Lab studies – Design of flexible procedures

for personal and organizational development

Our R&D in progress concerns handling diversity in reasoning and action in professional contexts. Diversity among people can be a nuisance or a benefit. Simplifying procedures for managing is desirable for agents in cases of complex organizational change or development. We have initiated a series of lab tests offline to examine possible guidelines for designing such procedures.

Recent lab studies of procedural qualities for examining and taking advantage of diversity indications.

Three different but connected laboratory inquiries examined procedures to compare individual capabilities and experiences of demanding work situations.

The standard quality of the studies is that they examine how different people comprehend and judge complex events and situations at work. The eventual outcome is to design procedures that would facilitate people's capability and will to contribute to task accomplishment and the quality of their working environment. The reasons behind participation can include several possibilities, such as implementing codetermination or strengthening personal development, or taking advantage of coworkers' creativity or loyalty. In principle, forms of participation could improve any moments of planning, judgment, decision-making, action, and evaluation.

Christine Strangert has presented three pilot studies in poster sessions:

1. Integrating working environment aspects into management planning.

XIII European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, Stockholm May 9-12, 2007.

2. On capability of handling diversity of psychosocial information in workplace interventions. European Congress of Psychology 2017, Amsterdam 11-12 July.

3. Qualitative assessment of job experiences for support to self-development. 21st European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, Katowice 24-27 May 2023.

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The design of simple and flexible methods need not imply that either theoretical requirements or practical demands will be set aside. The next paper

comments on how to assess the diversity of job experiences with just a few combined judgment alternatives, which could predict the outcome of coping on a job or mission.

General comments

Our R&D is deeply rooted in experiences of down-to-earth OD with people facing challenging demands of comprehending and acting in complex and diverse contexts. It has often led us to a kind of bottom-up strategy, starting with inquiries about which crucial daily judgments and decision-making are necessary or desirable for responsible agents in different tasks and roles. Participant observation of practice is essential for the strategy and is very resource-intensive.

The next level of analysis requires examinations of existing and possible coordination of tasks and functional capabilities. This phase includes formal modeling alternatives and hypothesizing about their relevance and power. Because any organizational advancement should be open to changing internal and external conditions, the role of individual and organizational learning and adaptation is pivotal in the planning, preparing, and applying activities on all levels.

This strategy needs the design and use of flexible procedures adjusted to the core activities and suitable psychological and social conditions for safe, stimulating, and inventive work. The procedures should be instrumental for agents (associates) in managing task accomplishment and development according to all goal levels.

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Training of Development Officers in Current Mode

The Swedish Armed Force's recent urgent need to use drone technology is a straightforward consequence of the Ukrainian war. Incidentally, ArbOrg Utveckling AB 2011 introduced the concept of using small UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) during a course commissioned by the Nordic Defence Corporation (NORDEFCO) to train officers in scientific concept development and experimentation. (See Training of Development Officers: Applied Research Methods. A case approach.

This idea was associated, in turn, with a clever case study of evaluating RSTA operations (reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition) by two Norwegian Air Force officers in a previous course, 2009/2010. A corresponding challenge for ground forces is to detect targets in close neighborhoods during combat in urban areas. The course subjects included systematic methods for planning, constructing, and testing technical, operative, and strategic possibilities of using small UAS on the battlefield.

Because the course focused on advanced scientific methodology and involved no known military secrets at the time, the primary communication between the supervisor and participants was open on the Internet. However, the registration of passive followers on the Internet showed a preponderous number from the USA, before some Ukrainians and Russian ones. Then, the presence of Ukrainians was a kind of surprise.