Experiences of Change – Challenges, Processes and Patterns of Action

Abstract

Change is experienced differently by people depending on the proximity to their own sphere of action: Change processes in which the individual person has to take care of establishing a target state by developing individual strategies for achieving the target are seen more as challenges to their own change competence. In the case of general trends in social, technical or cultural change, however, a wait-and-see attitude seems to prevail as to how these will affect the personal sphere of action. Two main types of changes in the area of personal impact or influence can be identified: emotional coping processes and life-design tasks. The set of emotional changes is strongly biographical and includes events such as entering into a partnership, responsibility for children and the death of relatives. On the other hand, the issues of housing, unemployment, self-employment, divorce and illness prove to be life-design tasks. In retrospect, changes triggered by a more intrinsic impulse receive more positive evaluations than externally induced changes. However, both follow a procedural pattern with four phases: orientation, solution, stabilization and practice. Within each of these phases, drivers can be identified that have different effects on the respective phase. If the phase model is combined with the concrete changes in the area of personal impact or influence on a further aggregation level, specific action patterns emerge as variants of this basic model. The results clearly show that changes do not happen at random, but follow a plan that has a goal. This goal must be understood in advance on the basis of information and become part of life planning—which will require ever faster adjustments in the years ahead. This is a mechanism that supports individual change management in the future.