APPLYING POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - Vol 15 May 2008

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deborah Ann Booth on August 9, 2009 at 3:03pm

David

I found your review of Applying positive Psychology very interesting. Its always fascinating to read about what related professional communities are thinking because we can both learn from them and potentially identify broad intellectual movements heading our way.

Re. Whose engagement is it anyway? : Does the prevailing OD worldview really assume so little individual agency as you suggest? That explains alot of what is wrong with it. Tim Harford's Undercover Economist column( FT June 13 2009) quotes Levitt and List who unearthed the original data underlying Mayo's Hawthorne Studies who concluded that in relation to the Hawthorne Effect 'existing descriptions of the supposedly remarkable data patterns prove to be entirely fictional'. So you don't need to believe Positive Psychologists data (especially as it conveniently shows we need positive psychologists). What on earth is volitional activity - and how could you measure it accurately anyhow? (rhetorical question)

Thrilled to read your remark about our younger selves' lack of understanding about need for moral courage. I raised the issue of ethics in practice at the St Albans meeting and the response of at least one person was that ' the client won't pick a consultant because they have a code of ethics'. This is exactly why I think it is fundamental to the future of OD that it begins to see itself as Business Therapy or Counselling and like all professional therapies develops ethics which protect practitioners and consultants and trains its practioners in these. Paul Z already includes such a code in his contracts so maybe we could start with his.

Have you ever heard of Autopoeisis? Organisations as organisms- Ralph Stacey (Ned lent me his 2001 Book) describes the biological idea that if you see an organisation as influencing/influenced by its environment an autopoetic organism/organ/cell responds to such change in a unique way (determined entirely by its unique internal organisation). It is the continuation of its unique way to respond to environmental perturbation which defines its identity If it changes in such a way as to stop doing so, it is no longer itself ie . it has lost its identity and become another organisation - or died. Autopoesis was a concept developed to describe the difference between living things and everything else. Feel this idea is very powerful in relation to OD. What do you think?

Regards, Deb

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David McAra on August 10, 2009 at 2:00pm

Thanks for your response, Deb

I started writing these reviews in an effort to draw people into the journal after a Council discussion in which I confessed that I always felt good when O&P arrived and then never opened it. When I started reading it I became a fan but the responses never threatened the capacity of the Ning servers. Do you have a copy of the May 2008 issue?

Deming was a statistician who was interested in quality - not really from the OD movement. The idea of the tiny percentage of autonomy is easiest to understand in the context of machine operators. No point blaming the operator for poor quality output. He can only work to the capability of the machine. For me it stretches quite comfortably into the area of management. In the moral courage article, for example, the reason HR professionals need it is because they may perceive a conflict between the interests of the individual and those of the company.

I did see that piece about how the Hawthorn data appeared to be folklore. Intriguing. I remember you saying you didn't have much patience with positive psychology. I am persuaded that going after more of the good stuff pays a better return than trying to fix the bad. I know it can sound like burying one's head in the sand but it really isn't.

Have you seen the AMED Ethical Charter? I believe this is a relatively recent formulation but I can't remember when or who by. I will find out.

I have heard of Autopoeisis but am not at all familiar. I will look out for Ralph Stacey. Certainly, for me, the essence of OD is organisations as organisms in contrast to a prevailing assumption of organisations as machines and people as the interchangeable and programmable parts.

Would be good to speak about these things. Hope we may have a chance soon.

Thanks again.

David

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Deborah Ann Booth on August 14, 2009 at 9:05am

David

Thank you . I just assumed that if AMED/Concepta had details & money O& P would just arrive (albeit by cyberspace) so I've just requested to join.

Why do you value Deming's ideas? Is his influence widespread? Am going to look him up, now.

Actually I'm quite a fan of Positive Psychology because it focuses on the study of 'normal' 'adaptive' behaviour as its research topic, enabling us to discover, for example, that truly happy people acheive this state through meaningful work, not endless pleasure. This is an individual psychology and if it has been extended recently into the study of 'normal organisations' I think it could be very interesting. Are we are experts on sick orgs and super-orgs right now ? What is their research tecnique?

I'm not a fan of moving towards the solution of an org's problems without a diagnosis of its ills (A.I. etc). This is akin to missing out akey stage of the learning cycle (Action- fixated learning cycle - Bob Garratt in Pedler, M (ed.) 1983: Action Learning in Practice). I can see this could be very attractive to those managers who don't want to have to openly acknowledge their own responsibility for organisational failings and might work where organisational business environments are favourable to slow adaptation. In the current/immediate future climate such strategies will not deliver organisational change change fast enough.

Have looked at AMED ethical Charter. It's agood start. Are all AMED members invited ti include it in their contracts? The bit I feel least comfy with is the loyalty conflict. Where are a consultant's loyalties, where should they be? Am I bound to be a tool of my client (who wants to increase control of the means of ?knowledge production at the expense of his/her staff) because I've taken their money? Am I loyal to my own humanistic values, so not fully committed to the client's interests? Do I shade this conflict by accepting at face value my client's denial of it's existence?

. Anthropologists (in USA) recently decided they would openly state their humanistic values in their own ethical code and openly include this in every contract with the military (Afghanistan/iraq etc). That way an individual would be underr less pressure to act unethically when required by such an employer because he/she could point to the code in the original employment contract . A neat trick was to insist that all research findings are disseminated through the anthropological community, which also forced military employers to think whether they want their use of anthropological research publicised!

All the best,

Deb

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Deborah Ann Booth on August 14, 2009 at 10:12am

David

Have just confirmed what I suspected. Deming is associated with TQM etc and Japanese management tecniques. I did my MBA dissertation on 20th century Japanese/US/British managerial control tecniques. The Deming/Japanese approach only works to the degree that it confers extra legitimacy on manageriaal control over the production process through imbuing the latter with the cultural values of employees. If you change the cultural values, you have to change the control system to get the same result. In UK research shows that only by meeting CULTURAL NEEDS of employees do you get good output/quality results. Deming and/ or his followers have very cleverly given his tecniques a (spurious) legitmacy for managers ie Quality, Systems etc. It isn't in capitalists' interests to acknowledge that their empoyees have a great deal of power/autonomy - they might wish to exert it. We should take a very critical view of theories which purport to describe the human world as one in which it is 'natural' for one person/group to have less autonomy than another. These theories are themselves instruments of oppression.

End of Rant. Sorry. I get carried away by 'theories' which are used for political purposes and are not actually theories.I favour the Vienna Circle's ideas that empirical knowledge must be based on observation(Schlick) and Bourdieu's assertion that social theories which hide the arbitrariness of the social order serve only to justify the legitimacy of existing social structures .

Do people use Deming's stuff to do OD? I should have thought evidence of the obvious protracted decline of US manufacturing (for whom Deming appeared asa saviour in the 80s) would be enough to make people question his theories (14 Principles). I'm sure you will have read that the real value of wages has declined for over 20 years in the US while the real value of top people's salaries/bonuses has increased. TQM has been very successful ---at acquiring a disproportionate amount of 'surplus value' from workers. It hasn't been able to save the US Car Industry from its competitors, either.

That's where the idea of looking at orgs which are 'normal' might help focus on what works ,rather than on what is pathological (ie Positive Organisational Psychology), but any findings would relate ONLY to their specific cultural/business context. In 100 years Social Anthropology has been doing this. It has only one theory so far: distaste for incest is universal!

Looking forward to further debate. I want to explore what theories people are attached to , and why? Am I attracted to Positive Psychology because I once studied Anthropology? Or because it is critical of prevailing assumptions and I love an intellectual punch up? Probably both. What about you?

Best regards, Deb

▶ Reply to This

▶ Reply to This