Organizational images as ghosts

Have you ever seen an Organizational Ghost?
When we enter an organization for the first time, we usually have no idea what we might be exposed to. Our expectations for the future are guided by our corresponding experiences (Koselleck, 2007) and our social phronesis (Flyvbjerg, Landman & Schram 2012). Through our phronesis, preconceptions, and prejudices, we probably have some experiential images of similar types of organizations, and with these, we try to create some expectations for what we will later recognize (Gadamer, 1960/2007). So, we cannot enter an organization without prejudice, but as Sartre (2002) puts it, we create meaning about the images that appear in our perception.
When you have belonged to an organization for many years, you build up a very large degree of intersubjective cognition (Husserl, 1950/2019) together with your colleagues about each other's behavior, but also about the phenomena that can be experienced in the common everyday reality (Schutz, 2005) as experienced by the participants. According to Henry Mintzberg (2023), management is neither a science nor a profession. It is practice, he believes, and that practice is fundamentally not changing. For generations, Gareth Morgan's metaphors (Morgan, 1986) have been used when we have had to try to understand some complex behavior patterns in concrete contexts. The metaphors create common images about something we know, which are then placed on the organization, which we then use for a sharper realization of the common actions that can be observed.
In this paper, some suggestions for organizational phenomena that I have collected from specific events in specific contexts over a long life as a leader (building material for my phronesis) will be presented. These phenomena are composed of several cases, but they are all created based on concrete everyday actions.
I work with seven unique ghosts, each of which has some precise characteristics and specific descriptions, which are linked to some specific influences and behavior patterns that can be observed in the context in which they appear. The good thing about this presentation is also that with this kind of storytelling, you can show how to spot them, but fortunately also how to initiate a hunt for ghost eradication.

Figure 1. The seven ghost phenomenon
The seven organizational ghosts
When we work with the transition to sustainability in practice, it is fundamentally important that we can understand what is going on in mature organizations. We can have all the wonderful intentions, but if we cannot understand each other, we can change nothing.
In an organization, you could observe an employee sitting at a reception, opening all incoming mail and distributing it to the individual recipients. When asking the employee why the mail was opened, the answer was that it was to see if there should be checks in the mail. This was more than five years after cheques were abolished as a means of payment. A common harmless Ghost.
In connection with a great public scandal in which an organization was exposed in the press, it turned out that those who had gone to the press with the story were three dismissed employees who wanted revenge on the organization. When you hurt or punish an employee, you create a 'wounded dog' who, at the first opportunity, will act like an executioner.
A charismatic founder, after organizational exit, could be identified as an organizational ghost, institutionalized by associative learning, perpetuated in the existing management practice and in the physical memory work, which could be traced back to the previous manager's practice.
Conclusion
As illustrated, each ghost can be described and its outcome space for an organization can be predicted. How do we act when a child comes in and tells them that they cannot sleep because there are ghosts in the room? We take the child by the hand, and together we go into the room, turn on the light, and look under the bed – there is nothing. Out in the organizations, management can use storytelling to 'turn on the lights' and together with the employees, we can create a sustainable communication about the phenomena we are performing together.