MGMT 301 Organizational Behavior Margaret Atwoods Cats...

Organizational behavior: Margaret Atwoods Cats Eye and groupthink Groupthink is described as the phenomenon of all members of the group feeling a need to internally or externally conform to the same common ideal, even if that ideal may be wrong or misguided (Chadwick 2012). This type of collective thinking is seen in Margaret Atwoods classic tale of female coming-of-age entitled Cats Eye. Cats Eye tells the story of Elaine, a young woman who is bullied by her best friends when she is growing up. Over the course of her torment, Elaine is subject to a series of more oppressive actions by the three girls she befriends. The most powerful of the three is Cordelia, and the two other little girls obey the more powerful girl without question, for fear of drawing Cordelias wrath, and also because of the hermetically-sealed world Cordelia creates, where her leadership is unquestioned. At the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Elaine is not an abnormal little girl. The main difference between Elaine and her friends is that Elaines father is an etymolog ist and her mother does not dress in fancy dresses like the other stay-at-home mothers of 1950s Toronto, where Elaine is growing up. But when Elaine finds friends her own age, she tries to be like them. One girl named Carol is fascinated by cutting out pictures from catalogues and posting them in scrapbooks. Elaine complies, not because she enjoys the activity, because she is desperate to have a friend. Atwood