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Future directions and challenges

4 important questions on Future directions and challenges

The changing psychological contract The psychological contract attracted attention as it offered a powerful way of analysing the perceptions of, and feelings and reactions of the victims of mergers, takeovers, redundancies, downsizing and sometime aggressive employer behaviour witnessed at the time. These corporate changes often led to new terms and conditions of employment. Changes currently affecting the workplace include:

Increasing number of employees on part-time, flexible and ‘zero-hours’ work;
Organisations downsizing and delayering, meaning remaining employees have to do more;
Markets, technology, and product constantly changing;
Organizational structures becoming more fluid and geographically dispersed.

Leading innovation Amabile and Khaire (2008) maintain that the first priority of leadership is to engage people who can undertake creative work. This implies people who can not only do the everyday tasks allotted to them, but who can also contribute imagination. They offer the following advice to managers:

Remember you are not the sole fount of ideas; • Enable collaboration;
Enhance diversity;
Map the stages of creativity and tend to their different needs;
Accept the inevitability and utility of failure;
Motivate with intellectual challenge.

Appreciative inquiry (AI)

is an organizational change methodology that takes a different view from traditional approaches, being a more holistic and humanistic method that focuses on the ‘positive psychology’ generated by asking positive questions rather than concentrating on negative questions and solving problems. AI is more concerned with discovering new possibilities and energising people around those possibilities, rather than focusing on working within existing patterns of behaviour.