91AV

91AV Vice President for Business and Finance Seth Allcorn, Ph.D., is co-author of a new book titled Private Selves in Public Organizations: The Psychodynamics of Organizational Diagnosis and Change.

The book, co-written with Michael A. Diamond, Ph.D., of the University of Missouri, is about the psychodynamics of analyzing and changing organizations.

"This book defines organizations as not simply rational, technological structures and networks for organizing people around tasks and services but also as relational, experiential, and perceptual systems," Allcorn explains. "What people feel, think, and imagine matters in the workplace and this appreciation contributes to our understanding of organizational life and performance."

Diamond and Allcorn take the position that organizational culture, identity, and performance are the outcome of the collision between self (psychological structure) and organizations (social and political structure) - our private selves and public organizations. 

With that perspective they believe it becomes self evident that the study of organizations requires that researchers immerse themselves in the organization with methods for extracting meaning through the organizational narrative and more importantly through the collective experiences and relational patterns of the organizational culture under observation.

In this book they draw together many of the insights and perspectives that they have arrived at from nearly three decades of research, consultation, and administrative experience in academia.

The authors discover workers who view their organizations as silos—fragmented and dysfunctional. They come across workers who demand but rarely find organizations where they feel safe and secure enough to question authority or challenge the status quo. The authors address issues of oppression, persecution, moral violence, chaos, and workplace democracy.

Case examples illustrate the collision of social and psychological structure in the workplace.

Reviews
In a review of the book, Harry Levinson, Ph.D., clinical professor of psychology emeritus at Harvard Medical School, writes that "This pioneering comprehensive volume establishes the new field of psychoanalytic organizational psychology. By unifying elements from articles that have touched on the topic, Diamond and Allcorn have provided a complete and definitive volume on a subject that has previously been only tangentially and partially explored. It will endure as the fundamental volume for scholars and consultants, setting a model for the field. This is a monumental accomplishment for which readers will long be grateful."

"Drawing on decades of fieldwork, Diamond and Allcorn beautifully describe how consultants for organizational improvement uncover lurking problems in the workplace," writes Vamik D. Volkan, M.D., emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "The book‚Äôs psychoanalytically framed techniques illustrate methods for effective intervention, especially timely in light of today‚Äôs concerns about globalization and the recent turbulence in financial markets."

The book, being published by Palgrave Macmillan, is scheduled for release in March 2009.

The Authors
Michael Diamond is professor of public affairs, associate director for academic programs, and director of the Center for the Study of Organizational Change at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri. He is a founding member and past-president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.

Seth Allcorn, who came to 91AV in 2007 as vice president of business and finance, has 20 years of experience working with physicians, hospitals and academic medical centers. He has served as associate dean for fiscal affairs at the Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola–Chicago and as the administrator of the departments of medicine at the University of Missouri–Columbia and University of Rochester schools of medicine.

During those 20 years, he has worked as a part-time and full-time organizational consultant specializing in the management of change, strategic planning and organizational restructuring. He is extensively published as the author or co-author of 11 previous books, including Organizational Dynamics and Intervention: Tools for Changing the Workplace (2005), which provides the reader twelve perspectives for understanding the workplace; The Dynamic Workplace: Present Structure and Future Redesign (2003) which creates for the reader a typology of workplace experience that includes bureaucratic, chaotic, charismatic and balanced; and The Death of the Spirit in the American Workplace (2002), which explores the dispiriting impact that massive and repetitive organizational change such as downsizing has upon organization members.

He is a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.