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

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t h e i n c e st u o u s wo r k p lac e
An incestuous organization is an encapsulated institution in
which members increasingly meet their personal, professional,
social, and sexual needs inside the boundary of the organizational
family.
The next three chapters will describe the professional, social, and
sexual closure that mark this incestuous dynamic. The highlights of the
closure process are illustrated in figure 4-C. Concepts used in the coming
chapters include the following:
• Workers can sustain themselves in high-stress work environments
over time only through sources of support and replenishment
outside the work setting.
• The closure of an organizational system increases stressors, reduces
internal supports, and decreases workers’ ability to develop
and sustain sources of support and replenishment outside
of the organization.
• Certain patterns of professional distress emerge out of and are
symptomatic of the progressive closure of the organizational
family system.
• Strategies to address professional distress and strategies to address
the internal organizational problems of closed systems
will fail unless they reverse the progression of organizational
closure.