ABSTRACT
Understanding is about understanding as the social need for shared meaning and prediction. A social representation is the ensemble of thoughts and feelings being expressed in verbal and overt behaviour of actors that constitutes an object for a social group. Social representations frame objects or issues in socially recognizable ways, in socially shared schemas. People are motivated to explain and understand the causes of events and behaviours. As a form of sense-making they assign causes to behaviour of themselves and others. Judgments are grounded in and based on people’s attitudes; in order to understand or to make sense, people will compare the position advocated by an idea with their own position regarding that idea. Most of the behaviours that people display are the result of social learning, either deliberately or inadvertently, through modelling, the influence of example. The presence of others causes social impact, an influence that can be real or perceived, direct or indirect (implied), experienced or imagined. How group members believe their goals are related impacts their dynamics and performance significantly. Social contexts are ‘forums of transaction’, with social exchange as the market mechanism. Individuals voluntarily act in favour of another person or an organization, motivated by individuals’ expectations of reciprocity.
Understanding, the need for shared meaning and prediction, is the second core social motive and one of the two (relatively) cognitive motives (the other is controlling). Shared understanding enables the functioning and survival of people in groups. Group meaning is instrumental in decision-making and helps to coordinate with other group members (Fiske, 2004). In organizations, understanding is present or visible in, for example, ‘a sense of mission’, the way people ‘strategize’, the organizational culture and values. Social learning, for example, is a vehicle for (shared) understanding in the organizational context and visible in, for example. socialization processes, the phenomenon of ‘lead by example’ and the role models that ‘significant others’ are. Shared understanding may hamper change when a current ‘joint view of reality’ is incongruent or in competition with a new ‘reality’ related to the change. Understanding is related to change and management topics like mission, leadership, organizational culture, and change vision and resistance to change.
In this chapter the following theories and concepts are presented and assessed:
Social representation—Attribution theory—Social judgment theory—Social learning theory—Social impact theory—Theory of cooperation/competition—Social exchange
