The addictive organization

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1. k310Jun 2023
   Old-timer here. I learned to use the unix built-ins via Unix Text Processing, Unix Power Tools, and UNIX Relational Database Management. The last of these is a commercial version of Walter Hobbs' work at RAND. The code is avalable at github. https://github.com/ironsmith58/RDB These were a great way to learn shell commands and perl. (and a free database)

   The Wiki Way was the first book on wikis.

   Another book that helped me was "The Addictive Organization" by Anne Wilson Schaef. It's just amazing how common behaviors are that are normally associated with addiction. Principally: Projection and denial.

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2. Alex3917May 2008
   There is a book called The Addictive Organization that touches on this. Below are a couple thoughts and excerpts cut-and-pasted from my notes:

   "What makes the organization addictive is the promise it makes to every employee about the future, which takes them out of the here and now." These promises involve power, money, influence, and social acceptance, the same as the promises of pop culture made-for-TV society.

   Having a self-important and grandiose mission statement can make an organization addictive, even if it has little or nothing to do with the actual work being done. "The very fact of having goals can be enough to con employees into believing that everything is all right in the organization."

   "One of the ways employees react to this addictive process is by changing their perceptions and thinking, therefore deluding themselves. They try to make themselves believe that the stated mission of the organization is really what is happening, even if what they are seeing and feeling as they work is quite different. When organizations function as the addictive substance, it is in their interest to keep promoting the vision of the mission, because as long as the employees are hooked by it, they are unlikely to turn their awareness to the present discrepancies. They choose to stay numb in order to stay in the organization. The mission is a powerful source of identification for workers. It is a type of philosophical orientation that appeals to their values. Through the mission they find a link between themselves and the organization."

   BTW, the sociologists refer to these hidden agendas as the "latent functions" of the organization, in case you ever want to search through the academic papers about this.

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3. gruseomMay 2008
   It seems we have similar interests. I've run across The Addictive Organization too, in addition to Gatto, though in his case I read Dumbing Us Down, not the book you cited. Gatto seems courageous to me; a real freethinker.

   Was it Durkheim who said that the first purpose of any large organization is to perpetuate itself, and only secondarily to accomplish whatever mandate it may have?

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