Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

Professional and Organizational Distress 13
Distress and Developmental Maturation
Professional distress and system distress often are symptoms
of developmental maturation.
There are developmental stages in the life of every worker and every organization.
Professional adaptation styles that worked well early in one’s
career may not work well in the middle or latter phases. Distress may
spring not from changes in the environment but from our developmental
maturation. Likewise, structures and processes that worked well in
one developmental stage of an organization often do not succeed in future
stages. Personal and organizational distress often accompany the
shift from one developmental stage to another. Such stages can be anticipated,
recognized, and actively managed.
Distress and Organizational Character
Professional distress, though most often emerging from temporary
aberrations of organizational processes, can sometimes
reflect more enduring and toxic dimensions of organizational
character.
There are organizations in which conditions become injurious to those
who work in them and to those who interact with them. We will explore
the difference between an otherwise healthy organization going through
a distressing period and an organization whose character has become essentially
predatory.
Resistance to Change
The first instinct of most organizations is to deny that distress
exists, reframe the stressor as something familiar, and resist
the very changes that would seem to be indicated.
Organizational systems are inherently conservative and self-perpetuating.
They respond to crises mechanically and superficially, in ways that prevent
or contain change. A committee is formed. A study is conducted. A
person is hired to address the special problem. A policy is written. This is
not how organizational systems change; this is how organizational systems
avoid change. In the chapters on organizational intervention, we will
look at the importance of getting inside the soul of an organization to
change or refine its character, structure, processes, and culture.