[Paleopsych] resilience in organizations (was, Eunichs)

Steve Hovland shovland at mindspring.com
Sun Mar 6 17:49:41 UTC 2005


These days many mature corporation are
not hardy, by the definitions given below.

Making them hardy will involve large
internal changes by the people who run
them.  As Jesus said, a camel can pass
through the eye of a needle much easier.

Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net


-----Original Message-----
From:	Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com]
Sent:	Sunday, March 06, 2005 8:59 AM
To:	The new improved paleopsych list
Subject:	[Paleopsych] resilience in organizations (was, Eunichs)

Howard,
Appros of this, Sal Maddi argues that such resilience can be taught to
adults. He postulates three belief structures, committment, control and
challenge.  I throw in a paragraph from the article below the header.

Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 	? 1999 by the
Educational Publishing Foundation and the Division of Consulting Psychology
Spring 1999 Vol. 51, No. 2, 117-124 	For personal use only--not for
distribution.


      The Hardy Organization
      Success by Turning Change to Advantage

Salvatore R. Maddi
University of California, Irvine
Deborah M. Khoshaba
The Hardiness Institute
Arthur Pammenter
Executive Development Group


ABSTRACT


    Our turbulent times require organizations that are hardy in the
    sense of having cultures, climates, structures, and workforces
    capable of turning potentially disruptive changes into
    opportunities. At the individual, or workforce, level, hardiness
    involves the attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge and the
    complementary skills of coping and social support. At the
    organizational level, the isomorphic counterparts of hardy attitudes
    are the cultural values of cooperation, credibility, and creativity.
    Furthermore, an organization is hardy if these cultural values are
    indeed expressed on an everyday basis through its climate and if its
    structure involves the matrix management scheme of semi-autonomous
    work teams rather than the more traditional hierarchical
    arrangement. This article also considers the assessment and
    consulting functions that can increase the hardiness of organizations.

Quote:
What is this dispositional hardiness that has such beneficial effects?
At the individual level, we have emphasized hardiness as a particular
system of attitudes and skills that facilitates managing circumstances
that are stressful and potentially debilitating because they constitute
disruptive changes or chronic conflicts (e.g., Maddi, 1994
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psycarticles/index.cfm?action=display&uid=1999-  
03308-006&ftType=HTML&sid=5f99ff02-c650-4bf0-af8e-77eeb50171c1#c12>,
1998
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psycarticles/index.cfm?action=display&uid=1999-  
03308-006&ftType=HTML&sid=5f99ff02-c650-4bf0-af8e-77eeb50171c1#c13>;
Rhodewalt & Zone, 1989
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psycarticles/index.cfm?action=display&uid=1999-  
03308-006&ftType=HTML&sid=5f99ff02-c650-4bf0-af8e-77eeb50171c1#c21>;
Weibe, 1991
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psycarticles/index.cfm?action=display&uid=1999-  
03308-006&ftType=HTML&sid=5f99ff02-c650-4bf0-af8e-77eeb50171c1#c23>).


<javascript:showCitation('Maddi, Salvatore R.; Khoshaba, Deborah M.;
Pammenter, Arthur','The Hardy Organization: Success by Turning Change to
Advantage','Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and
Research','51','117-124','Dispositional Hardiness','2')>The
HardiAttitudes are the "3 Cs" of commitment, control, and challenge
(e.g., Kobasa, Maddi,&Kahn, 1982
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psycarticles/index.cfm?action=display&uid=1999-  
03308-006&ftType=HTML&sid=5f99ff02-c650-4bf0-af8e-77eeb50171c1#c9>).
To be strong in commitment means believing that being involved with
tasks, people, and contexts is the best way to find meaningful purpose
in life. You will be infinitely curious about what is going on around
you, and this will lead you to find interactions with people and
situations stimulating and meaningful. Feeling alienated and isolated
will seem like a waste of time. To be strong in control involves
believing that, through personal struggle, you can usually influence the
directions and outcomes going on around you. Lapsing into powerlessness
and passivity will seem like a waste of time. To be strong in challenge
means believing that personal improvement and fulfillment come through
the continual process of learning from both negative and positive
experiences. It will seem not only unrealistic but also stultifying to
simply expect comfort and security to be handed to you.
End

I can send the text of the entire article if you are interested. Maddi
applies his ideas to organizations, improving the resilience of groups
of people.
Lynn

HowlBloom at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 3/6/2005 1:17:56 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Howl
> Bloom writes:
>
>     In a message dated 3/3/2005 8:08:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
>     joe at quirk.net writes:
>
>             "Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even
>             if you weren't so inclined, you get surrounded by an
>             entourage that's also heavily invested in your
>             reputation," said Redelmeier. "So you end up sleeping
>             properly every night, eating well, exercising regularly
>             every day."
>
>     Your points are good ones, Joe.  It's like the problem of
>     resilient kids.  Roughly one out of ten kids who grow up with
>     single, abusive, drug or drink-addled mothers end up as very
>     successful adults.  What do these kids have in common?  The find
>     mentors, substitute parents to whom they bond.
>
>     This leaves us with a puzzle.  Do these kids become more
>     successful because they have an attachment to a significat other,
>     an emotionally meaningful, nurturing other, something most
>     tormented kids like this lack?  Or do these resilient kids have an
>     attachment to a mentor because the are born with better social
>     instincts, the instincts of self-confidence and extroversion that
>     make them bold enough to find others they can attach themselves to?
>
>     Which came first, the confidence or the social connection?  Is the
>     success these kids have later in life due to their outgoing nature
>     or due to the mentors that outgoing nature brings?  Or are the
>     two--confidence and social connection--inseparable?
>
>     Is there a gene-tweak or a womb-experience that makes for more
>     confident kids and others who are born with shyness
>     and overwhelming insecurities?  In twin studies by an Italian
>     researcher, regular sonographic scans of the two kids in the womb
>     showed that there was a battle taking place in utero.  One twin
>     managed to take over the living room of the womb--the central
>     chamber,  The other kid was shoved aside and had to gestate in a
>     corner, in a sort-of closet of the womb.
>
>     When the two finally made it from the uterus into the outside
>     word, the winner of the womb war was outgoing and self-confident.
>     When a stranger showed up, the winner ran over clearly expecting
>     to win the stranger over.  It saw this new social contact as an
>     opportunity.
>
>     The loser in the womb wars saw the same stranger and hugged its
>     mother's legs in panic, then ran off to something eerily like its
>     old uterine closet--it hid in a side room.  ThIs kid saw a
>     stranger as a danger, not as a new opening.
>
>     Did the winner of the womb wars win by chance and then gain the
>     benefits of his land grab for intra-uterine space?  Or was there
>     some gene-tweak that predestined him to win?
>
>     Does womb-real estate change the nature of the kid--does it change
>     the way that genes express themselves?  Or does some small
>     gene-fluke exist even in what we think of as genetically identical
>     kids?   Howard
>
>     ----------
>     Howard Bloom
>     Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
>     Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind
>     From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
>     Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
>     University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
>     www.howardbloom.net
>     www.bigbangtango.net
>     Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board
>     member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The
>     Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New
>     York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement
>     of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
>     Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International
>     Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:
>     Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
>     For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
>     www.paleopsych.org
>     for two chapters from
>     The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
>     History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
>     For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from
>     the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
>
>
> ----------
> Howard Bloom
> Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
> Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From
> The Big Bang to the 21st Century
> Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University;
> Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
> www.howardbloom.net
> www.bigbangtango.net
> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member:
> Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project;
> founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
> Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
> American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human
> Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
> Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor
> -- New Paradigm book series.
> For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
> www.paleopsych.org
> for two chapters from
> The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
> History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
> For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the
> Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: Tortured Souls & Eunuchs at Orgies...
> From:
> HowlBloom at aol.com
> Date:
> Sun, 6 Mar 2005 01:17:56 EST
> To:
> joe at quirk.net, emdls at pacbell.net
>
>
> In a message dated 3/3/2005 8:08:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> joe at quirk.net writes:
>
>         "Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even if
>         you weren't so inclined, you get surrounded by an entourage
>         that's also heavily invested in your reputation," said
>         Redelmeier. "So you end up sleeping properly every night,
>         eating well, exercising regularly every day."
>
> Your points are good ones, Joe.  It's like the problem of resilient
> kids.  Roughly one out of ten kids who grow up with single, abusive,
> drug or drink-addled mothers end up as very successful adults.  What
> do these kids have in common?  The find mentors, substitute parents to
> whom they bond.
>
> This leaves us with a puzzle.  Do these kids become more successful
> because they have an attachment to a significat other, an emotionally
> meaningful, nurturing other, something most tormented kids like this
> lack?  Or do these resilient kids have an attachment to a mentor
> because the are born with better social instincts, the instincts of
> self-confidence and extroversion that make them bold enough to find
> others they can attach themselves to?
>
> Which came first, the confidence or the social connection?  Is the
> success these kids have later in life due to their outgoing nature or
> due to the mentors that outgoing nature brings?  Or are the
> two--confidence and social connection--inseparable?
>
> Is there a gene-tweak or a womb-experience that makes for more
> confident kids and others who are born with shyness and overwhelming
> insecurities?  In twin studies by an Italian researcher, regular
> sonographic scans of the two kids in the womb showed that there was a
> battle taking place in utero.  One twin managed to take over the
> living room of the womb--the central chamber,  The other kid was
> shoved aside and had to gestate in a corner, in a sort-of closet of
> the womb.
>
> When the two finally made it from the uterus into the outside word,
> the winner of the womb war was outgoing and self-confident.  When a
> stranger showed up, the winner ran over clearly expecting to win the
> stranger over.  It saw this new social contact as an opportunity.
>
> The loser in the womb wars saw the same stranger and hugged its
> mother's legs in panic, then ran off to something eerily like its old
> uterine closet--it hid in a side room.  ThIs kid saw a stranger as a
> danger, not as a new opening.
>
> Did the winner of the womb wars win by chance and then gain the
> benefits of his land grab for intra-uterine space?  Or was there some
> gene-tweak that predestined him to win?
>
> Does womb-real estate change the nature of the kid--does it change
> the way that genes express themselves?  Or does some small gene-fluke
> exist even in what we think of as genetically identical kids?   Howard
>
> ----------
> Howard Bloom
> Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
> Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From
> The Big Bang to the 21st Century
> Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University;
> Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
> www.howardbloom.net
> www.bigbangtango.net
> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member:
> Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project;
> founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
> Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
> American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human
> Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
> Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor
> -- New Paradigm book series.
> For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
> www.paleopsych.org
> for two chapters from
> The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
> History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
> For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the
> Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>paleopsych mailing list
>paleopsych at paleopsych.org
>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
>
>
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