Is there a difference of approaching an organization's health from a "what makes people feel good" or "what makes people ill" perspective? According to the sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, it is. Most research has traditionally been dominated by the 'ill' perspective. However, in 1970, Antonovsky discovered through his research that a significantly large proportion of Israeli women who survived concentration camps had fairly good general mental health - this despite the fact that they had lived through the extreme horrors of the camp, lived as refugees for several years and tried to create a new life for themselves in a country that then suffered through three wars. This made him want to understand what it is that makes certain individuals feel good despite illness, suffering and other strains in life and made his work taking a new direction.
Antonovsky realized that it's not enough to only look for problems and shortcomings and developed the concept 'Sense of Coherence' (SOC). Sense of coherence consists of three components: comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness:
COMPREHENSIBILITY refers to whether or not inner and outer stimuli make sense to us in terms of being coherent, ordered, cohesive, structured and clear. A person with a high sense of comprehensibility will expect that the stimuli he or she will encounter in the future are predictable, or that, when they come as surprises, at least can be handled or able to explain.
MANAGEABILITY refers to the extent to which we feel resources are at our disposal to help meet the demands posed by the stimuli to which we are exposed. A person with a high sense of manageability will not feel like a victim of circumstances or feel that life is treating him or her unfairly.
MEANINGFULNESS is the motivational component of the concept. It refers to the extent to which we feel life has an emotional meaning. Can we perceive life’s difficulties as ‘welcomed’ challenges worthy to invest energy, engagement and dedication in, or are they just a burden that we would prefer to avoid?
A strong sense of coherence leads to improved health. Ann-Sofie Forsmark has written a book about SOC in the working place ("KASAM på jobbet"). She gives an example of how important it is to have a sense of coherence at work and how the three elements are connected to each other:
"You are informed of a coming change at your workplace. If you are given the opportunity to find out why the change needs to happen, and you understand its purpose and why it is urgent to implement it, this will strengthen your sense of comprehensibility and meaningfulness. If you also receive clear information about how the change process should take place and what it means for you in practical terms, your sense of comprehensibility is strengthened. If you are given the opportunity to prioritize so that you have the time and energy to manage the change, which may require you to learn new things and change ways of working (which takes time), feelings of manageability are not challenged in the same way as if the change was just added your current situation." (p. 23, my translation)
Forsmark also points out that by creating an image of one's own personal SOC, it becomes both a way to describe how life actually is here and now, and something to start from in order to create a target image for how you want life to be.
