Crisis of Perception LO10702

malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Fri, 25 Oct 1996 20:48:56 +0000

Replying to LO10684 --

On 15 Oct 1996 Martin Silcock wrote in LO10684

>Doesn't Kelly's Construct theory use "distinctions" in the form of
>"constructs" to describe how people construe the world. Does this
>have any use as a learning organisation concept?

Here is an excerpt about Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (PCT) from our
paper which was presented at INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and
Technology, May 5-6, 1996, and published in the 'Organizational Adoption
and Learning' track of the proceedings.

The citation of the paper is:

Malhotra, Y. & Kirsch, L. "Personal Construct Analysis of
Self-Control in IS Adoption: Empirical Evidence From Comparative Case
Studies of IS Users & IS Champions," Proceedings of the First INFORMS
Conference on Information Systems and Technology (Organizational
Adoption and Learning), Washington D.C., May 5-8, 1996, pp. 105-114.

-------extract begins------

The fundamental postulate of the personal construct theory is that
constructs are created from an individual's experience in order to
anticipate future events (Kelly 1963, p. 46). This central hypothesis
is based on the model of a "person-as-scientist" (Fransella 1983) -
who tries to make sense of the world and tests that sense in terms of
its predictive capacity. Individuals use constructs to make sense of
the world and anticipate events by "construing their replications,"
i.e., by erecting constructs of similarity and contrast for the
various elements that are construed. Kelly (1963) describes
individual construction as a series of choices based on prediction of
the outcome or results: "a person chooses that which will extend and
define the [existing] system [of constructs]" (p. 64). The process of
construction, which is highly individualized and based on one's
existing system of personal constructs, is aimed at finding meaning
and making sense of the situations. Individuals respond to "what they
interpret the stimulus to be," which is a function of the constructs
they detect or impose upon their world (Bannister and Fransella 1971,
p. 21, Bannister and Fransella 1986, p. 10).

Two persons involved in the same event could construe it
differently and thus have different anticipations and resultant
behaviors (Kelly 1963, p. 90). They could also perceive the same
situation differently - to be threatening or promising, sought after
or forced upon them (Bannister and Fransella 1986): "Each of us lives
in what is ultimately a unique world, because it is uniquely
interpreted and thereby uniquely experienced" (p. 10). However, there
may be some shared (common) aspect among the two individuals about
which they may construe similarly, i.e., "discriminate, interpret, see
the implications of events, in similar ways" (Bannister and Fransella
1971): "They are similar in so far as, and with respect to, events
which have the same meaning for them" (p. 30). To that extent of
commonality of the construction of experience, the psychological
processes may be construed as similar between the two persons (Kelly
1963, p. 91).

----extract ends----

You can find more on Personal Construct Theory and Knowledge related
issues at the following URL:

http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/PCT.htm

This page also contains information about the PCT listserv and the
related journal 'Journal of Constructivist Psychology'.

Sincerely,

Yogesh Malhotra
-----------------------------------------
Yogesh Malhotra
malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu
On Knowledge [and] Management
http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/Peterold.htm

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malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu

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