ABSTRACT
The nature of the connectedness between individuals and the organization of their employing enterprises is always a puzzle. This chapter outlines a heuristic perspective that relies on psychoanalytic thinking for one of its elements and attempts to engage with the puzzle of the connectedness of individuals to their enterprises. The size and complexity of machines, particularly in heavy industry, tend to produce in people a sense of threat and personal inadequacy. The basic postulate that guides a psychoanalytic approach to disentangle organizational life is that the individual can be understood to be living in a “double environment” at one and the same time. A good example of such a social system as a defence against anxiety can be found in Berry’s studies of the possible relationships in companies between policy formulation and accounting procedures. He found that the budgeting process acts to suppress uncertainty and anxieties about disorder for higher management.
