Nathan Gerard

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at California State University, Long Beach

In recent years, a scholarly movement has taken hold that is critical of work and organizational psychology (WOP). Referred to as critical work and organizational psychology (CWOP), this movement problematizes some of the foundational premises of WOP, including its lack of reflexivity on its own values and ethics. While bringing increased attention...

In recent years, a scholarly movement has taken hold that is critical of work and organizational psychology (WOP). Referred to as critical work and organizational psychology (CWOP), this movement problematizes some of the foundational premises of WOP, including its lack of reflexivity on its own values and ethics. While bringing increased attention...

Although antiwork finally receives its due by Alliger and McEachern (2024), their focal article remains remarkably if not suspiciously organizational in both tone and substance. Indeed, the “O” in our professional moniker appears to wield its stubborn dominance, carrying on as business as usual in an otherwise radical challenge to our field. What,...

Building upon Max Weber’s insightful critique of the capitalist spirit as causing ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’, this article traces the trajectory of a fraught subjectivity over the course of a socioeconomic order from the Protestant Reformation to the present. Beginning with the premise that this socioeconomic order has a long history of both...

Objective: This study explores the perceptions of mindfulness among students and administrators in a university setting. Participants: In Study 1, six focus groups were conducted with 34 students. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six administrators involved with implementing mindfulness-based activities. Methods: Thematic...

This chapter expands upon the argument outlined in the Introduction that much of the critical discourse on worker subjectivity, however well-intended, explains subjectivity away. Specifically, this chapter explores how critical scholarship might reclaim subjectivity (or the self) while, at the same time, fostering ways of self-contact outside of wo...

Beginning with a talk Winnicott gives in 1967 to the Association of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, this chapter outlines the developmental trajectory of the absent self within the context of neoliberalism. Central to this outline is an understanding of the relationship between new forms of labor that call upon a constant refashioning and reinvent...

This concluding chapter revisits the major themes of the book through the vantage of an enduring preoccupation animating all of Winnicott’s writings: the search for a life that feels real. While harboring no illusions about the prospects of achieving such a life inside capitalist work relations, this chapter nevertheless holds out the possibility o...

This chapter seeks to locate Winnicott among a larger ecosystem of thought in psychoanalysis and its extension into organization studies. Beginning with an overview of the interconnected and, at times, the muddled relationship between Winnicott and Melanie Klein, the argument is made that it is precisely in Winnicott’s divergences from Klein that h...

This chapter draws upon Winnicott to offer a new perspective on care and its discontents. Specifically, the question of why the so-called care crisis afflicting affluent Western societies seems to persist despite itself, and particularly despite growing awareness among care workers of their degrading work conditions, is explored through the use of...

This chapter examines efforts to remake organizations into “holding environments” and “potential spaces,” two of Winnicott’s revolutionary ideas that, however compelling, warrant particular scrutiny when applied to the organizational arena. Often implied in such efforts is an analogy between the organization and Winnicott’s good-enough or ordinary...

Draft of a forthcoming chapter In M. Bowker & A. Buzby (Eds.), Getting lost: Psycho-political withdrawal in the Covidian era.

A critical movement is afoot in work and organizational psychology. But what is this thing called CWOP? What, and who, does it represent? And what might it become? Many of us on the "inside" of this movement are anxiously asking such questions, perhaps with a mixture of hope that CWOP might finally be the reckoning force we have long sought, and fe...

In this paper, we expand upon our use of the cocoon metaphor for understanding and working with organizations from a psychodynamic perspective. Conceived as both defensive and generative, cocoons are relational phenomena that manifest throughout organizations and risk being mistaken as dysfunctional entities in need of dismantling. To illustrate th...

The purpose of this paper is to widen the scope of workplace bullying to include an analysis of neoliberalism and its propensity for violence. Applying a relational psychoanalytic frame, the paper draws hitherto underexplored connections between abusive relational dynamics and the system of neoliberalism, demonstrating how such dynamics permeate bo...

The impetus for this essay arose from a close reading of the work of American psychoanalyst Hans Loewald. Little referenced in the psychoanalytic literature on organizations, Loewald offers a unique and highly influential set of ideas that both prefigure contemporary psychoanalysis and redefine classical theory. In this essay I explore how Loewald...

In this paper we explore the metaphor of the cocoon as a vehicle for enriching our understanding of organisational life. Deployed in clinical psychoanalysis to convey both intrapsychic experiences and interpersonal dynamics, the cocoon metaphor has yet to be applied to workplace dynamics. We outline the origins of the cocoon metaphor in the artsand...

This paper situates the burgeoning movement of critical work and organizational psychology (CWOP) within a broader and ongoing effort to rehabilitate work in a broken society. Drawing upon Loren Baritz’s seminal critique of the field, The Servants of Power, the argument is made that while CWOP scholars clearly militate against pandering to the “pow...

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate the value of combining the strategic planning process with psychoanalytically informed interpretation through an exploratory case study. Design/methodology/approach The authors present their experiences and findings from a consulting engagement that began as a strategic planning assignment and soon evolved in...

Throughout the fields of medicine and organization studies, there are growing indications of the value of the humanities for enriching scholarship, education, and practice. However, the field of healthcare management has yet to consider the promise of the humanities for illuminating its particular domain. This perspective paper explores how the hum...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalysis to an emerging sub-field known as “critical healthcare management studies” (CHMS). Design/methodology/approach Building upon a wave of critical scholarship in the broader field of management, scholars and practitioners of healthcare management have begun to forge a...

This paper critically examines efforts to “professionalize” the field of healthcare management and its corresponding costs. Drawing upon the scholarly critiques of professionalization in medicine and the broader field of management, this paper seeks to explore the symbolic role professionalization might play in the psyche of its constituents, and s...

This paper connects the critical discourse on the ‘creative class’ with a longstanding lineage of thought on creativity in psychoanalysis, demonstrating their combined value in understanding worker subjectivity and exposing the perils of contemporary creative work. Drawing upon object relations theorizing in particular, the argument is made that th...

A review of Chamberlain's (2018) Undoing work, rethinking community: A critique of the social function of work.

This paper critically examines the approach to studying and intervening in organizations that derives from the work of Melanie Klein. It proposes that Klein’s emphasis on reparation, while clearly valuable for effecting change, can also induce undue guilt that stymies employee subjectivity and damages the organization. The term “reparation compulsi...

In his now classic article titled "Real Work", Abraham Zaleznik (1989) famously chastised organisations for subordinating real work to psychopoli-tics. For Zaleznik (1989), real work involved "thinking about and acting on products, markets, and customers" while psychopolitics amounted to "an unhealthy preoccupation with process at the expense of pr...

This essay demonstrates the value of psychoanalysis among the critical approaches to HRM (Human Resource Management). Specifically, the attempt is made to rekindle the conversation between critical scholarship and psychoanalysis byway of discovering new use of the 'human' as a resource.

Purpose: While considerable scholarly attention has been given to “millennials” (those born between 1981 and 1997), little is known of this generation’s ability to influence healthcare organizations and managerial roles in particular. This paper aims to clarify why millennials enter the healthcare management field and how their motivations correlat...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw parallels between universal basic income (UBI) and universal healthcare, highlighting their conceptual alignment and combined implications for health management and organization. Design/methodology/approach: The idea that everyone should receive a set amount of money regardless of employment finds renew...

This paper explores the utility of psychoanalysis for understanding the underlying meaning of healthcare work. At times deeply fulfilling, while at other times demanding and thankless, the provision of healthcare takes a unique toll on the psyche. Psychoanalysis is particularly suited for highlighting the paradoxical character of healthcare work be...

Although I wholeheartedly agree with Gloss, Carr, Reichman, Abdul-Nasiru, and Oestereich (2017) that a focus on those living in the deepest forms of poverty is sorely needed in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology, the real issue is not so much who we serve but how we serve, and specifically how we continue to neglect the systemic failure...

In their recent book, Dead Man Working, Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming paint a haunting picture of the contemporary employee: sleep deprived and overworked, exhausted and strung out, unable to tell where work ends and where life begins, hardly alive and yet unable to die. In this paper, the author widens the picture by examining the systemic eff...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for a revision of the concept of compassion fatigue in light of both its history and psychodynamics. Design/methodology/approach This paper calls into question conventional interpretations of compassion fatigue and the assumptions underlying them. As an alternative, a psychoanalytic interpretation is o...

Just before his untimely death in 1947, Kurt Lewin paid a hasty visit to his friend and collaborator Dorin Cartwright, overcome by what Cartwright would call a “brilliant insight.” Upon arriving at Cartwright’s home “in a state of a great excitement,” Lewin proclaimed, “Marx was right.” On the surface, Lewin’s affirmation of Marx may seem superfici...

Does death confront the young as an incomprehensible force or can it be talked about? And what are the implications for health administration education? These questions serve as the impetus behind the present study, which is the rst known a empt to document young adults’ perceptions of end-of-life care. Descriptive data were gathered from 84 “mille...

Over the past decade, critical scholarship in the field of management has experienced a veritable explosion. In this paper, I introduce the critical scholarly tradition to scholars and practitioners of I-O psychology in the hopes of stimulating dialogue. I begin with an account of the critical tradition’s intellectual history in relation to two bet...

This is an extended review of the book, The Wellness Syndrome (2015), by Carl Cederström and André Spicer.

This is an extended review of the book, Dead Man Working (2012), by Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming.

Having struggled for several years with not only trying to define learning agility but attempting to measure this construct as well (Mitchinson, Gerard, Roloff, & Burke, 2012; Mitchinson & Morris, 2012) — a far more daunting task — it is our desire to state at the outset that we are grateful to DeRue, Ashford, and Myers (2012) for (a) their work on...

This paper examines the philosophical substructure to the theoretical conflicts that permeate contemporary mental health care in the UK. Theoretical conflicts are treated here as those that arise among practitioners holding divergent theoretical orientations towards the phenomena being treated. Such conflicts, although steeped in history, have beco...