Creating a Family in the Workplace

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Abstract
Modern service work in bureaucratic organizations requires possibilities for acting aggressively in intimate relationships without anxiety. This article describes a local planning agency where staff created a “family” to solve these problems. Staff members originally created family activities to structure intimacy under intense working conditions. Simultaneously, they negotiated room for these activities in the bureaucracy. Consciously and unconsciously, they designed the family so as to transform organizational authority into family relationships, as well as to exclude Oedipal and sibling conflicts that are normally part of families. The departmental family eventually foundered on a changing reality: increasing individual and racial competition over promotions, as well as the departure of the family “father.” The case offers lessons for modern, bureaucratic service work.

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