Drafts by Larry Hirschhorn
This blog post takes up the question of why James Comey, the head of the FBI until recently fired... more This blog post takes up the question of why James Comey, the head of the FBI until recently fired by President Trump, announced on October 28, 2016, eleven days before the presidential election, that he was reopening his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private computer server to send classified emails. According to Nate Silver, the premier U.S political pollster, this decision most likely cost Clinton the election. Ninety-nine attorneys general and prosecutors wrote a memo stating that they were “astonished and perplexed” by his decision, which contravened decades of accepted practice. According to Rod Rosenstein, the current Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Comey’s decision has damaged substantially the FBI’s reputation and credibility. Yet Comey, in testimony to a congressional committee, said that if he had not taken his decision, he faced the “death of the FBI as an independent institution in America.” The contrast could not be more extreme and compelling.
This post suggests that Comey, influenced by the wider Republican Party narrative that the election in particular and the “system” in general were rigged, came to believe that it was his task alone to prove that the system was fair and just. This happened in part because Loretta Lynch, Obama’s attorney general, compromised her standing when by happenstance her and Bill Clinton’s planes landed at the same time at the Phoenix airport, and she allowed him to visit with her in her plane. By responding passively to the dilemma she created for herself, she opened the door for Comey to act independently of her, even though institutionally he was subordinate to her and could not by precedent decide on his own whether or not Clinton should be indicted.
The post proposes that Comey had a valence for being the hero in dramas of his own making, shaped in part by the accolades he received for confronting President George Bush in 2004 over a wiretapping protocol. I suggest that this valence created a bias for action and led him to discount the impact of his decision, if Clinton should in fact lose the election, which of course happened. I suggest that like all political pollsters he assumed Clinton would win and this led inexorably to the conclusion that were he to “conceal” his reopening of the investigation, he would damage the FBI’s reputation. But I suggest that his use of the word “conceal” resulted from this same bias for action and prevented him from considering the possibility that if Clinton would lose, revealing as well concealing could damage the FBIs reputation, which in fact happened. His valence stopped him from accessing the full play of rational thought.
Larry
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-comeys-fateful.html
This is an intro to a blog post.The blog is called "Learning from experience_larry hirschhorn. th... more This is an intro to a blog post.The blog is called "Learning from experience_larry hirschhorn. the purpose of the blogs to connect psychodynamic thinking to current events.
Papers by Larry Hirschhorn
American Journal of Sociology, 1986
ics. Steve’s primary research area is creativ-ity, innovation and resilience in work and or-ganiz... more ics. Steve’s primary research area is creativ-ity, innovation and resilience in work and or-ganizations. He teaches and conducts re-search on creativity, innovation, improvisa-tion, and resilience in work and organiza-tions. Contact Information Personal website:
Organizations in Depth: The Psychoanalysis of Organizations
Organisationsberatung, Supervision, Coaching
ZusammenfassungCovid-19 beschleunigt virtuelle Formen der weltweiten Zusammenarbeit. Das hat weit... more ZusammenfassungCovid-19 beschleunigt virtuelle Formen der weltweiten Zusammenarbeit. Das hat weitreichende Konsequenzen für Struktur und Prozesse von Organisationen einerseits und ihre Kultur andererseits. Wir unterscheiden drei Welten, die die meisten Unternehmen in unterschiedlichen Proportionen miteinander verbinden: (1) die bürokratische Welt mit ihrer Orientierung an Hierarchie, Kontrolle und Vorhersagbarkeit, (2) die Projektwelt mit den Werten Team, Kooperation und Entwicklung, (3) die mit Freiheit, Autonomie und Unsicherheit verbundene Transaktions- oder Gig-Welt. Der richtige Zuschnitt der drei Welten im Unternehmen (wieviel braucht es von welcher Welt?) ebenso wie die Passung der Unternehmenskultur zu den Welten (fördert oder behindert die vorherrschende Kultur die Organisation?) sind wichtig u. a. für Recruiting und Bindung von Talenten – und damit für den Erfolg des Unternehmens.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 07393148108429530, Dec 13, 2007
This blog post takes up the question of why James Comey, the head of the FBI until recently fired... more This blog post takes up the question of why James Comey, the head of the FBI until recently fired by President Trump, announced on October 28, 2016, eleven days before the presidential election, that he was reopening his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private computer server to send classified emails. According to Nate Silver, the premier U.S political pollster, this decision most likely cost Clinton the election. Ninety-nine attorneys general and prosecutors wrote a memo stating that they were “astonished and perplexed” by his decision, which contravened decades of accepted practice. According to Rod Rosenstein, the current Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Comey’s decision has damaged substantially the FBI’s reputation and credibility. Yet Comey, in testimony to a congressional committee, said that if he had not taken his decision, he faced the “death of the FBI as an independent institution in America.” The contrast could not be more extreme and compelling. This post suggests that Comey, influenced by the wider Republican Party narrative that the election in particular and the “system” in general were rigged, came to believe that it was his task alone to prove that the system was fair and just. This happened in part because Loretta Lynch, Obama’s attorney general, compromised her standing when by happenstance her and Bill Clinton’s planes landed at the same time at the Phoenix airport, and she allowed him to visit with her in her plane. By responding passively to the dilemma she created for herself, she opened the door for Comey to act independently of her, even though institutionally he was subordinate to her and could not by precedent decide on his own whether or not Clinton should be indicted. The post proposes that Comey had a valence for being the hero in dramas of his own making, shaped in part by the accolades he received for confronting President George Bush in 2004 over a wiretapping protocol. I suggest that this valence created a bias for action and led him to discount the impact of his decision, if Clinton should in fact lose the election, which of course happened. I suggest that like all political pollsters he assumed Clinton would win and this led inexorably to the conclusion that were he to “conceal” his reopening of the investigation, he would damage the FBI’s reputation. But I suggest that his use of the word “conceal” resulted from this same bias for action and prevented him from considering the possibility that if Clinton would lose, revealing as well concealing could damage the FBIs reputation, which in fact happened. His valence stopped him from accessing the full play of rational thought. Larry http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-comeys-fateful.html
International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior
Cross-level analysis is a problem for mainstream approaches to organizational behavior, but not f... more Cross-level analysis is a problem for mainstream approaches to organizational behavior, but not for psychoanalytic theory. The reason is that psychoanalytic theory is not so much about behavior as about the meaning of behavior, which is relatively invariant across levels. The Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times is analyzed at the individual, the group, the intrapsychic, the interpersonal, and the organizational levels. Blair’s behavior and the behavior of the Times toward him are explained in terms of a clash between two ways in which meaning is made: the Oedipal and the anti-oedipal.
Steve Freeman is on the faculty of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences Cen... more Steve Freeman is on the faculty of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences Center for Organizational Dynam- ics. Steve's primary research area is creativ- ity, innovation and resilience in work and or- ganizations. He teaches and conducts re- search on creativity, innovation, improvisa- tion, and resilience in work and organiza- tions. Abstract F
Human Resource Management, 1989
Passion drives productivity. Today senior executives recognize that they can no longer motivate d... more Passion drives productivity. Today senior executives recognize that they can no longer motivate disinterested employees by rewarding them for doing the right things and punishing them for doing the wrong ones. If employees do not care about their work, they ...
... La Superación de la mecanización: trabajo y tecnología en la época posindustrial. Información... more ... La Superación de la mecanización: trabajo y tecnología en la época posindustrial. Información General. Autores: Larry Hirschhorn; Editores: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social; Año de publicación: 1987; País: España; Idioma: Español; ISBN : 84-7434-393-3. Otros catálogos ...
Organization …, 2004
The Power of Moral Purpose: Sandler O'Neill & Partners in the Aftermath of Se., Steven F Fre... more The Power of Moral Purpose: Sandler O'Neill & Partners in the Aftermath of Se., Steven F Freeman; Larry Hirschhorn; Marc Maltz Organization Development Journal; Winter 2004; 22, 4; ABI/TNFORM Global pg. 69 The Power of Moral Purpose: Sandler O'Neill & Partners in ...
The Death and Life of Tony Hsieh: The Dynamics of Projection, 2021
I have written a new blog post titled: The Death and Life of Tony Hsieh. Hsieh was the CEO of Zap... more I have written a new blog post titled: The Death and Life of Tony Hsieh. Hsieh was the CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer that pioneered a level of customer service we take for granted today; letting customers return shoes, questions unasked, for a year. The result delighted customers, many of whom were naturally anxious about buying shoes sight unseen. But Zappos was distinguished in another way. Its call-center workers could be zany every day, dressing up as superheroes and racing toys cars in the office. The resulting climate of free spiritedness reinforced a policy of trusting employees to treat customers well. Call center workers followed no script and their calls were not timed. Over time thousands of people toured Zappos to see this combination of good working practices and zany behavior for themselves. Hsieh became a culture hero and wrote a book Delivering Happiness: A Path of Profits, Passion and Purpose. The book ends with a call to action for readers to join him in a larger movement for creating happiness at work. Yet Hsieh burned to death in a fire, which he may have set himself. Certainly prior to his death he was on the path to self-destruction, A close confidant warned him that as a drug addict he had become a cliché. The post proposes that Hsieh's overreach and subsequent death-was based on his own unhappiness-many people experienced him as estranged and distant-and on the way people and groups projected their utopian fantasies onto him. He was consumed by his inner demons and our wider dreams. It explores this hypothesis by examining his compulsion to remake Zappos, first as a Holacracy and then as a marketplace, and his effort to remake downtown Las Vegas into a startup city. These efforts failed, they had to fail, since they were motivated by fantasies, not good business judgment. The post is an example of socio-analytic thinking, that is the application of psychoanalysis to large group dynamics.
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-death-and-life-of-tony-hsieh.html
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Drafts by Larry Hirschhorn
This post suggests that Comey, influenced by the wider Republican Party narrative that the election in particular and the “system” in general were rigged, came to believe that it was his task alone to prove that the system was fair and just. This happened in part because Loretta Lynch, Obama’s attorney general, compromised her standing when by happenstance her and Bill Clinton’s planes landed at the same time at the Phoenix airport, and she allowed him to visit with her in her plane. By responding passively to the dilemma she created for herself, she opened the door for Comey to act independently of her, even though institutionally he was subordinate to her and could not by precedent decide on his own whether or not Clinton should be indicted.
The post proposes that Comey had a valence for being the hero in dramas of his own making, shaped in part by the accolades he received for confronting President George Bush in 2004 over a wiretapping protocol. I suggest that this valence created a bias for action and led him to discount the impact of his decision, if Clinton should in fact lose the election, which of course happened. I suggest that like all political pollsters he assumed Clinton would win and this led inexorably to the conclusion that were he to “conceal” his reopening of the investigation, he would damage the FBI’s reputation. But I suggest that his use of the word “conceal” resulted from this same bias for action and prevented him from considering the possibility that if Clinton would lose, revealing as well concealing could damage the FBIs reputation, which in fact happened. His valence stopped him from accessing the full play of rational thought.
Larry
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-comeys-fateful.html
Papers by Larry Hirschhorn
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-death-and-life-of-tony-hsieh.html
This post suggests that Comey, influenced by the wider Republican Party narrative that the election in particular and the “system” in general were rigged, came to believe that it was his task alone to prove that the system was fair and just. This happened in part because Loretta Lynch, Obama’s attorney general, compromised her standing when by happenstance her and Bill Clinton’s planes landed at the same time at the Phoenix airport, and she allowed him to visit with her in her plane. By responding passively to the dilemma she created for herself, she opened the door for Comey to act independently of her, even though institutionally he was subordinate to her and could not by precedent decide on his own whether or not Clinton should be indicted.
The post proposes that Comey had a valence for being the hero in dramas of his own making, shaped in part by the accolades he received for confronting President George Bush in 2004 over a wiretapping protocol. I suggest that this valence created a bias for action and led him to discount the impact of his decision, if Clinton should in fact lose the election, which of course happened. I suggest that like all political pollsters he assumed Clinton would win and this led inexorably to the conclusion that were he to “conceal” his reopening of the investigation, he would damage the FBI’s reputation. But I suggest that his use of the word “conceal” resulted from this same bias for action and prevented him from considering the possibility that if Clinton would lose, revealing as well concealing could damage the FBIs reputation, which in fact happened. His valence stopped him from accessing the full play of rational thought.
Larry
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-comeys-fateful.html
http://learningfromexperiencelarryhirschhorn.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-death-and-life-of-tony-hsieh.html