Group analytic methods beyond the clinical setting – working with researcher-managers.

Abstract

Group analytic scholars have a long history of thinking about organizations and taking up group analytic concepts in organizational contexts. Many still aspire to being more of a resource to organizations given widespread organizational change processes which provoke great upheaval and feelings of anxiety. This article takes as a case study the experience of running a professional management research doctorate originally set up with group analytic input to consider some of the adaptations to thinking and methods which are required outside the clinical context. The article explores what group analysis can bring to management, but also what critical management scholarship can bring to group analysis. It considers some of the organizational difficulties which the students on the doctoral programme have written about, and discusses the differences and limitations of taking up group analytic thinking and practice in an organizational research setting.