Archetypes at Work – Notes for a book #2

Active Living Dispositions

Archetypes, as they manifest themselves in organisations, are not illusory qualities; they are not some apocryphal acts of the imagination. They have a reality and substance in the greater community of the people who comprise the organisation. They are active living dispositions which impact on our everyday life.

 Let us stop for a moment to look at the organisation. What is an organisation? Does it have a meaning and context beyond that of the people who work within it? Often, we tend to take concepts like ‘organisation’ and build around them a sense of the object. The organisation becomes an object in its own right. This does not make sense. It is true to say, that when we talk about organisations, we may be referring to a number of attributes – the people, the buildings and their fabric, the role and purpose of the organisation. However, in all of this, there is the intrinsic role of the people as the key component parts. For, without people we have no organisation.

The objectification or personification of the organisation is a step that takes us further away from the productive scope of the organisation. It removes us from the true essence of the organisation – we move away from the soul of the organisation, away from the sense of the organisation as an active living disposition. In removing the focus from those people who work in the organisation, we diminish the soul within the organisation.