The psychic prison and instruments of domination metaphors concentrate on the negative aspects of organizational life. The psychic prison perspective emphasizes the impact it can have on the free development of our thinking. Certain organizational forms are seen by psychoanalytic theory as born of and contributing to repression. While the ideologies that sustain capitalist organizations are regarded by Marxist thinkers as preventing individuals from realizing their full potential. Employees become ‘alienated’, as the jargon has it. The instruments of domination perspective shifts from the individual to the group level and ¢xes attention on the way certain groups are exploited by others through organizations. The classical picture is of managers using hierarchy and control of the labour process to extract surplus value from the workers in order to bene¢t shareholders. This is extended, however, in the metaphor to embrace all other groups who might be exploited by organizations or at least excluded from decisions that impact on them ^ other employee groups, women, the disabled, those of a different sexual orientation, minority races, those in the community affected by the organization, the environment, etc. Critics see organization theorists and man- agement scientists who overuse these two metaphors as being themselves ideologically driven. They have swallowed a radical political agenda that they hope to thrust on others. They are characterized as being intellectual elitists who, for some reason, resent employees who are happy pursuing a nice house and car rather than self-actualizing themselves. They are seen as guardians of ‘political correctness’.