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The study of group dynamics was central to the field of organization development at its inception. More recently, there has been a move away from considering irrational and unconscious dynamics in organizational life and more attention focused on rational and observable behavior that can be measured and quantified. We introduce the tool, Beneath the Surface of the Burke-Litwin Model, that invites consideration of how the overt behavior of individuals, groups, and entire systems is linked to covert dynamics. This more comprehensive view of organizational life provides scholar-practitioners with a systemic perspective, a view of covert dynamics by organizational level, and support for the ongoing development of one’s capacity for using self-as-instrument when engaged in organization development and organization change efforts.

The paper aims to describe and understand the gap between the psychodynamic literature on groups and the social psychological perspective on group dynamics.

As Wilfred Bion is the most influential group dynamics representative of the psychodynamic tradition the authors performed a citation analysis of Bion's work to find out whether it influenced the social psychological research on group dynamics. They compared three domains of literature: therapy/clinical, management/organization studies and social psychology. Moreover, they depict (by drawing on interviews with European pioneers in social psychology) the historical context in which European social psychology developed to explain the gap between the psychodynamic and social psychological approaches in the study of group dynamics.

The results clearly indicate the existence of a gap between the social psychological and psychodynamic perspectives on group dynamics. Moreover, the authors show that Bion did influence scholars studying or working with real-life groups and is cited more by American than European scholars. The attempt to build a legitimate scientific identity for social psychology provides a context for understanding of the neglect of the psychodynamic tradition.

The authors conclude by exploring ways in which the psychodynamic tradition may fertilize the social psychological tradition in studying groups.

The paper is one of the first to address the discrepancy between the social psychological and psychodynamic perspectives in the study of group dynamics.

This paper aims to describe how organisation coaches can work at relational depth with their clients by exploring the unconscious relational dynamics of the coaching relationship and their links to unconscious dynamics in the client's organisation.

The paper draws on relational psychoanalytic theory of the individual and system psychodynamic theories of organisations to argue that unconscious dynamics that emerge between the coach and client can be understood as: a complex unconscious interaction between how the client and coach organise their relationships; a repetition of how the client participates in unconscious organisation dynamics; and shaping the coach's subjective experience in the work, including their emotional and embodied responses to the client. These propositions are explored through an in‐depth qualitative case study of the author's work with a client.

The case illustrates how unconscious organisation dynamics shaped the client's experience of his role, evoking in him feelings of powerlessness and anger. The coach initially identified with these feelings because of his own relational past. As a result, the relationship became stuck in a repetitive dynamic which could be understood as an expression of the stuck dynamics in the organisation around the unconscious management of anxieties within its management structures. A shift in the coaching relationship was brought about through the coach's disclosure of his own experience and naming of feelings and emotions that were previously implicit and out of awareness in the coaching relationship. The subsequent exploration of the dynamics of the coaching relationship helped the client to understand at a deeper level his struggle in the organisation and to take up a different position in the organisation dynamics. The case study highlights how the dynamics of the coaching relationship can be understood as a repetition of unconscious processes by the client in the organisation.

The paper highlights how coaches can understand and work with unconscious dynamics in the coaching relationship. This requires coaches not only to be self‐aware, but also to possess the emotional maturity and confidence to work with difficult emotional material.

The paper demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory of individuals and organisations can be integrated into a relational approach to coaching which facilitates the exploration of the client's experience of their work in an organisation context.

Based on an experience, the paper aims to describe how group dynamics can play out in a traditional classroom setting and reflect on how the author worked with these dynamics from a systems psychodynamic perspective.

The experience involved teaching a two-day module on group dynamics to a class of 35 mature students enrolled in a business school. The author tried to create a space to understand and work with here-and-now dynamics as the module progressed.

Frustration grew among the students regarding the time spent on discussion and reflection. The group was split in two, with one subgroup opening up to experiencing and reflecting on the dynamics, whereas the other subgroup grew more frustrated and demanded that the author take up his authority. Apart from attempting to work with the dynamics, the author introduced relevant concepts and theories that could help to understand the dynamics. The group was characterized by an emotional climate of dependency while students projected hitherto unexplored frustrations onto the lecturer. Although the conditions for experiential learning were far from optimal, the group did experience group dynamics and did engage in reviewing their experiences. Learning did take place, although the depth varied among individuals.

Reflections are provided on the (im)possibilities of learning about group dynamics at business schools. Suggestions are given how to create conditions for experiential learning in management education.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether a group dynamics perspective still exists in the scientific study of groups and what factors may account for the current situation.

Alongside reflections based on my professional experience, I have analyzed the main academic journals that publish group research.

A group dynamics perspective is almost totally absent in the scientific study of groups. Contributing factors to this state of affairs are disciplinary developments in psychology (e.g. individualization, experimentalization and specialization), the demise of the status of psychoanalysis, changes in the meaning and manifestation of the “group,” and effects of New Public Management.

The study offers a critical perspective on current group research practices and considers these in a larger (social and historical) context. It advocates a group dynamics perspective for the study of groups, based on systems-psychodynamic insights.

Drawing on project work in public and private sector organizations, considers the critical factors for managers of central support services of working in an internal market. Considering both public and private sector experiences, the roles of both supplier and customer managers are examined. Spells out what is involved for supplier managers to take a genuinely customer‐focused approach to their services, and how customer managers can develop the skills to work best with suppliers for a strategic approach to crucial support services. Considers how to develop managers in this environment with reference to current developmnent projects which involve customer and supplier managers learning together.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalysis to an emerging sub-field known as “critical healthcare management studies” (CHMS).

Building upon a wave of critical scholarship in the broader field of management, scholars and practitioners of healthcare management have begun to forge a critical scholarly movement of their own. CHMS, short for “critical healthcare management studies,” formally denotes a new subfield of inquiry dedicated to challenging entrenched assumptions, exposing power relations, and cultivating critical praxis, all the while serving as a vital counterpoint to mainstream scholarship. This paper seeks to augment the CHMS movement with psychoanalysis, and particularly the critical vein of organizational psychoanalysis already well-established in critical management studies.

The argument is made that a greater engagement with psychoanalysis offers novel avenues for critical theorizing and practice in healthcare management. Specifically three areas are considered: 1) the exploitative role of guilt in the caring professions, 2) the resurgence of authoritarianism and its implications for unconscious organizational dynamics, and 3) the potential for a psychoanalytically informed critical healthcare praxis.

While there remain wide differences of opinion about the utility of psychoanalysis outside of the clinical arena, this paper reveals just how psychoanalysis can inform today's healthcare organizations, and more broadly the social and political organization of health in society.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward an argument for the importance of social and situational dynamics present when groups of organizational members view images. This both enriches psychoanalytic theories of the visual previously brought to bear on this topic and adds a valuable psychoanalytical perspective to visual organization studies.

The paper extends Burkard Sievers’ concept of the “social photo matrix” (SPM) through an interdisciplinary review of literature in psychoanalysis, audiencing, media studies and social theory.

A socially nuanced variant of the SPM is put forward as a way to explore organizational members’ experiences of work and employment, as part of a nascent “visual methodological approach” to studying organization(s).

The ideas within this conceptual paper would benefit from empirical investigation. This would be a fruitful and interesting possibility for future research.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the contemporary utility of the SPM as a psychoanalytically‐motivated method through which to understand visually‐mediated effects of organizational action, as collectively experienced by their members and stakeholders.

The paper makes a particular contribution to the poorly‐researched area of the collective reception of organizational images and opens up possibilities to work with the hidden anxieties and defences that arise in the course of organizational action.

This paper introduces this special issue and initially provides some contextual background to the field of psychodynamics, its significance to organisational studies and the understanding of behaviour in organizations. The internationally-based papers in this special issue are then introduced and summarised.

This paper aims to introduce and illustrate the notion of narcissistic group dynamics. It is claimed that narcissism does not simply reside within individuals but can be characteristic of groups and social systems. In this case, the focus is on narcissistic dynamics in multiparty systems.

Social psychological understandings of group narcissism are complemented with notions from psychoanalysis. A systems-psychodynamic perspective, informed by psychoanalysis and systems theory, is adopted.

Narcissistic group dynamics in a multiparty context are illustrated by observations from a two-day simulation of interorganizational relationships that is called “The Yacht Club” (Vansina et al., 1998).

In the social psychological literature, narcissism thus far has been largely understood as the prevalence of feelings of ingroup superiority vis-à-vis a particular outgroup. Sometimes the term narcissism is explicitly used, in other cases not, for example in social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), a theory that is built on group members’ need to regulate self-esteem. Psychoanalysts adopt an individualistic perspective while aiming to understand the underlying dynamics resulting in narcissism. A cross-fertilization of social psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives results in deindividualizing and depathologizing narcissism and a deeper understanding of the dynamics of (inter)group narcissism.