Managing Ego Energy: The Transformation of Personal Meaning Into Organizational Success

To survive in today's global economy, many companies undergo dramatic transformations - mergers, downsizing, and reengineering - that can demoralize employees and undermine their willingness to risk energy and talent for their organizations. This book shows how to unleash, mobilize, and channel employees' abundant ego energy - the perpetual struggle for personal meaning - to foster healthy, creative organizations. In thirteen original chapters, twenty-three leading scholars and practitioners reveal how to create and sustain organizational systems and practices that foster positive ego energy. From diverse perspectives, these experts tell how to help employees stay emotionally open to anxiety-ridden surprises; encourage all employees to actively participate in reinventing their organization; provide job mastery experiences, role models, and emotional encouragement; and support expressive acts (ceremonies, rituals, stories, theatrical performances, songs, and dances) so that employees can release and refocus their collective spirit. Drawing on a variety of real-life examples, the authors examine the vital role that the human spirit can play in revitalizing and transforming organizations. Managing Ego Energy shows how to summon, nurture, and manage the potential of the human ego to create and sustain healthy, adaptive organizations in turbulent times.