IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-319-52878-6_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Wilfred Bion’s Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

In: The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah J. Brazaitis

    (Teachers College, Columbia University)

Abstract

Wilfred Bion was a change leader who served in and lived through two World Wars and was deeply affected by his experiences on the battlefield and later in treating veterans with shell shock as an army psychiatrist. From his earliest experiences of group life (including bullying) at a British boarding school, to his frustration of enduring the politics and sometimes corrupt aspects of military life, to his satisfaction in developing new, respectful and successful treatment modalities for veterans, to his innovative efforts at transforming the army’s hiring practices, and finally to being a founding member of group relations and experiential learning in industry – Bion’s contributions to organization change are monumental and long lasting. His theory of basic assumptions in group life, his development of the therapeutic community, and his ground-breaking leaderless group technique are all innovations that are used today in organization change efforts. More than half a century after Bion formulated his ideas, his contributions continue to reverberate with significant impact. This chapter traces Bion’s life and legacy as a seminal leader in organization change.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah J. Brazaitis, 2017. "Wilfred Bion’s Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”," Springer Books, in: David B. Szabla & William A. Pasmore & Mary A. Barnes & Asha N. Gipson (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, chapter 9, pages 143-156, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-52878-6_3
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52878-6_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-52878-6_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.