Affiliation
Affiliation structures the social thought and emotion patterns that people develop during their socialization due to their origin and their social environment. It is the highest layer of the logical levels. There are standards, values and judgments as well as attitudes deeply anchored, which affect people. Cultural differences are for example decision making, discussion style, the idea of groups, and the perception of time.
The work with these aspects is useful, in order to be able to react appropriately to desired or undesired patterns. It is difficult to cope with it, since these contents can be rarely discussed openly. At the same time, these aspects affect strongly a role, e.g. it will be difficult to enforce an open discussion culture, if existing standards prohibit criticism in the public. Every person behaves at the same time in different social systems that have different values that influence everybody.
Affiliation consists of three layers: personal, collective and public.
- Personal
Core
is the personal layer. It develops patterns
in the behavior and the relationships starting from the youngest age. The behavior can be seen in
learning, co-operation and the leadership style. It is deeply anchored and difficult to access. This layer is formed by the direct
environment, i.e. family and friends.
- Collective
In
the course of life people find themselves actively in different social groups -
school, university, club, enterprise, project and much more. The groups have their own worldview
that, in extreme cases, may contradict each other. Everybody must handle these tensions and sort them
out by themselves. During the
description of roles, it helps to consider the collective tensions of the
participants.
- Public
The most
general sphere is the public. The media and politics essentially shape it. The public affects indirectly people, since they are
a part of an abstract mass, the so-called target group. This layer is reached the easiest way through respective publications, in
order to obtain certain effects.
With this model, you check the lower
logical levels concerning possible contradictions. If actions, capabilities or
convictions violate existing thought and emotion patterns of the participants,
this leads to unwanted resistance. Under normal conditions, the activities
should not compete with these patterns. Thus, you should align the critical
aspects to the conditions without giving up your targets.