The phrase ‘redefining conventions’ can trigger multiple questions in our minds. What is a convention? How can one possibly redefine a convention? Is the redefinition beneficial? What does this have to do with the role of HR professionals?
The meaning of word ‘convention’ as per Merriam-Webster dictionary is ‘a custom or a way of acting or doing things that is widely accepted and followed’. A convention may be alternatively referred as a social norm or an unwritten rule. These conventions are pervasive in social life. In families, there are conventions which prescribe acceptable behaviours such as touching feet of elders. In the broader society, the conventions define various civic manners and etiquettes. Communication experts point out that even the most basic communication breaks down unless anchored in a set of linguistic conventions shared by the interacting parties. When the conventions receive religious sanctions, they become rituals. When they get legitimised as legally sanctioned rules, they become common law. Infact every conflict is governed by a set of conventions among conflicting parties. In organizations and occupational communities, the conventions taken together define the culture of that organization or community. Conventions, when widespread enough across a nation or a civilization hold power to shape national or civilizational culture.
The conventions arise in a specific context. For example, various conventions signifying tremendous respect for elders arose in social milieus in which elders acted as glue for joint families and exclusively embodied the memory of multiple community knowledge traditions. All conventions need not be necessarily old. Even relatively new social entities such as emerging industries and start-ups rapidly develop their own set of conventions. Conventions need not be always formal. Wearing a t-shirt, shorts and floaters on a sprawling university campus or in a start-up office is as much a convention as wearing a Dhoti, a Turban and applying Tika in a temple! Heavy usage of diverse emoticons on a WhatsApp group constitutes as much a matter of conventions as following traditional e-mail etiquettes. Any particular belief, practice or linguistic usage becomes a convention when it is widely accepted and practiced by the members of a social grouping.
In my view, conventions get redefined through four social mechanisms fiat, rebellion, innovation and imitation. ‘Fiat by authority’ is an age old method to bring about quick change in social norms. The modernization of Turkey after the World War I was the result of fiats by a single individual, Kemal Ataturk. In my personal observation, a new CEO of a large IT company mandated the use of a particular font in all e-mail communication by managers reporting into him. Soon the entire organization started using the font. While the fiat is an important stimulus for change, its efficacy is limited by the writ and durability of the authority issuing the fiat.
Another method of redefining conventions is rebellion. Certain catholic priests in medieval Europe such as Martin Luther did not agree with the conventions of the Catholicism practiced at that time and rebelled against these to start the protestant movement. Bribery in the government is so institutionalised in India that there are numerous conventions around it which one can notice in any government office. To get rid of the situation, it will take nothing short of a mass rebellion. While rebellion is a historically powerful method of redefining conventions, the change is often quite painful and generates reaction by conservative elements who try to preserve the old conventions. Also not all rebellions succeed. Did Rahul Yadav succeed in altering the conventions for interactions between the promoters and institutional investors in Indian start-up world?
Third method of redefining conventions is innovation. Innovation involves re-interpretation or recombination of existing conventions from various contexts to tackle a problem in a novel way. Gandhi redefined the conventions of the so called constitutional politics practiced by Indians before him through innovative use of non-violent agitational methods. The use of captcha for separating humans from computer trolls for authentication before access to a website is a convention in IT industry for more than a decade now. But the use of various captchas for digitizing a difficult to read manuscript is an innovative use of the convention.
The last but most widely practiced method to redefine conventions is imitation. When a particular marginal practice is copied en masse by a social grouping it becomes the convention. When Mongols overran Egypt in 13th century, the Mongols were nomads among which men grew hair whereas Egyptian Arab men, being more settled and advanced, practiced regular haircut. But as usual, the vanquished copied the victors and growing hair became a fashion among contemporary Egyptian men. Mimetic influence of conventions is stronger than we recognise. In the organization design work for multiple new businesses, I have personally experienced how the industry norms around structures, roles and people practices influence our design choices.
Redefining conventions has some value in this world only because the contexts of these conventions change. In an ossified context, there won’t be any benefit in changing the conventions! This entire ‘redefining conventions’ business matters to HR professionals as it is one of HR profession’s core mandate to act as a change agent and a custodian of organizational culture.
What role should HR professionals play in redefining conventions? First, as individuals entering the world of work, a new organization, a new industry or a new country, we should try to recognise and understand the conventions of the context we are entering into. Some of our own habits, beliefs and even values might be at odds with the conventions prevailing in the context. For example, entering an authoritarian top down organization for a person with collegial values and open management style or entering a gender discriminatory workplace for a person with egalitarian values means great challenges. In such cases of mismatch, each of us has a choice – either adapt our habits, beliefs or values as per the context or become a change agent to set in motion the process of redefining these conventions. The problem is compounded by the fact that most of us have internalised some conventions in our heads which are at odds with our goals or the changing reality in the world e.g. various career stereotypes we hold. Second, as designers, implementers and custodians of various HR policies and processes, we should be cognizant about whether they are in harmony with the widely practiced conventions within the organization or industry. The greater the disharmony, the greater is the need to relook at our policies and processes or enhance the change management efforts if these policies and processes are necessary tools in the change management journey. HR professionals have a tenuous task of ensuring continuity, stability and smooth people experience while bringing about a system-wide change in our respective organizations from time to time. Every revolution has a method and a script. So escaping conventions altogether is a mirage even for the most ardent protagonist of change management. At best, he can hope to redefine some of them!
Author Information:
Dr. Prashant Deshpande is a TISS alumnus (batch of 19999-2001) and has earned M. Sc. in Organizational Behaviour and PhD in Management from INSEAD, France and Singapore. He is currently working as VP, HR Strategy, Planning and Policy in Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited..
