Integrating the Shadow within “Us” to Strengthen Our Field

Jordan Peele’s film Us vividly illustrates Jung’s shadow–persona duality: the idea that all people and societies have a “shadow”—a collection of lamentable but often functional attributes—that encourages us to hide behind our laudable “persona” mask. We use the film and the critical reaction to it as source material to reveal the struggle of managing the shadow–persona duality. The root of the struggle is that that these elements must coexist; one cannot cancel the other without weakening the whole person (or society). The film is thus a cautionary tale about how the suppression of the shadow creates havoc for communities, and we apply this lesson to our own community of management scholars. We argue that the shadow aspects of our work must be acknowledged, lived, and integrated to create a more robust scientific imprint. To this end, a “holding environment” might be constructed by the Academy of Management to help scholars process shadow-activating events to create more integrated scientists and improve the impact of our work.