EMPLOYEES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS AT PERCEPTION OF INNOVATIONS

Abstract

Continuous changes, innovations, which ensure the survival of organizations in the ever-changing environment, are not always painless for employees, often evoke tension, lead to stressful conditions. The socio-psychological research on the phenomenon of psychological barriers to innovations has been performed for a long time; however, many aspects of this problem have remained little studied till now. Therefore, the search for the psychological objective laws of assimilation of innovations lies in the focus of studies on an individual’s attitudes to the new. The reasons for difficulties in innovation introducing is the non-innovative environment, conservative instructions, an outdated system of work organization and control, ambiguous orders, employees’ routine experience, so they do not understand how to use innovations, their overly confident idea on their professionalism and reluctance to learn something new. There are many reasons underlying the non-acceptance or rejection of innovative changes in professional work: economic, technical, organizational, vocational, managerial and psychological. All the above reasons are prerequisites for psychological barriers to the perception of innovative changes. Thus, the psychological barrier toward innovative changes is a combination of employees’ actions, judgments, conclusions and emotional experiences, which express the employees’ socio-psychological states caused by innovations consciously or unconsciously, latently or explicitly, intentionally or unintentionally. The most psychological barriers in its essence are related to human emotional and personal sphere and resulted in emotional tension or high stress. A. Massanov notes the importance of the personal basis of psychological barriers, and suggests directions for its improvement. He emphasizes individual psychological characteristics are an important factor affecting the dynamics of psychological barriers. Namely such characteristics determine whether an individual is ready for the perception of something new and it adoption; how easily innovations will be introduced in the workplace; what emotions and relationship with others will accompany this process. Basing on the personal characteristics of professional agents identified by O. Starovoit, we examined and described the whole spectrum of their possible manifestation in the professional environment. Since individual characteristics of each employee are included, in a certain way, into the group psychology and the psychology of its members, they actively influence on the work effectiveness and determine employees’ attitudes to innovations. We focus not only on psychological barriers, but also on a set of objective and subjective descriptors that determine employees’ attitude towards innovation. This set includes types and stages of an innovation process, expectations of positive and negative consequences from innovations, specific composition of employees and their relationships in a group, before and during innovative application.