Ken Kesey's Organizational Archetypes

It's all a Cuckoo's Nest

If I were teaching a course in organizational behavior, I would assign Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kesey’s characters Randle McMurphy, Nurse Ratched, and Doctor Spivey are organizational archetypes. They exemplify people you can find in any setting.

McMurphy is the rebel. He seeks to achieve goals. If rules get in the way, then they are silly and should be broken. This archetype thrives in small startup companies, which are desperate to gain a foothold in the market and achieve profitability.

Rebel behavior can be found more often in males than in females. In politics, rebels tend to be radicals, including radical libertarians.

Nurse Ratched is the proceduralist. She is a stickler for existing rules and norms. She is the opposite of the rebel, in that she has no higher goals. She only wants to remain in control. Obtaining conformity to rules and norms serves that end.

The proceduralist archetype thrives in larger, older organizations. In politics, proceduralists act to preserve the existing order, and ideology is secondary. They are the enemies of both libertarians and goal-oriented progressives. When Noah Smith expects industrial policy to achieve something, he underestimates the inertial force of proceduralists.

Women are more likely to be proceduralists than rebels. As higher education shifted from being male-dominated to female-dominated, it became more proceduralist. The goals of scientific discovery and critical thinking faded into the background. Equity and loyalty tests (e.g., diversity statements) came to the fore. Administrative bloat emerged. I would speculate that as tech companies bring more women into management positions, those companies become more proceduralist and less dynamic.

Dr. Spivey represents another organization archetype, the pleaser. Meek and unobtrusive, Spivey is an almost-forgettable character in Kesey’s novel. He would seem to outrank Nurse Ratched, but he readily submits to her dominance. He does not want to rock the boat. To get along, he goes along.

In organizations, I was a rebel. (I don’t think that I am a rebel in every context. Not in my personal life.) After grad school, the first organization I worked for, starting in 1980, was the Federal Reserve Board, which by then was a bureaucracy with very entrenched proceduralism.

When your main task is keeping the government debt market running smoothly, you don’t look for creativity. Even in 2008, when the Fed was tactically creative (“quantitative easing,” buying mortgage-backed securities, injecting capital into banks), it was playing a very traditional role of ensuring that government debt markets, and the largest financial institutions stayed afloat.

Back in the early 1980s, the Fed staff was male dominated. But rebels were readily cast aside. I recall a section chief who was a rebellious type being denied a promotion, in spite of his accomplishments. The promotion instead was given to a proceduralist woman with fewer achievements. The man left to go to academia. Rebels typically left the Fed to go to academia or Wall Street. The men and women among the Fed staff who thrived were Spivey’s.

The next organization I worked for was Freddie Mac. In the late 1980s, parts of the organization were more tolerant of rebels. But others would accuse you of being “out of control” and “not a good team player.”

Starting my own business on the Web was a much better fit for my personality. I did not have a natural gift for finding revenue opportunities, but I happened upon a partner who had such a gift, and that made the business work.

President Trump and the Rebels

President Trump’s Administration is filled with rebels. It is a collection of Randle McMurphy’s, epitomized by Elon Musk and RFK, Jr. The Nurse Ratched’s of Washington are appalled. The Spivey’s are losing their job security.

In Kesey’s novel, McMurphy’s rebellious character proves to be intolerable to Nurse Ratched. She has him lobotomized. The sentiment inside the Beltway is to do the same to Mr. Trump. I can imagine scenarios in which that happens.