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Defense Mechanisms in Organizations in Response to Changes

Student: Yusipova Evgeniya

Supervisor: Ekaterina Shapovalova

Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Business Consulting (Master)

Year of Graduation: 2019

Today the need for organizational change is a key success factor for any company. However, change is always met with resistance. This paper explores the psychological defense mechanisms that can be the sources of resistance during the period of organizational change. Main aim of the paper is to analyze the mechanisms of these psychological defenses and psychoanalytical concepts of such defense systems, so that they can be used to evaluate the cases of organizational change and help in understanding the processes underlying the change and predicting the development of such processes. The case study part of the paper analyzes the case of changes in regional sales departments of a large company and lists the assumptions about psychological defenses that were in process on different organizational levels during the period of changes. The interpretations of these assumptions are presented using psychoanalytical concepts of the defense systems. The results of the case study show that primitive psychological defense mechanisms start to work in response to any organizational changes, hindering and slowing down the process of changes. In conclusion the paper identifies the psychoanalytical methods that could be used to lower the distress and anxiety within the organization and make the changes that are implemented in all regional branches of the company more efficient.

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