Competition archetypes and creative imagination

Organizational studies have been deeply influenced by three separate streams of research: the soft sciences; the hard sciences; and economics. This paper makes a case for an interdisciplinary approach, one that includes not only the social and physical and life sciences, but also methodologies that have a long history in mysticism. It illustrates how the similarities and relationships between depth psychology, in Jung’s theory of archetypes, and the “hard science” notion of complexity theory can reveal critical aspects of competition as expressed through capitalism. It also suggests that a methodology for accessing information about archetypes in general and capitalist competition in particular is through creative imagination.