A New Way Forward
Psychology shows a new way forward, through a science based approach, and built upon a growing convergence of evidence from many disciplines.
Armed with insights into human needs and capabilities, we can build environments that bring out the best in one another. This in turn leads to greater performance and hence to greater profits. It is our aspiration to use these insights to contribute to creating a more socially inclusive society, where businesses,organisations and individuals reap all of the benefits this can bring.
By introducing the innovative ideas in Business and Community Psychology, we want to put an end to some of misunderstandings we come across in organisations surrounding social inclusive issues. We can get a lot more done by working with the tidal flows of human nature — understanding what motivates people and the limits to change — than we can by managing as if we can stop the tides from coming in.
There is an apparent tension that exists between “Business Interests” and “Social objectives”. However as is so often the case in human affairs the real question is one of intangibles, one of fears, passions and beliefs. Through applying psychology we have many ways of approaching and hence working with these intangibles.
In most organisations we have a dark side and the most common issues faced come under the following umbrella titles of:-
- Suppressed emotion and stress
- Disempowerment
- Low trust politics
- Discrimination
- Ineffective teams
- Bad decisions
- Management by fear
The difficulties and challenges can sometimes seem insuperable. Sometimes our tendency to look at organisations, institutions and society distract us from turning inward and looking at how these issues affect us as individuals. By working with the ideas and approaches embodied in Business and Community Psychology we can give people whole new levels of control in the above areas. What we have found is that through the process of discrimination (and other practices experienced in organisations) intra-psychically our pictures and views of our identities and ourselves become distorted. This is described in our Discrimination Model (Rowley et al, 2003). These distortions can and do frequently result in a capping of our potential and hence our achievement and performance.
This obviously presents us with serious and unavoidable challenges. Many who believe that equal opportunities have dealt with these issues can meet these challenges with surprise and frustration. However much of this takes place because we are human we are very much influenced by what goes on in our subconscious.
We acknowledge that to turn around the above issues requires work at all levels of the organisation. Our models allow for the practical realisation of this. We aim to enable all we work with to be able to achieve new standards. The utilisation of the Social Audit also assists in focusing the attention to where it is required.
Our role is not in telling people what they have to do; it is more in identifying where their talents lie and developing them. We are firm believers in the fact that bessing them leads to different calculations of interest and differing perspectives on the value and meaning of experiences gained in businesses, organisations and society. We all exist in a complex web of interpretations, interactions and differing perspectives. At the core of Gallant 2000 and Business and Community Psychology are tools, techniques and approaches, which look at changing and understanding various perspectives, and hence routes to changing behaviours and identifying the resources that lie within all of us.
In today’s climate we need a way of recognising these resources. We all have a spectrum of qualities skills and attributes. Sometimes we suppress some of the softer skills at our own expense.
It is our challenge to you to see if you have the strength of character to invest in your organisation, the key challenge facing organisations, businesses and society is to start to experience an increase in productivity. To achieve this requires a change in mindset. By combining the engagement of Social Inclusion with the knowledge, skills and tools embedded within Business and Community Psychology we can achieve positive change in the future.
The Business and Community Psychology Process
