ABSTRACT
In these days of widespread cuts, closures of services, and restructuring of jobs and management systems, many organizations feel under great threat. Often, they request consultation because they want help with managing the disturbances produced by these threats. In other cases, the request is for help with organizational development, such as training or team-building. Yet here, too, exploration often reveals a threat to survival, albeit an internal and unacknowledged one. We shall describe here a particular kind of institutional defence we have encountered repeatedly, which severely impairs an organization’s capacity to deal with the threats to its survival.
