Change and the individual: expectations and triggers

Hello. I'm Dr. Ann Parkinson from Henley Business School, and I would like to welcome you to my talk on "Change and the Individual: Triggers and Expectations".

In this session, I will be exploring a number of areas which will help us to understand the impact that change has on the individual, and what we in organisations need to consider. Firstly, I will outline what we need to think about when dealing with individuals in order to understand some of the areas that make us so different in how we manage change and in how we consider change. To help us understand this, I will be using the psychological contract as a framework or lens so that we can see what is often going on in people's minds in the midst of change and how it plays a key role in the employment relationship. That relationship that can have a huge impact on how change is managed in organisations. The employment relationship is often developed through the various practices designed by the HR function in organisations which we will explore in a little more depth, as well as understanding the role of the line manager in operating these processes. I will then go on to explore the various triggers for change that can impact that relationship before considering the implications of the organisation, the individual, the line manager, and the HR function, which will then lead up to my conclusion.

The first area I want to explore is understanding how an individual reacts to change and to examine the reasons why and how we're all different. Although it's often thought that our attitudes to change might be dictated by our age, this is not the case. I'm sure that we can all think about young people that we know who have always been resistant to change, just as we can think of our older colleagues, friends, and relatives who have always been keen to have a go at new projects and embrace the latest technology or gadget. We can see that with the rise of the "silver surfer". We can understand personality in a number of ways, including instruments like the MBTI or the 16PF or any others that you know. I will use the MBTI as an example later. We can see through these the people who are always open to new experience or those who like the tried and tested approach. We can see this through people's values as well. There are some people who prefer the natural order of things that we would perhaps see as a more conservative view as opposed to those who prefer radical new ideas and being in the forefront of progress, being entrepreneurial, loving innovation and creativity and moving forward. Another way of looking at this is through the locus of control. By this we mean how much we are inner or outer directed. By being outer directed, this is where we believe that fate plays a large part in what happens to us. For those of us who are inner directed, it is more about the feeling that we are in control of our own destiny. As well as our personalities, socialisation and education will make a difference to how we react to change. Our national culture will impact on how we are educated and the form of our education system, it will impact some of the values that we hold and we can see this in the work of people like Hofstede, who by choosing to look at an organisation, IBM, in the 1980s and continuing since then. IBM because it had a very strong organisational culture so that he considered that the difference between the various offices must be down to the cultural differences. This enabled him to outline areas such as how masculine or feminine a culture might be. How individualistic or collectivised it is. How much authority is respected or not. What are the attitudes to risk and uncertainty? Finally, how long the time horizons in the culture were? We can see how these would be key drivers to how we react to change. Allied to this, we can see a whole area such as our sense of self in our social setting, our social identity can be wrapped up in this. How do we see ourselves? What's important to us can come from these. Our social identity will be impacted by the type of education we had, the type of family we were brought up in and how that family saw themselves and importantly, how they were seen by others. The other key area that impacts on how we deal with change will come from our own experience in organisations. This will be influenced by areas such as our life stage. Whether we're just setting out in the world, looking forward to settling down and focused on a family, wanting to achieve great things before retiring or worrying about a growing family or elderly parents. We can also look at where people are in their career stage. Whether it is the early career where we are testing the reality of ourselves at work and looking for new experiences, whether we are in our mid career where organisations are expecting our energy and drive in new and exciting projects. Of course, this is just at the point when people have young families and lots more demands piled on them. Or coming to the end of a career and considering moving on into part time or self employment, or retiring from work altogether. At each stage between people's lives and their careers, they will be looking for different things and worrying about different things. Therefore, change will impact them differently and in different ways. The other key area that will impact them is the organisational experience that they had and what type of organisation they've actually worked in, whether that has been public, private or the charity sector. Large or small, local or multinational will all impact on how they see change and how they interpret it for themselves. Also the extent to which they have been developed in organisations or have had to fend for themselves in smaller ones. What opportunities that have been there and of course, vitally important, what has happened to them while they have been in that organisation will impact how they see change in the future in other organisations.