OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO RESISTANCE: INSIGHTS FROM A STUDY OF THE SHADOWS

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This article analyzes how students of organizations have used concept of resistance. Its purposes are twofold. First, authors seek to deepen understanding of concept of resistance by discussing certain lacunae in treatments of this topic. Second, by exploring origins and nature of these lacunae, they seek to gain insights into fundamental assumptions that are associated with significant limitations in contemporary thought about development and related branches of applied social science. analysis develops from an application of Carl Jung's concept of Shadow. authors apply idea of to two sets of treatments of resistance--the treatments by writers whom we describe as managerialist in their view of study of change and those by another group that have been highly critical of managerialist views. In addition to deepening our understanding of resistance and sources of shortcomings in approaches of both of these groups, analysis leads to suggestions for improvement. THE SHADOW Although Jung's (1969) metaphor of originally referred to parts of an individual's personality that s/he refused to accept, term recently has been used to deepen our understanding of organizations. For example, Denhardt (1981:vii) employs concept to call attention to ...the ethic of existence of an organization that pervades contemporary life. Bowles (1991:400) demonstrated value of the Shadow metaphor for revealing detrimental effects that organizational management can have on ...human, moral and social concerns. authors suggest that similar insights can be gained through application of metaphor to frameworks of thought in social sciences. Bowles (1991:388), following Jung, observed: The Shadow...represents inferior part of personality, sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility, are banished to unconscious. It also includes information from outside world which does not carry sufficient energy to be recorded in consciousness. has a symbiotic relationship with individual's ego. As Bowles (Ibid., 389) put it: Qualities or characteristics which ego does not need or cannot make use of are set aside or repressed. In other words, content of is a function of ego--what ego rejects comes to rest in Shadow. If ego were different, so would be different. Often, coming to terms with reality requires that latent element of personality be brought out of Shadow. authors suggest an analogue of this process operates in social theories. manifest content of a theory predisposes its users to exclude elements systematically from their consciousness that, in some circumstances, are important in order for theory to provide a useful guide to reality. Moreover, given symbiotic relationship between manifest and latent aspects of a theory, exploration of side is as important to understanding a perspective as is analysis of its manifest contents. It also seems likely that critics of a theory will be concerned with both its manifest and latent content. Thus we might be able to learn about side of a theory by looking at its critics. Of course critics will have sides as well. Therefore, we might also expect to find clues about critics' side in manifest content of theory they critique. If, however, we find that two conflicting approaches have relegated same elements to their respective Shadows, it may be that we have uncovered parts of a Collective Shadow. Discovery of such widely repressed components could lead us to insights about major barriers to progress in thought. For example, if all theorists of a certain subject, even those who appear to be holding conflicting positions, are making common, erroneous assumptions, uncovering these could be an important step to progress. …

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