realities, they point out that they are not trying to be psychologists, they are trying to be economists. They are working at a different level of analysis. I think it is interesting that in one case from the learning center that really was quite successful, a CEO decided that before anything else would be done he would impose very tough economic targets and bring in a professor of economics to teach all the layers of management what it meant to add value from the economic point of view. He asked them to rethink their own jobs from an economic point of view. And in the process of having to improve the economics of their situation they discovered they had to be more open with each other, that they had to build teams, and they had to be more collaborative. Those were all consequences of trying to be more efficient and effective, rather than primary values. I think there is an important lesson here because in my experience a lot of culture change programs skip the business problem and the economic real -

ities and go straight to advocating new cultures of teamwork, empowerment, openness, service, and the like. I keep finding myself asking: "Why? What are you trying to accomplish in the work arena? What is the business problem you are trying to solve?" So is this back to your concept of focusing on what the business issue is? We cannot start culture change without some reason for doing so. Does that mean that then we have to start with symptoms? You have to start with symptoms, with disconfirming data, with burning platforms. There are various metaphors, but the evidence seems to be piling up that real change does not start to happen until the organization is experiencing some real threat or some real pain. That pain can be felt in the form of guilt in recognizing that certain values or ideals are not being met. The goal can then be a very positive improvement goal, but it is still based on experienced tension between what is desired and what is perceived to be the present reality. Would that be what you called Anxiety 2? I would now call it " survival anxiety, " and argue that it is a necessary but not sufficient stimulus to change. Survival anxiety is the feeling that unless we learn something new we are going to be out of business or fail to achieve some important goals. The reason it is not sufficient for learning is that the prospect of learning something new itself produces anxiety, what I have called "learning anxiety." We realize that new learning may make us temporarily incompetent, may expose us to rejection by valued groups, and, in the extreme, may cause us to lose our identity. Learning anxiety makes us react defensively by denying the reality or validity of the data that triggered the survival anxiety, and allows us to rationalize that we do not really need to change after all. Learning anxiety is the basis for resistance to change.

Learning anxiety is the basis for resistance to change.
Is that a paralyzing kind of anxiety? It can be. I have seen it most clearly in the computer area. Senior executives decide that everyone

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will be on electronic mail; anyone who is not will not be in the communication loop and the company will be less efficient. That causes survival anxiety in the next layer of the organization. But learning anxiety quickly surfaces because executives who used to call secretaries and dictate to them now realize that it was the secretaries who fixed all the grammar and spelling. For them now to sit down at a computer terminal and expose the fact that they do not know how to spell or how to construct a sentence can be such a traumatic identity shift that they typically make all kinds of arguments as to why they do not have to be included or why the new technology is really not needed. For new learning and change to begin, survival anxiety has to be greater than learning anxiety. But there are two ways of accomplishing this. The wrong way is to increase survival anxiety because that leads usually to more defensiveness and denial. The right way is to reduce learning anxiety by creating psychological safety for the learner. Clever bosses in this situation will recognize the existence of learning anxiety and reduce it by providing lots of training, acknowledging the identity shift, and even saying that they do not care who does the typing. " We are all going to be on e-mail. The e-mail part is nonnegotiable. But how you get there is up to you and I am going to give you some options. " So the goal is firm and the means are flexible. That is the key to creating psychological safety. The change agent will keep firm on the goals but will try to make the learning process as painless as possible. That is what good coaches do. Think about your tennis game or your golf game. You want to improve your stroke, but you also know very well that that is going to be awful. There is going to be a period of time when you are going to be worse than you are now. The difference bet ween a good teacher and a bad teacher will be his or her ability to get you through that period. There are all kinds of ways that good coaches and change agents can do that. The key is to stay firm on the goal, but to give a lot of participatory power to the learner on the means.

pervisors now to be able to assess for themselves whether a pool of stuff is really oil, is really toxic, and is really in need of being cleaned up. The supervisor is no longer an expert. He does not know or he is not around when a situation is encountered. For each employee, that is potentially a traumatic change in personal identity, in relationships to authority, and in relationships to other employees. They must now work as a team and be responsible to each other. To create psychological safety for these employees, the process of learning first of all involves a lot of training in the classroom on how to diagnose stuff. They get a lot of group practice in simulations and a lot of expert support. If they are not sure out in the field what to do, there is a hot line to call to bring environmental experts to the scene. At the same time, the supervisors have to be retrained not to fall back into the old habit of just making the decisions. As employees gradually learn to take more responsibility, new heroes emerge as role models of how the new system should work. New mythologies are created on how so-and-so figured out something that was really a better way of doing things, and the new heroes are then given a lot of publicity and rewards. Both the reward system and the discipline system have to be redesigned to reinforce the new way of working so that gradually new employee identities are formed. Some people will not be able to learn the new way. Some people will quit and say, "I cannot do this. " But the new people they bring in are empowered in this way from the beginning. It takes five to 10 years to make such a cultural change because new identities and relationships have to be formed throughout all the levels of the organization. Is that what adolescence is? Yes, that is right. But, adolescence, in a sense, is easier because you are building on a fairly open, flexible format. When you tell 35- or 45-year-old employees who have lived their whole lives in one organization that they have to change, there is tremendous unlearning to do before new learning really takes root. But let' s go back to the therapeutic models we use in dealing with organizations. I want to mention an example of a different way of working with organizations that intrigues me because it treats the organization as a system and is based on the family therapy model. There is a consultant by the name of Irving Borwick, 12 who has a process called Group Strategy and Action Program, in which he brings in a team at the top of the organization, 20 or 30 people, for three or more days. He begins by

The key is to stay firm on the goal but to give a lot of participatory power to the learner on the means.
For example, in a power company that is trying to become more environmentally responsible, they want employees who always took orders from su -

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asking people to start thinking about their own role in the organization. He then asks them to share their role conceptions and collectively build up a picture of the existing role network. He will diagrammatically show everyone how they relate to each other. Then, as they analyze the network, they talk about role expectations vis-a-vis each other and how the system is working. As they listen to each other, they begin to recalibrate their own role, so that by the end of the program, they leave with a completely redesigned organization, yet the words "change" or " change goals " or "business problems " have never been mentioned.

So how does the example you used inform your concept of organizational therapy? Let me try to state what I am trying to get at and which I might write about next. Just as in the history of individual therapy there have been different philosophies geared to different kinds of patients, different times, and different kinds of dis-

Our successes come in systems that are desirous of improving their functioning, where consultants come in as catalysts or homeopathic agents to enable the system. orders, I suspect the same is true for systems and organizations. 'We are going to need different kinds of therapeutic interventions according to different states of health, different stages of organizational development, different kinds of organizations, and different kinds of pathologies. The most obvious example, one that I have written about, is that culture change is a completely different process in young, mid-life, and mature organizations. In the young, entrepreneurial, growing company, culture " change " has a completely different feel to it. It is usually culture building, culture enhancement, and culture clarification. But like the adolescent building identity, the culture of a young company is the primary source of its identity and is, therefore, what it is seeking to clarify and strengthen. So what a therapist does with a young entrepreneurial organization is to provide insight, feedback, enhancement, encouragement, and very little challenge. An organization that has a culture, an adult who has a personality, faces a different issue if that culture or personality becomes in some way dysfunctional, is no longer adapted to a changing environment. A very different set of therapeutic processes that have to do with unlearning have to come into play so that something new can be learned. Then you get into seriously pathological situations, where the analogy between individual and organization breaks down, because I do not think you ever destroy an individual, but you do destroy organizations. Organizations do go bankrupt, they do get acquired, they do disappear as organizations in the larger economic scheme of things. I do not see an individual counterpart to that except maybe conversion experiences and drastic changes that people undergo in disaster and war. Earlier in my life when I was talking about brainwashing and coercive persuasion, there was the question of

And what is the rationale for that? The rationale is that if you give people the insight into how they have connected to each other and how their total system works, they have the capacity to perceive what needs to be fixed, and you do not need a change model of what is wrong and how you are going to fix it. Once they understand their expectations of each other, they can fix what needs fixing. What is intriguing about that model is that it deals directly with role relations, where most organizational problems arise. So if you put people in a situation where they can just explore fully what they expect of themselves and what they expect of each other, they have the capacity and the good will to renegotiate everything so that it works better. It is like saying, if you give the patient enough insight, the patient can redesign his or her own life. You do not have to literally say, "Do this and this, " except to give them a good picture of the present state in relation to what they might want. You are giving this top group of 30 people a clear picture of where they are at so that they can then compare to their mental models of where they would like to be. They generally have the ability to get there themselves.

Is that almost homeopathic, in the sense it presumes that it is naturally a health-seeking system? You said that, I did not, but I like it. I think that if consultants enter a really pathological system that does not want to be healthy, they tend not to get anywhere. Our successes come in systems that are desirous of improving their functioning, where consultants come in as catalysts or homeopathic agents to enable the system.

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whether that is what was happening with some of the civilian prisoners in China. Were they really ground down to a state of personal bankruptcy? Maybe that is the key to Alcoholics Anonymous and these various treatments that talk about "bottoming out." Until one has really given up, one cannot really rebuild one ' s life. It is kind of an unraveling process. You were talking earlier about the process of needing to unlearn or let go of what you at least thought had worked up to this point in time. When we look at the difficulty of treating alcoholism or drug addiction, that should inform us as to why it is hard to change organizations. They tolerate an enormous amount of negative feedback before they begin to say, "Well, maybe it is us. " We do not let go easily as individuals, so why do we expect organizations to let go of their cultures easily? Do we assume that? Yes. Just look at the popular and academic literature on culture today—it is all about changing cultures and creating new ones as if this was merely a matter of deciding to do that. There is no recognition of how difficult it is to change tacit assumptions that have worked in the past. I saw this with the culture of Digital Equipment that grew up around sophisticated engineers designing sophisticated products for themselves under the assumption that, "If we like this stuff, the world will like it, " and getting reinforcement for that from the market place. The world loved their products because they were elegant, fancy, and new. DEC developed a tremendous arrogance toward the " dumb user" who wanted the simple turnkey product like eventually Apple came out with. DEC had plenty of data suggesting that the future lay in some of those low-end products, but they had a lot of reasons why they did not want to develop that kind of computer. That was one reason they got into trouble. It was very clear that their engineering group was not going to produce an Apple. They would have had to replace them all with a different set of engineers. So do you think that this organizational therapy paradox may be a multifaceted paradigm rather than a simple model? Let me try to get at that with another dilemma that applies to all therapies—the dilemma of what is diagnosis and what is intervention. Can they and

should they be separated? There is a model developed by psychoanalytically-oriented consultants like Larry Hirschhorn 13 which starts with part of the client system defining a problem, for example, a plant that is not running right. Larry will visit, observe, and interview, and, based on those data, develop a psychodynamic set of hypotheses and write a diagnosis based on what he has learned. As I understand it, he will share that diagnosis with the clients and then develop further interventions jointly. To me, that ignores the point that interviewing everybody with a model that may be mysterious to them is already a giant intervention and puts the diagnostician into a very powerful role. I would not want a therapy model that put that much emphasis on the diagnostic process and that uses concepts that are mysterious to the informants. Within the whole therapy field, I generally disagree with those therapists who start out with, " Let 's give you psychological tests and let ' s get a diagnosis before we start something called therapy. " I think therapy models that will be useful to organizations have to have organizational members see the therapist as a normal human being like themselves, not a separate expert with X-ray vision or special tools. I think it is very important not to intervene in a way that will mystify people. My logic should be perfectly open and transparent to you, not a hidden agenda or some mysterious force floating around the organization from which I am drawing mysterious interventions that would change things.

I think therapy models that will be useful to organizations have to have organizational members see the therapist as a normal human being like themselves, not a separate expert with X-ray vision or special tools.
The goal is for the organization to be able to continue to function after I leave. If I use mysterious diagnostic or therapeutic techniques, then I will increase the organization ' s dependency on me. I will have a harder time disengaging myself later. So from the beginning I have to try to be a role model. I think that the T-group experience taught me a lot about the relative potency of different kinds of interventions. I drew away from the mysterious ones because I could see that the best learning occurs when the group can see exactly what happened that led me to intervene. As a counterexample, I recall a comment from an executive

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j

whose company abandoned the use of Tavistock training groups because one executive came back all bent out of shape after the psychoanalytically oriented group trainer said, "Now the group is trying to castrate me." Probably that intervener could have said, "Every suggestion I have made, you have resisted." The data must have been there that led to the formulation of castration. What was the purpose of putting it that way? It sounds very traumatic. That trainer had a different agenda from the trainer who says, " I want to be transparent. " There are all sorts of ways it could have been said to the group without putting it into a mysterious context. I fear that the written diagnostic statement has the same potential of mystifying because it is based on the consultant ' s going through a process of gathering data, processing it through an elaborate model and then bringing back a product where the reader has not been through the same data gathering. If I am going to write a diagnosis, I would rather write about something that is going on, that is highly visible, so the reader can say, "Oh, yes. I remember that. I can see why you said this. " So then they can learn from that process, and if I disappear, they can continue to do that. Without you? Without me. So part of the issue in the kind of organizational therapeutic model that you resist is the initial diagnostic intervention. As we began talking this morning, you talked about the simultaneous activities of diagnosis and intervention. Not only is diagnosis an intervention, but I have now added the criterion that I want that intervention to seem normal rather than mysterious. I do not want to come across as having X-ray vision and having concepts that are drawn from models that are unavailable to them. Maybe there is something psychological in this, in that I have never liked dependent students. I have always liked students who know what they want to do and then I help steer them. I am really scared of creating dependency. In some therapeutic models that might be okay; one may want dependency for a while. You are not inclined to create dependency. Not at all. In fact, I think it scares me. I even say in the process consultation model that it is perfectly

okay to terminate at the end of the first session. The client may feel that this is all the help he or she needs. This is not a model that is designed to build income. There are no projects, hooks, or hidden messages that you have got to " do six weeks of this. " The client has to feel helped moment to moment, and either consultant or client should feel free to terminate at any point.

The client has to feel helped moment to moment, and either consultant or client should feel free to terminate at any point.
It is not uncommon for some individual clients or groups to want assessments or information framed in a kind of diagnostic way. In the psychoanalytic model, Hirschhorn creates and produces the artifact, which is a diagnosis. Within your organizational therapy framework, are there artifacts or products that get produced by you, or is that idiosyncratic to the particular relationship? I have had different experiences in producing and sharing artifacts. For example, in my work with Ciba-Geigy years ago, they commissioned me one year to interview senior management to develop a picture of their culture. In a subsequent meeting, I was to give an articulated view of their culture to the top 40 people, based on the interviews and a lot of observation. It seemed like a very legitimate task. I was a culture expert. I had tools with which to do that. Then there came the day when it was my turn to make the presentation, and, as I look back on it, it was a disaster. Implicit in the culture picture were evaluations that I was unaware of. For example, I likened a lot of the culture to a military model that was directly derived from the fact that most of the senior executives were, in fact, also officers in the Swiss Army. That immediately caused severe objections from a number of people in the room who did not like being likened to a military model. Others pointed out to me that I did not understand the Swiss Army model. I learned later from still others that I was right on, that is exactly what their culture was, but they did not like hearing it in that context and from an outsider. What I ended up doing was stirring up a lot of negative feelings and compromising my own position with several of the key senior executives, who said, "You know, Schein's got it all wrong. He does not understand us. Why are we using him as a consultant anyway? "

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So my sincere effort to diagnose their culture ended up being, from my point of view, a fairly disastrously negative intervention. It did not particularly enhance their insight about their own culture. It polarized them around several things. It devalued my position. I have to take those lessons seriously. What did I do wrong here? What would I do next time around? The conclusion I drew reinforced my experience with Digital. Digital would not have let me say 10 words about them. They wanted me to facilitate and be helpful, but not to say, " Here is how I see you guys. " So, I learned very early on that facilitation in that context had to be a low-level question— " How do we feel about the decision we just made? "—or something that was much more akin to what I was doing in training groups. That led to the thought that maybe that is the only way you can deal with culture. Even if the client wants you to analyze the culture, they don't, in fact, want the consultant to present it to them. Rather, they want help in deciphering it for themselves. So, since then, I have evolved an entirely different way of doing culture interventions. If we were doing that again, I would bring 10 or 15 of them together and first give them my framework of artifacts, values, and assumptions. Then I would say, "Now let's work this out together. What are some of your artifacts?" I would be a fairly active process manager but would force them to produce the content. I might ask provocative questions, but they would always be questions, not conclusions. There is a completely different quality to the intervention if I am working with them, building a picture of the culture, instead of listening to a bunch of interviews, constructing my own picture, and then saying, "Here, I am giving you back the picture." The latter did not work. The former works very well. Is part of the dynamic there a time lag dynamic? Because what I heard you describe is a fairly extended period of data collection, so the lag time between data collection and then the feeding back creates a potential problem because you are not in synch with them. When you do not have the time lag, there is kind of an interactive accommodation potential. Does that make sense? Yes, but even more, the time lag was a separation psychologically between them and me that permitted them to project onto me all kinds of notions about what I was going to produce, and then being disappointed in what they actually heard. Whereas, if I am working with them, we are correcting their perceptions of what culture is all

about and how I am going to work with it moment to moment. There is never a period where they have an opportunity to let their own fantasies about me run loose. Furthermore, what I realized, and why I push the current model so much, is that the most powerful influence I have on them is not, in fact, the content picture of their culture, but my way of thinking about culture. Culture exists on these different levels and it is essential to search for what the deep, tacit underlying assumptions are on which the organization is operating. If they learn to do that, then I have done my work. They can get at the content themselves. What they did not have is this process model of what culture is all about. This is why I am so opposed to the books that offer a questionnaire solution, because it implies that if employees answer a bunch of questions, the data coming back are going to tell me something about the culture. It will, but it will be very superficial. It will not teach the organization that the things that enhance or constrain behavior are down there in the tacit assumptions that are like the root system in the lily pond, not the beautiful flowers that can be observed on the surface. The point is that the best therapy is where the client and the therapist are working as a team to work on whatever the client 's problem is. Different from the X-ray model? Totally different from the X-ray model. I am quite frustrated that people do not see that more clearly. Why do you think that is? Do you have a theory on why they are doing that? I think there is a larger cultural issue here, that clients expect us to be experts and the power position they initially grant us is very seductive. I only learned to avoid the expert role because of the bad experiences I have had when I tried to be an expert in this context or that context. Is part of that related to issues around anxiety and insecurity? There are big domains where the expert or doctor role is appropriate. If I am going to have surgery, I do not want a therapist, I want a good surgeon. If my television needs fixing, I want a good repairman, I do not want someone to help me fix it. Although it is really fascinating that even those experts have learned to be somewhat processoriented. When I have called up someone about my non-working TV, they say, "Let's check. Is it

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plugged in? " They have learned the hard way that clients do all sorts of dumb things that do not require an expert to fix. Or a more dramatic example is that oncologists have learned that they really have to give the breast cancer patient a serious choice between mastectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy, because often the treatments are equivalent in the prognosis. Oncologists have learned that to help the women get through the treatment it is very important to involve them in the choice of treatment.

knowing when it is there is, I believe, critical in the therapeutic process.

I am almost hearing another kind of expertise issue. To build and manage a helping relationship you do have to be a process expert. That is the paradox. Building that relationship is not a trivial matter. I have to have skills and expertise in how to deal with the new client in such a way that after a while that client will feel we are a team. That requires a lot of expertise, but it is not content expertise on the client problem. It is expertise on how to manage a relationship. When I do workshops, we focus on a very concrete level of learning how to ask the right kinds of questions that build a relationship while, at the same time, revealing data. For example, I distinguish a pure inquiry kind of question where I nod and say, " Can you tell me more? " from a diagnostic question, which asks, "Why?" or "How did you feel?" or "What did you do?" Each of these is influencing the client 's mental process. If you are telling me your story, and I say, " Why do you suppose that happened?" or "How did you feel about that? " those are big interventions, because you may never have thought of that and I am forcing you to think about something that is on my mind. So, when to insert a diagnostic question becomes a major tactical issue. Another level of question which I think of as confrontive brings in your own content thoughts, such as, "Did that not make you feel angry?" or "Could you have done the following?" Asking a confrontive question introduces content which you may not have ever thought about, so I may be diverting you from your story and losing valuable data in the process. So tactically one should stay at the pure inquiry level as long as possible, because that also helps the client regain some self-esteem and confidence. You do not want to send the message that what I want to know is something different than what you have told me. I think the tactics of those first interviews or the initial meetings are very important in building a relationship that works.

Even within the context of an expert model relationship. The way I formulated it in my latest version, Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship, L4 expertise is entirely appropriate when you and the client both know what expertise is required. When expertise fails, it is usually because the expert has assumed that he or she knows what is needed and then makes an error in diagnosis. There has to be enough of a relationship so that the patient or client really owns up to what is troubling them. At the start, they often do not reveal the. real problem, so advice or intervention of an expert at this stage will be directed at the wrong problem. In my current formulation, the argument is that all helping has to start with some process model that helps build the relationship. Expertise becomes relevant when the client does not feel " one down " for having a problem, and when enough mutual trust has been built up to allow the real issues to surface. The consultant or therapist will know when that trust is there by a certain relaxation and ease of communication bet ween the two parties. Part of the skill of helping is learning to sense when the relationship is at a point that expert advice might be relevant and acceptable. Once I

Part of the skill of helping is learning to sense when the relationship is at a point that expert advice might be relevant and acceptable. have a good relationship, I find that I can give all kinds of advice and be comfortable because I know the client will be able say, " No, " without damaging the relationship. The same piece of advice a month earlier might not work because the client would not be comfortable saying, "I have tried that and it did not work. " Building that relationship and

Are you satisfied that we have gone out to some of the edges of where you are on this organizational therapy concept? Have I missed some of the edges on that? No. In fact, you have pushed me to edges I have not been on myself.

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Was that okay to do? Oh, absolutely. That is what I was hoping would happen. As I review this interview, there is much food for thought in it as to what this domain is that I am talking about. One anchor in it, which I think I have emphasized, is this notion that it is always simultaneously a diagnostic and intervention process. The diagnosis is a byproduct, a necessary byproduct of your own interventions. It is this principle that I am always intervening in the system that defines my activity as clinical and therapeutic. Even if my initial intention is to do research or collect data, if I am working with a human system, I must adopt the position that my purpose is to be helpful and make something better. The issue of what needs to be better is defined by the client, not by my agenda. What defines the relative balance of clinical work versus research is based on who initiated the question. The researcher with a question and the clinician working their way into an organization can appear to be doing the same things. But the researcher is initially working his or her own agenda. The clinical model, as I have described it, is defined by the fact that the question and what we are doing is determined by a client, who is paying for a service. The client is defining the domain. That licenses the clinician to go deep into that domain because the client wants me to. It creates some boundaries which the client can break, but the clinician should not. Can the clinician question the boundaries? That depends on the relationship. Once I have a comfortable relationship with a client, I can become a pure researcher and define my own boundaries. On the other hand, the pure researcher will not get access to the deeper levels unless he or she can form a clinical relationship with the client, where the client feels comfortable in asking the researcher to provide some help. Researchers in human systems must be prepared to be helpful and must have helping skills or their access to data will be very limited. For example, I believe that good ethnographers become de facto clinicians. But they are uncomfortable with this role, do not think it is sufficiently " scientific, " and rarely write about it. In other words, good ethnographers sooner or later begin to treat their informants in a manner that they regard as somewhat helpful, and I bet the good ethnographer provides help. The classic case was a graduate student who was going to interview an engineering group at Digital. They kept him at bay until one day at lunchtime they were having a soccer game and he scored the winning

goal for his group. Magically, all the doors opened. Somehow, he was no longer the ethnographer. He could do something for them. I think that is what the organization wants. If you are going to sit around here, what are you doing for me? The promise that you are going to get to read a paper about yourself some day, or get some feedback on what was found is not worth much. So I think contemporary ethnographers quickly learn that they have to establish a helping relationship. They have to do something positive, which puts them more in the clinical mode. In the end, the clinical and the research modes blend into one, and that should be our ideal of how to work with human systems.

Endnotes
'In preparation for this interview, James Campbell Quick and Joanne Gavin read and discussed the following original works, biographies, and interviews on Dr. Schein. Schein, E. H. 1996. Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21" Century. The Academy of Management Executive, 10(4): 80-88. See also Schein, E. H. 1985. Career anchors: Discovering your real values. San Diego: University Associates. Schein, E. H. 1993. The academic as artist: Personal and professional roots. In A. G. Bedeian (Ed.), Management laureates: A collection of autobiographical essays, Vol. 3: 31-62. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Luthans, F. 1989. Conversation with Edgar H. Schein. Organizational Dynamics, 17(4):60-76. Hendrix, G. 1996. Interview with Ed Schein. Vision/Action, Fall: 1-12. Schein, E. H. 1969. Process consultation: Its role in organizational development. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Schein, E. H. 1987. Process consultation, Vol. 2: Lessons for managers and consultants. Reading, MA; Addison-Wesley; and Schein, E. H. 1988. Process consultation: Vol. Z. Its role in organizational development (Rev. Ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Schein, E. H. 1987. The clinical perspective in fieldwork. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Schein, E. H. 1985. Organizational culture and leadership. San Fran"d cisco: Jossey-Bass. 1992 (2 Ed.). Schein, E. H. 1965. Organizad tional psychology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 1970. (2" d Ed.). 1980. (3` Ed.). Bass, B. M. 1965. Organizational psychology, Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Leavitt, H. J. & Bass, B. M. 1964. Organizational psychology. In P. R. Farnsworth (Ed.), Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 15 (371-398). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. z Dr. Schein 's latest revisited publications include: The corporate culture survival guide (1999), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; Process consultation: Building the helping relationship, 0 d ed.), (1999) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Strategic pragmatism: The culture of Singapore's Economic Development Board (1996); Or"d ganizational culture and leadership (2 ed., 1992); and Career anchors (1992). s Schein, E. H. 1996. Culture: The missing concept in organization studies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(2): 229-240. Schein, 1999. The corporate culture survival guide. op. cit. Schein, E. H. 1959. Brainwashing. Encyclopedia Britannica, and Schein, E, H. 1996. Organizational learning as cognitive redefinition: Coercive persuasion revisited. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Center for Organizational Learning, MIT working paper. a Frost, P. & Robinson, S. 1999. The toxic handler: Organizational hero—and casualty. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 77: 97-106.

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'Light, D. 1982. Becoming psychiatrists: The professional transformation of self. New York: Norton. 6 Otto Alois Faust, Head and Professor of Pediatrics, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, 1941-1952. 7 Winters, E. E. (Ed.). 1952. The collected papers of Adolf Meyer, Volume IV, Mental hygiene. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. e Moss, L. 1981. Management stress. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. 9 Bavelas, A. & Strauss, G. 1955. Money and motivation. New York: Harper Brothers. 10 Roth, G. & Kleiner, A. 2000. Car launch: The human side of

managing change. In G. Roth & A. Kleiner (Eds.), The Iearning history library. New York: Oxford University Press. 11 Schein, E. H. 1996. Three cultures of management: The key to organizational learning. Sloan Management Review, 38(1): 9-20; Schein, E. H. 1996. Culture: The missing concept in organization studies. op. cit. 12 See www.Borwick-inc.com. 13 Hirschhorn, L. 1998. The workplace within. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. "Schein, 1999. Process consultation revisited: Building the helping relationship. op. cit.

Tames Campbell Quick is professor of organizational behavior, The University of Texas at Arlington, and a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He is a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Houston. Dr. Quick is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Institute of Stress. Contact: iquick@ uta.edu.

I

Joanne H. Gavin is a doctoral student and research associate in organizational behavior at The University of Texas at Arlington. She has a special interest in character, ethics, and decision making in organizations. Contact: gavin@uta.edu

Commentary on the Edgar Schein Interview
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm once said that you have to stop to change direction. Ed Schein certainly knows how to stop and take account of what is going on around him. In addition, he knows how to stop others and encourage them to reflect on their own behavior. When he has something to say, people generally . pay attention. They may even change direction. I certainly do. His ideas have strongly influenced my thinking. Over the years I have read most of Schein ' s work. I have studied his contribution on brainwashing; I have used his framework concerning career anchors in my MBA classes; I have been influenced by his thoughts on process consultation, interpersonal conflict resolution, and individual and organizational change. And in appreciating his work on organizational psychology, I have not been alone. It is fair to say that Schein ' s contributions have influenced a whole generation of organizational scholars. Given these personal memories, I was quite pleased to be asked to comment on his reflections on organizational therapy.

My first reactions to the interview were thoughts about convergence, not divergence. I realized once more how alike his thinking and mine are about organizational therapy, though we differ at times in the use of terminology. I have a rather traditional clinical background, combined with training as an economist, while Schein has a social-psychological and anthropological background. Understandably, these early influences color our outlook on the world. In reflecting on what I would say in this commentary, I thought about how the knowledge explosion is making all of us specialists, knowing more and more about less and less. Hopefully, this trend will not lead to the point where as one wit cautioned—we end up knowing everything about nothing. With the acceleration of research contributions from different fields, I find it increasingly difficult to process all the information that comes across my desk. And this is most likely not a lonely cry in the wilderness. Many of us struggle with the challenge of keeping up with the contributions of other scholars struggling with similar issues.