It’s all in the family (business): Divided Power and Organizational Behavior In King Lear, Act 3

Kelly Plante

“Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm invades us to the skin. So ‘tis to thee, But where the greater malady is fixed the lesser is scarce felt. Thoud’st shun a bear; but if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea, thoud’st meet the bear i’ the’ mouth. When the mind’s free, the body’s dellicate. The tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else save what beats there. Filial ingratitude, is it not as this mouth should tear this hand for lifting food to’t? But I will punish home” (King Lear, 3.4.8).

In Lear act 3 it all comes to a head: the storm is brewing both outside and inside Lear’s head, as the above text shows, and the two of his daughters to whom he succeeded his power (in name only?) have turned him out into the storm. How does power work in King Lear? Does he truly empower his daughters? What are the political implications for how he acts?

Imagine you are an employee in a business organization made up of three teams. Your boss holds a meeting to announce he is relinquishing his supervisory role/title and will be turning over control of the three teams to three female employees based now on their merits, but on their family connection to him and also, how much they state they love him in front of the large organization of employees. What would you think, how would you feel about that, as someone who would be working for one of these females? Now, the plot thickens: your boss states he will still retain 10 employees for his own personal staff and he will be migrating between the teams with these 10 administrative staff periodically (you cannot predict when). What would this do to the organizational politics? Who would you listen to, if your new “boss” Regan told you to do something but then your former boss, her dad who she has proclaimed to love in front of everyone, told you to do the opposite? This is the environment that could be set up in the classroom to show students the relevance of the politics of King Lear and how it can help us to navigate organizational and political culture today.

In “The Burden of History in the Family Business Organization,” (Organizational Studies, 2016) Daniel Hjorth and Alexandra Dawson use King Lear to:

“focus on the study of history through the use of narratives, within the context of the prevalent form of organization worldwide: the family business. … This way, we seek to make a contribution to the organizational studies by answering recent calls to engage more with history in studies of business organizations. By implication, the study also initiates an integration of family business studies into organizational studies” (Hjorth 1).

Considering King Lear and his daughters as a family business and analyzing their power dynamics and interactions as such can yield valuable insights for students, especially those interested in pursuing business as a career, to see how Lear and Shakespeare in general are not only applicable to their field on a practical level, helping them to work through in the classroom issues of politics, gender and family/organizational dynamics that they will encounter in the business environment; that this Organization Studies journal uses Lear and his daughters to examine contemporary scholarship on organizational behavior drives the point home even further. In this study, they “consider the dilemma of the impossible gift of succession using Nietzsche’s discussion of the burden of history and paralleling the story of a family business succession with that of Shakespeare’s King Lear.”

In this lesson plan, the overall goal/objective/theme is that students will learn to apply the themes, character development and psychology of madness and family dynamics to synthesize them with “real-life” concerns in the business, and family, world(s). Students will use methodologies to include Specifically we consider the dilemma of the impossible gift of succession using Nietzsche’s discussion of the burden of history and paralleling the story of a family business succession with that of Shakespeare’s King Lear close reading and cultural studies to craft valuable digital humanities projects that will assist them in navigating politics, whatever their work/family environment, giving them the chance to use literature as (one way) it is designed to be used/”useful”: to work through real-world problems first in their heads and in their classroom experience.

Students will use the advanced skills of textual analysis and synthesis–first they will analyze King Lear and his family succession (or lack thereof) in terms of an organizational behavior type reading; then, they will apply that reading by creating concept- or mind-maps, synthesis charts–digital tools they can use/display on websites for use in the digital humanities field.

Due to the practical application to other fields such as business and psychology, this lesson plan is ideal for undergraduate students of Shakespeare who will have learned advanced skills of analysis and synthesis in other classes, making this ideal for mid- to upper-level undergraduates. Due to the readings of Foucault, Nietzsche, and others, this lesson could be tailored for use in the graduate classroom as well.

References:

Tools:

 

Beginning

How will I engage the learners: motivational strategy, hook, activation of prior knowledge?
Students will read the above-referenced articles in preparation for the lesson on family businesses, organizational power, and King Lear. In reflection journals, students will free-write to organize their ideas in a logical sequence regarding how the articles read and King Lear interact to show a picture or view of organizational leadership (or lack thereof). The instructor will then enable a discussion amongst the students to synthesize their points with one another.

Figure 2. Example synthesis chart From Inquiry to Academic Writing.

Middle

How does the lesson develop? How are new concepts/processes learned? By gradual empowerment? Modeled, shared or guided instruction?
“Mind the Gap” in-class synthesis activity:

Students will then participate in a creative brainstorming exercise of mind-mapping, in groups or individually as per their preference. For inspiration, show the 4-minute video on YouTube, The Genius of the London Tube Map. Then ask students to think about how they would create a similar simplistic “map” for their ideas about how the characters are organized in terms of power relationships/key interactions; which ones are connecting to each other? Who is clashing and over what? Are they on the same color “line”? (Name the lines.) Students will then identify any “gaps” to “mind” between their sources; what is not being said? Is there another “stop” they should create between them on one or more of the “lines”? They will sketch this out on paper then write a paragraph/reflective piece in which they flesh out idea(s) about and/or in addition to the characters in Lear whose power dynamics they have chosen to examine. Minimum requirement: “London Underground”/”Tube Map” depicting at least three characters, with the claims/ideas which connect/disconnect them (are there any “down” lines?).

End

How will I conclude this lesson? How will we integrate the ideas/experiences? How will I check for understanding? Application–what will learners do to demonstrate their learning?

Students will write a 1,000-word synthesis paper to accompany their created visual (they can use mind-mapping software or hand-drawings of their “Tube” maps) to accurately identify and describe the claims and evidence within King Lear and their organizational situation which they select. In this paper, a synthesis must develop a claim about all of the characters they choose to examine from the text and in a “real-world” business or political scenario.
The instructor will evaluate the student synthesis papers based on the following learning outcomes:
Writing: Compose persuasive academic genres, including summary, analysis, and synthesis to practice demonstrating understanding of claims, evidence and exposing logical fallacies and/or gaps in the conversation surrounding your topic at hand. Use a flexible writing process that includes brainstorming ideas, planning, drafting, giving and receiving feedback, revising, editing, and publishing.
Reading: Use reading strategies in order to identify, summarize, analyze, synthesize, and respond to arguments, rhetorical elements, and genre conventions in college-level texts and other media. Use the concepts of rhetorical situation, argument (claims + evidence), and persuasive appeals as a reading strategy to identify, agree or disagree with, and/or add to, characters in the play and in the “real-world” scenario of organizational behavior of their choosing.

 

In
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