“Setting Events” as Determinants of Staff Behaviour: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

One of the major problems facing behaviour therapy has been the relative lack of success in bringing about lasting change in complex environments. The difficulty in assessing and understanding these failures may well be due to an unnecessarily narrow view of change in terms of small units of behaviour and short time-scales. In contrast, if one takes a “setting events” perspective, this might generate more explanatory hypotheses by focusing on larger behavioural units and longer time-scales. This exploratory study adopted such a perspective in order to consider staff opinions about the maintenance and generalization of an innovative behavioural programme in psychiatric rehabilitation. The results of a structured interview with a small group (n = 11) of multidisciplinary staff indicated the potential value of this perspective: factors traditionally regarded as obstructing innovation (such as not enough time, staff or facilities) were not in fact seen as problematic. On the contrary, factors which were more readily manipulable (such as feedback, nursing officer support and in-service training) were regarded as facilitating planned change. The implications of these findings and this perspective for sustained organizational development are discussed.