Organization and meaning: A multilevel psychoanalytic treatment of the jayson blair scandal at the new york times

Abstract

Cross-level analysis is a problem for mainstream approaches to organizational behavior, but not for psychoanalytic theory. The reason is that psychoanalytic theory is not so much about behavior as about the meaning of behavior, which is relatively invariant across levels. The Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times is analyzed at the individual, the group, the intrapsychic, the interpersonal, and the organizational levels. Blair’s behavior and the behavior of the Times toward him are explained in terms of a clash between two ways in which meaning is made: the Oedipal and the anti-oedipal.

Citation

Schwartz, H.S. and Hirschhorn, L. (2009), "Organization and meaning: A multilevel psychoanalytic treatment of the jayson blair scandal at the new york times", International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 441-474. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-12-03-2009-B003