Showing papers in "The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science in 1968"

Phases, Roles, and Myths in Self-Analytic Groups

Abstract: This paper describes a comparative study of the development of two self-analytic groups meeting over a period of nine months. Methodologically, the study employs a computer system of content analysis which reads verbal text and categorizes words and phrases into a set of psycho-sociological variables specified by the investigator. This method is applied to brief reports written weekly by group members. Analysis of variance and factor analytic methods are applied to the output of the computer system to develop a model of change in the social structure and culture of the groups. This model demonstrates that the groups passed through similar phases which were strongly influenced by the emergence of nonrational role specialists and given an underlying common meaning by an integrating group mythology.

Self directed change: Two studies.

Abstract: These studies describe two experiments testing the effectiveness of a new procedure for self-directed behavior change in a self-analytic group and investigating the effects of variations in the change technique. In both studies, graduate students in industrial management selected personal change goals and worked to achieve them during weekly or biweekly group meetings. Initial commitment to achieveing the change goal was significantly related to change for subjects in both experiments (p < .015). The 25 subjects in Experiment I who were in groups where exchange of feedback about the projects was encouraged reported significantly more change (p < .o3) than did the 21 subjects in groups where the projects were not discussed. In Experiment II, where all 54 subjects were encouraged to discuss the projects, it was found that the amount of discussion of an individual's project in the group during the second half of the semester was significantly related to both self-perceived change (p < .015) and to group lead...

Trainer Self-Disclosure and Member Growth in Two T Groups:

Abstract: This study compares the effects that "more" or "less" self-disclosing trainer behavior had upon members of two T Groups. Part I of the data analysis substantiates that the experimental manipulation took place as intended. Part II shows that while an equivalent number of 2-person "perceived therapeutic relationships" were formed in each group, the Ss in the group with the less self-disclosing trainers (lSD) more often entered them with their trainers and dyad partners and the Ss with the more self-disclosing trainers (mSD) entered relationships more often with other members. Part III shows that although both groups eventually attained the same level of self-awareness, the mSD group did so earlier. A revised prescription for trainer behavior is advanced, suggesting that the trainer might optimally begin his participation with a high rate of self-disclosure and become more selective with time.

Conditions for Competence Acquisition and Therapy

Abstract: The acquisition of interpersonal competence and therapy are viewed as learning processes that differ in terms of several key dimensions. The former is especially relevant for those who are competen...

Helping Teachers Improve Classroom Group Processes

Abstract: The studies reported here assumed that informal classroom group processes affect students' attitudes as well as their academic performances and that teachers can modify these group processes constr...

A Comparative Study of Consulting Processes and Group Development The 1968 Douglas McGregor Memorial Award-Winning Article

Abstract: The impact of three organizational development consulting processes is analyzed and compared in terms of prelaboratory interaction between consultant and client, interaction during laboratory sessi...

Operation KPE: Developing a New Organization

Abstract: Although behavioural science concepts and consultants are being utilized with increasing impact in many organizations, no work, to the authors' knowledge, has been done with a virtually new organization. This paper describes a programme of organizational development in a new company.As a framework for the programme, three key problem areas were initially diagnosed as important for the future growth of the organization: (a) individual problems of identity, future security, and alienation; (b) a group-level problem of developing interdependence within the top management team; and (c) organizational issues associated with policy formulation and adaptation to the environment. The behavioural science concept of organizational role was applied to the problem of interdependence in evolving a new method of group development-The Role Analysis Technique (RAT).The paper concludes with a discussion of three general issues which affect the future growth of the new organization: (a) the importance of developing concurr...

Interpersonal Relationships: U.S.A. 2000

Abstract: Man's greatest problem, at this point in our swiftly changing technological progress, concerns our ability to assimilate change. With the population doubling during the next generation, can we huma...

A Short-Form Measure of Self-Actualization

Abstract: The importance of the concept self-actualization is discussed in the context of explaining and predicting behavior in complex organizations. Assessing self-actualization by use of the semistructured research interview is discussed; and a short-form, structured instrument is set forth, not as a substitute, but as an alternative technique that may better meet the needs of investigators and practitioners, particularly where time, expense, and (relative lack of) interviewing and analytic skills are important factors. The short form is validated (a) by comparing the data yielded by it with the data yielded by the semistructured form and (b) by showing that the scores yielded by the structured technique are associated with the same phenomena as the scores yielded by the semistructured technique.

Personality and the "Laboratory Style"'

Abstract: Much laboratory training activity assumes that all individuals have adequate skills for learning from immediate experience. The following study is based on the alternate premise that this type of learning requires a scientific posture toward one's world, and that this posture may be much more difficult for some personality types than for others. The author investigated this premise, using the Sensation Intuition scale of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (1962), and assuming that the Intuitive (N) mode of perception would be more facilitative of operation in the "laboratory style" than the Sensation (S) mode. Using three laboratory populations, it was found that the S-N scale does predict tendencies toward laboratory interpersonal value orientations (as measured by the Managerial Behavior Questionnaire) and ratings of effectiveness in a T Group. The scale was found less effective in predicting actual change. Several implications for laboratory selection and design are suggested.

Individual Change in a Management Development Program

Abstract: Research into laboratory processes and outcomes has suffered from a lack of precise methods and continuity of effort essential to the construction of empirically grounded theoretical models of learning and behavior change. Data are presented here from a study of perceived behavior changes in employees of a large industrial concern one year after their participation in training.Participants are seen by co-workers as increasing significantly more than controls in effective initiation and assertiveness, in capacity for collaboration and operational skill in interpersonal relations, and in diagnostic awareness of self and the ability to fulfill perceived needs.Further systematic inquiry into the determinants of laboratory education is needed to complete the spectrum of alternative designs and outcomes.

Concerning the Nature of Human Systems and the Consultant's Role

Abstract: The opportunity for service as a consultant to large organizations, to small groups, and to individuals has led the author to observations concerning similarities in human systems regardless of size, in terms of the relationship between subparts or subsystems that make for collaboration and health or for imbalance, stress, and dysfunction. It is along interfaces between parts that human organization within one man or among nations is welded, bonded, and linked or stressed, damaged, and broken. Every boundary offers opportunity for collaboration or competition. The role of consultant to an organization is to use himself freely as a diagnostic and, if necessary, healing agent to release forces that move toward balance and health. This article describes the processes the consultant uses to help the client system externalize disruptive tendencies and move toward collaboration.

Interpersonal Confrontation and Basic Third Party Functions: A Case Study

Abstract: This study centers on a conflict between directors of two interdependent groups in a government agency and interventions by a third party consultant who helped them confront their intergroup and interpersonal differences. The third party (a) enhanced the parties' willingness to confront each other, because they perceived him as possessing skills which could prevent the process from deteriorating; (b) synchronized the parties' readiness and efforts to confront, because of the signal value of his presence and his limited availability to them; (c) increased their candidness in expressing views about the issues and reactions to each other, because each party associated the consultant with a prior experience in which openness had been normative. In addition, the third party (d) increased their feelings of social-emotional support and (e) helped clarify and diagnose the issues.A significant aspect of this episode is that because of the nature of the third party's professional identity and the clients' prior exp...

A Personal Growth Crisis in Laboratory Training

Abstract: This article is presented on the assumption that knowledge about laboratory training may be advanced by the careful study of critical incidents and that such study may lead to the isolation of variables of significance for research.The following is a verbatim account of a personal growth crisis which occurred near the midpoint of a two-week laboratory. Four factors are explored as having been of major influence in the growth crisis: (a) the group leader's persistence in turning attention toward emotional distress; (b) the leader's persistent quest for meanings in chaotic emotions; (c) the group's attentiveness as a healing force; and (d) the emotional interfiow among group members as a facilitator for self-exploration.

Social Therapy of a Civil Rights Organization

Abstract: The author reports informally his role as therapist for a social action group torn internally by dissension. The therapy includes individual interviews, T-Group and laboratory methods, with the author as trainer and "midwife."

Concepts of Change and Innovation in 1966

Abstract: The Editorial Board of this Journal have decided that our readers would welcome an annual review of the development of theories, research, and applications focused on social change. This paper offers the first of what we now envision as a continuing series of summaries of progress during each year. The material reviewed here was published, for the most part, during 1966. A summary of the 1967 publications may be expected a year from now.-The Editor