From corporation to entrepreneurship. Modern view on startup success through the prism of the boundaries of oedipal triangulation

Applied psychoanalytic research

Abstract

The paper explores the ability of successful managers to remain effective when leaving corporations and launching their own business projects, namely when the professional identity of a hired manager changes into the role of an owner. The authors suggest a hypothesis that the success of former managers of large corporations in launching their own business projects directly depends on the ability of a new organisational system to reduce a level of anxiety. Moving away from the conventional view of classical theory on organizational boundaries, the authors expand the picture of defensive boundaries by examining the needs of individuals to use the organization for personal protection against organizational anxiety. The authors particularly focus on exploring attempts to create a personal safe space by deploying the defensive boundaries of the oedipal triangulation in the organizational system through the repetition of the oedipal situation from the primary family. Drawing on the key phenomenon of the Oedipus complex in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the authors hypothesiseis how the strength of these metaphorical boundaries of oedipal triangulation affects managers' ability to cope with anxiety in organizations with different types of organizational design, using the examples of corporation and startup.