My daughter Suzanne has long been the gnostic of our family. For example, shortly after her seventh birthday, she returned from church services and confronted me with the question, "Daddy, what if God is a mouse?"

Being a college professor with a Ph.D. in psychology and having read more than a little in such disciplines as psychiatry, group dynamics, organizational theory, religion, philosophy, and physiology, I feel that I am reasonably well prepared to answer questions that deal with human behavior, management, and comparative theology. For reasons known only to God (or mice), however, I did not feel adequately prepared for Suzanne's metaphysical onslaught. Therefore, trying to maintain the semblance of decorum required of any self-respecting father who doesn't want his daughter to discover early in life that his wing-tip shoes cover feet of day, I replied with what I thought, under the circumstances, was admirable calmness, "What do you mean, 'What if God is a mouse?'"

"Well," said she, "if God is a mouse, aren't we wasting a lot of time going to church? And even if we do go, shouldn't we be putting cheese in the collection plate? A mouse wouldn't want money."

"Suzanne," I responded, feeling my studious, self-assured facade beginning to crumble, "you can't ask questions like that. You just have to accept the fact that God is God. I mean, you can't bound around the house willy-nilly, questioning the existence of the One Who Put Us Here. You simply have to accept the fact that God exists and go from there."

Then, experiencing a renewed sense of confidence — stemming from her puzzled stare — I went on: "Who do you think made the universe, the stars, the moon, and the planets? Who makes the rain fall and the sun shine? Who makes the grass grow and the seasons change?" Aware that I might be going a little beyond the bounds of philosophic decency, I decided to conclude my discourse with something a little more pragmatic and to the point, at least a point that I was sure a seven-year-old could understand, and said, "Who makes the cocoa beans that make the chocolate that goes into M and M's? Answer that for me."

"Mice, maybe," she replied, totally unfazed. "They are pretty smart. You sure haven't been able to catch the ones in our basement."

I began to feel exasperated. Although related to me because of biology, this little snippet simply could not treat me and God in such cavalier fashion, so I decided to end the debate once and for all.

"Suzanne," her name came out in my most authoritative voice, "I don't want to hear you ever ask again, 'What if God is a mouse?' I don't want you blubbering on about whether God is an orangutan, an armadillo or a potted plant, either. Questioning God's existence is immoral. It's communistic. What if everyone did it? Things would get messed up. Why don't you just drop the whole question and go play hide-and-seek with Megan?"

"Why?" she said. "If God is who He says He is, He wouldn't mind us asking the question; and if He isn't, we sure ought to quit trying to catch the mice downstairs. We might break God's neck in a trap. I think it would be better for us to find out who He is than to smash Him with that spring-like thing you bought at the hardware store." (I am aware that some of you may believe that God is a woman. If so, I suggest that you contact Suzanne directly with your concern. I am sure she would be glad to discuss it with you.)

I don't recall how the conversation concluded. I do have some vague memory of shouting for my wife, Beth, to join the fray. If she did, I don't recollect it. Regardless of the status of my memory, I know that if she did participate, she was of no help; because since that day, in addition to being obsessed with the implications of Suzanne's basic question, I have had a recurring dream, which leaves me sometimes in euphoria and sometimes in terror, of going to church and putting Swiss cheese in the collection plate. Even worse, I have dreamed more than once of wandering into the basement some morning and confronting a massed chorus of grieving rodents who are engaged in singing the dirge "God Is Dead" while gazing at a small mousetrap that holds within its wire jaws the furry little figure of their beloved god, Muridae, whom I killed.

As I have been able to detach myself from the ravages of her penetrating theological foray, I have begun to believe that Suzanne is correct —not about the possibility that God is a mouse, but about our having to ask repeatedly the question, "What if God is a mouse?" After all, when Thomas Merton conducted his Raids on the Unspeakable, he concluded, rather sensibly I thought, that arrogance makes tsars out of mice; so I could see no reason that Suzanne couldn't join Merton's raids by asking whether God might exist in the image of a rodent.^[13]

Her contention that we must be free to consider such a possibility took on even more meaning for me when I began to put into print some of the ideas, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and intuitions I have had over the years about issues of organization and the practice of management.

When I showed drafts of my material to a close friend and colleague, Peter Vaill, he responded in a letter: "You are, and I say this caringly, overly disposed to utilize the sermonic form."

At first I was indignant, then outraged, and finally intrigued. In articles such as "The Abilene Paradox"^[14] and "Organizations as Phrog Farms,^[15] I had indeed written (albeit unintentionally) in a sermonic form. It is a form that — as Peter Vaill correctly pointed out — is characterized by "The Everyday Story That Means Something Larger." In addition, I have served time as a deacon in a semi-tub-thumping Southern Baptist church, and I have long been deeply concerned with matters ethical and spiritual. Furthermore, on more than one occasion, colleagues, clients, and friends, though unaware of my religious background and convictions, have contended that I sometimes speak with the rhythm and cadence of a fundamentalist tent-revival minister. For those reasons, plus others that undoubtedly reside in my unconscious, I decided to interpret Peter's remark in its best potential light by adding a comment he didn't make: "Why don't you admit that your essays are sermons, call them that, and go on from there?"

Hence, I won't deny my spiritual convictions and predilections. Rather, I have decided to "come out of the closet" and own up to the fact that a pan of me has always wanted to take his place in the pulpit.

As I follow current events in commerce and government, I am more confident about my decision to own up to my tendency to sermonize. For instance, the Zeitgeist of contemporary American business seems to be dominated by "corporate raiders," who leverage their way into multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and mergers. Often, the raiders destroy the enterprises they acquire by selling off choice pieces to finance the original purchase. Frequently, hard-working, competent managers are summarily dismissed by the raiders for reasons of economy. Loyal, skilled blue-collar workers lose their careers and the means to support their families as entire plants are shut down with callous disregard for the human consequences of decisions made for the short-term benefit of a corporation. In the realm of government, a president and administration that said they would never ever ransom hostages make tawdry arms deals with the Ayatollah's government and then violate the expressed decree of Congress by giving the profits to mercenaries fighting in Central America. Perhaps it is high time that some of us who are interested in managerial behavior voice the ethical and moral questions related to the functioning of American organizations. Therefore, in the "sermons" of this book, I attempt to explore the origins and ethical implications of the moral dilemmas confronting today's managers.

The first issue I broach is the tendency of groups of two or more homo sapiens to take what I call "trips to Abilene." When I first published "The Abilene Paradox," I only wished to use a personal example to illustrate how organizations actually have greater difficulty coping with their supposed agreement than managing their conflict. To my surprise, the article hit a responsive chord. McGraw-Hill made the parable into a management movie; and I frequently hear from some managers who complain that their organizations have taken trips to Abilene and others who describe with delight how they avoided such journeys. People also tell me that the phrase Abilene Paradox has become relatively common management jargon. Obviously, the Abilene Paradox is a more pervasive problem than I initially had believed.

In subsequent chapters, I take up such issues as the alienation in organizations and the tendency of managers to follow orders without questioning authority. I then ask why managerial life prohibits the same contrition and forgiveness that is taken for granted in the religious traditions of most managers. In the chapter entitled "Eichmann in the Organization," I ask whether collusion in organizational holocausts is inevitable. Next, I turn a jaundiced eye toward the widely held assumption that the pressure to conform can explain the group tyranny exemplified by the lynch mob; perhaps that notion is merely an excuse for the irresponsibility of mob members. Finally, I explain that I encourage cheating, because our educational system has penalized the very collaboration we so desperately need to make our organizations productive.

As one might guess, I have some reservations about overtly moralizing on the subject of management. I have been besieged by negative fantasies of the disasters that will befall me if I stray from the management scientist's obsession with the bottom line and worker satisfaction and speak instead of the moral and philosophical implications of organizational behavior. Disturbing to say the least, my fantasies have found expression in such diverse forms as: "I will lose whatever professional status and creditability I have gained over the years;" "My colleagues will ostracize me;" "My consultation practice will suffer;" "Students will no longer sign up for my courses;" "I will appear foolish;" "Readers will not take my work seriously;" and perhaps the most frightening fantasy of all, "Readers will take my work seriously." But having read my own sermon, "The Abilene Paradox," in which I attempt to offer some insight about the destructive role of negative fantasies, I realize that the ultimate purpose of such reveries is to provide me with an excuse for avoiding the existential risk that comes from genuinely inquiring into the nature of the world of which I am a part.

Stated differently, as long as I, through the medium of my fantasies, can convince myself and others that I will be damaged or destroyed if I try something that, for me, is new and different and sensible, then I can spare myself the difficult and risky work involved in getting on with the task of coming to grips with the essence of my soul.

I have opted not to give in to those fantasies. Rather, I have chosen to ask, "What if traditional 'management theory' is a mouse?" — particularly when its tenets are applied to the domain of the human psyche (or soul). Furthermore, I have decided to ask, and maybe answer, that question (for me, anyway) in the form of a series of sermons on the topic of organization behavior.

Not only are the chapters in this book sermons, but they are also, at times, tub-thumping, hellfire-and-damnation sermons. As you may or may not know, such sermons are generally passionate, occasionally dogmatic, and universally moralistic. Though delivered primarily from the darkness, the best of them eventually point to the light. They walk a fine line between being disciplined statements of belief and undisciplined harangues. For those reasons and perhaps others, they frequently disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Some parishioners are irritated and turned off by them. Others are stimulated by and learn from them. Few respond to them neutrally.

Competent sermons of the sort I am describing are not delivered with the intent of convincing anyone to believe anything or do anything. They are offered to the congregation as thoughts that the preacher believes to be important. As Wilfred Bion, a great practitioner of psychoanalytic homiletics, implied, such thoughts — if they are real thoughts rather than nonthoughts, disthoughts, or re-thoughts — exist independently of the thinker. All they need is someone who is willing to express them. Once expressed, they become the basis of genuine conversation.^[16] I would be delighted if my sermons result in such conversation.

As I wrote about leadership, followership, group dynamics, communication, motivation, morale, productivity, consensus, and cause and effect, I realized that I was not preaching about those concepts in the manner I had long found to be both comfortable and undemanding. I was not communicating in the liturgical style that had served me so well since my days as a novitiate in secular theology at the Department of Psychology of the University of Texas. Once again, though, Suzanne's question — "What if God is a mouse?" — seemed relevant. It seemed relevant because the "old way" has not been very satisfying or productive to me of late. Perhaps I am better off saying whatever I have to say and thinking whatever I have to think in whatever way I do it best, rather than dealing with issues that are of little concern to me in a way I do it worst. Indeed, what if the god that dictates that I write in the dispassionate third-person language of the behavioral science priesthood is a mouse?

Finally, I realize that regardless of my formal professional affiliations as a psychologist, a professor of management science, and a consultant to organizations, I am, at heart, not only a preacher but also a storyteller. I think pan of my proclivity and fondness for storytelling came from my maternal grandfather. Clad in drop-seat "bib-tuck" overalls, holding an empty half-pound Folger's coffee can that served as a depository for the effluence that poured from the snuff-processing factory located between his jaws, he practiced the art while ensconced in a cane-bottomed rocking chair located on the screened porch of my grandparents' rambling north Texas farmhouse. (Several years ago, after a thirty-year hiatus, I paid a sentimental visit to that vast exemplar of Texas blackland architecture, only to find that it was little more than a tiny, box-shaped, ramshackle, tar-paper shack — a discovery that, to me, just goes to show what a little creative storytelling can do to accomplish what my grandfather used to call "Making the best of a bad sit-sbe-a-sbun.")

Whatever the character of the environment in which he spun his yarns, he regaled his five grandchildren with dry, preposterous, hilarious, improbable, sometimes terrifying, occasionally poignant, and generally interminable stories. One was about a catfish that dragged him the full length of the Mississippi River. Another concerned a mule that he trained to sing bass in the church choir.

An all-time favorite of the grandchildren was his description of what happened to one of his neighbors — the rather buxom Mrs. Lenora Thrusher — when, during an unaccountable lapse of concentration, she leaned over the motor-driven wringer of her new electric washing machine and got one (or more) parts of her anatomy temporarily entangled in its workings. I can still remember my grandfather's description of her, perched on the rooftop of her house, clinging to the chimney, shouting to Beecher, her husband, "Get rid of the damn thing before it maims us all."

Equally vivid is the memory of my grandmother chastising him, again and again, "Frank, you shouldn't tell those kids stories like that." Although my grandfather's influence may contribute to a sense of irreverence that some people say makes my sermons palatable for even the staunchest, dyed-in-the-wool atheist, in retrospect, I nearly agree with my grandmother's admonitions. Today, when I hear someone use the trite expression, "I got caught in a wringer," I know all too well — perhaps better than the speaker — the origin of the comment and the earthy reality of its meaning.

Another part of my storytelling proclivity I attribute to my father. He hid an immense sadness and all-encompassing sense of personal defeat with a sense of humor, expressed through stories — most of which correctly placed him at the butt-end of life's jokes. Similar to the self-deprecating comedian Rodney Dangerfield, my father "didn't get no respect." In fact, his work as a demeaned, low-level, undervalued postal clerk killed him many years before we buried him. Unlike Rodney, though, my father was not well paid for the respect he failed to get. About all he got was a son who too late appreciated his courageous capacity to laugh (and help others laugh) through the pain. Through his reluctant sacrifice, he also got a son who has a deep understanding of the bittersweet couplet in "Through The Forest" by Robert Frost:

Dear Father, I forgive you after all these years. Will you forgive me for my failure to recognize, while you lived, the enormous suffering your laugh-producing stories hid?

Whatever the source of the stories I tell, they are my way of communicating. But the reader should be warned: I tell stories because they help me make sense out of what is frequently an insane and absurd world. I tell them because they are more interesting to me than telling analyses of variance or correlation coefficients. I tell them because they are my expressions of truth. Carl Jung spoke for me in the "Prologue" to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, when he said, "I can only make direct statements, only 'tell stories.' Whether or not the stories are 'true' is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth."^[18] Thus, although the stories I recount are expressions of the truth as I see it, I won't vouch for their being factual. I do have — as my son Scott has pointed out on more than one occasion — a tendency to "elaborate a bit."

As I muse about this collection of sermons, some of which I have created and some of which have created me, I realize that the essence of my attitude about and orientation to them is captured in a story one of my graduate students told me immediately after the conclusion of the investigation into what is now termed, "The Watergate Conspiracy."

The student had been employed as a lawyer in the White House, working for one of the principals in the debacle — one who was later convicted and sent to prison for his role in that sordid affair. According to my student friend, he and other lawyers working for the principal were frequently asked to participate in immoral and illegal activities, even prior to Watergate. If they balked at carrying out such activities, they received an Orwellian lecture from their superior as to why what they knew to be immoral and illegal was, in reality, moral and legal. Furthermore, if they carried out the task competently, they were rewarded with pay increases, "perks," and closer access to the center of power. Anyway, as a defense against the pain generated by their moral complicity, they developed an in-house joke that went as follows:

To me, the theory and practice of organization and management frequently reflects the same essential convoluted thought process. Consequently, unless we can question its basic assumptions, discuss it from the point of view of different premises, and communicate what we know in methods other than those prescribed by the high priests of logical positivism — in short, unless we can ask, "What if God is a mouse?" — then each of us runs the metaphorical risk of living our lives in quiet desperation, trapped in decaying organizations, sitting at our places of work, heads cradled in our hands, munching cheese, and periodically muttering, "My God! I nearly got caught" — knowing full well that mouse gods also make men (and women) in their own images.

This book is a chronicle of some of my efforts during the past fifteen years or so to avoid that trap. Perhaps it will assist you in doing the same.