|
institutions lors des précédents séminaires |
|
The
International Forum For Social Innovation Founded in 1976, the International Forum for Social
Innovation is an international association whose aim is to promote social
innovation and institutional transformation in private and public
institutions. In I.F.S.I.'s reasoning, "institution"
designates organizations of all kinds, highlighting
the end products they generate as well as the factual and mythical history
that underlies them, the implicit and explicit rules that govern them, the
conscious and unconscious emotional life that sustains them, and, generally
speaking, everything that makes them exist. By "social innovation", I.F.S.I means the
ability to innovate in terms of social behaviour, whether personal or
professional. The term also entails the capacity to envision options other than
repetition and reproduction of past behaviour; it implies the ability to
transform roles and thereby contribute to the transformation of institutions. By stressing the function of roles in the
transformation of institutions and by taking into account the psychic aspects
of institutional life, I.F.S.I. makes reference to theoretical currents such
as personalism, psychoanalytic theory applied to groups and institutions, and
systems analysis. Its intent is to probe the complementarities, contradictions, and
tensions of these disciplines. One of I.F.S.I.'s principles is that evolution
in behaviour takes place through work on mental representations; it further
holds that transformation cannot take place without conflict. The origins of
its approach can be found in the work of W.R. Bion and associates. Moreover,
I.F.S.I. has developed its own approach by extending practices that were
developed for the helping professions to the world of private enterprise.
This has been accomplished by systematically holding an international frame
of reference, and by using as a resource the conscious and unconscious
expression of diversity in language and culture. I.F.S.I. is now developing its own approach, that of Institutional Transformation. In concrete terms,
since 1978, the main activity of the Forum has consisted in organising an
annual, international Conference in Today, it has developed activities or similar
conferences abroad (Belgium, the Caribbean, Catalonia-Spain, Cuba, Finland,
India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Palestinian Authority, Peru, United Kingdom,
USA) at
its own initiative or in co-operation with other organizations. It maintains
close relationships with foreign associations that share its theoretical and
methodological references. It also develops new methodologies and specific intervenes in areas
such as training for consultancy, conferences within companies, and
socio-technical analysis. Since 1993, I.F.S.I. has utilized this methodology
for an entire company or for one of its units (Intel Inc., EDF-GDF and TSTT: Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and
Tobago). In this type of conference, the staff, in the roles of management and
consultancy, was composed of senior managers of the company, while the
remaining managers were participants. In 1994, I.F.S.I. co-operated in the
creation of a working conference using art materials:
Imagining Europe created in UK and renewed in Belgium for an
industrial company. In 1999, an international pilot conference entitled Body, Soul, and Role first realized in Israel and
subsequently renewed each year since 2000 in Belgium by the FIIS Belgique. It
has been realized by GReNWE in Bristol (UK) in 2003 and in Bari (Italy)
co-operated by Thalos, IFSI, IFSI-B and ISMO in 2004. In 2001, I.F.S.I. developed in co-operation with the
Business School of The University of Glamorgan, and then the one of the
University of Hull (UK) an ambitious training programme for managers and
consultants: Leading Consultation. The third
programme starts in November 2005. It awards participants the following
diplomas: M.Phil. and Ph.D. Finally, it has created and
renewed, since January 2004, a new international annual conference on the
theme of Femininity, Leadership, Authority and Masculinity: the F.L.A.M. conference. I.F.S.I. is both a learning institution,
devoted to transformation, as well as a place of transit where it is possible
to work individually and collectively in the "here and now" towards
the transformation of roles and institutions. I.F.S.I. considers the
diversity of the origins of its members, consultants, and board members to be
a source of richness that it intends to enhance through the high demands it
makes on itself as an institution in transformation. I.F.S.I. is financed through individual and institutional membership
fees and the fruits of its activities. It uses these resources to support and
develop its own projects, award scholarships to participants who otherwise
would not be able to participate in its activities, and initiate new programs
conducted independently or in co-operation with other organizations in 1978 - 2003: the Journey of I.F.S.I. After World War II, a distinction was made by some between
"institutions" and "organizations" in order to
differentiate the attitudes, behaviour and motivation between the members of
social systems. By "organizations" was meant systems whose only
goal was to accomplish a defined task; their stereotype was the corporation.
"Institutions" represented systems such as armies, churches and
schools which had an explicit goal of generating meaning in and for the
society in which they existed. The change process was seen as simply the
ability to accomplish a task. Other internal or external factors were not
considered. Soon, however, a more complex formulation of organizations was
developed by W.R. Bion and associates who brought psychoanalytical theory to
group dynamics, and by A. K. Rice and P. Turquet who applied the theory of open
systems to social organizations called Group Relations. This model
differentiated between the institution and the organization and focused on
the conscious and unconscious processes affecting authority, role and task in
these systems. As more and more perspectives and models have been linked with Group
Relations work, these concepts have broadened through contact with industrial
and commercial organizations. Facing the globalization of the markets as well
as increasing competition, these organizations have been the first to
acknowledge how much they need to adapt themselves to the evolution of their
environment. Thus, acknowledging their desire for change, I.F.S.I. has continued to
support the idea of social innovation but has also insisted on the importance
of persons within organizations. The assumption of I.F.S.I. is that no
innovation (in-novare) can happen without a transformation process. Thus, the
usual word change should be replaced by the idea of Institutional
Transformation. Indeed organizations use the word "change" very often to
express their will to transform a situation that does not satisfy them: when
they are continuing or accelerating their decline, when they are focused on
their survival, when they appear hyperactive and frantic and, more rarely,
when they want to be innovative or generative. The approach called Institutional Transformation (IT) and developed by
I.F.S.I. completes and enriches the tradition of Group Relations. It not only
includes psychoanalytic and open systems theories but also draws on
socio-political, philosophical and spiritual dimensions. It deals with
defences and learning and focuses at the point of conflict, often
unconscious, between this learning and these defences in the context of the
whole, both inside and outside. It stresses how, along with their learning
experience, people unconsciously develop individual and collective defences
that are more and more sophisticated and effective. Thus, at this point in our history, I.F.S.I. members submit that the
broader concept of Institutional Transformation may be helpful in
understanding systems and the leaders and workers in those systems. Five
reflections summarize what they have learned from their experience as
leaders, managers or consultants, supported by the work and research
mentioned above. 1. No doubt that the most tricky ‑ but also crucial ‑ step
of any transformation process is the transformation of our mental
representations (or system in the mind) which is the place for our prejudices
and resistances. Only the experience to come can put into question these
representations. 2. To work towards the transformation of systems (institutions being
systems), people need to attempt to transform their own roles. What they need
to focus on is the transformation of the chosen or projected-introjected
roles and not the transformation of themselves as individuals. 3. Achieving the transformation of our roles implies that we accept
the mobilization, not only of our thoughts but also of our feelings and
desires, and that we enable ourselves to acknowledge and work out the
unconscious factors, which affect them. The transformation process largely
involves work with our resistances and defences and implies the
transformation of resistances. 4. As a consequence, the institutional transformation process forces
us into an interaction between the work on individual roles and the work on
the system (the institution). For this reason, we consider the Institutional
System Event in Group Relations conferences to be the place where the
political and the spiritual dimensions emerge as products of the psyche. The
revelation of this emergence and the interactions in and by management in
public become determining conditions for fruitful learning for all
participants, members and staff. Similarly, the daily life of institutions
could also be understood as an "institutional systems event."
Leaders, managers and consultants, engaged in institutional transformation,
may learn from their experiences in the institutional system event in group
relations conferences and connect this learning to their daily work life in
institutions. 5. The trans-formation process is not predictable, with an initial
state, a final state and the possibility of regularly measuring the gap between
the two. It is a journey in zigzags which we begin without any guarantee of
arrival, and without any certainty of a happy ending, except the satisfaction
of learning, of undertaking, of living the human condition with its joy and
despair, its progression and regressions, its fertility and sterility, its
repetitions and surprises. Thus, the concept of Institutional Transformation continues, enlarges
and deepens the Group Relations approach. The core of the work focuses on
institutions and not only on groups. It also underlines the importance of
transformation as a journey composed of various states of development or
change. Leaders, managers, and consultants who refer to institutional
transformation favour a hermeneutics of events as they happen in and between
systems, sub-systems and the environment ‑ from the individual, as a
sub-system, to the eco-system. The heuristic posture adopted stimulates
perception and interpretation by all the participants of the feelings they
have, the projections that are in play, the drama and the issues that are at
stake. Doing this, they offer to each participant and also to themselves the
occasion to transform their roles, their relations and their projections and
to contribute to the transformation of the institution, rehabilitating the
initial, and, subsequently, the actual meaning of politics. Thus,
institutional transformation aims not only at analysis and understanding in
depth; institutional transformation is committed to continuous action. Only when leaders, managers, consultants, or members of any
institution acknowledge and work with the increasing complexity of political,
psychic or spiritual dimensions, they enable the institution to leave the
path of decline, survival, frantic acceleration or hyperlife and to
move toward a state of generativity and reflection: LIFE. |