Structures Of Corporate Consciousness
STRUCTURES OF CORPORATE CONSCIOUSNESS Bernie Neville La Trobe University Introduction In Gebser’s understanding, our contemporary consciousness is multi–structured or, to change the metaphor slightly, multi–layered. The complexity of human behavior comes out of the interplay of these several “layers” or “levels” of consciousness in whatever we doi. Gebser suggests that the acknowledgment and appreciation of these discrete structures is a step towards their integration with the rational structure in a more “integral” way of experiencing the world. From the point of view of the rational–scientific culture that has been dominant for a few hundred years, magical and mythical thinking are primitive and inferior forms of thinking that have limited value in the contemporary world. However, we can argue that it is our capacity for mythical, and even magical, thinking that enables us to find meaning in our lives and gives us a grounding in the concrete world that rational thinking seems bent on destroying. It makes more sense to say that magical and mythical consciousness is neither better nor worse than mental/rational consciousness. They are simply older and different. In this paper I want to focus on the ways the discrete structures of consciousness are observable in business organizations. The Archaic Organization There are a number of elements in Gebser’s theory that are particularly relevant when we look at the culture of organizations. We are inclined to see groups or organizations as collections of separate individuals. Yet there were groups long before there were individuals. The notion that we are separate individuals living inside the boundaries of our own skins and communicating by passing messages to other individuals walking around in similar capsules is a very recent one, relatively speaking. We are inclined to think of consciousness as a personal, self–reflective phenomenon. If we think of group consciousness at all we are likely to think of it as the sum, or maybe the consensus, of the consciousnesses of all the members of the group. Gebser’s theory is based on the evidence from archaeology that, in evolutionary terms, it goes the other way around. Group consciousness comes first. It is more basic than individual consciousness, which has emerged from it only recently. We may have a considerable investment in the notion that we are free, choosing, initiating individuals, but we have to admit that sometimes a group – or a mob – of so–called individuals acts as though it were a single organism. When we examine the behavior of a termite or ant colony, or study schools of fish, flocks of birds or herds of animals, we find evidence that groups of creatures sometimes behave as though they are single organisms. The simpler or more primitive the forms of life, the more sense it makes to describe them in this way. If we could view the human species from a great enough distance we might have an impression of it
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