Confession time. When I began this blog, I contended that behavioural science offered three main contributions to the responsible business field:
Psychological insights into why people behave the way they do and how to influence behaviour
Approaches and methodologies to try to change the behaviours within business that impact people
An evidence-based approach to generating data about what works, particularly through experimentation and Randomised Control Trials (RCTs).
I still believe that these three contributions are powerful ways to address the human impacts of corporate activity. My confession is that I always thought the second point – approaches and methodologies to behaviour change – was the driest. Yet, I increasingly passionately believe that what behavioural science can tell us about the process of behaviour change is its most powerful contribution.
“what behavioural science can tell us about the process of behaviour change is its most powerful contribution”
In the next few posts, I want to share what I have been learning about behaviour change process, approaches, and methodologies. I will share:
How to specify what behaviours need to change to improve outcomes for people affected by business activity
How to conduct behavioural diagnosis to understand those behaviours, their barriers and enablers using the COM-B model
How to design interventions using the Behaviour Change Wheel and the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy
As you can see, there are pre-existing tools and resources that can help us to scientifically approach how we change behaviours relevant to responsible business. I can envisage these approaches being utilised to:
Support workers and communities to raise grievances and complaints in more behaviourally friendly ways
Discover how best to encourage colleagues to speak up and flag potential responsible business concerns, for example as part of sales deals
Design more effective human rights training programmes that lead to desired behavioural outcomes
Change some of the specific behaviours that lead to adverse impacts within the supply chain, for example prompting purchasing teams to update associated delivery times or payments when changing orders
Without this laser focus on the specific behaviours and actions that lead to adverse human rights impacts, outcomes for people will not improve. We can engage in all the policy development, impact assessment and training in the world, but without targeting specific behaviours to change, we are simply crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. I look forward to sharing how we can overcome this, and hearing from you how you think about behaviours in your own work.