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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

Mistaken Belief Visualisation’

‘William’

2002 The work I undertook with ‘William’ came out of a management development programme I was delivering for ‘Brentbros Ltd’, a smallish family-run machine parts and assembly operation. ‘John’, the Managing Director, was under pressure from his wife (who did the books) to take more time out from the company. They were both in their late 50s and she wanted them effectively to go into semi-retirement. Brentbros, in Adizes LifeCycle terms, had been in ‘Go-Go’ for years without ever having seriously attempted the journey into ‘Adolescence’. John, typical of an Adizes ‘Founder’, still made nearly all decisions in the company. For John to acede to his wife’s wishes would mean he would have to delegate decision-making to others – and they would have to be capable of making those decisions. So I was brought in – on a recommendation from one of Brentbros’ customers – to develop the management capabilities of those people in his team John saw as having potential. 5 people, including ‘Delia’ (John’s daughter and office manager), workshop manager ‘Adrian’ and his assistant, William, went through 5 months’ twilight training (2 hours at the end of every second Monday). The length and format of the training allowed the… Read More

Glossary M

Nos   A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P-Q    R    S     T     U    V    W    X-Y-Z McDonaldisation: George Ritzer (1993) argues that the fast food restaurant is the ultimate model of rationalisation, based on 4 key elements:- Efficiency – economies of scale, assembly line production of food and limited menus cut costs and facilitate the fast processing of customers Calculability – every aspect of the food production and consumption is measured and evaluated on the basis of rational calculation Predictability – Ritzer states “in a rational society people prefer to know what to expect in all settings at all times”. So customers should be able to enter a McDonald’s anywhere in the world and have exactly the same experience. Control – through training, supervision and technology, McDonald’s exercise rigid control of their employees and the food production process. There is even a degree of control of the customers, with hard seats, bright lights and, in some cases, security guards to make customers behave themselves and do not linger over their meal Ritzer and later commentators such as Soumyaditya Dasgupta (2015) see McDonaldization is a by-product of ‘Americanization’ or ‘Westernization’ which… Read More

The Counsellor gets counselled!

Only a few years ago I would never have undergone counselling or therapy. My RED  vMEME’s pride would never have let me submit myself to be helped by someone who couldn’t possibly be as knowledgeable or skilled as me. When a close member of my family elected to go to someone else for counselling rather than come to me, I was mortified. What did it say about me that I couldn’t give them what they needed? I knew the argument that prior relationship dynamics could cloud the judgement of both the counsellor and the client…but, to me, that argument paled into insignificance compared to the vast knowledge and skills I could deploy. In fact that counsellor did a good job and the family member was a lot less troubled afterwards. Yet the counsellor, from what I could make out, knew nothing about the Gravesian approach and didn’t exactly espouse NLP. My wife Caroline had suggested for several years that counselling might benefit me but I had always demurred, convinced that there wasn’t really much wrong with me. I could acknowledge intellectually that I had problems because everyone has problems. To paraphrase Ichak Adizes (1999), the only people without problems are dead people!  But to… Read More