Organizational Behavior 5

From Unconscious Motivation to Role-motivated Leadership

John B. Miner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780765619907
• eBook ISBN: 9781317463450
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This volume makes available in one place the large body of research that has been developed over the years on role motivation theory. Author Jack Miner has always been concerned with unconscious factors in human experience, and this work is designed to give proper emphasis to their role in organizational behavior.

Part I reviews the current status of projective techniques and the recent work that has been done on unconscious motivation. Part II covers Miner's significant research in the field, from his early work at the Atlantic Refining Company to his career-long leadership studies of Princeton University graduates. The chapters in Part III involve psychometric data analysis, meta-analysis, and factor analysis.

PART 1

UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION

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CHAPTER 1

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UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION AS VIEWED FROM THE PROJECTIVE PERSPECTIVE

Introduction

The Missing Organizational Context

The Missing Unconscious (or Subconscious)

The Nature of Unconscious Motivation

Uses to Which the Idea of an Unconscious May Be Devoted

Harry Levinson on the Missing Unconscious

The Status of Research, Measurement, and Assessment of Unconscious Motivation

Projective Techniques and the Unconscious

Evaluations—Primarily Negative

Replies to the Negative Evaluations

The Rorschach Inkblot Method

Murray’s Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Various Sentence Completion Tests

The Tomkins-Horn Picture Arrangement Test

Projective Techniques in Contrast to Self-report (or Objective) Measures

The McClelland, Koestner, and Weinberger (1989) Theory

Comparisons with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Comparisons with the Big Five Personality Characteristics

On the Imperfections of Self-report Measures

INTRODUCTION

In large part the study of organizational behavior has failed to embrace two approaches to its subject matter that are important to its advance. These missing emphases are (1) a concern with the organizational context within which behavior occurs and (2) the unconscious (or subconscious) motivation that drives this behavior. The research program described in this volume deals with these matters. Before proceeding, however, we must first document the underrepresentation of these two variables in organizational behavior’s research and theory.

The Missing Organizational Context

Porter and McLaughlin (2006) surveyed the leadership literature for the period 1990–2005 to assess how articles in twenty-one major journals dealt with matters of organizational context. They say:

… the basic premise of this article is: Leadership in organizations does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in organizational contexts. The key issue, therefore, is whether, and to what extent, the organizational context has been front and center in recent leadership literature (Porter and McLaughlin 2006, 559).

Based on their data they conclude that 16 percent of the leadership articles they reviewed gave moderate or strong attention to some aspect of the organizational context as a factor affecting conclusions. Another 19 percent placed only slight emphasis on organizational context. Thus 65 percent of the articles fell into the no emphasis category. This void was most pronounced among the empirical articles surveyed (74 percent), as opposed to the conceptual articles. Accordingly these authors conclude that the organizational context is indeed missing from research on leadership, and to a somewhat lesser extent from the theoretical or conceptual literature.

Porter and McLaughlin (2006) extend their discussion of this deficiency in the field beyond leadership to organizational behavior more broadly, contending that for some reason the organization has been omitted in large part from our research studies. Johns (2006) does an even more extensive job of documenting the ways in which contextual factors tend to be ignored in organizational behavior as a whole. All in all, there can be no question that there is indeed a missing organizational context in the field that stems primarily from certain historical circumstances surrounding the way in which research into organizational behavior has developed (see Miner 2006a).

The Missing Unconscious (or Subconscious)

A substantially different type of neglect occurs in the case of unconscious motivation. Here the problem is both more pronounced and arguably more important, and the documentation derives from clear instances of omission. As an example let us consider a recent issue of the American Psychologist. This issue deals with the leadership field and is predicated on the view that many psychologists are relatively unfamiliar with the leadership literature. To remedy this situation six contributions were solicited from leading theorists—Warren Bennis (2007), Stephen Zaccaro (2007), Victor Vroom and Arthur Jago (2007), Bruce Avolio (2007), Robert Sternberg (2007), and Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman (2007).

None of these leadership theorists makes any mention of unconscious (or subconscious) factors, or of procedures used to assess or measure unconscious motivation; the word unconscious is simply not used. There are, to be sure, references to theories that include in their repertoires unconscious considerations—references to McClelland’s achievement motivation theory (by Zaccaro), to Lord’s information processing theory (by Zaccaro and Avolio), and even to Miner’s role motivation theory (by Zaccaro). Yet even in these instances the concept of the unconscious is not specifically invoked. We will consider shortly why this kind of omission occurs.

THE NATURE OF UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION

In discussing the reactions of the executives he counsels, Manfred Kets de Vries has the following to say:

If you study executives, you quickly see that they don’t behave rationally all the time. Indeed irrational behavior is common in organizational life … When I analyze them, I usually find that their drives spring from childhood patterns and experiences that have carried over into adulthood. Executives don’t like to hear this; they like to think they’re totally in control. They’re insulted to hear that certain things in their minds are unconscious (Coutu 2004, 67).

Uses to Which the Idea of an Unconscious May Be Devoted

Definitions employed to enunciate unconscious factors may vary considerably. The following listing is not intended to include all possibilities, but it does introduce many of the alternatives to be found in the recent literature.

Unconscious thought refers to object-relevant or task-relevant cognitive or affective thought processes that occur while conscious attention is directed elsewhere (Dijksterhuis and Nordgren 2006, 96).

The unconscious was the subterranean strata of the psyche that consisted of previous experiences, memories, feelings, and urges, of which the individual was not actively aware due to defensive mechanisms—the most common of which was repression—or other active psychodynamic processes (Carr 2002, 344).

… most central, much of mental life—including thoughts, feelings, and motives—is unconscious, which means that people can behave in ways or develop symptoms that are inexplicable to themselves (Westen 1998, 334).

… there can be no doubt that the subconscious is a storehouse of knowledge and values beyond that which is in focal awareness at a given time. People can take action without being fully aware of what is motivating them or what stored knowledge is affecting their choices (Locke and Latham 2002, 714).

The concept of the subconscious is not a “hypothetical construct” but a fully objective one. It refers to information that is “in consciousness,” but not at a given time, in focal awareness. … We validate the concept of the subconscious by observing that we can draw knowledge out of memory without any additional learning (Locke and Latham 2004, 395).

The psychoanalytic unconscious is to most lay people and those in the arts and humanities, the only unconscious. It has many more characteristics (besides operating outside of awareness) than can be reviewed here. It includes the id … and most … of the superego …and ego. . . . But it does not provide an influential framework for understanding unconscious processes in academic or scientific circles (see Westen 1998 for a dissenting view). Unlike the psychoanalytic unconscious, the cognitive unconscious has no innate drives. … So what is new about the new unconscious? It is basically cognitive, firmly embedded in cognitive science and historically beholden to the computer as a metaphor … the new unconscious is much more concerned with affect, motivation, and even control and metacognition … goals, motives, and self-regulation are prominent (Hassin, Uleman, and Bargh 2005, 4–6).

The unconscious is, in the first place, the state of ideas and desires which have undergone repression. … The idea that repression is a form of mental defense against threatening psychic phenomena lies at the heart of Freudian psychology. … Repressed ideas do not disappear without a trace from a person’s life, but they seek expression in various subterfuges. … Dreams represent fulfillment of unconscious desires and they are censored to the extent that they may contradict the contents of consciousness (Gabriel 1999, 6–7).

There is research to support many of these formulations. It seems likely that all of these statements may prove to be correct as knowledge evolves; thus I believe that a definition of unconscious motivation at present should encompass all of these propositions. Note in this connection the following quotes—

With regard to career decisions—once the self-concept has been formed, it functions as a stabilizing force, an anchor, and can be thought of as the values and motives that the person will not give up if forced to make a choice. Most of us are not aware of our career anchors (Hall 2002, 186). With regard to organizational identification—whether individuals believe they are part of the organization involves both subconscious and conscious processes (Leana and Rousseau 2000, 159).

Thus, some major contributors to the organizational behavior field do recognize unconscious considerations and find such constructs useful; the missing unconscious is not a universal phenomenon.

Harry Levinson on the Missing Unconscious

One writer who has made abundant use of the unconscious terminology is Harry Levinson (see Miner 2002b). As an example he describes organizations as tending to recapitulate the family structure; members evolve conscious and unconscious contracts with organizations to maintain psychological equilibria (Levinson 1973,28). In the same vein he says “A leader should understand the meaning of the unconscious psychological contract” (Levinson 1998, 236).

Levinson and his colleagues have also directed their attention to the missing unconscious and the reasons for its prevalence:

We get the sense that even those scholars who would like to speak of unconscious needs and psychological development may be reluctant to do so in the face of collegial skepticism regarding clinical themes … One reason organizational scholars tend to fall back on agency theory and transactional elements is that concepts of unconscious needs and personality are no longer in vogue. … Terms such as “unconscious motivation,” “ego ideals,” and “dependency needs” have been eliminated from our working language. … Contemporary articles stay away from the language of unconscious needs, self-identity, and developmental aspects of psychology (Meckler, Drake, and Levinson 2003, 219–221).

In short, unconscious motivation and its associated terminology have become taboo words for organizational behavior, something on the order of four-letter words. As we will see later in this chapter and in the next chapter, this taboo is not attributable to a lack of scientific substantiation, although such has been claimed. More likely it derives from certain processes (presumably often of an unconscious nature) that have come to permeate the field. I have demonstrated such processes as they apply to leadership. Meckler, Drake, and Levinson (2003) have done the same in the case of the psychological contract.

THE STATUS OF RESEARCH, MEASUREMENT, AND ASSESSMENT OF UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION

Psychoanalysis as promulgated by Sigmund Freud has been the driving force behind the study of unconscious motivation historically, although there have been inputs from other areas of psychology for many years, in particular from experimental psychology. Psychoanalysis has at present made its greatest contribution to measurement in the area of projective techniques and their use in assessment. Research data of a scientific nature has increasingly infiltrated the study of projective techniques, yet—like psychoanalysis as a theory and as an application—measurement of the unconscious motivation that derives from psychoanalysis remains largely part of the clinical process. However, the new unconscious as it has emerged in recent years has come out of experimental psychology. This new unconscious has developed increasing force; it will be considered in Chapter 2, after we take up the research, the measurement procedures, and the assessment processes involving projectives considered here in Chapter 1.

There have been two major milestones in the evaluation of research related to psychoanalytic theory. The first of these was the Sears (1943; 1944) analysis which tells us little about the outcomes of research at the present time, but much about the overall evaluation of the theory itself at an early point:

The experiments and observations examined in this report stand testim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I. Unconscious Motivation
• Part II. Studies that Consider Unconscious Motive Patterns
• Part III. Analyses
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author