Teaching Managers About The Dark Side of Organizational Life: A Case of Too Much Yang and Not Enough Yin.

This session argues the case for a more dedicated, systematic and integrated treatment of the dark side of organizational life in our education of managers. Drawing on the Taoist principles of Yin and Yang I argue that the practice of management may be viewed as a process of balancing the polar forces of the positive and negative dimensions of organizational life. I suggest that there is limited and piecemeal attention to the murkier dark side of organizational life. The dark side will always be with us and managers need to more fully understand its nature, its lure, underlying processes and consequences and be provided with strategies for avoiding, mitigating, or coping with its excesses when it inevitably manifests itself. This session presents a course/module structure aimed at systematically addressing the dark side.