Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

9.3. Organizational Codependency

Here is how I use the concept of codependency in an organizational context. Just as a person can exist in a codependent state with another person in relation to an addiction, a person can also be codependent with an organizational system. People who are organizationally codependent have enabled the system to control their sense of worth and self-esteem at the same time that they invest tremendous energy attempting to control the system.

People are the carriers of organizational codependency. The network of organizational codependency can be visualized as a series of chain links, from bottom to top and across all levels, as though a chain-mesh fish net covered the organizational pyramid, with each link a reciprocal ...