2:30 pm Friday 9 July 2021

PP6 : Ernest Frugé, Melody Brown Hellsten, Laura Loftis, Michael Sprehe & Quinn Franklin: Understanding intergroup conflict & facilitating decision-making in the care of critically ill children.

The complexity of medical care for critically ill children creates a unique psychological, social and technical crucible for all involved, one primed for conflict. (Frugé, et al 2020; Puri, 2019; Frugé & Adams, 2004) We conducted eight focus groups to identify the sources of conflict among multi-disciplinary/multi-specialty teams caring for pediatric cancer patients in critical care settings. (Brown-Hellsten, et al 2006) Based on these findings and our prior work on team-based medical education strategies (Howells, et al. 2015;Frugé, et al 2010; Frugé & Horowitz, 2005), we designed a structured method of intergroup discussion and decision-making with the aim of facilitating optimal coordination of care. Our paper will summarize results from the focus groups and pilot testing of the intervention.  We offer hypotheses about how group-level unconscious processes (e.g. defenses against otherness) combine with other setting variables to impair collaboration and how the evolving case conference design may enhance integrative decision making. (Park & DeShon, 2018)  read more (PDF)

PP7 : Beate West-Leuer“Am Deutschen Wesen wird die Welt nicht genesen” Interpretation Film “Diplomacy” (2014)

The theme of the symposium is an allusion to the Berlin Wall (1961-1989), a structure built to fortify the border of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Berlin Wall and the division of Germany were the primary consequences of National Socialist rule (1933-1945) and the Second World War. Volker Schlöndorff’s historical film “Diplomacy” (2014) is an example of how the arts and culture deal with the “emotional inheritance” (Freud cited in Moré 2013) of National Socialism to “remember, repeat and work through” the participation of the Wehrmacht in war crimes. The film centers on the night of August 25, 1944, in which occupied Paris was to be destroyed by the Germans before the Allies could recapture it. The Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling has set himself the task of tearing down the “walls in the head” of the German Governor of Paris, General von Choltitz, to persuade him to reconsider, though von Choltitz’ thoughts and action are shaped by his belief in Germany’s special historical significance. read more (PDF)

PP8 : Holle & ZimmermannReal Work: Removing Walls that prevent New Work and Innovation

With serious interest but without euphoria – our consulting practice simply looks different – we observe new trends and especially New Work practices that promise a better way of working and collaborating. New Work is indeed highly relevant for psychodynamic-systemic organisational consultants, because most aspects and dimensions of New Work are well founded and justifiable from a psychodynamic perspective and stimulate work with organisations.
However, the authors believe that the normative approach of New Work not only does not carry far enough, but even more so: as a side effect it creates symbolic walls between the old and the new kind of thinking about work, which rather prevent the potentially beneficial exchange between Old Work and New Work and complicate the transformation to another mental state.
The authors think that it is not enough to simply adopt New Work practices: Before these can be effectively implanted into organisations, the psychodynamics of primary risk, the fear of change, and the multiple forms of avoiding and watering down of real change must be experienced and addressed in the process of the discussion. read more (PDF)

PP9 : Leslie Goldenberg: Roles of the Coach Within the Walls: Trojan Horse, Field Medic, Canary

Core exploration of the paper: To be an external organizational consultant or leadership coach is, by definition, to be an “other,” with a vantage point outside the client’s organizational walls. What about internal consultants or coaches? How much “otherness” do we represent, and how “other” do our clients seem to us? What unique roles are available to the coach within the walls and how does the internal coach position herself moment-to-moment? This paper proposes to explore, with cases and theoretical texts:
1) How internal coaches can deploy three roles represented by the metaphors of Trojan Horse (subversive force), Field Medic (collusion), and Canary (warning system),
2) Practical considerations for succeeding as an internal resource, which may also apply for externals who might be prone to “go native”
read more (PDF)

PP10 : Matias SanfuentesThe underground work of hope: resilient organizing in the Chilean Miners’ catastrophe

Crisis and crisis management have become a growing concern in the organization and management studies literature, as catastrophic events besetting the world are both complex and diverse and have more destructive consequences than in the past. A more comprehensive understanding of crisis management demands we pay attention to social dynamics. From this perspective, organisational crises can be conceived ‘in terms of relational disturbance and crisis management as the repair of such disturbances’ (Kahn et al. 2013, p. 377). Accordingly, the reconstruction and recovery from the relational system breakdown is what allows resilient organizing in the face of adversity. These reparative capacities reside in supportive relationships that enable emotional processing and the construction of new meanings to envision a desirable future. The creation of conditions to move from despair to constructive optimism is fuelled by the work of hope, which through open dialogue can promote social learning and the development of generative capacities to struggle against the negative crisis consequences. (Ludema et al. 1997). read more (PDF)