ABSTRACT

This chapter takes a seemingly obvious but fundamentally radical position that organisations – including human service organisation – are, like individuals, living systems (Senge et al., 2004). Being alive, they are vulnerable to stress, particularly chronic and repetitive stress. Chronic stress stealthily robs an organisation of basic interpersonal safety and trust and thereby robs an organisation of health. Organisations, like individuals, can be traumatized, and the result of traumatic experience can be as devastating for organisations as it is for individuals. As a result, many human service delivery networks are functioning as ‘trauma-organised systems’ (Bentovim, 1992).