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.

SO YOU’RE NOT A NAIL

I want to continue the topic I introduced in my last posting: power-coercive change strategies.  Basically, this type of change is a type that depends on subjects doing what someone, a change agent, wants them to do in order to avoid experiencing a punishment.[1]  This punishment can take the form of a physical, financial, emotional, reputational, or other type of harm.  As I indicated toward the end of the last posting, this effort will look at more specific power-coercive strategies.  They are non-violent, political power, and Marxian approaches.

Those change strategies that are referred to as non-violent have a rich history over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  We first encounter the idea of non-violent change strategy in the writings of Henry David Thoreau in the mid-1800s. But its first application can be noted in the work of Mahatma Gandhi as he led the movement that eventually broke the imperial hold that Great Britain had over India.  That movement finally secured India’s independence in 1947.  Since then, here in the US, the civil rights movement, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, applied many of the strategies inspired by Gandhi in the 1950s and ‘60s.

There are two prerequisites to this approach:  one, the conditions that are to be changed need to be seen as unjust or extremely unfair by significant numbers within the relevant population and, two, the groups or organizations (private or public) in which change is sought have to be susceptible to some loss which is also, in some way, accessible to the change faction who can use it as leverage.  So, in the case of the early civil rights movement, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama proved effective in giving the movement a much needed symbolic victory and was first to put into prominence a young King who was elevated to lead the protest.[2]  If the goal is simply to implement a change – change agents satisfied with a change that might not be accepted emotionally by those who have to live with the change – then a power-coercive strategy is good enough.  But if the change advocates depend on a moral value rationale for their efforts, they might also want those subjected by the change to have a change of heart.  They might want to create a collaborative relationship with the subjects.  If so, then power-coercive will not be enough.  Initial change will then have to be followed up with a normative-re-educative strategy (the subject of my next posting).

The second type of power-coercive strategy is the political power approach.  Political power strategies are those that are administered by those in authority.  Let us assume, for the purposes of just looking at the dynamics of this type of strategy, that the change agent is someone in authority and that authority is accepted as legitimate.  Here, the punishment element can take on several guises.  They can be sanctions, fines, loss of monetary rewards such as grant moneys, or even imprisonment.  But these types of changes are usually not so clean and simple.  Usually, if the change is significant, provocative, and/or multidimensional, then follow up is needed.  For example, such a change might need training so that the subject will have the skills to implement and perform the change to satisfactory levels.  In those cases, it is not just a matter of some underling verbally agreeing to do something differently, but having to engage in time consuming and unpleasant activities in order to learn a skill or otherwise arrange for restructuring or some other movement of personnel.  If one adds reluctance of any kind on the part of the subject, one is considering a costly transitional process.  This is not only costly, but dependent on a certain level of willing cooperation.  Again, one is probably talking about instituting a normative-re-educative addition to the initial change process.

The third strategy type one can consider under the power-coercive category is the Marxian approach.  This approach presupposes that in the location in which the change is sought, there exists an established intellectual “field.”  That is, those involved are under the view promulgated by those in charge, the elites.  This field is controlled by class-based elites (it might be elites who are defined as being ethnic, gender, nationality, age, or sexual preference based).  In controlling the field, the elites define the parameters of the field.  They determine what is legitimate or not.  Marxian aim is to change this very reality; i.e., the effort is to fundamentally inflict a social change so that those who are being abused by the existing order will adopt a new class (ethnic, gender, nationality, age, or sexual preference) consciousness.  I wrote of this process of change in earlier postings when I described and explained the basic argument of Paulo Freire in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.[3]  Those who advocate this strategy speak of holding, through this type of consciousness change, truer democratic values.  Whatever it is considered, one would augment the implementation of changed policy in which a heavy dose of normative-re-educative efforts to engender the type of consciousness which is being sought.[4]

As you can detect, when we talk about any extensive plan of change, a coercive form of power seems to fall short.  In each of these three more specific approaches, change, in order to be meaningful and lasting, needs to be supplemented by normative-re-educative processes.  My next posting will take a close look at this other type of change.

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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.

[2] Actual change in the bus service that had discriminated against African-Americans was accomplished by a Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of the Montgomery buses.

[3] See blog posting, Teaching Aim of Critical Pedagogy, May 11, 2011.  Available upon request.

[4] This type of “education” is not as heavy-handed as it might sound.  You are encouraged to look at Freire’s approach to education to see what is being considered.  This is not to say that in countries where Marxists have taken power that they have not used drastic and very authoritarian modes of re-education.

THE STAGE FOR THE POWER-COERCIVE

Here goes, as promised in my last posting, a few (or more) words on a general strategy type of change known as power-coercive.[1]  Generally, these strategies are based on avoiding what is anticipated as painful or disagreeable; that is, a set of change strategies in organizational operations – be it in terms of goals/aims or processes – that are deliberate and conscious.  These changes are on the part of a party related or associated with an organizational entity and motivated by an understanding that not to change will resort in enduring some pain or disagreeable consequence.  These changes are spearheaded by a person or group.  They are in a position to administer some sort of punishment if the party does not get the change it wants and, therefore, the strategy can be called a power-coercive strategy.  I billed this type of strategy as one that promises to be efficient in instituting a desired change.  By efficient, I mean the change will be effective in a relatively short amount of time with minimal costs.  I will explain that this billing is true only if certain conditions are met.

In the last posting, I reviewed what is commonly called empirical-rational strategies and that set of strategies is seen as fairly quick and efficient, but it does not hold a candle to what is anticipated with the use of power-coercive strategies.  This is true if those wanting to institute change enjoy a relatively powerful position within or over the organization in question.  If they don’t, then the use of such a change strategy is possible, but it will not be as quick and efficient and might, as a matter of fact, take a significant amount of time. 

When the change is by the powerful, though, they have resources that do make a difference.  Why?  Because power-coercive strategies rely on what I have termed, along with French and Raven,[2] coercive power.  That is, power – an ability to get someone to do something that they would not otherwise do – is based on the belief that those implementing the power can and will administer some sort of punishment to the subjected party if the subjected party does not comply with what the would-be power wielder wants done.  It is the sort of power one usually thinks of when the term power is used.  You get someone to do something because not doing it will result in that someone experiencing a consequence that is unpleasant or even worse.  You’ve seen untold number of movies in which such power is central to the plot line.  The Godfather trilogy comes to mind.  But does power have to rely on punishment?  Let’s read on.

In the realm of change:  power-coercive strategies rely on the more powerful agents exerting their wishes on the less powerful.  In real life, not the movies, exertion of power-coercive strategies takes place without guns and sinister sneers; they are usually expressions or implementations of legitimate authority.  That is, the person or group seeking the change has the authority, due to organizational positioning or ascribed positioning by law, to exert the “commands” that would institute the change.  I should add that such power is usually exerted to maintain what is, the status quo, instead of trying to institute change. 

But when it is change that is sought, such change efforts by those in legitimate power positions are taken when a new set of authority figures takes hold of an organization such as a corporation or a governmental department or other bureaucratic entity.  Sometimes those in power want to institute a new direction that calls on a certain level of change.  Whether change is emanating from a change in administration (usually with the election or the selection of a new president, governor, or CEO) or a change in strategy by those already in power, such changes are deemed legitimate due to the legitimacy of the power positions of those seeking change.  Even in such cases, what is in existence, the ongoing set of realities, is usually very well entrenched.  So change promises to be difficult.  It helps to have authority on one’s side and using authority, relying on power-coercive strategies, usually can result ostensibly on implementing the desired change, at least on paper.  By on paper, what is usually meant is that the structural and verbal commitments upon which the change relies can be put in place in a relatively short amount of time.  The problem is in the ensuing performance by those who have to carry out the change.  If the change objectives are not really shared by this corps of workers, change, even with authority on the side of the “changers,” can prove to be elusive.

But before I address these types of consequences, let me fill in more of the details entailed with the power-coercive set of changes.  First, there are modes of change for such coercive moves.  These are generally of two types:  political and economic modes.  Political modes encompass the necessary policy changes that support the operational changes that the change advocates desire.  This is dependent on the procedural apparatus the organizational or governmental entity has in place and the politicking in which both the advocates of change and those who oppose the change(s) engage.  This process is deserving of its own analysis – rest assured, such questions have their own literature of research that one can review.  But, whatever the result, assuming both sides follow accepted procedures of politicking, the results of the conflict will be accepted, at least verbally.  And then, second, there are economic modes.  Here, decisions over expenditures will be instrumental.  If those in authoritative positions sense or know that there are recalcitrant rebels fighting the desired change, decisions over budgetary allocations can and will administer the necessary punishments to solicit compliance.  This has proven highly effective in terms of actual activities subordinates perform, if not the all-out devotion those activities might demand.  Those are the sorts of actions that the more powerful can administer over the less powerful, but do not explain what options exist for the less powerful entities who desire and are willing to pursue change.

If the change advocate is less powerful (and assuming that there exists enough of a cadre of malcontents, either within or without the organizational structure in question who wish for change) what can those desiring change do?  Under these conditions, this type of change is not short term; these strategies take a lot of time.  The most common avenue here is for such a person or group to organize the discontented who is or are demanding that change occur.  This can take place, as appropriate, within or without the organization or governmental entity, within or without the legitimate channels of authority.  For example, teachers who seek changes in their working conditions might organize to engage in tougher labor actions such as staging a strike or work stoppage – activities that are to some degree illegal in a lot of states.  The aim is not to cause disruption for its own sake, but to seek a shift in the conflict from confrontation to negotiation.  This might take on the air of legitimacy, even if the actions are illegal – albeit more difficult – if the initial demands are seen, by the general public, as advancing fairness and justice.  Of course, if the lesser powerful party has been viewed as being subject to authoritarian subjugation, this adds to the image of any existing unfairness.  If these conditions exist, then such options as quasi or fully illegal means might cause the more powerful party to be sufficiently hurt by the actions and, therefore, will be encouraged to negotiate.  This result, being the aim of the change advocates in the first place, will be considered a success.  Needless to say, the fact that one might be speaking of illegal or semi-illegal activity adds to the burden of those seeking change as they must overcome expected allegiance for the law. 

There are times, however, that one or two of the conflicted parties might want, for whatever reason, to continue the conflict.  If this is the case, then we are talking about such a heightened conflict that one would question the ultimate aims of one or both sides of the conflict.  In these extreme cases, expressed aims are simply not what is sought.  Instead, what is sought is probably a more institutional change that is or borders on revolutionary change.  That is, they are either attempting to change  the system by destroying the ability of the advocates to organize or overthrow the system.

In my next posting, I will review more specific power-coercive strategies.  I will address the issue of having to depend on punishment; i. e., does one, even under a power-coercive type of strategy have to depend only on punishment to get results? These more specific strategies will stretch from those advocated by Gandhi to Marx.  The expanse of these strategies is quite wide, but they are over a singular aim:  inflict pain – physical, economic, or psychological – to gain acquiescence to sought-after change.

Note:  Due to travelling requirements, this entry was posted on October 13, 2015, at around 11:30, Central time.  Due to the account being established in the Eastern time zone, the posting date, as recorded with Blog Spot, is October, 14, 2015.  Sorry for not meeting my self-imposed deadline of a Tuesday (the 13th) posting date.

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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] French, J. R. P. and Raven, B. H. (1967). The bases of power. In. E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt (Eds.) Current perspectives in social psychology (504-512). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

MARGINAL OVERSIMPLIFICATION

Our collective awe over how science and technology have affected our lives is noteworthy.  I note, for example, as I walk in a mall or other areas where there are a lot of people, how many are carrying and using hand-held devices that hook them up to global information systems.  A marvel indeed.  It is not surprising, therefore, to see how intrusive that worldview of science and technology has been on how we see human behavior and human problems including those that manifest themselves in group or other collective settings.  Our reliance on those disciplines to show us how to better our social relations seems prudent and not so far-fetched.  But, as with any scientific and technological approach, certain assumptions are made when we study human behavior.  We need a starting point since, as with any segment of reality, complexities abound and in order to get a handle on those complexities, we need to assume some things.  We should, as best we can, be mindful that we operate under any such assumptions and calculate how they might affect our analysis of what we observe is going on, what we determine is wrong, and what we decide we should do.

Implementing change in our social venues is no different.  If we want to approach changing some social dynamic, be it ongoing, episodic, or highly occasional, certain assumptions are inevitable.  In the history of such efforts, a leading strategy – the empirical-rational approach – has adopted the assumption that humans are rational and that they will choose to behave in such ways that offer the highest level of reward while minimizing costs.  Further, those determinations are done on the margin; that is, they take the following form:  if I do X, it will marginally improve my condition over what is and it will cost me Y amount more than what I am expending presently.  That is, we determine whether marginal benefit is greater or less than marginal cost.  Economists treat this as comparing marginal revenues – how much more money will be attained – and marginal costs – how much more money is expended.  If marginal benefit (marginal revenue) is more than marginal cost, then it is rational to do X.  If marginal benefit is less than marginal cost, then it is rational not to do X.  Now substitute a proposed change for X – say hiring one candidate for a job over another candidate – and you get the rational considerations assumed by strategies classified as empirical-rational strategies which are identified by the authors Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne.  They claim that this category of change strategy is the type most commonly employed.[1]  If one makes such an assumption, the main work of change agents that ascribe to this type of strategy is to acquire, analyze, and distribute the scientific/technological information that facilitates such calculations.  This can be done so that clients, students, or patients can go about making the determinations over proposed change(s) that this type of assisting professionals (consultants, teachers, or medical practitioners) proffer.  Procedurally, this strategy includes such activities as diagnosis, education, and evaluation as a professional studies the problem area, devises change options, educates the subject, and evaluates the implemented change activities.  Less than acceptable results indicate a lack of appropriate knowledge and the need to do more research.  As such, the assumption itself is not questioned.

One might ask:  what usually interferes with implementing needed change or with the success of an implemented strategy?  One often cited cause is wrong personnel.  Fitness for the job is often considered lacking.  Solutions, therefore, are often hiring new people or rearranging the roles of existing employees.  This bias can be a cover of sorts to act out biases for existing conditions instead of a way to implement change.  In any event, as for working toward curricular change, the object of my interest in addressing this concern, this option of changing personnel is not readily available for a variety of reasons.  What we generally find is that this strategy, empirical-rational approach – is apt to work more readily when considering “thing technologies” – e. g., computers, TV, or other electronic tools – as opposed to “human technologies.”  The hang up seems to be that with human related change, a lot more is going on than merely the simple calculations of marginal benefits and marginal costs.  This is what Chin and Benne have to say when commenting on specific curricular change of a particular effort:

When we assess this situation to find reasons why such researches have not been more effective in producing changes in instruction, the answers seem to lie both in the plans of the studies which produced the materials and designs and in the potential users of the findings.  Adequate linkage between consumers and researchers was frequently not established.  Planned and evaluated demonstrations and experimentations connected with the use of materials were frequently slighted.  And training of consumer teachers to use the new materials adaptively and creatively was frequently missing.[2]

More is going on than with the aforementioned calculations of marginal benefits and marginal costs.  There are role considerations, considerations based on reputational factors, held biases over curricular content, ongoing social chemistry within the classrooms, and the like.  “Field testing” of curricular materials is a tricky business and yet we are talking about a very limited domain of change, whether a set of materials will be used or not in the instruction of some content.  To change an entire approach to a subject area or to how we run a school would promise to be way beyond the conceptual parameters of a marginal benefit vs. marginal cost calculation.  Why?  Because benefits and costs in such a proposed change encompass a very large set of relevant factors that are often very difficult to measure or even identify.

What we do know is that some content will be taught and some manner of operation will be in play in a given school at a given time.  “What is,” in these domains, is usually there as a product of the evolutionary forces that affect a given school.  I had the opportunity to work on a faculty that opened a school – a brand new school.  While there, I often stopped to consider that, as different situations popped up, there was not an established way to handle them.  We, as a faculty, were creating “the way.”  It was a weird experience.  And yet, we as a group of workers at that new school were establishing the way that probably still influences how things are done there today more than thirty years later.  Changing those elements incurs a cost, some costs being quite high.

So, if one does want to institute a new curriculum, especially if that newer curricular choice entails some changes in how the school staff sees itself, how it runs administratively, and how it considers itself along democratic measures, one cannot see such a project as simply another change effort.  These types of changes go way beyond empirical-rational considerations.  They will not be accomplished overnight. 

Oh, excuse me; there is another approach to change that touts a fairly quick and efficient process.  I will, in my next posting, address the power-coercive approach.  As with empirical-rational approach, power-coercive does offer some useful ideas, but the level of its comprehensiveness will be questioned.  As for empirical-rational, I do appreciate the basic assumption.  We do act on the margins.  The problem is, when it comes to human interaction, we simply can’t simplify what constitutes benefits and what constitutes costs, especially at the margins.

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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] Ibid.  Citation on p. 28.

AGAIN

We have another tragedy on our hands – the shooting in Oregon.  I have visited Oregon.  It is a beautiful state with its majestic pine trees.  I will not get into the political question about what should be done concerning the recurrence of such shootings.  I have addressed the issue in the past when I tried to document the levels of criminality in our nation.  Should we limit the number of guns out there?  Should we do something about the mental illness factor that some have blamed for such attacks?  Should we distribute enough guns so that just about everyone is armed and able to defend him/herself?  Or should we do nothing?  Up to date, it’s been the fourth choice.  I am focusing on this because as unfortunate as the Oregon tragedy is, it does provide a context on which to address the need for change.  We need change in how we are addressing this recurring problem.  And it is not just a matter of these mass shootings, but the whole concern over deaths caused by the use of guns.  We are by far the most murderous advanced nation.  In 2013, there were over 30,000 deaths due to the use of guns (a third of them by homicide, two-thirds by suicide).  Compared to other advanced countries, we have the highest level of gun related deaths per 100,000 population.  We should institute change in our approach to this problem area if we want to have fewer deaths.  But considering it just a by-product of being a nation with a Second Amendment:  that doesn’t sit well.

But change is difficult, especially when we are talking about a national change in which there are strongly held biases that see such change as threatening and when the status quo financially helps a vested, national commercial interest.  This is when knowledge is power and, more specifically, when knowing about how planned change takes place or how successful change agents do their work is useful.  It is useful to at least understand what it takes to change whatever needs to change so that we have a different response to our “gun problem.”

I promised in the last posting that I would give you a short survey of change strategy types.  I feel that knowing about these strategies is a good first step in becoming knowledgeable about planned change.  Let me introduce this by pointing out that in the literature, there are quite a few surveys about existing change strategies.  This reflects the fact that there are many of these strategies out there in the literature and being applied by different organizations – businesses, governments, and non-government service organizations.  The survey I am sharing is very short but, before I share it, I will briefly mention a few other surveys – which are more extensive and more telling of the variety of strategies about which one can become informed.  Robert R. Blake and Jane Srygley Mouton review twenty-five different strategies in their article, “Strategies of Consultation” in the book, The Planning of Change, edited by Bennis, Benne, and Chin.  Another survey is provided by Kenneth D. Benne in his article, “The Current State of Planned Changing in Persons, Groups, Communities, and Societies;” it reviews a large array of approaches to change and is also in the book, The Planning of Change.  This book was published in 1985.  A more recent survey can be found in Andrianna J. Kezar’s monograph, Understanding and Facilitating Organizational Change in the 21^st Century, in the chapter entitled, “Theories and Models of Organizational Change.”  This 2001 published survey reviews six categories.[1]  The one I am sharing has only three categories and, as one might expect, the categories are more general and encompassing.  While this is true, I think it works well to entice one to look further into the literature.

The three categories offered by Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne are empirical-rational strategies, normative-re-educative strategies, and power-coercive strategies.  Let me describe each briefly.  Empirical-rational approach relies on one basic assumption.  That is, human beings are rational and they will act in accordance with pursuing their rational self-interest.  The challenge to instituting change, therefore, is to devise options that will better meet the self-interests of the parties who are being asked to change and to inform them of those options and how they advance those interests.  In terms of normative-re-educative strategies, they do not deny the effects of rational and knowledgeable decision-making, but in addition attempt to account for “[s]ociological norms and by commitments on the part of individuals to these norms.”[2]  As for power-coercive strategies, the assumption is that people will respond to coercive power; that is, they will act in ways that are different from the ways in which they have been behaving in order to avoid punishment.

Those three approaches to change reflect three different views on human behavior.  Without delving into the differences too far, one can see that the empirical-rational approach mirrors the behavioral school of psychology.  It is one way to implement “engineering” social processes – which I mentioned a couple of postings ago – to social problems.  Normative-re-educative strategies are more in line with “clinical” processes – also previously mentioned – and are concerned with feelings and emotionally based relationships.  Finally, power-coercive methodologies are based on authority – legitimate power positioning – and are mostly concerned with large systems such as nations or large corporations.  As with what I had to say with the use of coercive power, concerns over resentment are one potential cost, but are available when change is utterly essential and relentless factors, such as time, are in play.  There is more to share with each of these types, but I hope that this brief introduction entices you to want to know more about planned change.  Again, knowledge of such social dynamics is essential to meeting the challenges, such as our “gun” problem, which face us today.

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[1] See http://aled.tamu.edu/440/READ%20-%20Change%20Theory%20Article.pdf .

[2] 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.  Citation on p. 23.

OKAY, I’LL DO IT

Have you visited a school lately?  Have you walked into a classroom?  It’s a different place from the one you might have attended if you are approaching my age.  Technology has hit the schoolhouse; it’s wired nowadays.  So schools are no stranger to change, yet change can still be a daunting process.  This blog is dedicated to convince you, the reader, that change is needed.  My target is not a “thing” technology, but an idea.  It is how we view the content of our civics curriculum.  The challenge which I write about will prove to be more difficult to accomplish.  Such a curricular change hits at basic assumptions, biases, aesthetics, senses of loyalty, and even notions of self-worth.  For example, the change I am advocating questions how we view liberty, such a cherished, self-defining attribute that we, as a nation, hold.  Yet, as I pointed out in my last posting, there might be certain historical trends, currently making themselves felt, that would help, if not necessitate, a move toward what is being “pitched” in this blog.

Of course, the proposed change is to move our view of civics from one which holds the natural rights construct as the dominant view in determining the content of our civics lessons, to what I have termed the liberated federalism construct.  As a proposed change, any effort to accomplish it would benefit from understanding what is involved with planned change, change that is conscious and deliberate.  There is a literature, in the social sciences, that reflects the research that has been done in this field.  I want to visit a portion of that literature so that we can consider the overall challenge of what I am proposing.

Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne offer an overview of strategies that have evolved.  These strategies represent three different approaches to the efforts of change.  But before I review these three approaches (a topic of my next posting), I want to tie these strategy types to a basic political concept, power.  I have written earlier in the blog about power.  I have used Robert Dahl’s relatively simple definition of power:  a person has power over someone else if he/she can get another person to do what he/she would not do otherwise.[1]  Further, I have cited two scholars’ work that identifies different forms of power.  John R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven identified five motivational types based on why someone would be convinced to yield to the dictates of another; i. e., the mental states that would lead one to do something he or she would not do otherwise. They are perceptions of coercion, reward, legitimacy, expertise, or referential desire (known as coercive power, reward power, legitimacy power, expert power, and referent power,).[2]

Coercive power occurs when a person acts in accordance with the wishes of another in order to avoid punishment, either initial punishment or the continuation of punishment.  Punishment can take many forms from physical harm to financial losses.  It can also be psychological in the form of guilt, shame, love lost, embarrassment, fear, and the like.  If experienced, punishment, especially if it is viewed as unjustified, can and is likely to elicit a desire for revenge.  If the conditions are right, the exercise of coercive power can lead to a cycle of coercive activity as in violence begetting violence.  This should be a consideration one would be wise to calculate before using coercive power.  On the other hand, coercive power might be viewed as the only option to attain what is perceived as an essential state of being.

Reward power is doing the bidding of others in the anticipation of receiving what one wants to attain.  Usually, this is in the form of money, but it can be in the form of psychological benefits – affection, love, kinship, fame, respect, and the like – or some physical entity – a car, a diamond ring, a trophy, a favored parking space, etc.  Reward power does not spur negative consequences other than the costs of issuing them.  These costs, though, can be substantial.

Legitimacy power occurs when someone does something he/she will not do otherwise due to a sense of doing the right thing.  Usually involved is a sense of duty or obligation.  One can see that if the act is not done, guilt can be the result so there is, in such a case, an overlap with coercive power; the difference being that there is no inkling that the requested behavior is unjustified.  Therefore, if one can convince a person or population that certain behaviors or aversion to behaviors is legitimate, then compliance will not elicit any resentment.  If the necessary beliefs are not present, then the party wanting to exert legitimate power needs to instill such beliefs.  This can prove to be expensive and difficult.

Expert power occurs when someone does something he/she would not do otherwise because he/she is being told to do so by someone who knows what is the best (or better) course of action.  An example from everyday life that comes to mind is the power a doctor has over a patient when the doctor convinces the patient of a change in lifestyle choices – such as giving up smoking.  The key here is twofold:  convincing the subject that the power holder is expert enough and that the subject is disciplined enough to follow suit.

Referent power occurs when someone does something he/she would not do otherwise because he/she wants to be associated with some person, group, movement, or something such as an idea (ideology) or symbol.  It is a form of reward power, but association usually involves an ongoing connection into the future.  A sense of belonging is the “reward” and, as such, deserves to be distinguished from what is usually considered a reward.

Those are the types of power that French and Raven insightfully wrote about back in the 1950s.  This formulation, I believe, is still a powerful conceptualization.  It is particularly helpful for those who want to begin to learn what is needed in order to initiate change.  If we look at civics education, for example, the current view has been institutionalized for a fair amount of time.  So if one wants to work toward changing an important element of our national curriculum, one is taking on a difficult task.  There should be no doubt about that.  Elementary use of the above list of power types quickly points to the fact that most coercive resources, in the form of job security, and most reward resources, such as job advancement, are in the hands of those who hold the current curricular biases that support the natural rights construct.  This should be kept in mind as I review the types of strategies Chin and Benne offer.  As I stated above, I will review those strategy types in my next posting.

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[1] Dahl, R. A.  (1957).  The concept of power.  See https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/Dahl_Power_1957.pdf .

[2]French, J. R. P. and Raven, B. H. (1967). The bases of power. In. E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt (Eds.) Current perspectives in social psychology (504-512). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

CONTENTIOUS SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC THINKING

I wish I had a nickel for every time I have written in this blog, “sixty or so years ago.”  The phrase refers to the notion that about sixty or so years ago, the natural rights construct became the prominent mental construct among Americans as to how they thought and felt about government and politics.  That promotion was at the expense of the traditional federalist construct.  I have in this blog shared some of the history that traces the transfer.  I wrote about how since the times of the early republic, our political beliefs and feelings have slowly drifted from the puritanical origins of congregational unions.  That origin led the way to our governmental foundational bias of forming polities through the use of covenantal arrangements.  I will spare you a whole retelling of the story; let it suffice to say that this religiously inspired origin went through secularization and then a shift from a collectivist orientation to a stronger and stronger individualism. 

In the past century, we had the effects of the Great Depression and World War II.  These two tide-changing experiences proved to be the end of the dominance of the federalist – the construct reflecting our covenantal perspective – mindset and the beginning of the dominance of the natural rights mindset.  In my telling of this story, to date, I have left out the effect of the influence our reliance on science has had.  I alluded to it when early on I related how the growth of positivist scientism influenced our views of the social sciences and the reliance on systems theory.  Since this blog is about civics, I emphasized how this influence affected political science.  What I left out was that the adoption of a science bias was not without contentious claims and a bit of a conflict among those who favored a more scientific approach to studying social realities.  That conflict has had consequences and they are of such a nature that they need to be accounted for if we are serious about implementing a newer form of federalism.  Let me explain.

We, as a culture, have adopted science so thoroughly that it is easy to believe that the influence of science has been around for centuries.  Not so.  The effects of science on our culture can be dated back only to the end of the nineteenth century.  The famous early social scientists had their “heydays” back in the late 1800s.  At that time, such pioneers as Vilfred Pareto, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber began using more scientific methodologies to study social realities.  There began to evolve a general belief that science could study any realm of reality and render such explanations and understandings so that someday one could predict how people would behave under given situations.  After all, the purpose of science is to be able to predict.  One strong spokesperson of this view was Lester F. Ward.  He wrote:

Man’s destiny is in his own hands.  Any law that he can comprehend he can control. … His power over nature is unlimited. … Human institutions are not exempt from this all-pervading spirit of improvement.  They, too, are artificial, conceived in the ingenious brain and wrought with mental skill born of inventive genius.  The passion for their improvement is of a piece with the impulse to improve the plow or the steam engine.[1]

That viewpoint only became stronger as the new century took hold.

Between 1900 and 1950, spurred on by the progressive forces of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and then the challenges of World War II, there was a very strong bias that undermined the remnants of the federalist view.  That newer bias held that desired social change could be engineered with enough social scientific knowledge.  That change could not only be substantively formulated by the use of such knowledge, but its implementation could also be achieved by the appropriate experts and sufficient resources – usually meaning enough money.  Such efforts entailed large bureaucracies, high levels of central planning, and national efforts.  Of course, this flew in the face of federalist thinking that relied heavily on local community responses to social ills.  Part of the problem was that social problems themselves had become national in scope, mostly pushed by a more national and then international economic system.  Local realities were to ever greater degrees being affected by events farther and farther away.  The Great Depression and a world war brought these realities into sharp focus and could no longer be denied by objective observation.  But not everyone bought into this “engineering” approach.

One of the outspoken critics of this planned change approach was William Graham Summer.  While these critics did not turn their collective backs on the use of science, they did find the ambitious projects these social engineers were conducting as troublesome.  Not only did such critics view Ward’s view a folly – a naïve and presumptive form of arrogance – but sacrilegious:  we study social realities scientifically to gain insight, but “never in the world by reconstruction of society on the plan of some enthusiastic social architect.”[2]  Instead, Sumner saw such knowledge as merely an assistance as one goes about his/her business.  Society, under this view, will balance itself out if the natural human and physical forces are allowed to “do their thing.”  He argued for a laissez faire approach and saw Wardian engineering as meddlesome and even dangerous.  He called for such efforts as affronts and urged all these do-gooders to mind their own business.

Since those days, we have had a heavy dose of both approaches.  The engineers took an early advantage as the nation, as stated above, slogged through the Great Depression and then had to conduct the monumental effort of defeating the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.  But even though overall they met with successes, they were not unqualified successes.  It took an entire ten years to get out of the depression – not until preparation spending for the war did we get to full employment – and the war effort left us with a new enemy, the Soviet Union.  But what finally cost the engineers their favored position was the social upheavals associated with the Vietnam War – the engineers got us into that mistake – and finally the Great Inflation of the 1970s.  Taking its place was the old Sumner view of laissez faire under the guise of Reaganomics.  Of course, not all of the measures instituted by the engineers disappeared.  Remnants of the Progressive Era and the New Deal survived:  Social Security, FDIC, and the FED are examples.  And the older line of thinking also had later successes such as Medicare and Medicaid.  Economically, we, under the regime of the engineers, had an economic policy described as Keynesian from the 1930s to 1980 which relied heavily on expert economic planning.  This was replaced by the supply side economic regime introduced by Reagan’s administration.  With the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, a lot of that economic construct has come under attack.  That’s where we are today.  Things are in flux; perhaps it’s time for a change.

There is more talk of what is known as clinical, as opposed to engineered, approaches to change.  This approach is more reliant on personal narratives, interactions with subjects, partnership building, collaboration, and shared decision-making.  It doesn’t disregard positivist/quantitative based knowledge, but sees such study as verification for what is learned from qualitative study.  It sees politics less as a zero-sum game and more of a win-win game.  Whether a new approach is developed where this more inclusive view becomes dominant, we will see.  There is one arena where this newer approach is being used and the critics are vociferous; that’s in the field of foreign relations.

President Obama has been trying to institute a foreign relations approach that relies more heavily on diplomacy.  His recently negotiated deal with the Iranians is an example.  I will not analyze the whole range of issues involved, but the President’s stance is one of seeking an arrangement with Iran in which both sides win.  The President’s critics accuse him of weakness that will be exploited by our adversaries.  I believe this illustrates the challenges that a more federalist approach will have to overcome.  We’ll see what the outcome will be.

In any event, the stage is set.  Will a newer form of federalism be able to take hold?  If so, will it mean that such a change will cause a ripple effect in other realms of our social life?  Can it affect, for example, what we teach in schools, in our civics classrooms?

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[1] Quoted in Benne, K. D., Bennis, W. G., Chin, R.  (1985).  Planned change in America.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.) Planning of Change (pp. 11-21).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston.  Quotation on p. 15.

[2] Ibid., p. 15.