Recently I have been diving into the research done on homeless heroin addicts by Phillipe Bourgois.

This is part and parcel of my renewed  sociological/ political interest in down and outs, housing projects, criminals, downtrodden, street gangs and mobsters which all started way back when with “Street Corner Society”, “Tally’s Corner” and has continued with Bourgois’ work.

Bourgois work points out (what he assumes to be) errors of public policy in treating the various medical needs of the homeless heroin addict, from the way frequent abscesses are treated  to misguided focus on prevention of blood-born diseases passed on with shared needle use.

Bourgois points out time and again that the homeless heroin addict needs to be treated, not cured- and he backs this up with detailed explanations pointing out the uselessness, for example, of trying to get addicts to stop sharing needles. By the way, it’s really fascinating how the culture of the heroin addict is based a lot of sharing, and betrayal!

Most organizations are not totally dysfunctional. Whilst severe pathology can be found in organizations, few and far between are the organizations which descend to the depths found in the world that Bourgois describes.

However, all organizations do have some degree of uncurable pathologies. These pathologies include constant political infighting, status degradation ceremonies, irresponsive bureaucracies, narcissist management-what have you.   

Organizational Developers (sadly) often come with tools that smack of incredible arrogance aimed at ridding organizations of toxic leadership, poor quality, disastrous interpersonal dynamics and faulty decision decision making. Better coping with problems like these makes a lot of sense; solving them and or curing/them makes no sense because they are almost all incurable.

The etiology of most organizational ailments stem from the fact that they are groups of people who come together to do a task, and as such, are dependent on one another; that is, they organize ergo they have anxieties which are expressed in various “dysfunctions”. And the pathologies are part of, or sawdust, or waste material-of doing things together.

At any rate, I am 76 and I doubt that too many people read  what I have to say about organizations. After all, Gemini and Chat GPT give shorter and more cogent input.

But if you have read this heavy handed piece until now, my once piece of  advice is to focus on  mitigating organizational pathologies; they cannot be cured in toto.

This approach has served my clients well for over 45 years of work. And there is nothing new in organizations which can change the validity of this approach.