Cultural Change#
What is cultural change?#
Culture is defined in many ways, one of which is about the social environment in which you partake, or the customs and behaviours that define a group of people. Culture has an influence on your views, values, concerns and your identity. Culture can be difficult to change as it is hard to address directly and shared values can be deeply ingrained ([Kot12]). Instead, norms of behaviour may be easier to change.
Here, cultural change is defined as inspiring a change in behaviour in persons/organisations, with a lasting impact, strengthening the core values of persons/organisation.
This section will continue to describe where you will encounter cultural change. This is followed by sub-chapters short summaries of works on cultural change, written by adrienne marie brown, William and Susan Bridges and John P. Kotter, Brian Nosek and a summary of the discussions on alternative models held by The Turing Way community at the June 2024 Book Dash.
Fig. 159 The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8169292.#
Where/when will you encounter cultural change?#
As your social environment is continuously changing, you are likely to experience some degree of cultural change on a daily basis. This might not feel like it, because the actual change that takes place will take months or even years.
Generally, you will either be affected by cultural change, or, you want to invoke cultural change by adjusting existing practices yourself. Researchers advocating for improvements in reproducible, ethical, and collaborative research practices often have to advocate for cultural change at their institutions and other organisations.
When you are affected by cultural change taking place in your environment, it may be difficult to change your practises and behaviour. Cassandra Worthy wrote ‘Change Enthusiasm’ ([Wor21]) to provide you with exercises and tools to see changes as an opportunity for learning and growth. As an Early Career Researcher you may also have to deal with systemic cultural change in your discipline. The work by [KHA+22] contains recommendations that may support you in this change journey.
You can also change the culture and get involved in committees that update policies, or add new ones (see the Guide to Accelerate Public Access to Research Data for some pointers that are applicable beyond a research data policy). You may be advocating to make your work environment more inclusive, at the office or within your research association. To provide you with some guidance to invoke cultural change, you can read the works summarised below:
Change is a team effort#
A single individual will not effect cultural change in an organisation, as this requires collective action. A team with members in position of power, members with expertise or leadership skills and credibility, will be needed. Note that the power and leadership referred to here may be formal (that is, your role has particular decision making responsibilities or budget available to support culture change), or informal (you have a great network of people you can convince or you are known as an expert in a particular area which allows you a say in policies).
Vision for change
The vision refers to the future and why people should strive to create that future. A vision clarifies the general direction for change and motivates people to take coordinated action. A vision will acknowledge that sacrifices will be needed to achieve benefits that would not be achievable without change. An effective vision is imaginable (it conveys a picture of the future), desirable (appealing to anyone involved in the change), feasible (has attainable goals), focused (for clear decision-making), and flexible (to allow for alternative responses in light of changing conditions).
This vision should be easy to communicate in under five minutes. The effective communication of the vision depends on the simplicity of the message, whether appropriate metaphors or pictures are used, the communication channels used, how often the message is repeated and how the behaviour is modelled by important people. These important or influential people can have expertise on the topic the change is focusing on, a network which they can influence, or hold a higher hierarchical position in the institution which provides them with more power to achieve changes.
Summary#
Cultural change is a long-term effort that you can achieve by taking one step at a time, ideally with some like-minded individuals. As it is difficult to achieve change without knowing where you’re heading, it is good to outline a vision of what the change should look like. To achieve change, transitions are inevitable. Transitions can be difficult to navigate for individuals, so patience and support are needed to safely fail in adjusting existing practices. The works described in this section provide some guidance and places to start your cultural change adventure!