ABSTRACT

Organizations have always had to face change of one sort or another - the difference today is the speed of transformation. In this context, how individuals within companies react to shifting conditions is essential to the ability of those organizations to cope. Much management behaviour has always been either intuitive and based on very fundamental personal characteristics, or imitative and modelled on a powerful individual colleague or mentor early in one’s career. Developmental psychologists believe that most children have their value systems firmly in place by the age of ten. Genetic givens, early environment and our interaction with early models (parents, teachers, childhood friends) shape our personality and social behaviour in later life.