COSMOGONY

Archetypes in Organizations

Self

Shadow

Anima and Animus

Persona

Sage

King

Adventurer

Trickster

Eternal Child

Gaia

Cosmogony

Soteriology

Cosmogony

• Myths of the beginning of time

• Sacred time

• Creation

Michlangelo, The creation of Adam

Cosmogony

Mircea Eliade (1932):

• Sacred time (sacrum) is different than secular, linear time (profanum).

• Myths recreate the sacred time as they summon it and let it be experienced by next generations.

Eros

Cosmogony

The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence (Mircea Eliade, 1932)

Supernova, by NASA

Examples

• Hesiod’s Theogony

• Enûma Eliš (Babylon)

• Biblical Genesis

• Norse Völuspá

• Gaudapada's Ajātivāda

Ancient of Days, by William Blake

Enûma Eliš

When the sky above was not named,

And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,

And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,

And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,

Their waters were mingled together,

And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;

When of the gods none had been called into being.

Dark Side: Destruction

• Mikhail Bakunin (1842): destructive creation, revolutionary role of negation

• Karl Marx (1857): capitalism destroys and devalues wealth and economic structure

• Joseph Schumpeter (1942): a „gale” making mutation and change possible

• Zygmunt Bauman (2012): Interregnum

Dancing Shiva

Founding Myth

Gabriel Tarde (1903):

• Innovations necessary prerequisite for cultural and social changes

• Flash of invention

• Human interaction

• Imitation – diffusion

Odin and the Völva by Lorenz Frolich

Organizational Founder

Edgar Schein (1991):

• Religious movements and organizations founded by prophets or charismatic spiritual leaders

• Political organizations formed by visionaries and activists

• Business organizations companies created by entrepreneurs

Father and Child: Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA

Organizational Founder

Edgar Schein:

• Idea

• Convincing others

• Creating structures

• Involvement and sharing of experiences

• The role of the founder remains vital

Moses, by Michelangelo

Small Business

• Bartosz Sławecki: personal relationships

• Henrietta Nilson: visibility and invisibility

• Miriam Salzer-Mörling: presence and dreams

The Departure of Fruits and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris, by Raymond Mason

Creativity and Organizing

• Alex Faickney Osborn (1953): brainstorming

• Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (1993): Schwung, management as art.

• Wendelin Küpers (2002): organizing as collective creation

John Slavin, paitning from The River series

Creation and Morality

Robert Solomon (2004): Aristotle – economic creation interlinked with ethics, this link raptured currently

Zygmunt Bauman (2015): adiaphorization or exclusion of specific categories of human acts, categories, of their human objects, from the moral universe dominating contemporary business

Hieronymus Bosch, Hell

Why Do You Shop?

Judith Wilske