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When theory meets practice
(2017)
Although more than seven decades have passed since Lewin laid the foundation for how employees’ behaviour could be changed within organizations, his ideas are far from being obsolescent. Accordingly, this article demonstrates how Lewin’s concepts can still be of use in tackling current issues (i.e. the need to raise energy-saving behaviours within organizations). In order to revive Lewin’s concepts, we combine his approaches on organization change with Motivational Interviewing (MI), a facilitation approach that fits well with his democratic and participatory mind-set. After a theoretical consideration of how Lewin’s ideas could be accompanied by MI principles, we outline a practical concept for raising the level of employees’ energy-saving behaviours to a higher standard. The usefulness of our concept is highlighted on the basis of qualitative (a force field analysis) and quantitative (an increase of energy-saving norms and – behaviours) data. Lewin’s legacy for current organization development, and the theoretical as well as practical implications for how his ideas could be applied through a combination with MI practices, are discussed.
Background: Neuroenhancement (NE), the use of psychoactive substances in order to enhance a healthy individual's cognitive functioning from a proficient to an even higher level, is prevalent in student populations. According to the strength model of self-control, people fail to self-regulate and fall back on their dominant behavioral response when finite self-control resources are depleted. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that ego-depletion will prevent students who are unfamiliar with NE from trying it.
Findings: 130 undergraduates, who denied having tried NE before (43% female, mean age = 22.76 +/- 4.15 years old), were randomly assigned to either an ego-depletion or a control condition. The dependent variable was taking an "energy-stick" (a legal nutritional supplement, containing low doses of caffeine, taurine and vitamin B), offered as a potential means of enhancing performance on the bogus concentration task that followed. Logistic regression analysis showed that ego-depleted participants were three times less likely to take the substance, OR = 0.37, p = .01.
Conclusion: This experiment found that trying NE for the first time was more likely if an individual's cognitive capacities were not depleted. This means that mental exhaustion is not predictive for NE in students for whom NE is not the dominant response. Trying NE for the first time is therefore more likely to occur as a thoughtful attempt at self-regulation than as an automatic behavioral response in stressful situations. We therefore recommend targeting interventions at this inter-individual difference. Students without previous reinforcing NE experience should be provided with information about the possible negative health outcomes of NE. Reconfiguring structural aspects in the academic environment (e.g. lessening workloads) might help to deter current users.
Method: The first study relied on focus group data collected from twenty-one team sport professionals (mean age = 34; SD = 11.65). Four hundred and fourteen adolescent athletes (mean age = 16.69; SD = 1.55) participated in the second study, whereas seven hundred forty-nine adolescent team athletes (mean age = 16.43; SD = 1.69) participated in the third study. For the latter two studies, team athletes were recruited across Italy, Germany and Greece and provided data on the new team measures. Only athletes participating in the third study provided data on doping intentions. Results: The findings of the three studies supported the empirical goals of the investigation and provided evidence for the factor structure, reliability and validity of the team instruments. Furthermore, multi group findings supported the hypothesis that the new instruments would have equivalent measurement and validity characteristics across the three European countries. The conclusions focus on the conceptual and practical implications of these findings. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.