A consulting psychologist, Keith Wilcock began research into the similarities between corporations and tribes in the early 1970. He worked as a consultant for ten years with Ernst & Whinney; Booz, Allen & Hamilton; and Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., before establishing his own private practice in 1975. Today, he designs and conducts management seminars and provides psychological assessments and career counseling for executives. His previous writings include the book, Death Row Dreamers.

Behind the oak-paneled boardrooms and underneath the pin-striped suits lurk the same organizational principles that ruled the very first social group, the tribe. This book...

When a corporation fires all the top executives of a recently acquired company, it is following an ancient tribal formula. Putting all the adult men to the sword was standard practice when one tribe conquered another. Yet those executives who wield the axe are completely unaware of the true roots of their behavior. When asked, they invariably have a logical business explanation for their decision.

Very few members of the board of directors realize that the role they fulfill, the council of elders, exists in all human clusters, on all continents, in all cultures. Even the room they meet in, the wood-paneled boardroom with its huge table and portraits of past presidents, evolved down through the ages from the men’s huts and council chambers of primitive tribes.

Corporations still employ hunters and gatherers but neither the people who hire them or the employees themselves are aware that they are fulfilling ancient tribal roles.

Seeing one’s corporation as a tribe and understanding one’s archetypal role within it, an employee can begin to discern the underlying meanings of coded messages, and the motives that drive executives. At the same time, executives and employees alike gain a new understanding of the tools used to increase motivation, elicit loyalty, and induce people to become committed to company goals.

Corporations are evolved tribes. They are like hybrids or mutations. The corporation is a human cluster whose goal is to survive and grow; it provides for its people, and competes with and defends against other tribes. The direct violence of earlier tribal life has, in many ways, been softened. …