A psychodynamic approach to implementing contract management in a complex organization

The world is becoming increasingly focused on an imperative to reduce the cost of services. Managers at this cutting edge of practical organizational development are trying many ways to achieve this. The major focus of this research uses a systems psychodynamic approach to investigate the role taken up by part-time contract managers in an Australian university. These part-time roles frequently fail in the longer term. This approach provides an understanding of the unconscious group dynamics that may cause the role to fail. The study considers contract managers with a wide range of skills and experience. It also looks at the organization’s understanding of the contract management role. The researcher was an insider researcher for the first part of the study, then an outsider researcher. During the outsider period, case study research of other change activities, consideration of dissimilar cultures between the client and contractor were undertaken, as well as completion of an organizational role analysis. It was expected that a method for implementing the contract management role would be trialled. However, when the researcher moved from an insider to an outsider researcher this proved impossible. This seemed to result from a loss of authority and the participants engaging psychological defenses. Nevertheless an implementation methodology is developed which relies on a comparison between the research and a previous change activity. The research used action research as an umbrella methodology. As the research progressed the potential for organizational role analysis to form the key change activity developed. However, refusal to continue as part of the research by one powerful participant raised the anxieties of other participants. Consequently the role analysis was used as a research method only. An hypothesis has been developed that considers the interaction of two simultaneously held roles. When a role is given to a person, the person then takes the role depending on the way it is conceptualised in their mind. When a person takes up a role in a single system there is limited scope for other systems to influence that role. The research hypothesises that a second system may be taken in two ways: as a system integrated into a single functional simple system or as a complex system and role where the simple roles act as influencers. In this case the simple roles act unconsciously to collapse the complex role. This is often regarded as the contract manager neglecting their role. The research then used the complex system and role hypothesis as well as a review of culture clash to propose a way forward. Organizational role analysis is proposed as a tool to achieve conscious and unconscious congruency of a system-in-the-mind of a group. It has the capacity to collaboratively identify a suitable organizational system, to identify and understand the conflicting issues of two organizational cultures and to achieve congruency in the minds of the organizations members.