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Unlearning in the Workplace

Karen Becker    

This research investigated the experiences of individuals required to unlearn as a result of workplace changes. The findings enabled the development of a process model of unlearning that provides specific indication of factors affecting unlearning during times of change. In particular, this thesis highlights the critical importance of elements of a more personal and affective nature; often referred to as "soft" issues. This research demonstrates that organisations must provide resources and education to provide both those in supervisory roles and those impacted by change with the necessary skills to unlearn and to embrace change at an individual level.

Transcript

Interviewe: I’d like to welcome Karen Becker, welcome Karen.  Karen can you give me a broad overview of your Research area?

Karen Becker: My Research focuses around changes that happen in the workplace so where there needs to be changes made in the workplace, what it actually looks at is how do people come to terms with that and how do they let go of ways they might have done something in the past so that they can actually start to learn a different way of doing things so that’s it in a nutshell.

Interviewer How did you go about conducting this Research?

Karen Becker: Okay the Research was broken into two parts, phase 1 and phase 2, phase 1 was qualitative study, it was done in three different organisations that were encountering a change and I spoke to individuals in the organisation about their experiences, about what it was that they had to let go of and the sorts of things that might helped or hindered them in that process.  So that was phase 1 and from that came a proposed model of unlearning, phase 2 then went on and took those findings and actually turned it into a survey questionnaire that was administered in quite a large organisation undergoing change and had almost 200 respondents and quantitative data was then used to reinforce the findings and clarify some of the findings from the first phase.

Interviewer: What were your key findings from the qualitative and the survey phase?

Karen Becker: Okay from the qualitative phase there was a sense that there was some individual factors that impacted unlearning and there was some organisational factors so those were identified in a broad sense and then a process that people go through so it was clear that there were some steps that people actually go through to unlearn so they become aware of it, they then have certain expectations, they then enter into a bit of a cycle where they try things out, they feel uncomfortable, they start to come to terms with the new way and eventually they let go so that was the findings of the first part was that yes there was some sort of  a cycle occurring and there were things about the individual but also things about the organisation that either helped or hindered that process.  The second phase then I guess honed in on that and what came out was very particularly the quantitative showed that the individual factors in particular were a key element to the unlearning process in particular feelings and expectations that people have about change has a huge impact, there’s also some organisational factors like the amount of training and whether there’s sufficient communication but in lots of cases it’s about the individual and the level of support they either do or don’t get to actually go through the change and that can make a huge difference.

Interviewer:    And lastly Karen how will your Research inform theory and practice in the area of organisational change?

Karen Becker: The key findings I guess that I just outlined have some implications for theory and practice, in terms of theory it adds to the body of knowledge about how to manage change and I guess coming from that, that should be informing practice so people who are actually managers and having to implement change in any sort of organisation really could have a look at this process and the factors that emerged and ask themselves what are they doing to cater to the needs of their staff to be able to help them unlearn and let go of past practice so those sorts of things aren’t necessarily things that have been done in the past very well, organisational change typically has this very neat step by step process about how to move an organisation through change and sometimes it just ignores the emotional side, the feeling side, the individual issues and I don’t necessarily think organisations have actually given enough thought about that issue or enough development of the people responsible for implementing change so that they can provide that level of support so I think they’re the key findings that should inform management practice and training and development issues in organisations.

Interviewer: Thank you for your time Karen