A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hostile Takeover Events

Hostile takeovers are interorganizational events that threaten organizational identity and integrity. Yet different meanings and different levels of meaning can be revealed by interpreting the texts that describe hostile takeover events. A psychoanalytic reading of these texts provides a way to explore the deeper meanings of these events. In addition, the media coverage of these events demonstrates both the reflection and construction of social reality, or "contemporary" culture. Interpreting the texts of hostile takeover events provides a way to both enrich our understanding of interorganizational phenomena and illuminate important social issues that might otherwise be kept in the dark.

Over the past several years, hostile takeover events have been brought to the attention of the general public by media accounts often described in the language of fairy tales, myths, and popular culture (Hirsch, 1986). Although these allusions may make takeover events more accessible and more interesting to a broader, nonexpert audience, the media coverage of these events seems to attract more attention than would be expected. Moreover, if fairy tales and myths serve to subdue fears and anxieties in children and "primitive people" (Bettleheim, 1977), it seems odd that they are being used by business journalists in the context of takeovers (see Figure 1). (Figure 1 omitted) Why is it that these events attract so much attention, both in the press and in the public? What is the meaning of the fairy-tale-like narratives used to describe these events?

According to Hirsch (1986), the use of familiar imagery, or "genre," serves to reduce the unnerving to the familiar, to provide delineated roles, to ritualize and contain violent emotions, and to facilitate evaluation of heroes and villains. Although the use of popular genre may provide evidence of the acceptance and legitimacy of mergers and acquisitions by the business community, "the adoption of unusually colorful language by any social group may signal states of instability, stress, or conflict over normative boundaries" (Hirsch, 1982: 39). Thus, the persistent use of fairy-tale language may indicate that these events are not necessarily becoming more acceptable or more legitimate at the societal level, but are creating pressures for or signaling the need for social change.

Hostile takeovers can be seen as interorganizational events that threaten organizational identity and integrity. They may, however,...