DEMANDS AND/OR SUPPORTS IN DIFFERENT FORMATS

I am in the midst of describing a “simple” model of political decision-making on the part of individuals.  I write political because I am trying to address what happens when a change effort is being conducted in an organization of some type, but more specifically a school.  In those situations, what usually happens is that someone comes up with an idea and, in order to implement it, other people need to either be convinced or coerced into performing some changed protocol or process other than what they had been doing.  Generally, people do not like change.  Change can represent different sorts of threats.  It might mean having to display different skills a person might or might not have or to perform a skill to a higher degree of difficulty.  This might expose people to deficiencies that to date were inconsequential or that could be hidden.  Or a new challenge might arise if the change calls for new working arrangements with others, perhaps with people a person hardly knows or worse, might dislike.  Of course, change might entail a demotion or having to do things the person just doesn’t like to do.  All of these and other things can be the source of a negative reaction to change and when these kinds of changes occur at the workplace, the looming importance of a paycheck is never far from a person’s consciousness.  Fear can be a motivator, but it is much more often a negative force which at the least disrupts a person’s quality of life and at the most can be the motivator to engage in very destructive behavior.  Given the potential stakes, I would comfortably regard such events or confrontations as political.  These are power exerting or power receiving episodes and as such are political.

When one acts politically, there are just two modes of behavior, but with variations in how the modes are exercised.  The two modes are derived from David Easton’s political systems model.[1] They are demands and supports.  At a school or any organization, a person can react politically by either demanding something; for example, let’s not do this, or supporting someone or something; for example, I’m behind you one hundred percent.  Of course, to varying degrees, a person can choose both modes:  I like it but, in regard to that aspect, can we do this instead?  Why a person chooses to demand and/or support a change proposal or some aspect of a change proposal can be found in either the contextual inheritance, mental domains, and/or emotional state a person is in.  How these factors influence a decision were the topics of my last two postings.  While this seems easy enough – either/or he or she demands or supports a proposal – that choice becomes apparent in a combination of the following options:  behave individually to advance immediate self-interest, behave collectively to advance immediate self-interest, behave individually to advance long term self-interest, and/or behave collectively to advance long term self-interest.  Usually, a person will choose one of these options and stick with it.  Sometimes not.  He or she might try one option, see how it works, and decide to try another one.  Of course, changing course can continue, but as changes of this type happen, the situation for the person will become more and more complicated.  The tendency is to stick to one option.  Here, the importance of the real domain and emotional disposition is very important.  When confronted with real world dilemmas or exertions of power, especially when a coercive element is added, the ideals one brings to the episode can be sorely tested and sacrificed.  Of course, this leads to rationalizations and other coping mechanisms by which an individual deals with resulting, internal inconsistencies.[2]

As can be detected, my view accepts the behavioral notion that one always acts out of a concern for self-interest.  The question is whether one can see beyond the immediate anticipated rewards or punishments and see how one will be affected by a decision over the long haul.  This distinction was put into sharp focus by Alexi de Tocqueville’s famous phrase:  “self-interest rightly understood.”  I have written about this notion often in this blog, but let me add:  in terms of organizational change and the politics involved, the person needs to analyze situations carefully to try to determine, one, what self-interests are affected by a proposed change, and two, which of those interests reflects short term effects and which ones are long lasting.  I say “needs” in the sense that a person wants to derive the most benefits in terms of quantity and quality.  These can be difficult to ascertain because change often entails unknowable consequences in terms of the change itself and the social and physical factors the change can effect.  But one can ask oneself:  am I acting or going to act in a certain way because of how I feel right now or because, in the long run, how I will feel overall?  Ultimately, it will be sentiments that determine how prudent a course of action is or will be.  That is, given the situation, will one’s actions lead to the highest level of happiness possible?

With a course of action decided, what remains that can still be influential in how that action is received by others – and, therefore, determining what levels of success affected parties achieve – is the tenor in which the chosen action is communicated.  That will be what the next posting addresses.

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[1] Two sources for this model are:  Easton, D.  (1953).  The political system.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf and Easton, D.  (1965).  A system analysis of political life.  New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

[2] I will treat this eventuality more extensively in a future posting.  This whole problem relates to a condition referred to as internal inconsistency when there is an inconsistent gap between a person’s espoused theory and theory-in-use.  See Argyris, C. and Schon, D. A. (1985). Evaluating theories in action. In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The planning of change, Fourth edition, (pp. 108-117). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

DOMAINS AND DISPOSITIONS

This posting is a continuation of a theme I began two postings ago.  What I am explaining are the factors that affect decision-making by an individual when that individual is confronted with a political challenge; more specifically, when he/she is expected to do something that is different from what he/she would have done otherwise.  This is political in the sense that power is being or is attempted to be exerted on that person.  More generally, my concern is over organizational change when change is dependent on such changes in behavior. 

To date, I have described and explained an initial factor, a person’s mental context, which is made up of two concerns:  the socio-cultural inheritance and the genetic inheritance.  I invite you to check out my last posting for my take on these concerns.  I will remind you here that these concerns are those elements that the individual brings to the confrontation.  They are part of the context – hence the title mental context.  With this posting, I want to begin looking at the elements that “pop up” when the confrontation is being processed from the moment of awareness to a point that some resolution is achieved and the parties to the confrontation are ready to “move on.”

The next specific factor is the domains of decision-making.  I have written about the domains before and I draw your attention to the postings in which I review the three domains I identified:  the domain of the real, of the ideal, and of the physiological.[1]  Without rehashing what I reviewed in those postings, let me summarily describe each:

·        The domain of the real is what the individual, mostly through his/her senses, sees as the physical and emotional aspects of a given situation – the current state-of-affairs.  This includes any relevant recollections the individual has.  What the person senses is real will vary from what is actually real since the human capacity of recording reality accurately is far from perfect. 

·        The domain of the ideal is what the individual holds should be real.  That is, the person is apt to project onto any situation a sense of what the situation ought to have been, what it ought to be, and/or what it ought to become.  Such evaluations are based on the attitudes, norms, and values the person has either inherited from his/her culture or the influences of other current associates such as family members, friends, workmates, etc.  At times, the individual has developed his/her own set of preferences by reflecting on life in general or on relevant situations from the person’s past.  In any event, the individual who is affected – emotionally snared by a situation – will respond with a notion or two about what should have been, should be, and/or should become that is relevant to the situation. 

·        And the last domain, the physiological, relates directly to the contextual concern I described in my last posting as the genetic inheritance the person carries along with him/her.  A perhaps silly example would be if the person is confronted with a change expectation by an attractive, sexually desirable other person.  He/she might be disposed to at least listen to the proposal if for no other reason than to extend contact with such a messenger.  In this type of situation, what is popularly referred to as “hormonal” influences, kick in and affect subsequent behavior.  Of course, this type of influence takes on many different guises and often the subject might not be conscious of the physiological influences being engaged. 

But engaged they are and these influences, the domain of the real, the domain of the ideal, and domain of the physiological, can make decisive differences on whether the desired changes in a person’s behavior take place or not.

These domains “click-on” automatically, assuming the confrontation engenders enough emotional response on the part of the subject (the planned-for).  Whatever the substance of the reaction might be, what is important in terms of achieving change is the disposition that reaction leads the person to adopt.  Here, emotions are prominent.  As I indicated in a previous posting, the list of relevant emotions can be long.  But more important is what disposition the engaged emotions encourage.  Let me repeat what I initially wrote:

In a political situation, it is not necessary to identify the exact emotions that are triggered in a given confrontation, but what is important is that whatever emotions are brought to the fore will lead to one of several dispositions.  These include a solo disposition, an allying disposition, and/or an antagonistic disposition.  So, for example, if the emotion felt is anger over some political confrontation, this emotion might lead to an antagonistic disposition.  The overall disposition a person feels in reacting to a confrontation, itself, can be based on one, two, or all three of these more specific dispositional reactions. 

The decision about whether a person is disposed to act by himself/herself or not or whether the person is disposed to be antagonistic toward a proposed change or not, is on what the change agent or planner should focus.  The planner would do well to make an inventory, to the degree possible, of whatever emotions are being or potentially being triggered.  The more the planner knows along these lines, the more he/she is assisted in trying to get the planned-for to be interested and willing to participate in the development and implementation of change.

Before leaving these two factors, domains and emotional disposition, I want to add a word or two about the domain of the real.  Most of this has been addressed in this blog, but I feel that it is worth repeating in the context of change.  First, along the idea of whether we know something or not, I find Plato’s distinction helpful.  He provides us with three degrees of certainty about whether we know something or not.  That is, if we don’t know something and hold no opinion about whether the something exists or not, we can term that ignorance.  If we are totally sure that something exists or does not exist, then we can call that knowledge.  If we hold something to be true or not true, but we are not totally sure, then we can call that level of acceptance of a factual claim as belief – we believe so and so to be true or not true.  In terms of what I am concerned with in this posting, there are times when a person, I include myself, feels confidently about some claim of fact, but finds out later that the claim is false.  It happens, I believe, to all of us.  The importance of this occurs when it comes to change in that antagonism or even support can be based on such a false grounding in the facts of the matter.  And when it does happen, it can be instrumental in developing certain inconsistencies and incongruities.  All of this can be detrimental to the efforts of change, complicating the work of both the planner and the planned-for.

As I continue, over the next several postings, and comment on more specific choices on the part of the individual, I want to point out that while I am not ascribing a particular order to how mental processes occur, I do need to say that the process generally advances from more nebulous notions of all of these elements to more concrete notions and feelings.  As the person thinks about what is being asked, he or she has the time and information to consider what his or her interests are and will evaluate and reevaluate what he or she should do and will do.  In other words, what I am considering is a very dynamic and very, as one can already ascertain, complicated series of mental operations.  I, for one, find it all fascinating.

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[1] I have deleted the postings to which I am referring.  They were posted on March 5, 2012, “Introducing the Domains Involved in Decision-Making,” March 9, 2012, “The Domain of the Real,” March 12, 2012, “The Domain of the Ideal,” and March 16, 2012, The Domain of the Physiological.”  These postings can be requested via email (using the blog’s email address – see above, one requested posting at a time).

ONE’S INHERITANCE

In my last posting, I played political psychologist and proposed a modest model of how people think about acting politically.  I am not a political psychologist, but I need to assume certain mental processes in order to make my points concerning organizational change.  The proposed mental model is based on what I have understood from the change literature I have read.  I believe that what I outlined in my posting is not very controversial.  I don’t think there is any portion of the model that would offend more sophisticated models or theories.  For example, the model does not contradict what Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne[1] write about the change strategies known as the normative-re-educative strategies.  So, let me summarize the overall process by reviewing, in logical order and over several upcoming postings, the factors which go into determining what action an individual takes when confronted with a political challenge.  I want to begin adding more substance to what is being proposed.

The process begins with the mental context the individual brings to the challenge.  There is no decision-making, at least not at the time of the challenge, in regard to this factor.  There is variance between “degrees” within the two specific concerns this factor contains.  There is the socio-cultural concern – what are the relevant values, norms, attitudes, beliefs that the individual has acquired from the social environment in which he/she emerges.  This is the nurture factor and there is evidence that those collective experiences have a strong influence on how a person views the world and, consequently, behaves in that world.  A popular book that speaks to this effect is Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwell.[2]  Not only does this concern affect decisions, but the lasting effect can be prominent, especially if the individual continues to live in the “bubble” of a cultural environment in which a particular set of relevant ideas is virulent and often cited.  For example, we currently hear about how our political society has become divisive and that each major division of political advocacy has ceased to listen or even hear what other positions are.  More and more people just turn on media, for example, where they hear their biases promulgated and justified – often with questionable information that is used to support whatever position is being promoted.  At best, this source of information is the product of “cherry-picking” the facts that are convenient to the partisan positions being espoused.  There is less straight-forward news and more biased sources of news accounts.  As such, a certain form of arrogance is at play:  “after all, I know the truth.”

The other concern of this factor is genetic inheritance.  I described this concern as being referred to as “how a person is wired.”  Popularly, this concern is the nature part of the nature vs. nurture question.  How much is our genetic makeup responsible for how we behave – as opposed to the environmental forces around us we term as nurturing?  This question has received extensive research and a lot of money to conduct that research.  We don’t know much as a result.  What we do know, from twin studies, is that genes do affect personality and, consequently, behavior.  It is estimated that genes account for 40% of identical twins’ personalities.  What researchers have not been able to determine is the genetic chemical compounds that contribute to which personality traits a subject exhibits.[3]  For my purposes, this is not so important – at least, I don’t appreciate the importance.  What is important is to be able to identify behavioral patterns that can be attributed to genetic inheritance.  Why?  This is important because if one can identify the patterns, one knows that the individual has little control over the presence of such forces and planning can then plan accordingly.  While genetic factors are influential, they do not necessarily dictate behavior.  Genetic factors are influences, not determinants, assuming the person is not suffering from such strong influences that what is being dealt with is a mental disorder needing professional therapy.  Short of that, genetically induced biases can be discussed, analyzed, and negotiated so that the subject can perform the necessary actions in order to implement agreed upon change. 

A change agent need not be a therapist, but he/she does need to be sensitive to what is.  As much as that agent can learn about not only the genetic concerns affecting behavior, but also the cultural and social backgrounds of those involved, the more prepared that agent can be.  This knowledge includes these personal traits as well as the technical aspects of what the change necessitates.  In the next posting, I will begin looking at the factors affecting the actual instances when change processes are taking place and individuals are deciding how they will act.

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[1] Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.

[2] Gladwell, M.  (2008).  Outliers.  New York, NY:  Little, Brown and Company.

[3] Kraus, M. W.  (2013).  Do genes influence personality?  A summary of recent advances in the nature vs. nurture debate.  Psychology today, see https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/under-the-influence/201307/do-genes-influence-personality .

FACTORS AFFECTING A PERSON’S LIKELIHOOD TO CHANGE

The last few postings have been about change, as in the case of organizational change.  The aim is to share some ideas associated with making profound change in a school’s curricular efforts.  Specifically, the aim is to have schools abandon, as a guiding construct, the natural rights perspective and adopt federation theory.  The last set of postings looked at types of change strategies:  rational-empirical, power-coercive, and normative-re-educative strategies.  Let me share with you how Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne summarize the difference between empirical-rational strategies, the most commonly used type, and the normative-re-educative type that is most closely conducive to federation theory:

[W]hat we have called rational-empirical approaches depend on knowledge as a major ingredient of power.  In this view, men [and women] of knowledge are legitimate sources of power and the desirable flow of influence or power is from men [and women] who know to men [or women] who don’t know through processes of education and dissemination of valid information.

Normative-re-educative strategies of changing do not deny the importance of knowledge as a source of power, especially in the form of knowledge-based technology.  … In addition, exponents of normative-re-educative approaches recognize the importance of noncognitive determinants of behavior as resistances or supports to changing – values, attitudes, and feelings at the personal level and norms and relationships at the social level.  Influence must extend to these noncognitive determinants of behavior if voluntary commitments and reliance upon social intelligence are to be maintained and extended in our changing society.  Influence of noncognitive determinants of behavior must be exercised in mutual processes of persuasion within collaborative relationships.  These strategies are oriented against coercive and nonreciprocal influence, both on moral and on pragmatic grounds.[1]

Excuse the length of this citation, but I feel the authors capture quite well what the differences of the two approaches are and I find this distinction revealing in that I associate rational-empirical strategies as being in congruence with natural rights thinking and normative-re-educative strategies in congruence with federalist theory thinking.  And with these three approaches – also including power-coercive – described and somewhat explained above and in the preceding postings, I want to next shift our attention to the individual being called upon to change.  What are the challenges from the perspective of that person (the planned-for); what are the dynamics occurring within that individual as he/she is asked or expected to change?

In keeping with the general tenor of this blog, I will address this other perspective as a case of a political change, one in which the person is being subjected to a political confrontation; that is, a situation in which the person is either asked or expected to make certain changes within his/her organizational role(s).  In essence, what is generally being asked when one is considering organizational change – in our case, change within a school – is aiming a chosen strategy that will have individuals change their course of action from what it is now to a different course of action in the future.  At times, these can and are likely to be changing an established course of action – the way things have been done in a particular school over a significant amount of time.  One wants to implement a change with the least amount of cost and, if done under the auspices of a federalist mode, one in which the planned-for will submit to the change out of his or her own accord; then what is sought is not only a change of mind, but also a change of heart.  Let me add, the particulars of what is changed is not a priori determined, but is developed in collaboration between the planned-for and the change agent.  That is, the approach, under such a goal, will be of the normative-re-educative category.  In short, in order to accomplish this, the process used will have to “get into his/her/their head(s)” and that includes not only what a person believes to be true, but also what a person believes should be true.  Whatever is chosen as the specific strategy, therefore, will have to account for an array of factors.  In this posting, I want to give a broad overview of what these factors are.  This will be limited to a run-down of the list of factors I believe are influential in such a change.

I will present these factors in a logical order.  One should not read into this order any claim that the decisions people make in adopting any change of mind and heart follows this order.  It is merely presented this way to assist in your understanding of what I am trying to communicate and, more important, in my attempt to get a handle on what goes on with a person who is so subjected.

The first set of factors is what I call contextual inheritance.  This is made up of two elements:  social-cultural inheritance and genetic inheritance.  Simply, social-cultural inheritance has to do with the cultural tradition in which the individual has been socialized with its array of norms, customs, cultural narratives (including ethnic, racial, religious, and national traditions), values, and other cultural legacies that relate to the challenges of change the individual is confronting.  On the other hand, genetic inheritance includes all those biologically determined forces impinging or otherwise influencing the individual’s decision-making processes.  For example and very important, genetically determined level of energy a person brings to life and its challenges will animate or depress the entire motivational outlook a person brings to a particular demand for change.  We vary, among ourselves, in how energetic we are about work, relationships, likes and dislikes.  This whole genetic inheritance is popularly referred to as how a person is “wired.”  Both the social-cultural and the genetic elements set parameters on how one is disposed to act.

The second set of factors is something I have already described and explained in this blog: the mental domains that influence the individual in his/her decision-making.  The domains are the ideal (how reality should be), the real (how reality is), and physiological (drives and other bodily influences – which are obviously, highly dependent on how we are “wired”).  Of course, what is actually real will deviate from how the mind “knows” the real, even in cases when the perception is stronger than a belief and is held as knowledge.  Our ability to “know” the truth is less than perfect; that means, we, ultimately, construct what we consider to be true.  The other condition affecting our mental images of the ideal, real, and physiological is that many, if not most, of these images are either subconscious or non-conscious.

The third set of factors is the emotional dispositional filter.  This mental orientation is not a product of reality, but of feelings.  Such emotions as anger, love, loyalty, trust, humor, comradery, and the like will be significantly influential in the decisions we make, including those that are political in nature.  In a political situation, it is not necessary to identify the exact emotions that are triggered in a given confrontation, but what is important is that whatever emotions are brought to the fore will lead to one of several dispositions.  These include a solo disposition, an allying disposition, and/or an antagonistic disposition.  So, for example, if the emotion felt is anger over some political confrontation, this emotion might lead to an antagonistic disposition.  The overall disposition a person feels in reacting to a confrontation, itself, can be based on one, two, or all three of these more specific dispositional reactions.  So, one might be disposed toward antagonism, but to be expressed by the individual without any assistance from others; i.e., a solo disposition.  In another situation, it can be antagonism in coordination with others.  In a third situation, it can be just plain antagonism without any thought or motivation to seek being alone or being in alliance with others.  Under such a situation, if an opportunity arises to act antagonistically, the person might take it, whether it is done with others or not or whether it is acted upon openly or not.  In general, therefore, the particular disposition for a particular situation can be one, two, or all three of these more specific disposition types.

The fourth set of factors is the intended mode of action chosen by the individual.  This is the simplest of the factors; there are only two possibilities.  A person, when confronted with a situation, can either demand something politically or support someone or something politically.  Those are the only two modes of political behavior.  But whether the mode is demand or support, each has four optional types:  individual acts in pursuing immediate self-interest, individual acts in pursuing long term self-interest, collective acts pursuing immediate self-interest, or collective acts pursuing long term self-interest.  While there are shades among these options – an option can be intermediate self-interest – the general thinking, planning, and intent is to either be immediate – what is good for me now – or have long term self-interest – what is good for me, let’s say, a year from now.

And the fifth and last set of factors affecting the decision of an individual – which will affect the consequences of whatever action is taken – is the interactive tenor one adopts.  Here, the choices come directly from transactional analysis and they are a “parent” interactive tenor, an “adult” interactive tenor, or a “child” interactive tenor.[2]  The “parent” tenor is demanding and authoritative.  The “adult” is reasonable and calculating.  The “child” is feel-good seeking and immediate.  Each of these is more complex, but these short descriptions, I believe, give you a good sense of what each tenor generates in the form of behavior.

I will stop here for now.  I still want to describe further, in upcoming postings, what this model indicates: the attributes of the dynamics when these factors are in “action” as in when an actual decision-making process is transpiring.  Also, one would benefit from understanding the anticipating consequences of each of these factors “doing their thing” in actual confrontations.  When all that is reviewed, I will then revisit a topic I have written about before:  the distinction between theory-in-use and espoused theory and how levels of “internal consistency” and congruence affect how likely the individual (the planned-for) will productively engage in change.

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[1] Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.  Quotation on p. 39.

[2] Here the classic source is Harris, T. A.  (1973).  I’m ok, you’re ok.  New York, NY:  Avon Books.  In this text I am changing the terminology from that of Dr. Harris.

IN THE PROFOUND, SIMPLE DOES NOT EXIST

To continue my present effort, reviewing three strategy types of social change – mostly organizational change – I want to add to what has been described as normative-re-educative strategies.  To date, I have, in terms of this type, offered some ideas that John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, and Sigmund Freud contributed and that have been incorporated by change theorists.[1]  In this posting, I want to go back to the Deweyean spirit of active learning and further develop the notion of the problem-solving focus option one can operationalize in implementing a normative-re-educative strategy.

When focusing on problem-solving, there are two tracks one can embark upon:  human problem(s) or technical problem(s).  Actually, there is a third track in which both tracks are combined, known as sociotechnical problems.  In modern society, one is hard pressed to encounter a purely human or technical problem – technology has become so ingrained in the course of our daily living.  Overall, after such a problem or set of problems is identified, the general idea is to convert that awareness into a set of questions or processes:  data collection, planning, invention, tryout solutions (testing), evaluation, and feedback.  This is a very general overview of what kinds of activities follow.  As emphasized in previous postings, the aim is to work through these processes armed with institutional support and in a collaborative mode.

Kurt Lewin’s work capitalizes on these foundational elements and, through what the change pioneer calls action-research, provides a bit more meat to this general overview.  One, he recommends data collection concerning organizational functioning and feedback.  This entails processes of interpretation as planned corrections are performed by managers in collaboration with data collectors – usually change agents.  Two, he calls for training of managers and other organizational staff members who are dealing with the identified and researched difficulties.  Three, he advises developing methods by which affected parties accept feedback.  This can prove difficult and time consuming as honest feedback will often challenge internalized norms, values, and beliefs about the organization or, more important, life itself.  Four, Lewin advocates the training of internal change agents for which I can add several reasons.  Internal staff members are known, potentially trusted, and seen as “one of us.”  These qualities can ease collaboration efforts.  They are also knowledgeable about the organization in ways external agents cannot be.  Whoever conducts the necessary research of the organization, their aim is to scan operations to detect problems, diagnosing them to identify changeable factors – not all factors are changeable – and move toward collaborative solutions.

To focus on the human angle a bit more, there is an overall aim to build up the persons involved.  To do so, there is a genuine assumption that people are or potentially are creative and life affirming and that this aspect of them, if not detectable, is being thwarted by existing conditions.  The work of change agents includes eliminating or, at least, ameliorating those conditions.  Here, the work of Abraham Maslow can be useful.[2]  By attempting to encourage the subjects (the planned-for) to seek higher levels of motivations, one can address these thwarting conditions.  This calls on agents to identify where on the hierarchy of needs each of those individuals is and being knowledgeable about how to move them along to higher levels.  The processes involved with such work usually demand some sort of intervention and can take the form of personal counseling, group training, laboratory work, or two-person or small group setups.  Success includes the persons achieving greater self-clarity over task demands and personal challenges which thwart moving toward self-actualization.  If an addressed condition is truly dysfunctional yet established, change will likely combat defenses because the condition is supported by an equilibrium or equilibria among those involved.  By stressing some “moral” set of goals, such as those emanating from federalist values, one can determine the dysfunctional quality of the consequences resulting from continuing those established conditions.

Added features of this type of change approach include a few other aspects.  While focusing on a group’s problem-solving approaches, there is a reliance on creativity – there are no a priori solutions.  The actual process will entail conflict management in which changes in norms, policies, and relationships will be targeted.  This might call for forming informal organizational structures that exist within the formal arrangement.  This is done to satisfy personal and interpersonal needs which are not accepted by the formal structure.  This type of strategic move needs to be done advisedly and sensitively.  Such moves can be easily misinterpreted honestly or mischievously by threatened parties.  The rationale of such a move – and this should be communicated to all involved – is to attempt to be more productive by not wasting energies on accommodating the unattended needs which the informal structure is addressing.

Overall, normative-re-educative strategies can be sold as an attempt to re-new the efforts of the organization.  They are not an easy option, but to meet profound needs, “easy” simply does not exist.

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[1] As reported in Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.

[2] If you happen to be unfamiliar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he theorized that a person advances through different levels of needs.  Advancement is dependent on satisfying lower levels before advancing to higher levels.  One does not do this consciously; we are “wired” to proceed in this fashion.  The list of needs are, in order of advancement, physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, self-actualization needs.  Most people are seen as being held up at some level before reaching and satisfying the self-actualization need level.

A SET OF CHANGE STEPS

If the general opinion is that our schools are falling short of their mission – to educate our youth so as to meet the challenges of adulthood – then change in those institutions should be central to our concerns.  I have set out to address social change and, in so doing, have shared with you a set of general strategy types that aim at instituting change.  They are empirical-rational strategies, power-coercive strategies, and normative-re-educative strategies.  Presently, I am in the midst of describing and explaining the normative-re-educative strategies.  In my last posting, I introduced this type and reviewed one of the iconic thinkers, John Dewey, whom the authors Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne cite as a major contributor to the development of this general type.[1]  In this posting, I want to pick up where I left off and add the thoughts of two other reputable thinkers and researchers, Kurt Lewin and Sigmund Freud.  Let me first place these contributions in a framework; that is, from their work, we can design a general approach to change planning.

Chin and Benne suggest the following:  With a commitment to include the change subject in planning and implementing phases, first, identify needed change, second, identify range of needed actions, third, find ways to act collaboratively, fourth, make apparent any unconscious or subconscious elements that are problematic and need to be addressed deliberately, fifth, selectively incorporate any relevant – and deemed useful – behavioral knowledge and technique components.  A few overarching elements should be kept in mind when following such an overall approach:  information concerning norms, values, and attitudes are crucial, relationships both internal and external to the organization might need to be changed, and people technologies (e.g., organizational plans) might be as, if not more, important than thing technologies (e.g., computers).  And a last bit of warning: manipulation should be seriously avoided.  Any conflicts in goals, aims, values, in order to be productive, need to be worked out openly and honestly.

Kurt Lewin introduced what might seem a bit obvious today, but was quite new back in the mid ‘40s when he engaged in his pioneer work.  He emphasized the need to have researchers, educators, and activists work in close collaboration.  The general approach known as action research is first attributed to Lewin.  His main aim was to address normative change, not just cognitive change or perceptual change.  In order to seek and accomplish such change, it becomes imperative that planning and implementation include the efforts of those who are to be the subject of the sought after change.

Sigmund Freud’s work with the subconscious is also critical to the normative-re-educative strategies because such mental content is influential in identifying, reacting, and evaluating any attempts at meeting problematic conditions.  Subconscious and even unconscious beliefs and values must be, first, identified, and, second, openly dealt with in order to overcome their dysfunctional aspects.  A second contribution of Freud is his therapeutic model; that is, his advocacy for the direct intervention of the therapist in the lives of his or her patients.  In the case of organizational change, that would be the direct intervention of the change agent in the organizational life of the client.  In the context of this posting, the organization would be that of the school and the change agent would be specially trained teachers and other staff members that would take on the challenge of planning and instituting change at the school site with, of course, the knowledge and support of administrative officials such as district officials, the principal, and assistant principal in charge of curriculum.

Before ending this posting, let me share what Chin and Benne identify as the two main options in normative-re-educative change efforts.  They are a focus on problem-solving and an awareness of existing norms, values, and attitude.  Given the context I have provided and based on my own experiences working in schools, I would suggest that what should be centered upon if one wants a school staff to institute a federalist mode of operation is a problem-solving focus.  Without engaging in any manipulative activities – change agents should be upfront about their goals and aims – by dealing with problems, one can adopt more of an evolving strategy than an abrupt policy dictum.  Again, based on my experience, I would say most teachers are aware that their assigned schools are not as productive as they could be.  If this general awareness can be mutually analyzed and specific problems can be identified, then the whole change process can begin by addressing problem areas felt by many in the school community.  By doing so, the process can be defined as a succession of practical and mutually desired efforts at meeting and improving less than optimal conditions.

In my next posting, I will look at more specific methodologies associated with normative-re-educative strategies.  I would like to emphasize before ending this entry that what is being considered here is a fundamental change for a school and that what now exists in a school is seen by most of a staff as not only how things are, but how things need to be.  It is just what a school site is in terms of its social relationships and expectations.  This is particularly true of staff members who have not worked at many different schools much less in different communities.  These individuals have little to no comparison by which to judge the soundness of how their current school operates.  There are even those on a school staff who see what is as what should be.  As I mentioned above, a lot of the motivation and rationale for such a position is based on subconscious beliefs, attitudes, values, and norms.  They do not change readily and, for some, will never change.  Success, under such conditions, is not guaranteed.  But the effort is worth it; a federalist school will enable, more readily, a federalist civics curriculum.  As such, a change in this direction will prepare those students to become better citizens.  That is the main argument of this blog.

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[1] Based on the theoretical work:  Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.

BEYOND REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

The last two postings of this blog reviewed and cursorily explained two general strategies for change in social environments.  To add context:  in this blog, I am currently looking at the question of implementing change in organizational entities.  To do this, I am reviewing some selected social science literature to help me express what it takes to successfully institute sought after change.  My overall concern is to address which organizational elements have to change in order to have a specific organization, a school, become a place that is run in a federalist fashion.  That is, a fashion in which the staff, students, and related community members, especially parents, are collaborating in the various processes that make a school run.  This is beyond what usually exists today in which there are structural elements for collaboration, but true collaboration is missing. 

My ultimate concern is that a federalist based curriculum in civics is enhanced, if not made possible, by a school community that lives its organizational life under the guise of federalist tenets.  This is based on the idea that there is such a thing as the “hidden curriculum.”  A hidden curriculum is composed of those aspects – either in its structures, processes, and/or functions – of an educational organization that is not part of the formal curriculum but, nevertheless, has an educational effect on the students of that school.  Usually, this teaching process occurs as students experience the specific modes of operation and other distinguishing aspects of the school they attend.  For example, how teachers of the school co-operate with each other or don’t co-operate sends messages, usually unintended, to students about how workplace expectations exist in the real world.  These behavior patterns very often teach students, and those types of messages that compose the hidden curriculum are just as influential as the content in textbooks or lectures, if not more so.  “Do as I say, not as I do” is a fool’s notion.  What we do in front of young people has equal, if not more, power over how they see and know the world.  The point being:  if a civics curriculum is set to use federation theory as its guiding construct by which its content is chosen, that choice would be enhanced if the school, in its operations, adopts an overall federalist approach in how it runs its business.  Given the dominance of a natural rights view of politics and governance – including the governance of organizations – schools today are in need of social change if they are to be run more in the mode of federalist principles.  It is this latter concern that necessitates those committed to federalist theory to look at and become familiar with change theory.

This posting follows a set of postings that reviewed two overall strategy types dedicated to instituting change:  empirical-rational strategies and power-coercive strategies.  This posting will begin to address a third general type, normative-re-educative strategies.  As with the other postings, this one will rely heavily on the work of Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne.[1]

I sort of introduced some of the ideas of the normative re-educative strategies when I described more specific forms of the power-coercive strategies in my last posting.  There, I pointed out that if, in using power-coercive strategies, the aim were to institute complicated and/or long developing change, power-coercive strategies would have to be supplemented with normative-re-educative ones.  This proviso indicates the first assumption one makes when selecting a normative-re-educative strategy:  the sought after change is profound and/or extensive.  In turn, this situation calls for more than merely seeking changes in knowledge, information, or intellectual rationales.  What is needed instead, or in addition, is a change in the way the subjects of the change value, feel, or hold relationships; i.e., what is sought is a change in the normative orientations that are present in the existing environment which can be within and/or without the organizational space.  Change is dependent on getting some or all of the people involved to “see,” to some extent, that space differently – a tall order indeed.

Chin and Benne, in their presentation of these normative strategies, depend on several iconic social thinkers:  Kurt Lewin and Sigmund Freud, on whom I will report in my next posting.  But before sharing some of their thoughts, let me mention another contributing source: John Dewey. 

This philosopher/educator’s contribution is the notion that people are not passive learners.  They learn from doing and as such, one needs to take into account the active learning processes that are derived from a person interacting with his/her environmental resources.  People are constantly anticipating and attempting to further or thwart developments in their social environments.  They are not simply receptors of the physical and social dynamics around them.  This is probably heightened when one is considering social environments, as in organizational life.  In this sense, intelligence is social.  More broadly, a person trying to engage or otherwise deal with that social reality must recognize the existence and influence of a normative culture which is made up, in part, of norms, habits, and values.  Over time, these become internalized by the individuals involved.  In turn, if meaningful change is sought, these elements have to be accounted for if success is to be achieved.  Such elements transcend the rational and are usually a product of heavy emotional investment – often beyond the conscious level and into the subconscious level of those so invested.  This, among those involved, goes beyond reason to an “intelligence” which has its own modes of invention, development, and testing procedures.  This is what is referred to when one hears, “we have our ways of doing things.”  These can be major obstacles to change and is what being “institutionalized” means.  Such entrenched factors, internalized factors, cannot be merely forced out by legal coercion or a system of marginal rewards and still maintain the integrity of the organization – such as a school.  The subjects of change have to first, need to feel the need to change – and feel it honestly – and then go about the often painful process of change which can be disorienting and threatening on many levels.  Normative-re-educative strategies are about dealing with this level of change.

I will next look at the contributions of Lewin and Freud.  Needless to say, of the three types of strategies, the one most inclined to institute the changes necessary to truly form a “federalist” school is known as normative-re-educative.

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[1] Based on the theoretical work:  Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.