Stein’s Study of Trauma In the Workplace

Review of Howard F. Stein, Nothing Personal, Just Business: A Guided Journey into Organizational Darkness. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Books, 2001. ISBN 1567204422, 191 pages, $69.95.

In Nothing Personal, Just Business Howard Stein makes a further contribution to his ongoing investigation into the darkness which pervades so

Page 154

many of the business organizations that dominate the American workplace. This book, published in 2001, foreshadows much of what we have been recently seeing in the media about corporate corruption and sleazy business practices: CEOs and top management profiting while workers lose their jobs and retirement benefits. We have been hearing at great length that for some corporations “business as usual” and adherence to “generally accepted accounting principles” have meant fraud and deception practiced by those at the top while everyone else — consumers, employees, and investors — are kept in the dark, being economically victimized by their greed driven mismanagement.

Stein’s approach is thoroughly experiential. There are five chapters which are case studies describing the reactions of those individuals in organizations which are going through the process of “downsizing,” “restructuring,” or “re-engineering,” three of the most common of the many euphemisms used for the psychological intimidation experienced by those who are fired, demoted, or exploited in the course of these organizational upheavals.

The remaining two chapters describe the methods Stein uses as a workplace anthropologist/organizational consultant. There are two key concepts on which he relies. Countertransference — his own subjective responses to the experience of bearing witness to the trauma and victimization he observes in the workplace, and metaphor — the words and images used to describe the feelings and thoughts of those who bear the pain as well as those which seem to best illuminate his own experience of the events he is observing.

Stein is a master at this work. He shows us how much can be learned by truly listening to both what others tell him of their experiences as well as his own responses. He chooses the powerful and provocative image of the Holocaust as the central metaphor for capturing the essence of what is felt by many of the victims of this process. In his introductory chapter he presents some of the objections he has heard to his use of the Holocaust metaphor. For example, quoting an unnamed colleague, he says, “You can recover from being fired from a job; you can’t recover from being fired in an oven. The Holocaust is the final “downsizing” from which there can be no return. People who are fired — even brutally fired — can still get another job; they are still alive.”

Much of the remainder of the book seeks to answer these objections by presenting the anthropological evidence he has collected in his role as consultant/witness to those individuals who bear the burden of being “downsized.” Stein’s method of supporting his choice of this metaphor is to appeal to the data. He argues that Holocaust imagery is the way the victims of downsizing choose to express their feelings when they are given the chance to speak openly and honestly about their experience.

Stein remains faithful to his project, consistently staying in the subjective realm close to his own experiences and those he observes and elicits from his subjects. In my experience of reading the book I found myself wanting to ask questions about why this rough treatment is so prevalent in contemporary American business practice. Stein, all too briefly, addresses the historical context. “When we think of American business in the context of history, words like “enterprising” and “entrepreneurial” come quickly to mind. They,” he continues, “correspond to nationally held self-ideals and self-images about human possibility, opportunity, hope, initiative, optimism, personal individuality, autonomy, and restless energy….”

Things seem to be getting worse recently is his argument. He states that malice in the workplace is becoming more widespread in this country and throughout the world. Yet, I find myself wondering if this is really a change from a more benign business environment or if meanness in the workplace has always been the rule rather than the exception, although perhaps manifesting themselves in different ways in former times. Hasn’t “business as usual” in America always involved heavy doses of exploitation and victimization of those not in the top echelons of the corporate structure?

We know something of the history of business in this country. We know that the workplace has frequently been a breeding ground for trauma; think of slavery and the exploitation of workers by forcing them to work long hours under harsh working conditions for low wages in dangerous work environments. For many years workplace safety was given a very low priority: Remember Upton Sinclair’s Jungle and the fatal fires in the New York City garment district. In times past there was also an almost complete absence of the social safety net composed of health insurance, workmen’s compensation, unemployment and disability insurance, and retirement pensions, all of which didn’t exist as recently as 70 years ago. In the past, when there were far more hard and dangerous physical labor and factory jobs, the traumas work-

Page 155

ers suffered were more frequently physical — accidents, injuries, and sickness occurring in or because of the workplace environment. One could argue that the Holocaust metaphor, or one of similarly devastating power, would have characterized the experience of traumatized workers in times past as well as they do now.

I would have liked to see something more of the objective side, an examination of the historical record of corporate behavior with the aim of answering the question of how the callousness came to be part of doing business. Are there psychological reasons for this attitude in the workplace that have their origins in child rearing practices or in the nature of contemporary society, or is it just the newest version of the callousness that has always characterized the realities of capitalism? An exploration of these questions would have enriched the psychohistorical interest of the book and would nicely complement the subjective approach that Stein so powerfully and insightfully presents.

Page 156