The effect of participation and team influence on team beliefs and team attitude towards organizational change

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The Effect of Participation and Team Influence on Team

Beliefs and Team Attitude Towards Organizational Change

Master Thesis

Author: Tanja Elting

Student number: 11394536

Date: 05-06-2018

Version: Final 20180605

Faculty: Economics and Business

Programme: Master of Science, Executive Programme in Management Studies

Track: Strategy

Institute: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Business School Supervisor: J. Kraaijenbrink

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Tanja Elting, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

Tanja Elting 11394536

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Abstract

Previous research is done on active involvement of employees in organizational change. This involvement lowers resistance and increases willingness to change. And it influences the thoughts and feelings employees have about that change. Research has also been done on the influence of peers on attitudes and behaviors, mostly in health or technology related studies. These studies are often directed at the individual.

Based on these two angles of approach, this research contributes to the existing theory by combining these social processes and bringing them together in the field of change management. The aim is to explain the relations between a) participation of employees and their overall attitude towards organizational change and b) the influence of their team and this overall attitude. And to explain how this is mediated by the thoughts and feelings of the employees about the change. Besides that, this research is focused on a team level of analysis instead of the individual. This research is worthwhile because it can provide information and insights at group level and in the effect of social processes to enrich the existing change approaches. And to know which factors are determinative for the attitude towards organizational change in order to influence these in a targeted way, making use of the social processes.

A quantitative research is done in which cross-sectional data was collected from a

business unit of an insurance company with an online survey. The research model is tested using multiple hierarchical regressions. The findings show a significant effect of participation, fully based on the mediating effect of perception of the need for change, the personal value of it to employees and their negative feelings. No significant effect was found of the influence of a team on the overall attitude. Finally, team level analyses showed that the results cannot be seen at collective team level due to a lack of homogeneity within the teams.

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New insights are that participation only has an indirect effect on the overall attitude instead of a direct effect and that negative feelings are more important in this than positive feelings.

Suggestions for further research are to investigate whether the perception of being able to

successfully implement the change belongs to this field of study or should be included in research on personality traits, why negative feelings are more important, why social influence plays no role in organizational change and how group beliefs come into being and how they can subsequently be influenced.

The business unit itself should use persuasive messaging to influence the beliefs and attitudes of their employees towards the change, find the colleagues who are the social

influencers, consciously engage and stay in conversations with employees to reduce the negative feelings, continue with active involvement of employees and pay attention to the differences between teams.

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1 Introduction

Nowadays, the environment of organizations is changing rapidly due to disruptive trends in the market, society and technology. This means that organizations must be able to adapt to these changes in order to remain competitive and successful. This has implications for the

organizational design, technical and managerial systems that are used, but also for the employees of these organizations. The behavior of those employees determines, among other things, whether an organization is successful or not (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011). This means that not only

organizations have to change, but employees as well.

In order to survive, organizations may change their strategy. A new strategy can be chosen or the existing strategy can be adjusted. But, only formulating a strategy is not enough (Higgins, 2005; Kraaijenbrink, 2018; Strikwerda, 2017). Much focus should be placed on implementing and executing the strategy to achieve the desired outcome. This is becoming increasingly important due to rapidly changing environments and developments. But

implementing a new strategy often fails (Kotter, 1995; Cândido & Santos, 2015). A big obstacle is the inability to manage the change, what implementing a new strategy in fact is (Hrebiniak, 2006).

One of the factors Higgins (2005) mentions is the alignment with staff and specifically the attitudes and types of individuals. This is in line with the motivation of people (Kraaijenbrink, 2018), the readiness to change that is needed (Armenakis et.al, 1993), the support and

understanding to be able to commit to the strategy (Yang, Sun & Eppler, 2009) and/or the willingness to support a change and to create energy (Ten Have et al, 2015).

An effective means for implementing change which is often mentioned is participation of employees (Coch & French, 1948; Dent & Goldberg, 1999; Nutt, 1986; Kotter, 1995; Kotter &

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Schlesinger, 1979/2008). This lowers the resistance and increases the willingness to change (Lines, 2004; McKay, Kuntz & Näswall, 2013). Participation influences the beliefs of employees, as McKay et al (2013) relate participation to different beliefs employees can have, for example about appropriateness of the change, support of management and the meaning that the change has for them. Beliefs can be cognitive or affective and are important regarding acceptance and

readiness for change (Armenakis et al, 1993; Piderit, 2000). Because a change of strategy or any other organizational change often affects the whole organization or large groups of employees, it is interesting to examine the group beliefs and the overall influence of the group. The social influence of the group has an effect on the beliefs and attitudes of people (Wood, 2000; Povey et al, 2000; Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2002; Madsen, Miller & John, 2005). Within organizations the group can been seen as the team in which the employee works.

Although much research is done on beliefs and what influences it, there are still some gaps to close. First, instruments on assessing beliefs and attitudes are often at individual level and not on group or organizational level (Weiner, 2009) and studying this is worthwhile (Hecht et al, 2002). This can lead to improvements in measures and to new insights for managers and change agents on group-level interventions. Second, much theory about group beliefs involves the cognitive beliefs like efficacy and valence (Weiner, 2009; Hecht et al, 2002; Goddard et al, 2004) and less the affective beliefs. Examining affective beliefs though is desirable and important because they have a strong influence on intentions and actions (French et. al, 2005; Lawton & Connor, 2007; Conner et. al., 2011). Smith & Mackie (2015) for example recommend researchers to measure group level emotional reactions to be able to predict and understand them. Third, in line with this group level, social influence of colleagues can play an important role. Social influence is often examined in the fields of marketing, health, education and use of technology. This research explores possibilities to apply aspects and measurements of social influence in the

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field of organizational development and change management. Finally, research that combines different social aspects (participation, social influence and group beliefs) is hard to be found yet and can lead to interesting new insights.

Many articles are descriptive and provide a theoretical explanation. These explanations contain one or more of the social aspects mentioned before and only a few all of them, for example Lines (2005). An empirical study, which combines these social aspects in the field or organizational change, can substantiate these theoretical explanations with evidence from practice and give direction for further research or the development of group-level interventions.

This leads to the following research question.

What is the effect of participation and team influence on team beliefs and team attitude towards organizational change?

This research is a quantitative survey and is carried out at a specific business unit of an insurance company. The business unit has 9 different teams with 134 employees in total, who are working on three different locations in the Netherlands. The company is one of the leading insurance companies in the country. This business unit is struggling with insufficient return and wants to control the financial expenses by changing the work processes. This should lead to an increase in efficiency and effectiveness. The business unit is in the phase of developing and implementing the new work processes. This means that a number of actions have already been initiated which influence the beliefs and attitudes of their employees about the change. One of these is active participation of employees. Also the change affects the whole business unit and not just single employees, why it is interesting to examine the team beliefs and the influence of the team.

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situation of this business unit and therefore this unit is used as a specific case. Although the outcomes of the research contribute to the scientific theory, it also helps this business unit to choose appropriate and effective (team-level) interventions in the coming period to further influence the beliefs and attitude.

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2 Theoretical framework

The research question is focused on change and the factors which influence the attitude towards it. The first paragraph deals with change; what is actually meant by that and why is it so difficult to implement a successful change? The subsequent paragraphs describe the attitude towards change, the underlying beliefs and the influencing mechanisms of participation and social influence on these beliefs and attitudes towards change.

2.1 Organizational change

Change is a broad concept. In essence, it is about making something different from what already is, which can be a transformation of something or a substitution, both incremental and radical. The scope and level of the change can be very different. It can take place in any situation or context, be large or small, with high or low impact, be planned or unplanned, occurring often or incidentally and motivated by various causes (Todnem By, 2005). With respect to businesses and firms the term organizational change is often used. A distinction can be made between a change in the organization itself or the direction of the organization (Mintzberg & Westley, 1992). In the organization itself it often affects the culture, the organizational design, the systems used and/or the employees. The other level is focusing on the vision of the organization, the programs or facilities. Often both concepts go together and they cannot be completely independent from each other.

A lot of research has been done on organizational change. In his overview Todnem By (2005) distinguishes the rate of occurrence, the creation and the scale. First of all, change can be seen as discontinuous, incremental or continuous. Discontinuous changes are best described as separate initiatives with a clear end. On the other hand, continuous change is an ongoing process

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to keep up with rapidly changing conditions. Incremental change means that there are targeted and step-by-step changes that are each based on a specific problem and goal. This can be a continuous process though. Second, changes can be planned or emergent. In a planned approach, there is a clear start and end situation with a development phase in between, also called purposive change (Ten Have et al, 2015). This approach is not suitable in all situations, because it is not always possible for organizations to move from one stage to another in a planned way due to rapidly changing environments and/or urgent needs for rapid change. Due to a lack of time extensive planning and tuning is not possible. The emergent approach addresses these problems and sees change as a process of continuous adaption to changing circumstances. This means that organizations should be ready for change at all times. Third, a change can vary in scale from fine-tuning of processes to organization-wide change like reorganizations or radical strategy changes.

It is clear that environments are rapidly changing and that organizations need to adapt to these developments in order to survive, but that also means that these adaptations, or changes, need to be managed successfully (Todnem By, 2005). And that is a difficult task, which often fails.

Different reasons exist why a high failure rate of changes is measured. Closing the gap between the overall plan and the execution of it is a considerable task (Kotter, 1995; Hrebiniak, 2006; Ten Have et al, 2015). Managers do not understand or are not able to execute the strategy or change. Sometimes planning and executing are seen as separate processes, or when this is not the case, different problems during the transformation arise. These problems can be an unclear plan or strategy, a lack of sense and reason, no clear description of what has to be changed and how, lack of willingness to change of employees and no consistency between all these factors. It is important to create a clear vision, motivate and engage people and recognize and solve barriers and obstacles that lie on the route of change (Kotter, 1995; Heath & Heath, 2010).

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This implies that organizational change has two components: a technical, process-based one and a soft, people-oriented one. The introduction of the Balanced Scorecard and the creation of a closed-loop management system (Kaplan & Norton, 1992, 2008) introduces a managerial and instrumental approach. The performance of an organization is the starting point. The focus in this approach is on the alignment of objectives with an increase of the performance as a result. This is achieved by translating a vision and strategy into targets, operational processes and dashboards. This asks for an organizational culture that is aimed at learning, growth and achieving results. Employees are, besides equipment and facilities, seen as resources. And today, this allocation of resources is an important aspect of strategy execution because if this is done well, collective and tacit knowledge can be created to be successful as a company (Strikwerda, 2017). In the

managerial approach, engagement and motivation of employees seem to rely on communication and coordination of objectives. This ignores the effect of attitudes and behavior of employees.

And it is precisely the employees who contribute for a large part to the success of an organization (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011), therefore it can also be assumed that employees have a large share in the success or failure of a change and that is confirmed in various researches (Choi, 2011). The other component of organizational change therefore is more people-oriented.

If employees are in the center of organizational change, alignment with them is important (Higgins, 2005). They need to be motivated, engaged and committed for a good performance and successful change (Kraaijenbrink, 2018; Yang, Sun & Eppler, 2009; Ten Have et al, 2015). They need to be willing to support a change (Ten Have et al, 2015) or be ready for the change, which means that employees have a positive overall judgment of a change initiative (Choi, 2011). Not only readiness for a specific change is needed. If organizational change is emergent and

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continuous. But if an organization is continuously ready to change, it increases the chance of successful management of any change within the organization. Underlying elements of this readiness to change are the attitudes and beliefs of employees.

2.2 Attitudes and beliefs

A lot of literature can be found on attitudes and beliefs and the use of both constructs. However, these constructs do not appear to be unambiguous and require clarification.

2.2.1 Attitudes

To successfully create change, an organization needs to know what the precursors are of

behavioral reaction and often beliefs are seen as a good precursor (Armenakis, Bernerth, Pitts & Walker, 2007). Holt, Armenakis, Feild and Harris (2007) define change readiness as “the extent to which an individual or individuals are cognitively and emotionally inclined to accept, embrace, and adopt a particular plan to purposefully alter the status quo” (2007: 235). Accepting and adopting change can be captured in the attitude towards the change and beliefs are mediating this attitude.

But beliefs and attitudes are often concepts that resemble each other or are mixed up (Bouckenooghe, 2010). In 1963, Fishbein makes a distinction between these two and found that an attitude towards something is the result of the beliefs towards it and an evaluative opinion someone has of those beliefs. This latter is often seen as the attitude (Ajzen, Fishbein &

Hernstein, 1977). There is also a difference in a belief in the object and about the object (Fishbein & Raven, 1962; Fishbein, 1963) in which a change of the latter can result in a change in attitude towards something. Ajzen (1991) describes attitudes in his theory of planned behavior in relation to behavior and the intention to behave in a certain way. People can evaluate or appraise certain

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behavior and this evaluative aspect is seen as the attitude towards the behavior. In her research, Lines (2005) follows this line of reasoning and sees attitudes as an overall evaluation of the change: the degree of approval or like. Overall, attitude can be seen as an “evaluation of an object or thought” (Bohner & Dickel, 2011: 392). The common denominator in all the descriptions is the evaluative character.

In this thesis an attitude is seen as the overall evaluative opinion about an organizational change, in fact it is about the question whether an employee supports the change or not, despite or thanks to his beliefs, and in which extent. The construct is mentioned as attitude towards

organizational change.

2.2.2 Beliefs

Beliefs are underlying the attitude towards change (Lines, 2005). They are important regarding acceptance and readiness for change and can be cognitive or affective (Armenakis et al, 1993; Piderit, 2000; Lines, 2005; Bouckenooghe, 2010).

Cognitive beliefs

Beliefs are cognitive if they refer to the knowledge and thoughts an employee has about the change. It is an opinion of an employee whether the change is advantageous, useful and necessary (Bouckenooghe, 2010). They are also referred to as instrumental beliefs. Information is an

important factor in these beliefs.

Armenakis et al (2007: 483) define a belief as “an opinion or a conviction about the truth of something that may not be readily obvious or subject to systematic verification”. Based on different research findings they describe five salient beliefs to implementing organizational change. These beliefs are identified based on several years of research published by other authors

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First of all, they mention discrepancy, by which they mean that people need to belief that change is needed. Often this belief is based on information that is provided to them by management or change leaders. This is also often mentioned as the sense of urgency (Kotter, 1995). Ten Have et al (2015) refer to this as the rationale, which is the reason why the change is needed. The second one is appropriateness which means that people need to belief that a specific change is needed to solve the problem. The change must solve the problem which caused the need for the change. The third belief is efficacy, is the organization able to execute the new strategy? And does an employee believe he can execute the new behavior that is required? The fourth belief is valence. This can be extrinsic by means of incentives and benefits but also intrinsic by means of

satisfaction and fulfillment of personal needs. This distinction is also made by Kraaijenbrink (2018) who describes that intrinsic motivation is what you would really want, but that some extrinsic incentives are needed too. The last belief is principal support, which reports to support from change agents or opinion leaders. If this is the case, an employee believes that this support exists.

Affective beliefs

In her literature review on organizational change, Choi (2011) sees besides cognitive aspects also affective aspects as dimensions of the readiness to change. Affective beliefs can be seen as the emotions employees have about a change. In the literature much attention is on the cognitive beliefs, and the affective beliefs are often overlooked (Rafferty, Jimmieson & Armenakis, 2013). While it is precisely these affective aspects that have a stronger influence on intentions and actions (French et. al, 2005; Lawton & Connor, 2007; Conner et. al., 2011). Also Piderit (2000) sees beliefs as a cognitive dimension of an attitude towards organizational change, but

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change are reflected in the emotional dimension. And finally, someone can have the intention to support the change or have negative intentions to oppose it.

But what are the indicators of affective beliefs? Several studies indicate the difference between positive and negative emotions in relation to organizational change (Klarner, Todnem By & Diefenbach, 2011). Positive emotions are for example being confident, enhance trust and hope (Klarner et al, 2011; Steigenberger, 2015; Oreg, Vakola & Armenakis, 2011). Mossholder et al (2000) examined the emotions of pleasantness and arousal and found that these two emotions affected managers attitudes. Negative emotions are for example feeling stressed, insecure and uncomfortable (Klarner et al, 2011; Oreg & Zedeck, 2003). Oreg et al (2011) present an overview of affective quantitative studies and the used variables. In this review also anxiety, fear and stress are mentioned. Bovey & Hede (2001) mention feelings like anger, denial, loss and frustration as a result of organizational changes.

Positive emotions lead to a more positive evaluation of a change proposal (Klarner et al, 2011). This is also confirmed by Avey, Wernsing & Luthans (2008) who found that positive emotions are related to a higher level of engagement attitude that would facilitate positive change. In their literature review Shin, Taylor & Seo (2012) acknowledge also the importance of positive emotions regarding commitment to change.

Ambivalence

Measuring responses on both dimensions (cognitive and affective) leads to insights at each specific dimension with the possibility of ambivalence (Piderit, 2000; Conner & Sparks, 2002). Ambivalence means that recipients can have positive cognitive beliefs and at the same time negative affective beliefs or vice versa. But ambivalence can also occur within a dimension, a recipient can – for example – belief there is a need for change, experience support of his

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manager, see personal benefits of the change but still thinks this change is not well fitting to the problem of the organization. And finally, during the change process and different stages, beliefs can change. Insights in this ambivalence can help change agents and/or the organization to better understand and interpret recipients reactions and based on that respond to recipients reactions in a more adequate way. Also, strong beliefs are associated with stability with more positive effects on intentions and behavior. Ambivalent beliefs are less anchored and are more influencable.

Shared we-beliefs

Besides this, beliefs – and also attitudes – can be seen at individual but also at collective level (Bouckenooghe, 2010). Although different terms are used for group beliefs (also as shared beliefs, team beliefs, collective beliefs) a difference can certainly be made between individual and collective beliefs (Bouvier, 2004; Bar-Tal, 1990, Hecht et al, 2002). People can feel that they need to commit to collective beliefs because they want to stay in the group. Each individual has personal beliefs and collective beliefs. The collective beliefs can also be subdivided into

cognitive and affective.

Weiner (2009) distinguishes individual readiness and organizational readiness, in which the latter refers to a shared commitment to change of all the members involved and a shared belief in the efficacy of the change. Valence and efficacy are the determinants of it; these are cognitive beliefs. He reasons that if this organizational readiness is high, it results in a more effective implementation. In relation to group performance the group’s shared belief in efficacy is important in performing complex tasks (Hecht et al, 2002). For example, Goddard et al (2004) describe the relevance of collective efficacy beliefs in schools in relation to student learning and teachers’ practice. A perceived collective efficacy increases group performance and goal

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individual beliefs on change. Also Rafferty, Jimmieson & Armenakis (2013) distinguish individual readiness for change and collective readiness. The assumption is then that group beliefs also affect the readiness to change and intention of adopting a change. As cognitive beliefs they mention the need for change, the capability to successfully undertake change and the belief that the change will have positive outcomes. Overall, most of the cognitive group beliefs are related to the constructs of need for change, efficacy and valence.

On the other hand, also affective collective beliefs exist. In his article, Steigenberger (2015) refers to other studies in which emotions spill over from one person to a group through interaction. The group adopts a shared or at least dominant affective state. This is also confirmed by Smith & Mackie (2015) who speak about group-level emotions which occur when people identify with social groups. It is important to recognize the collective emotions in the context of strategic change to be able to organize effective actions to respond to it (Sanchez-Burks & Huy, 2009). Tuomela (1992) makes a distinction between so called shared we-beliefs and positional beliefs and advises to look at them both. Shared we-beliefs are based on personal beliefs and are mutual. A person believes in something and at the same times believes that the group believes in this. The other positional beliefs are related to the position someone has. The positional belief someone has can be different than his personal belief.

Just as with individual beliefs, a positive relation is found between positive collective affective beliefs and performance and a negative relation with negative affective beliefs (Sanchez-Burks & Huy, 2009).

Some reasons are given in the above research that group beliefs are important regarding the organizational readiness for change and deploying the right interventions. Because organizational change has an effect on all employees of the organization or business unit, it makes more sense to

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to management teams and change leaders to deploy the right actions. Using the team beliefs and social mechanisms can result in stronger positive effects than could be realized by trying to influence the beliefs of every individual employee.

Hypotheses

Based on the attitude and the underlying beliefs, the following hypotheses can be formulated. H1: Cognitive team beliefs have a positive effect on the overall team attitude towards

organizational change.

H2: Positive affective team beliefs have a positive effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H3: Negative affective team beliefs have a negative effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

2.3 Participation

Beliefs are formed in early stages of change, as soon as people are confronted with it or hear it for the first time (Lines, 2005). That implies that the change content itself triggers the first

reactions. But, an organization can undertake diverse actions to influence these beliefs to increase the acceptance of the change, thus creating a positive attitude towards it. In a lot of subject areas research has been done how to influence intentions, attitudes or behaviors. Active participation is one of the methods (Nutt, 1986; Dent & Goldberg, 1999, Armenakis et al, 1993; Lines, 2004; Bartunek et al, 2006; Rafferty et al, 2013, Erwin & Garman, 2010), for example by actively involve people in strategy and change activities. This is also reflected by concepts as experiential learning and Kotter (1995) mentions this as the guiding coalition.

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This active involvement of employees is part of the theory of the participative school

(Strikwerda, 2017). Because of the complexity of the environment, organizations themselves and the changes, CEO’s and senior managers are boundedly rational. It is impossible for them to have all the relevant information, their brains are limited in their capacity to evaluate and process all the available information and often there is also a time limitation. Involvement of employees is then needed to oversee all the relevant aspects. On the other hand though, too much involvement can lead to ineffectiveness because too many people want to have influence and have something to say (Collier, Fishwick & Floyd, 2004). This can undermine the change, because different meanings or values of the involved employees can lead to arguments that fit their own goals and interests. And it brings politics into play. The risk is to end with a compromise, which does not have to be the optimal solution. If the intended organizational change threatens existing values and norms, participants may obstruct the initiative to maintain the current situation. And, like the CEO’s and senior managers, the participants also bring constraints with them. A precondition for effective participation of employees is an honest dialogue in which employees must feel free to give their opinions without consequences (Beer & Eisenstat, 2004).

Hypothesis

Based on the theory that participation influences the attitude of employees, the following hypothesis is formulated.

H4: Participation has a positive effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

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2.3.1 Different forms of participation

Participation means that employees are involved in decision-making, planning and/or

implementation of change. Different forms of participation exist (Nutt, 1986, Cotton et al, 1988) depending on the extent of involvement. Overall, the two most striking forms of participation are decisive and consultative.

For example, Nutt (1986) names 4 types of participation, based on extent of involvement and role of task forces. The role of a task force can be framing or specifying, which means respectively offer ideas or set directions (framing) versus actual development of these ideas and directions (specifying). Full involvement, combined with specifying the solutions, leads to the maximum idea of participation, called comprehensive participation. Partial involvement in combination with framing the solutions is the minimum idea, called token participation. Cotton et al (1988) categorize six different forms of participation based on five elements: the degree of formality, directness and influence, content and short or long term involvement. Participation in work decisions is formal, direct and long term with high influence and the content focused on the specific work. Short term participation has the same characteristics as participation in work decisions, except for the duration. Sessions are limited to a couple of hours or days. Both are in line with the construct of solution-specifying by Nutt (1986) and can be seen as decisive. Consultative participation also has the same characteristics, but the content is focused on job issues and the influence is much lower. The reason is that the participants can only give their opinion but have no (or less) right to take the decisions. This is in line with the construct of solution-framing by Nutt (1986).

At last, three other forms of participation are described by Cotton et al (1988) but these are less concrete, organized or with indirect influence. Informal participation exists in the relationship between a manager and his employee and is difficult to measure and classify.

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Employee ownership is the influence and participation an employee has just from the role as employee. Active, concerned employees participate by mediating their influence through boards and meetings. Representative participation at last is in line with employee ownership, but with less influence. The influence is indirect through representatives.

Bartunek et al (2006) describe - besides decisive and consultative - a third form of participation. In their study they measured the effect of participation on interpretation of the change, experienced emotions and gains from the change. Participation was seen of being part of a council charged with implementing the change or working at a unit where the change was implemented well. Translated to organizational change, employees of a unit where (an aspect of) the change is already implemented can have different beliefs and attitudes toward the change then employees of a unit where the change is not already (partially) implemented. This can be called executive participation.

2.3.2 Effect of participation on attitudes and beliefs

Creating a guiding coalition and participation of employees is seen as a method of increasing involvement and commitment. Often it is assumed that involvement of those affected by a change in strategy will reduce organizational resistance and create a higher level of commitment towards the changes (Lines, 2004). The participation in work, described by Cotton et al (1988), has

positive influence on productivity. Some studies also found a positive effect on job attitudes but it was not significant. The effect of consultative participation is inconclusive, steady outcomes of studies were not found. Lines (2004) though found that decisive participation, which work participation is, is not significantly related to resistance to change, but that consultative

participation lowers the resistance. The first finding is somewhat surprising, but it is suggested that others factors as trust or building commitment to a decision have a mediating effect.

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Resistance to change is often seen by managers as being unwilling to accept a change (Smollan, 2011). This resistance can manifest itself on different levels: cognitive, affective and behavioral. If participation is lowering this resistance, this means a positive effect at the cognitive, affective and behavioral dimension.

McKay et al (2013) also found that a perceived opportunity to participate in change was negatively related to resistance to change. Also a positive impact on appropriateness of the change, perceived management support and personal valence of the change was shown. This is supported by Oreg et al (2011) because participants have a greater understanding of the meaning of the change. No significant effect was found on the relation with change self-efficacy, although Oreg et al (2011) mention the fact that participation increased the sense of competence of the participant. Recognizing the need for change is not described in both their research, but it can be assumed that, like the other cognitive beliefs, the need for change will be positively influenced by participation. And with regards to the principal and management support it can also be assumed that it is positively related to participation, because participants in organizational change are part of the guiding coalition. They work close together with management and change agents and are seen as representatives of the organization. Wanberg & Banas (2000) describe participation as the possibility for employees to have input regarding a change and their research confirmed that a higher degree of participation led to a more positive view on the change.

Regarding affective beliefs Oreg et al (2011) also describe that participation leads to less stress and a higher chance of overall support for a change. Also participants experience more positive emotions overall. Brown & Cregan (2008) found that involvement of employees in decision making leads to less cynism towards organizational change. This cynism is fed by previous experiences and consists of blaming management for the failure of change programs and believing that the change is futile.

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Hypotheses

This review on the relationship between participation and beliefs leads to the following hypotheses.

H5: The effect of participation on the overall team attitude towards organizational change is mediated by team beliefs. More specifically:

H5a: Participation has a positive effect on the cognitive team beliefs of discrepancy, efficacy and valence, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H5b: Participation has a positive effect on positive affective team beliefs, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H5c: Participation has a negative effect on negative affective team beliefs, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

2.4 Social influence

Marketing theories describe the role of influencers and also Wood (2000) mentions social influence on the change of attitudes. But what is social influence? It is the effect of other people on thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behaviors of a person. Social influence can take many forms and varieties.

2.4.1 Different social norms

Povey et al (2000) mention three aspects of social influence: perceived social support, descriptive norms and subjective norms. Perceived social supports refers to the perception someone has whether he gets help from his contacts or not. A descriptive norm is the extent to which someone

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pressure someone receives from others, also mentioned by Ajzen (1991) in his theory of planned behavior.

Also other authors make a distinction between injunctive and descriptive norms (Cialdini et al, 1990; Rivis & Sheeran, 2003; Rimal & Real, 2005). Descriptive norms refer to individuals’ beliefs about the prevalence of a behavior and can be translated to what other people do and what is normal. Injunctive norms refer to the extent to which individuals perceive that influential others expect them to behave in a certain way, and by implications, social sanctions will be incurred if they do not. This is about what most others approve or disapprove. It is in line with compliance and the subjective norms, although the latter does not mention the underlying principle of social sanction. Common is the element that behavior is guided by expectations of others’ beliefs. People will follow what they perceive to be the appropriate group norm.

Kelman (1958, 1961) defines three elements of social influence: compliance,

internalization and identification. Compliance refers to subjective norms and means that people need the approval of others to be motivated. They accept the influence of others to get a positive reaction from the other. An aspect of rewarding plays a role here, receiving a positive reaction is a reward, but a negative reaction is not. It means that a person is willing to comply to group expectations - or beliefs - and change their initial opinion for it. Internalization refers to the extent in which values of a person match those of other group members. If the values and goals of a person are congruent with that of the other group members, the stronger the we-beliefs are (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2002). Identification is related to the conception of one’s self in terms of the group’s defining features. People are influenced than by someone who is liked and respected. People make themselves similar to the group they want to belong to. When people believe that their referent others show certain behavior and they perceive similarity with them, they are likely to engage in that behavior themselves (Rimal, Lapinski, Cook & Real, 2005).

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Another distinction that is made is twofold: informational and normative influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Normative influence is to conform with the positive expectations of another. Informational social influence is the influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality. Both are motivations to conformity, adapt your behavior to align with the behavior of others (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Conformity and compliance are related to each other, both are aiming at adapting your behavior to the group. Burnkrant & Cousineau (1975) combine the types and processes of Deutsch & Gerard and Kelman. Informational social influence refers to internalization and normative social influence to identification and compliance.

The combination of Burnkrant & Cousineau (1975) can be extended with descriptive and injunctive norms, which leads to the following overview in Table 1.

Table 1

Overview of social influence concepts

Meaning

Normative influence Identification Role of relationship to

another benefits own self

concept

Compliance Injunctive norms Subjective norms Perceived social

pressure/approval of

others/what others think

the person should do

Informational influence Internalization Accept information of

others

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2.4.2 Conscious use of social norms

Persuasion is an attempt to influence someone’s beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and behavior

(Cialdini, 2001; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; O’Keefe, 2004; Gass & Seiter, 2014; Perloff, 2016). It is used in a lot of subject areas like marketing, health, business, change, communication and so on and is focused much on verbal or written messages. Attitudes can be positive or negative, but they can also vary in the extent of this feeling (e.g. extremely positive or extremely negative). In his work O’Keefe (2004) sees an attitude as the overall evaluation of an object. Another aspect of attitudes he describes is the strength. That means that an attitude can be positive, also extremely, but still be weak. If this is the case, an attitude can be influenced easily and can vary from time to time. A stable attitude though is more connected to for example behavior and is less influenced by counter arguments. Overall this means that persuasion is used to influence the valence

(positive, negative), extremity (extent of valence) and its strength. Translated into organizational change, a strong highly positive attitude of the employees towards the change is wanted to increase the chance of success.

Social norms can be used in persuasion, because descriptive and injunctive norms have different impact and the norm focused on in persuasion interventions should be in line with the goal (Cialdini, 2003; Cialdini et al, 1990; Cialdini et al, 2006). Descriptive norms are related to what most others are doing. A persuasive intervention focused solely on these norms is only useful if the majority of people actually shows the desired behavior (Cialdini, 2003). This means that the descriptive norm is the standard with which people compare themselves and what they want to keep to (Schultz et al, 2008). If someone sees himself above or below this standard he will move towards it; someone above will decrease the desired behavior and someone below will increase the behavior. In their article, Schultz et al (2008) describe the situation of alcohol consumption. Students may over- or underestimate the prevalence of alcohol consumption,

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leading for one group to lower their consumption (the group who sees itself above the norm) and the other group to increase their consumption (the group who sees itself below the norm). A message based on the descriptive norm then can have an adverse effect and may lead to adjusting behavior in an undesired direction.

Persuasion interventions based on the injunctive norms though are leading towards positive effects in more settings than interventions based on descriptive norms (Reno, Cialdini & Kallgren, 1993). The reason is that it is less situation-dependent and is more settled in approval of behavior in a culture or broader setting. Persuasive messages have most effect when descriptive and injunctive norms are aligned (Cialdini et al, 2006). They must include the message that the desired behavior is performed by the majority and that the undesired behavior is rare. The two independent sources of motivation are targeted then and this is seen as a successful strategy to social influence.

Two mechanisms by which people influence others that are related to social norms are liking and social validation (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). If we like the other person, because we have worked with him or her or we perceive the other as being similar to ourselves, we are more willing to comply to a request. Besides that, we take other persons as an example how to behave. These are for example role models or so called social influencers (Langner, Hennigs &

Wiedmann, 2013). If someone sees himself as a member of a certain social group, he will move towards the main characteristics of the group (identification). But individuals can intensify this by being a role model. For example, famous vloggers, actors or athletes are used to promote products. We are more likely to take other persons as example if there is any kind of uncertainty about what should be done. Apparently, we are influenced by what others are doing. By giving information about these others (descriptive norms) our behavior can be proactively influenced.

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The conscious use of social norms can be translated to organizational change. In order to create support for the change – and influence the beliefs and attitudes – change agents and principals should use persuasive messaging with content based on the combination of descriptive and injunctive norms to trigger different types of motivations. It also important to identify the

employees who are seen and experienced as the social influencers in teams. If they believe in the change or can be convinced of this change, they should be actively involved and form the guiding coalition.

Hypothesis

Based on the theory that social influence affects the attitude of employees, the following hypothesis is formulated.

H6: Identification, internalization and compliance have a positive effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

2.4.3 Bias

However, some bias must be taken into account. First of all, is that people do not take into account the possible repetition in the information they receive, called persuasion bias (DeMarzo, Vayanos & Zwiebel, 2003). This can happen with a single source, but also multiple sources connected through a social network. They are not able to distinguish which information is really new and which information is repeated through different persons before it reaches them

personally. Repeated information increases one’s belief in the validity of it, probably mediated by the fact that repetition makes information familiar. With sufficient communication, the overall belief of the group converges to a weighted average of initial beliefs. The weight associated with any given agent can be seen as the agent’s social influence on the group. That depends on how

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many other agents listen to him and on the endogenously determined social influence of those agents. If there was no social influence, the accuracy of the information given would be more determining.

Second, social influence can lead to conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004), adapt your behavior to match those of others. The risk is to pay too much attention to conformity and ignore or decrease any other form of social influence. This risk is called conformity bias (Padalia, 2014). Padalia mentions the fact that people are not passive and not only choosing to conform or not, but that they are active beings who can bring (social) change. If you are not able to look beyond this conformity, you will miss the real problems. In other research, conformity bias is found by judging gymnastics when feedback needs to be given with the ability to hear or see the scores of the other judges (Boen et al, 2008). This was most based on informational influencing, because the effect was also shown when feedback was no longer provided assuming uncertainty over the correct response was leading and not the fear of standing out in the group (normative

influencing).

2.4.4 Effect of social norms on beliefs and attitudes

The description above gives some examples how to actively use social influence and that you should be aware of bias. But what can be said about the effect of this use on beliefs and attitudes? Povey et al (2000) examined the moderating influence of their three variables of social influence on attitudes and intentions regarding eating healthy and found that only perceived support moderated the impact of attitudes on intentions. In health related research the descriptive and injunctive norms are related to intentions (Larimer et al, 2004; Elek et al, 2006; Smith-McLallen & Fishbein, 2008). Both norms were positively related to the intention to eat more fruit and vegeTables and medical screening intentions. Stronger perceived injunctive norms predicted less

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drugs usage and intentions to accept it, while descriptive norms predicted more use and greater intentions to accept usage. And both norms were good predictors for drinking alcohol, with more importance to injunctive norms. Rivis & Sheeran (2003) state that descriptive norms should be added towards the subjective norms, because these also are positively related to intentions.

Bagozzi & Dholakia (2002) and Malhotra & Galletta (1999) found in their studies that internalization and identification were positively related to participating in virtual communities respectively to attitudes towards using new technologies. Both studies found no significant evidence for compliance.

Madsen et al (2005) researched the relationship of social relationships in the workplace with the readiness for change. This is about the feelings, attitudes and perceptions people have towards workplace colleagues. They found a slight relation between these two. Perceptions of a good relationship are positively related to the perceived readiness for change. One might argue though that social relationships are more an expression of organizational culture instead of social influence (Choi, 2011).

In much research the effect of normative influence is shown; it has an effect on people’s behavior (Nolan et al, 2008; Schultz et al 2008). Research points out that most constructs are positively related towards attitudes or intentions. The beliefs are underlying the overall attitude. If the actions, behavior or presence of other people has an effect on one’s attitude, it is also

assumable that it influences the beliefs. This is already confirmed in 1999 by Chattopadhyay et al who found that social influence has an effect on executive beliefs. In their article, they also describe that other research points out that members of a group influence the beliefs of the other group members. This is an effect of communicating with each other and is seem to be stronger in groups who work together to achieve a common goal.

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Hypotheses

Based on the literature review, the following hypotheses are formulated.

H7: The effect of team influence on the overall team attitude towards organizational change is mediated by cognitive team beliefs. More specifically:

H7a: Team influence has a positive effect on valence, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H7b: Team influence has a positive effect on efficacy, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H7c: Team influence has a positive effect on discrepancy, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H8: The effect of team influence on the overall team attitude towards organizational change is mediated by affective team beliefs. More specifically:

H8a: Team influence has a positive effect on positive affective team beliefs, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

H8b: Team influence has a negative effect on negative affective team beliefs, which has a positive indirect effect on the overall team attitude towards organizational change.

2.5 Theoretical framework

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3 Research Method

In this chapter the research method is described. The design itself, the collection of data and the sample are described. Next, the used measures are described, as well as its reliability and possible bias. The chapter ends with a description of the data analyzing methods.

3.1 Research design

The research question contains hypotheses about the effect of team influence and participation on team beliefs and attitudes. A certain relationship between the different variables is assumed and the research needs to collect data to find out whether these assumptions are right. This means that the aim of the research is to examine if participation and team influence have an effect on the overall attitude towards organizational change. This is a measure of a given situation and quantitate research fits in well.

To examine the prevalence of the particular relationships a cross-sectional survey is done, because cross-sectional data can be used to test causal relationships between variables and mediating mechanisms (Visser, Krosnick & Lavrakas, 2000). The data collected in this survey is used to estimate the impact of the independent variables participation and team influence on the dependent variable overall attitude and to find mediating effects of cognitive and affective beliefs. The data is collected at a single point in time from employees working in a specified business unit of an insurance company. Although it would be very interesting to repeat the survey after certain time periods, because the change process within the business unit has not yet been completed and therefore the beliefs and attitudes can change, but the time period for the thesis does not allow this.

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3.2 Sample and data collection

A non-probability sample was used, called purposive sampling (Saunders & Lewis, 2012; Acharya et al, 2013). This sample, a business unit of an insurance company, is chosen because organizational changes take place in this unit where management consciously considers how to involve employees. This situation is in line with the research question and the business unit is therefore suitable as a sample.

The target group of the survey are the employees of a specific business unit of an

insurance company. It involves all the 134 employees of the business unit, who are working in 9 teams on three different locations in the Netherlands. The population consists of several groups: the management team, various functions that belong to the support staff and executive staff (case managers). The change approach chosen by the business unit is multidisciplinary and

representatives of every group of employees are involved in participation.

The respondents are invited via e-mail to fill in the online survey, supported by face-to-face communication in daily meetings. The invitation contains a short explanation of the organizational change, why this survey is being held and what is done with the outcomes (see Appendix 1). It is also stated that the survey is anonymous and cannot be traced back to

individuals. Furthermore it is also indicated how much time it takes to complete the survey. The structured online questionnaire is built in Qualtrics for data collection.

In a period of three weeks, with a reminder after the first and second week, 91 employees started the survey. Six respondents did not finish the survey and their results are excluded from the analysis. Eventually, 84 employees completed the survey leading to a response rate of 62.7%. After data analysis, the answers of two respondents were excluded because their answers contains outliers (see paragraph 3.5.1), which lead to N = 82 respondents (see Table 2 for the response

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rates of the different teams). Some teams had low response rates compared to others. Some employees of these teams responded that they feel the mentioned change is far from them and that they were afraid that their responses would negatively influence the research. After

explaining the research in more detail and also paying attention to this in the reminder e-mails the response rate unfortunately did not increase.

Of all the respondents, 25 are male (29,8%) and 59 are female (70,2%). Regarding their job, 7 respondents are part of the management team (8,3%), 26 of the support staff (30,9%) and 51 of the executive staff (60,7%). The average age is 42,25 years, with a minimum of 24 and maximum of 63 years. The average employment with the company is 13,28 years (minimum 1, maximum 41) and with their job is 6,52 years (minimum 1, maximum 18).

3.3 Measures

This paragraph describes the specific measures used to compile the survey and their reliability. First, the dependent variable is described. Second, the independent variables are described followed by the mediation variables and finally the control variables. Additional information

Team Invited Response Response rate

Management team 12 10 83.3% Team 1 21 16 76.2% Team 2 18 8 44.4% Team 3 20 17 85.0% Team 4a 9 7 77.8% Team 4b 9 7 77.8% WIA 28 8 28.6% ACI 11 6 54.5% Fraude 6 3 50.0% Total 134 82 61.2% Table 2

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about the scale reliability, rating scales and back-translation is given in the subsequent paragraphs. The survey is included in Appendix 2.

3.3.1 Constructs

Overall team attitude towards change

The dependent variable overall team attitude towards organizational change is measured by two items, based on the two items developed by Van Knippenberg & Van Knippenberg (2005) to measure the willingness to engage in organizational change. The wording of the questions is adapted to the specific context of the research. The scale has a good reliability with Cronbach’s • = .804 (see Table 3).

Participation

Participation, one of the independent variables, can be measured in different ways, for example as the extent the respondent is able to participate in the implementation of changes (Wanberg & Banas, 2000), but operationalization can also be based on the concrete situation of the business unit or department (Bartunek et. al, 2006) or simple as a dichotomous variable: being a

participant or not (Holt et al, 2007). The construct of participation in this research is measured by the scale of Wanberg & Banas (2000), which consists of 4 items (• = .856). The questions are about the extent to which an employee was able to ask questions about the change, to participate in implementation, to have some control over the change and to could have input on the

decisions.

Team influence

The construct of team influence consists of multiple variables, all independent variables. Team identification measures the extent a respondent identifies him of herself to the team and if

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someone sees him or herself as a member of it. The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), developed by Allen & Meyer (1990, 1996) contains the subscale affective commitment which measures the extent a respondent feels involvement with his or her team, identifies himself or herself with the team and how emotionally attached he or she is to the team. This scale is used in different research to measure team identification (Van der Vegt et al, 2005) or team

commitment (Bishop & Scott, 2000). O’Reilly & Chatman (1986) developed a scale to measure organizational commitment based on the concepts of social influence: compliance, internalization and identification. Vandenberg, Self & Seo (1994) concluded that with respect to identification the scale of O’Reilly & Chatman overlaps with the OCQ of Allen & Meyer. The construct of team commitment, as used by Bishop & Scott (2000), is based on the short form OCQ and is seen as the identification with and involvement in a team. It is slightly adjusted to fit the context of this research (e.g. “I am extremely glad that I chose this team to work with over other teams” is changed into “I am extremely glad that I work in my team instead of another team”). Cronbach’s • of this scale is 0.832.

Team internalization mentions that influence is accepted because of congruent values between the respondent and his or her team. The internalization subscale of O’Reilly & Chatman (1986) consists of 5 items. In the questions the word “organization” is changed in “team”.

Cronbach’s • for this subscale is .811.

Finally, compliance is measured by four items. Two items are developed by Miron-Spektor, Erez & Naveh (2011) and are based on the construct of conformity (“I try not to oppose team

members” and “I adapt myself to the system”). The latter is adapted to the context of this research and is changed to “I adapt myself to my team”. Two other items are developed by Taylor & Todd (1995) to measure peer influence. The questions are about the influence of team

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the context of the research. Cronbach’s • for this subscale is .648. This is slightly lower than the limit of .70 that is normally used, but is still acceptable with 4 items.

Team beliefs: cognitive and effective

The scale used to measure cognitive beliefs, a mediating variable, is the Organizational Change Recipients’ Beliefs Scale (OCRBS), developed by Armenakis et al (2007). This instrument consists of 24-items, measuring the beliefs of discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, valence and principal support, which can be used in any stage of the change process. Based on the literature review of collective beliefs (paragraph 2.2.2.), three common collective cognitive beliefs are discrepancy, efficacy and valence (Rafferty et al, 2013) and they are included in the survey. Discrepancy is measured with 4 items (• = .882), efficacy with 5 items (• = .764) and valence with 3 items (• = .836).

A scale to measure the affective beliefs is the PANAS scale (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). This is an instrument to measure mood, as well positive affect (PA) as negative affect (NA). PA refers to the extent to which a person is enthusiastic, affective and alert. High PA is characterized by a state of energy, concentration and pleasure. Low PA is characterized by sadness and fatigue. NA refers to the extent to which a person is struggling with unpleasant feelings. High NA means someone is characterized by aversive moods and low NA by calm and serenity. The PANAS scale contains 10 positive emotions and 10 negative emotions. The positive and negative items of this scale are used in research of organizational development and change (Avey et al, 2008; Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne, 1999; Begley & Czajka, 1993). More recent, an international short form of the PANAS-scale is developed (I-PANAS-SF), which contains 10 items in total instead of the original 20 items (Thompson, 2007). There were multiple reasons to develop a short form. First of all, although the original PANAS is already relative

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short, when the research contains more variables, then respondent fatigue can occur. Second, the short form is made suitable for non-native English speakers by using other words, so it is cross-cultural applicable. The short form developed still covers the content of the original PANAS but is less ambiguous. The survey of this thesis research contains –besides the affective beliefs-several other variables. Because of survey length the short form PANAS is used. The Positive Affect subscale contains the items determined, attentive, alert, inspired and active. The Negative Affect subscale contains the items afraid, nervous, upset, ashamed and hostile. In 1996 a Dutch version of the full PANAS is used in a study of self-assessment of depression and anxiety

(Peeters, Ponds & Vermeeren, 1996). In 2006 this Dutch version is compared with another Dutch version, mostly used in Belgium (Engelen et al, 2006). Both versions offer a reliable and valid measurement, although the translations differ on 9 items between the two Dutch versions. It can be concluded that the wording in Dutch is representative and valid. For the translation of the I-PANAS-SF the Dutch words will be used in this thesis research. The accompanying question is adapted to the specific research of this thesis. Cronbach’s • for the subscale Positive Affect is .768 and for the subscale Negative Affect .862.

Variable N of items Cronbach's •

Overall attitude towards organizational change 2 .804

Participation 4 .856 Identification 8 .832 Internalization 5 .811 Compliance 4 .648 Valence 3 .836 Efficacy 5 .764 Discrepancy 4 .882 Negative Affect 5 .862 Positive Affect 5 .768 Table 3 Scale reliability

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3.3.2 Control variables

Control variables are included to reduce errors and increase statistical power (Becker, 2005). Age is included as a control variable. It can expected that a younger employee has less experience with organizational change and therefore can react differently than an older employee. This is measured as a quantity (“What is your age?”).

Tenure Company and Tenure Job are included, because it is likely that a respondent with a long-term employment with the organization or their job has already experienced several changes at this company which might affect the attitude and opinion of a respondent. This is also measured as a quantity (“How many years are you working for the company?” and “How many years are you working in your job?”).

Gender is included, because female respondents may react differently to change then male respondents; this is a categorical variable.

Working group is included to measure participation in a different way and to see whether there are differences between decisive and consultative participation (see paragraph 2.3.1). The working groups are organized by the business unit as a conscious choice to organize

participation: a decisive core group and a consultative group. The question is whether an employee is a member of one of these two groups or not.

Team is included to see if there are differences between the team. These teams are

situated on different locations in the Netherlands and each has his own team manager. It might be expected that there are differences in team influence and participation between these teams. It is a categorical variable (“In which team do you work?”) where the team names are the possible answers.

Job is, like team, included to see if there are differences between the employees who fulfill different jobs within the business unit. Depending on their job, they are more or less

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affected by the change, which can result in different findings. This is what Tuomela (1992) referred to with positional beliefs. This is also a categorical variable (“What is your job?”) where the job titles are the possible answers.

After looking at the correlation matrix, the control variables Tenure Job, Working Group and Job are removed (see paragraph 4.1).

3.3.3 Scale reliability

To test the quality of the research model in this thesis the internal reliability of items from individual constructs is analyzed. This internal reliability means that the questions reflect the variables in a consistent manner (Field, 2013). The measure is Cronbach’s •. A general guideline is that the value of Cronbach’s • should be > 0.70 to assure sufficient internal reliability. Also, the correlation between each item and the total score must be above .30. These analyses show if it is necessary to remove an item for further analysis to increase the internal reliability. The

Cronbach’s • scores are represented in Table 3 (paragraph 3.3.1).

Only the subscales compliance showed insufficient reliability (• = .648), see Table 4 below. The corrected item-total correlations indicates that one item does not have a good correlation with the total score of the scale, because this item is .297 and that is < .30. An explanation can be that the other items probably refer more to conformity than to compliance, measuring a slightly different construct. Deleting this item would increase the reliability of the scale to .667 (∆= 0.019). Because corrected item-total correlations is very close to .30 and the increase of the reliability is not substantial, this item is not removed.

The subscale valence showed one item with a corrected item-total correlation score below 0.30, although the scale is sufficiently reliable (• = .739). The corrected item-total correlations indicates that one item does not have a good correlation with the total score of the scale, because

The effect of participation and team influence on team beliefs and team attitude towards organizational change