Managing the Emotional Terrain: Psychological Defenses and Emotional Ambivalence in the Organisation by Garima Kumar
By: Global Vision Publishing HouseSingle Issue
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- Managing the Emotional Terrain: Psychological Defenses and Emotional Ambivalence in the Organisation by Garima Kumar
- Price : 200.00
- Published on May 28, 2013
- Global Vision Publishing House
- Language - English
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About this issue
This study takes a critical look at the institutional and social practices at work, and how these are played out within social institutional relations. It is proposed that these practices have an impact on psychological health and well-being of employees. More specifically, it is argued that the culture of teamwork and flexibility being practiced in multinational corporations (MNCs) has a manufactured appearance about it. The culture creates a social sphere that does not appear authentic, but merely manages to provide functional cohesiveness. The practices prevalent within the organisation generate a complex mix of factors facilitating regulatory control, promising rewards and obscuring penalties. Although, this is not completely understood by most employees, these practices have a definite impact on employee health and coping strategies used. With the demise of Weber’s iron cage of rationality, management of organisation is about orchestrating the collective emotions of employees. Under such a complex environment the employee struggles in various ways and with variable success, either for readily fusing with the corporate, defensively struggling to make sense of ambiguous work situations or at times aggressively asserting against these processes. Data are drawn from semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The research has been carried out in the interpretive tradition. The paper brings to the fore the socialpsychological dimensions of work and their implications for psychological well being of employees. It is argued that the new cultural practices replace traditional lines of authority by flexi-structured dotted lines of management only at the manifest level. But, power however transmuted has not gone off totally. Rather, it operates more smoothly now in the emotional domain.
About Managing the Emotional Terrain: Psychological Defenses and Emotional Ambivalence in the Organisation by Garima Kumar
Journal of Indian Health Psychology Vol. 1, No. 1, September, 2006