Master Thesis
Spring term 2015
The support for change for vision of continuity and
vision of opportunity
Name: Nils Rubbert
Student number: 10828354 Date: 29-06-2015
Supervisor: Merlijn Venus Word count: 8147
Statement of originality
This document is written by Student Nils Rubbert who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this
document.
I hereby 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.
Table of content
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... i
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ... ii
INTRODUCTION ... 1
PROBLEM DEFINITION ... 2
COURSE OF INVESTIGATION ... 3
THEORY FOUNDATION ... 5
IMPORTANCE FOR CHANGE ... 5
LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE ... 5
CHANGE THROUGH VISION ... 7
UNCERTAINTY ... 11
VISIONS OF OPPORTUNITY AND THE ROLE OF DISSATISFACTION AS A TRIGGER FOR CHANGE ... 12
PRACTICAL EXECUTION/METHOD SECTION ... 15
SAMPLE AND PROCEDURES ... 16
Sample ... 16 Procedures ... 17 DATA ANALYSIS ... 19 Variable description ... 19 Correlation table ... 21 Hypothesis testing ... 21
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION ... 24
FURTHER RESEARCH SUGGESTIONS ... 26
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 27
APPENDICES ... 33
APPENDIX 1 ... 33
APPENDIX 2 ... 34
List of Abbreviations
Vision of Opportunity VOO
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1: Moderation Model 15
Figure 2: Plot vision of continuity 23
Figure 3: Plot vision of opportunity 24
Introduction
In today’s markets, incertitude on the upcoming future is high and due to high fluctuation, recent crises and political movements, it is necessary to have strong leaders that give a strong vision of the future path to reach a company’s goals.
It is in the firm’s own highest interest to have employees with a collectively shared vision to follow, in order to be able to deal with a constantly changing environment and still focus on keeping the company with all its individuals steered into the same direction. Without a common future picture, a company cannot function. Managers must communicate in such a way that the commitment of employees regarding change is high enough to be executed, while keeping the company’s identity.
Besides the way of communication, the content, in order to explain purpose of vision oriented actions and changes in a company, can vary and vision communication has to adapt to meet the visions target. Thus, the vision statement can be seen as the basis for the mission statement and all following routine plans. Overall, a unifying vision statement reduces the beloved end-state of the business’ key objectives into one easily understandable and aspirational sentence (Collins & Porras, 1996). As those key objectives that should clarify the company’s position in the long term, vision statements only rarely change. While the vision persists unchanged, it serves as an anchor during the adaption to the company’s surrounding. Today adaption is crucial to keep a company competitive and thus H. G. Well’s timeless quote still holds “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative”. Now it is to be tested, when a vision will be most effective in terms of change?
Problem definition
Only a limited number of academic journals and studies have empirically examined the effectiveness of visions while distinguishing different visions and testing specific circumstances. We already know from Venus, Stam, & Knippenberg (in prep) that a vision, which highlights the perpetuation of core values of a company will most probably “be effective especially in mobilizing support for change” (Venus, 2013). Such a vision is defined as a vision of continuity (VOC). For leaders, which make use of a VOC, it is important to know what impact enhances or diminishes the effect of the vision. Hogg (2012) as well as Venus (2013) expect a support for changes according to a VOC when the follower feels self- or work-uncertainty. In the interest of business leaders, it is to be tested whether these findings hold and are today still replicable.
Another vision type, as newly theorized by M. Venus and N. Rubbert for this work, is the vision of opportunity (VOO). In this vision, the only focus lies on the opportunities a company has in the future, seen from the state it is currently in. Contrary to the vision of continuity, the vision of opportunity is not concerned in keeping specific traits, values and other characteristics that are closely related to identity. In general, a vision of opportunity will challenge everything that is believed as granted in the status quo up until then, and change as much as possible, under the premise that this change maximizes the conditional outcome of the opportunity the company faces. Such vision has not been theorized up until now in scientific works.
Nevertheless, all visions are made in order to give a guiding path for a collective future and through that drive down uncertainty of the individual. It is therefore most often necessary for a company to formulate future visions precisely to fit the company’s future needs and also use managers to communicate this vision in a way that also fits the individual (Collins & Porras, 1996). The work of Stam et al. (2015) elaborates how, through vision communication, the individual has a future picture of him or herself as a defined future self. If multiple followers
have a future self that covers same aspects from the vision, the group of followers becomes a possible-collective-self following the lead of the vision. Stam et al. (2015) argue that the higher the consensus is, the higher the willingness to change and pursuit the vision. Hence, managers control the quality of a collective future in their vision. The unfortunate reality, however, is that it is actually far from clear what characterizes an opportunistic leader vision that is capable of motivating and inspiring employees towards change. Current literature is not able to specify what characteristics in specific situations are conducive to bring real effective change through a vision of opportunity in a company. Even though there are studies that focus on the interaction between the follower and the leader, those do not identify specifically the characteristics of a change-effective vision. Rather, the possibility of followers as co-creators of visions is taken into consideration. Studies in the field of transformational and charismatic leadership suggest that if the bond between the leader and the followers is strong enough to allow influences, direct effect on the actions of the other party are possible. In this case, the followers can become co-creators of the vision. In this work a dissatisfied employee, following a VOO is expected to act well as a co-creator in order to change the own situation into a good one. For studies, which focus on vision mostly a top-down communication is existent in the works.
Course of investigation
At first, it is to be inspected what the current academic literature and studies know about organizational change, its importance, and the related leadership theories. In the second chapter, it will be looked on how change can be triggered through a communicated vision. Therefore a section covering vision effectiveness will follow the definition of vision and visionary leadership. Lastly, the two phenomena, of dissatisfaction at the workplace and followers’ uncertainty, and their impact on vision support (Venus, in prep) bridges effectiveness with the vision categories visions of continuity and visions of opportunity. In the
method section those connections will be tested, by collecting questionnaire data from both supervisors and managers and their subordinated employees. Through this method a clearer picture of cause and effect is made possible (Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). For this work it will be hypothesized that under the circumstance of dissatisfaction with the current situation, the vision of opportunity has the greatest impact, as it gives the follower freedom to change. The overall research question in this work therefore is:
When will a vision of opportunity be most effective?
Additionally, the sub-question will be explored when a vision of continuity will be more effective.
It is expected, that this work will contribute greatly to existing works of knowledgeable authors like M. Venus, D. Stam, D. van Knippenberg, and Bass in the fields of visionary leadership in such a way that a clearer picture will be displayed of what kind of circumstances are motivating employees to follow and pursuit a leader communicated vision, which focuses on change. By being clearer about the mechanisms of how visions mobilizing followers to make a contribution in the realization of change, which may reach the formulated state in the vision, managers will understand what characteristics work best to pursue their vision together with their employees.
Theory foundation
Importance for change
“Industry evolution is important strategically because evolution, of course, brings with it changes in the sources of competition” (Porter, 1979). As businesses are manmade, they are also subject to evolution. There is no way for firms to stay in a static place. Porter clearly stated that a change in the environment of a firm can happen on different levels. Therefore, he introduced one of the basic and most used frameworks – the 5-Forces model. Each change in one of the forces has a direct impact on a business. Some changes are supportive for a business and others are less favorable. Especially the latter ones are tried to be foreseen by management and timed adaption is planned to diminish the negative effects accordingly. It is leadership, which stimulates employees for change. This stimulation is key as only the final acceptance and support for change can enable an effective transformation.
Leadership and change
The term leadership describes a broad field of behavior between individuals and has an individual meaning for different persons. In scientific literature, various definitions emphasize and develop over time on different focus points on Leadership:
“... [Is] the ability of a superior to influence the behavior of subordinates and persuade them to follow a particular course of action.“ (Barnard, 1938)
“…is the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants. A leader is one who successfully marshals his human collaborators to achieve particular ends” (Prentice, 1961)
“…is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.” (Northouse, 2013)
For this work the most recent definition of Northouse will be used. From this definition one can see that three aspects are important in the field of leadership. First, is the grouping effect,
which separates a smaller group of individuals, the leaders, from the larger one, the followers. Secondly, this definition states that the smaller group of leaders affects the other group. Leaders influence their followers on purpose (Cohen, 1990). The reason for this influence covers the third aspect of the definition. The common goal gives a direction to the population to thrive for. Leadership in the context of companies can be described as the medium or bond between the employees, the followers, and the boss as the leader (Ogawa & Bossert, 1995). Special focus on the two first facets of Northouse’s definition are detailed in Stam et al.’s (2015) work, where „goal-directed behavior is dependent on... collective self-efficacy... [but also on] leadership [,which contains] expressing confidence in the follower and emphasizing his or her worth van Knippenberg et al (2004b)“.
In the end, the idea of a process of leadership supports the possibility of change. The process idea is not as static as Jago’s (1982) specific leadership traits, which he states, someone is born with. Instead, the idea of a transformation from the current state into one in the future is the basis of today’s leadership. “One of the most comprehensive leadership theories of organizational transformation is the theory of transformational and transactional leadership. Burns (1978) developed the initial ideas on transformational and transactional leadership . . . and Bass (1985) further refined them and introduced them into the organizational context“ (Eisenbach, Watson, & Pillai, 1999). Each transformational leader traverses through three major steps when following the process of transformation (Tichy & Devanna, 1990). At first, the leader has to identify the necessity of change to keep the organization existent in the future. Secondly, the leader has to formulate a vision to communicate the requisition of change to the group of followers. At the core, “effective visions of change emphazise the deficiency of the status quo and provide a discrepant and idealized alternative, thereby creating a need for change, providing a sense of challenge, highlightin the existence of opportunities, or simply inspiring followers towards change” (Venus, in prep). This is the linkage to visionary leadership as a sub style of transformational leadership. Lastly, the leader
has to regulate the change in such a way that the change is standardized and established well in order to give the company a chance for an advanced business set up in the future. In terms of visionary leadership, it becomes clear that change will lay the focus on organizational change, whereas visionary describes the communication process from a leader towards the followers. Over all, ”it may therefore not come as a surprise that leader vision has been qualified as a key vehicle for leaders in motivating followers towards change (Yukl, 2010). What should be surprising, however, is that it is unclear what characterizes an effective vision of change” (Venus, in prep).
Change through vision
Visionary leadership lays the focus on the transition from the second to the third step in the process of transformation from Tichy and Devanna (1990). Knippenberg and Stam (2014) define visionary leadership as “the verbal communication of an image of a future for a collective with the intention to persuade others to contribute to the realization of that future“. This definition will be used in this work to describe visionary leadership as a change oriented management style. Amongst various studies, Podsakoff, et al. (1990) and Rafferty & Griffin (2004) declare visionary leadership as a theory of goal-setting, but van Knippenberg & Stam (2014) argue that in visionary leadership „idealized futures [are] images capturing shared values and identity.“ Those ideals, other than goals, might not be possible to reach, but motivate through the followers’ hopes to be obtainable. As goals are understood to be more tangible, it might be easier to measure them and their outcome.
Even though there is no concordant concept to measure vision statements and their characteristics, a variety of studies finds significant coherences between the usage of a motivating vision and company performance (Larwood, et al. ,1995; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Westley & Mintzberg, 1989); whereas positive financial outcome is most often identified as performance.
The content of the vision is a picture of what the leader together with the followers will possibly face in the future. In most academic journals, the vision definition of Kirkpatrick, et al. (2002) fits: “the vision, an ideal that represents... the shared values to which the organization should aspire, ... an effective component of a business strategy (Ireland & Hitt, 1999), and an important part of the managerial process“. A vision statement as a future picture is not to be mistakenly permuted with a value statement, which describes the reason for a firm to exist in the first place. Vision statements on lower levels are publicized by department leaders and managers and do not necessarily have to be expressed in written words. Visions communicated in spoken words or written text are the major media employees can get information on where the superior manager wants to be in the future.
In searching for „what makes leadership effective, visionary leadership is important in that it concerns the definition of ends for a collective (i.e. the vision to pursue) and the attempt to persuade followers to contribute to the achievement of these ends as a collective interest” (van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). According to Westley and Mintzberg (1989) change through vision functions in a similar consecutive step process model as Tichy an Devanna (1990), but Westley and Mintzberg connect the rather static model of hierarchical top-down communication with Brook’s (1968) idea of a theater play that allows back and forth between the different steps. This results in a construct where between the idea or the identification of necessity of change and the formulated vision the possibility of returning from the vision back to the idea is opened to the vision formulator. This allows the leader to re-evaluate own ideas and gives the opportunity to correct assumptions on what change is urgently needed. This might result, even though very seldom, in a re-formulation of the vision. Not only is a step back from the second to the first step possible, but also from the third, the action, to the second, the vision. By taking Brook’s (1968) concept into account, Westley and Mintzberg (1989) see the exigency of creating emotions with the vision to enhance actions and pursue the leader’s vision. Even though their works separate different types of visionary leaders and
try to position those in different situations, it is not mentioned what characteristics a vision has to have in order to achieve great support from the followers for the formulated action towards change. Venus, Stam and Knippenberg (2013) argue “emotional displays from leaders can have a profound and influencing effect on the way employees think, feel, and behave relative to an organization’s visionary goals”. In their work it is shown how the leaders’ emotions have an impact on the affectivity of a vision and against the argument of ”most business communications advisors . . .[that directly steer] to accentuate the positive..., [they] found, however, that positive or negative is not the crucial aspect of whether a message is effective... in the end, there are no bad emotions, just emotions that don’t suit the purpose“ (Venus, Stam, & Knippenberg, 2013). From the fact that the work is focused on the emotions during the communication of a vision, the question of what formulation results in a fetching and opportunity seeking vision is not answered. For the later section, the field of emotions might play a role when people feel dissatisfaction in their current job situation. It might also be of interest, whether the leader needs to learn a particular ability to formulate a convincing vision of the future.
Vision effectiveness is not solely dependent on the emotions that are delivered through the vision. Stam, Knippenberg, and Wisse (2010) argue “individuals with a promotion focus are more motivated by a goal that emphasizes gains or by a role model that embodies excellence than by a goal that emphasizes losses“. Additionally, Collins & Porras (1996) “suggest that once the core [in the vision statement] has been identified, managers should generate their own statement of the [vision] ... to share with their groups“. In conclusion, the knowledge of a leader about his followers also plays an important role in enabling actions towards vision realization. Kelman (2005) states that unless leaders do not initiate change, endorsement from supporters cannot be unleashed. For this work we take a transformation vitalization in terms of inaugural vision speech as granted.
Vision realization in terms of alignment with the surrounding either happens by innovative building of something new or by a combination of deductive and inductive reasoning, resulting in adaption of an existing part. It is to be seen “that group behaviour is an intricate set... [of] interactions and forces that not only affect group structures, but also modify individual behaviour.... Consequently, any changes in behaviour stem from changes, be they small or large, in the forces within the field“ (Burnes, 2004). Therefore, it is important that the effective support for change can only be found in those situations with the right forces triggering a change. Bennett (1983) argues that action towards change happens after the individual has analyzed the situation with all alternative decisions and has then chosen the most appropriate one. Conclusively, visions must appeal to the individual to enable support for change in a group and lower resistance to support for change.
The vision statement of a person can be seen as an action. The reaction of individuals when they are confronted with that vision is typically expressed as positive acceptance or negative retraction. Stam et al. (2015) state that besides acceptance, persistency in terms of enduring effort on the achievement of vision is key. According to the paper, such pursuit can be seen in collective as well as individual behavior and is dependent on the willingness and the ability to do so. It is the degree of conformity together with the own aspired future picture, where a person sets itself in balance between vision acceptance and revocation (Lord & Levy, 1994). “Vision statements may also include words that will maintain areas that leaders consider important to the accomplishment of the organization, but may not necessarily represent inspiring content” (Berson, Shamir, Avolio, & Popper, 2001). The retaining of specific aspects of the current situation separates the visionary leadership style away from the overall transformational leadership, because in such visions the focus might lay on those specific fields that should not be changed. M. Venus in the work Vision of Change as Vision of
Continuity (in prep) refers to this situation as a vision of continuity (VOC). As for the other
changed now in order to reach a withdrawal from the current state. Both sorting of visions will be of importance in this work. No paper published yet, has been focusing on the circumstances under which a vision of opportunity is most effective.
Acceptance and reaction to change under a VOC can be found in Venus’s not yet published work. The VOC is a special vision in which the continuation of core values is in the focus to be delivered to the vision-followers. Venus states that “leaders can construe change in such a way that followers will believe that the organizational identity will remain preserved.“ (Venus, in prep). Especially under changing and inconsistent corporation constructs, a leader acting as a protector of the organizational group-identity attracts support and enhances change movement that goes in line with the VOC (Shamir, 1999; van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, & Bobbio, 2008). It is to be tested whether self-uncertainty will moderate the effect of a vision of continuity on support for change.
Uncertainty
Change brings something new and unknown and thus uncertainty can influence follower behavior on a communicated vision immensely. Successional to the idea of Stam, et al. (2015) of having an individual, as well as a collective self, it results that uncertainty can appear on different levels. Employees can be uncertain about themselves and what their position in the world is and will be. On the other hand, individuals can be insecure of the social relationship construct. A vision is able to stable the social bond. Contrary to that it might tear a team apart, when the protective arrangement is questioned in its underlying basis. Besides the two uncertainty facets in individualism and collectivism, employees fear work intensification to a harmful level, company closures and layoffs. These fears are pooled in the term “job uncertainty”. Following the “uncertainty identity theory (Hogg, 2007, 2012), an extension of social identity theory (e.g. Hogg and Terry, 2000), the primary motive for employees to categorize in terms of organizational identity resides in its ability to reduce subjective
self-conceptual uncertainty” (Venus, in prep). This “uncertainty reduction is proposed to be satisfied by reliance on group memberships because group prototypes capture socially shared reality and provide group normative standards for attitudes and behavior” (Cicero, Pierro, & van Knippenberg, 2010). Therefore, one can argue that a vision that is concentrated rather on maintaining the social core construct of a company attracts those followers with uncertainty. It is hypothesized that the securing aspect of a VOC triggers followers’ support, when the pendants are uncertain about their work.
This argument results in the first hypothesis:
H1: The follower’s uncertainty moderates the effect of a vision of continuity on follower support for change, such that followers with high uncertainty are more willing to support change in terms of the vision of continuity than followers with low uncertainty.
Even though this hypothesis is giving a good insight on how visions may enact follower’s acceptance, it is to be questioned, whether a vision that breaks with the past, as conceptualized in the literature of transformational leadership, might generate more support for change. It is reasonable to suggest that visions for people that are dissatisfied with the status quo, are more effective to gain support for change, when they highlight the opportunity to change various aspects in the firm.
Visions of Opportunity and the Role of Dissatisfaction as a trigger for change Contrary to the VOC, the vision of opportunity (VOO) gives room to make changes in business assumptions, which are not free for adaption. There is not yet a scientific paper that comprises the topic of a VOO. M. Venus and N. Rubbert theorized the VOO during the search for alternative vision categories. The VOO is expected to trigger support by the followers, in a case where they actively search for change. This often happens when the follower is dissatisfied with the status quo. Already one effect of dissatisfaction with the current status on change can be found in the work of Beer (1987). In his work, dissatisfaction
has to appear as just one preliminary assumption amongst the two others of vision and process management, in order to make change possible. Additionally, it is stated that this vision has to portray a better future and is brought to live by “visible top-management leadership. . . [through] early activities [that] communicate . . . expected change (Beer, 1987). Due to the fact that there is no scientific work on the VOO, there is not yet the model of dissatisfaction moderating the link from an opportunistic vision to an effective change support by the follower. The moderator of choice, dissatisfaction, will most likely trigger willingness to support an effective change.
As it is already shown by Venus et al. (2013), and Wesley & Mintzberg (1989) that emotions play a role when communicating a vision it might also be insightful for managers to know under which other circumstance a vision is an effective tool to trigger change in an organization. Hunt, Boal, and Dodge (1999) examined in an experiment how responsive followers were to a vision in terms of a crisis. Crisis is defined “as a condition where a system is required or expected to handle a situation for which existing resources, procedure, policies, structures, or mechanisms are inadequate“ (Hunt, Boal, & Dodge, 1999) in their work. This definition already supports the elementary need for change but needs to be bridged to the follower’s proactivity, as it is hypothesized in this work that dissatisfaction will trigger the will to follow a leaders’ vision of opportunistic change. This proactivity can be found in the work by Griffin, Parker, and Mason (2010) in which also the personal development during an organizational change phase according to the vision develops. They suggest that a “vision may be more effective in stimulating change- and innovation-oriented behaviors for those employees [that are] more open to such activities to begin with“ (Knippenberg & Stam, 2014).
Dissatisfaction as a force or enabler for change in an organization is in literature also often referred to as personal and interpersonal status dissatisfaction (Cummings & Worley, 2015). Another way in which literature refers to dissatisfaction is the creation of awareness of change
by higher management up to that point where the follower sees the current state as such negative that a wish for change comes up (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993; Mabey, Mayon-White, & Mayon-White, 1993). Similar to these ideas of dissatisfaction, this work will focus on the contextual dissatisfaction of followers, in which work-related influences are taken into account. Existing research on job dissatisfaction finds that this triggers results that can be categorized in the four different pendant responses of exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect (Farrell, 1983; Withey & Cooper, 1989; Rusbult, et al., 1988). In the case of exit where the employee is truly dissatisfied, cannot stand the situation, and sees no opportunity for a change, quitting might be the only reasonable option to deal with this state of affairs. The better case where the worker searches actively for improvement and making solutions public is defined as voice. When instead of an energetic retrieval for the better, the setting is taken passively as non-changeable by the follower, loyalty keeps the employee in the company. Destructive behavior of neglect is found when pendants work with less strain or even against the company.
By looking at different high quality research papers and journals, the research questions become visible, which was not in the focus of other researchers yet. For the content of this study the question is:
When will a vision of opportunity be most effective?
Because of this research question, the focus lies on the chance to enhance a situation to the better and voice will be the optimal response to dissatisfaction. “Voice not only enables organizations to channel employee job dissatisfaction into positive desire for change, but also helps them to correct existing problems and make improvements” (Zhou & George, 2001). Additionally, “Voice is making innovative suggestions for change and recommending modification to standard procedures” (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). In combination with the VOO, it opens up the possibility to correct and adjust all solid approaches to finally adapt
with the changing environment. With the ideal research questions at hand, hypotheses will be formulated. The second hypothesis for this work is:
H2: The level of job satisfaction moderates the effect of an opportunistic vision on follower support for change, such that visions of opportunity generate support for change, especially for followers who are dissatisfied with the status quo.
This hypothesis might give an insight into whether productive voice is currently present, when the questionnaires are analyzed.
The total research model in this work will therefore be visualized in the following picture:
Moderation Model for this work
Practical Execution/Method Section
The chapter of practical execution will describe the different steps that were made during the study. A clear description of the sample will commence this section. The second step of this study has been the preparation and compilation phase of designing a working questionnaire
that focuses on asking for specific details concerning the acceptance or negation of the different hypotheses. In the next part of the work, the collected data is analyzed. With the results of the hypotheses testing the overall research question will be answered. The section of conclusion, which holds a deeper discussion, is following the practical execution.
Sample and procedures
Sample
The population as well as the respondents are divided in two groups; the leader group will be represented by company-, department, or team- leaders. The other group consists of the respective followers as workers lower in the hierarchy than the leader. The survey will focus on organizations that are currently in the process of change or just completed a change in the company. For convenience, the companies will be those located in and around Amsterdam. Simple random sampling will be used as the sampling technique for this survey.
The sample size 118 completed dyads consisting of leader and follower pairs, and adds up to 200+ surveys with the already existing 97 collected surveys of Venus et al. (2015). This amount allows statements of generality and replicability. 58.5%, of the followers that responded were males with an average of 32.5 years of age. The female respondents average age was 29. The overall average age therefore was 31 years ranging from 19 to 55 years. On average the employees in the study worked 33.5 hours per week. 24 followers indicated that they work for 40 hours a week but nine replied that they work for at least 50 hours a week, topping at 58. The majority of 84 stated that they have been working in their current company for only four years or less. Reason for that can be found in the geographical location of Amsterdam, where a lot of startups are founded, which often face change situations. For the sake of finding companies that have encountered or are in the process of change, startups were in favor, as there happens to be many changes. Due to the little tenure in the company
also the time of the current leader-follower construct was short. 73.7% of pendants had the same boss for less than three years, whereas 43 claimed to be still in their first year working for that person. The two most oftenly rated changes were “reorganization of the office” and “diversification of core business”. Four responses came from China; one from Germany and the rest of the dyads were collected in the Netherlands. Together with another student, with a very similar topic, the data was collected.
Procedures
After a few meetings with the thesis supervisor, prof. M. Venus, a common understanding of the thesis content was established and placed the basis for the theoretical analysis of existing works. After that, the question forms for the followers and for the leaders were constructed in qualtrics. A closer description can be found in the following part of survey design. To verify the questionnaire is steering for the right data, a pilot version of the questionnaire was checked back with M. Venus. This person is a specialist in the study field of this work as well as researchers. The questionnaires were changed accordingly to the suggestions several times. The final version of the questionnaire was handed out via mail. Online it was not possible to reach a greater number of participants due to the fact that the e-mail addresses of the follower and the one of the associated leader had to be known. Therefore it was decided to hand out the exact same question form as a paper version in person. Typically, the question forms for the leader as well as for the follower were handed out in the company. Some recipients of the questionnaires asked for some time. Those forms were then collected several days later. After collecting all data, it was manually entered into SPSS. The right format was given from the few cases that could be reached via mail in the first time via the standard qualtrics mail distribution channel.
To verify that the right boss and follower are later combined correctly into one input case, we used qualtrics. This allows us to send a link to the online survey of the follower. After a complete fill out, a link will be send to their boss/leader. A tracing back to the specific
company or person should not be possible, so that anonymity can be assured to the respondents.
It was the case, where not enough respondents answered the online questionnaires. This resulted in a situation where the same version as a paper questionnaire was handed out and later collected in and around Amsterdam to companies. Amsterdam is useful for this research topic, because a lot of new businesses start and these often have to deal with change.
In a face-to-face situation like that, already a pre-selection could be made, whether the respondents fit to the characteristics of a leader-follower pair, that experiences change, to test the level of support for change. This pre-selection is not possible in the distribution of the online survey, because one does not have the possibility to verify whether the respective persons answered both questionnaires of one input case accordingly. It is crucial to have both, the leader and the follower, to fill out the survey accurately. To gain more response, the questionnaire was available in English and Dutch language. The respondents were able to choose the language of their choice. Because a native speaker translated the Dutch questionnaire from the English version, the content of the questions was identical.
The Venus’ (2015) survey is also the fundament of this thesis survey, especially for those subjects concerning vision types. Additional questions were taken from Yuan & Woodman (2010) for the variable of dissatisfaction with the status quo. From the work of Colquitt, et al. (2012) variable questions concerning uncertainty were extracted. Various control variables can be found containing the duration of deployment in the company and the tenure under the current supervision. The weekly work time, age, and gender were also chosen as control variables for the follower questionnaire. The only control variable amongst leaders asked for the type of change in the company. More questions were inserted into the questionnaire, focused on the work and hypotheses of the other student with a similar thesis topic. In total, the followers had to answer 68 questions and the leader questionnaire covered 15 questions.
An overview over the total variable construction and the questionnaires can be seen in the appendix 1 and appendix 2.
Because the majority of answers was collected in person, the response rate for this study was high. It is not possible to state an exact number of responses because it was not noted how many persons accepted and how many declined to take part in our survey.
Data analysis
For the analysis, the program SPSS Statistics 21 by IBM was used. The constraint was set to only use relevant items in the variables that surpass the burden of a Cronbach’s Alpha of at least 0.7. With those variables a mediated regression analysis will be performed and also a correlation analysis was conducted. The data analysis follows the standard analytical strategy of data cleaning for missing values and recoding counter indicative items. Then a computation of reliabilities and scale means will set as basis to construct a correlation matrix.
Variable description
Besides the control variables, the participants answered all questions in terms of a 5-point Likert scale, describing their attitude towards a statement between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree).
Vision of Continuity (alpha=0.878) is measuring to what extend the follower perceives that
the leader’s vision holds continuation of core elements. The following three items were used to assess this variable: “My direct supervisor often communicates in his/her vision that our team in the future will be a continuation of what we stand for“, “My direct supervisor often communicates in his/her vision that our team in the future will be a continuation of our team now“, and “My direct supervisor regularly communicates that it is important that our team will maintain its identity“. Those items were similarly used in Venus (in prep) work.
Follower uncertainty (alpha=0.898) contained four items. To assess whether the follower
perceived him or herself to be uncertain, we used all four items from the work by Colquitt, et al. (2012). This work is focused on work uncertainty. Therefore, the four items ”There is a lot of uncertainty at work right now”, “Many things seem unsettled at work currently”, “If I think about work, I feel a lot of uncertainty”, “I cannot predict how things will go at work” by Colquitt et al. are enough to be used in this analysis.
Follower support (alpha=0.943) was measured with seven items “to assess the general feeling
of uncertainty that employees experienced as a result of the plans for change” (Venus, in prep). Examples for the items are: ”I support the future plans of the organization”, “I am willing to put extra effort in implementing the changes”. For both hypotheses the items used were the same.
The Vision of Opportunity (alpha=0.702) had three questions concentrated on the view of the follower onto the vision as promoted by the leader. Contrary to the questions for the vision of continuity this time the questions were not focused on retaining the identity. Instead, they focused on changes the supervisor communicated and the clearness of the vision. Due to the fact that the concept of a vision of opportunity was not existent in former scientific papers, all items were newly constructed. Examples are: “My direct supervisor makes clear how his/her vision deviates from the current situation”, “My direct supervisor’s vision for the team emphasizes that in the future the team should be in a different situation than it currently is”.
Dissatisfaction (alpha=0.814), as the second moderator in my model, expected to influence
the effect of a vision of opportunity on follower support, is measured in the first three items of the survey. To assess dissatisfaction with the status quo the items were taken from the work of Yuan & Woodman (2010). The items are: “Many things in my department need improvement“, “The performance of my organization needs to be improved“, and “The performance of my work unit needs to be improved“.
Data cleaning/missing values
Together with another student, I collected the dataset under the supervision of professor Venus. We resulted in 118 total answered dyads. However, one of those was not useful because one part (either the leader response or the follower response) was not filled out properly or had missing values. We share the same opinion that this incomplete dyad will not be used. In the end, we have 117 complete dyads, which we will use for our analysis. To find the missing values the analysis function “frequencies” in SPSS was used. In the output, it was visible that in the dataset there was one item that had at least one missing value. When comparing with the original answer sheets, it was not clear what answer the respondent wanted to check.
Correlation table
In the appendix 3 one can find the correlation matrix including all means, standard deviation, and reliabilities on the diagonal for my model. The significant correlation between uncertainty and vision of continuity is has a weak negative relationship (-0.3). Dissatisfaction has a weak positive, but not significant relationship with vision of opportunity (0.13). Follower support has positive significant relationship with vision of continuity (0.34) and vision of opportunity (0.42) and a moderate negative significant relation with uncertainty (-0.66). There is nearly no correlation with dissatisfaction with the status quo (-0.15). This correlation is not significant.
Hypothesis testing
To test the hypotheses for a two-way interaction, I used SPSS 21 by IBM. First, with the function “Univariate Analysis” three regression analysis were made. In the first step the independent variable and the moderator were entered into the model. In a second step the interaction of these two was also entered by computing product term of both (the independent and moderator).
Hypothesis 1:
R-squared in hypothesis one is 0.519. Therefore, we can say that the model predicts a quarter of the cases. There is a positive significant relation between the vision of continuity as a vision of change and the change support of the follower (ß=.141; p=.015). Additionally, the relation between uncertainty and change support of the follower is significant (ß=-.502; p=.000). The overall moderating effect of uncertainty on the effect of a vision of continuity on follower support for change is significant (ß=.191; p=.000).
This results in a status where I can say that the hypothesis one “The follower’s uncertainty
moderates the effect of a vision of continuity on follower support for change, such that followers with high uncertainty are more willing to support change in terms of the vision of continuity than followers with low uncertainty.” holds true, such that a vision of continuity
leads to more support when uncertainty is high.
This can be seen from the following graphical plot, where the doted line describing the highly uncertain pendants can be found below the straight line of people, which delinates low uncertain followers. On those people the level of continuity in the vision has nearly no impact, as the line is close to perfectly horizontal. Additionally, one can see that the slope of the line of people with high uncertainty is steeper, than the one that are more certain. This means that highly uncertain followers are more reactive to the level of continuity in a communicated vision. This statement is congruent with findings of the study of (Venus, in prep).
Plot vision of continuity
Hypothesis 2:
R-squared in hypothesis one is 0.214. There is no significant relation between the vision of opportunity as a vision of change and the change support of the follower (ß=.437; p=.598). But, the relation between dissatisfaction with the status quo and change support of the follower is significant (ß=-.058; p=.028). Additionally, the interaction between the vision of opportunity and the job dissatisfaction is significant (ß=.193; p=.041). Therefore we do have a significant moderation effect in our model also for the second hypothesis.
Therefore the hypothesis “The level of job satisfaction moderates the effect of an
opportunistic vision on follower support for change, such visions of opportunity generate support for change, especially for followers who are dissatisfied with the status quo” holds
significantly true. One sees in the following graphical plot, where the doted line delineates the highly dissatisfied followers can be found under the straight line, which describes more satisfied pendants. Those show a tiny bit of less support for change under high levels of opportunity. Additionally, one can see that the slope of the line of people with high dissatisfaction with the statues quo is steeper, than the one that are more contented. This
1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5
Low Vision of Continuity High Vision of Continuity
S u p p or t for c h an ge Low Uncertainty High Uncertainty
means that highly dissatisfied followers are more reactive to the level of opportunity to change a situation as communicated in the visions of opportunity.
Plot vision of opportunity
Evaluation and Conclusion
Vision in different categorizations as the topic of this work lead to the interesting research question when either a vision as a vision of continuity or a vision of opportunity catches follower’s willingness to support the vision. To render more precisely the situation the moderators of follower’s uncertainty and the pendant’s job satisfaction with the status quo were used. It was expected that follower, which felt a lot of uncertainty during their daily routine, are searching for maintaining patterns and a stable identity to rely on in the future. This persistence is found in the vision of continuity. Thus, it was expected that people with high uncertainty show support for change according to a vision of continuity. Through analyzing, the returned questionnaires it can be stated that this expectation was fulfilled. People from the sample who scored high on uncertainty also marked a high willingness to support a vision of continuity. One could argue that employees see in the vision of continuity a surviving company and a maintaining team in the upcoming time. With this picture in mind
1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5
Low Vision of Opportunity High Vision of Opportunity
S u p p or t for c h an ge Low Dissatisfaction High Dissatisfaction
they feel more certain about their future and are thus more supportive for changes according to the VOC.
On the other hand, it was also expected in the second hypothesis that employees, who indicate high dissatisfaction with the current status within their company show motivation to change their situation. Especially the newly introduced vision of opportunity allows room for change and focuses on the deviation from the current status. The sample showed that frustrated people show support for change, as communicated in the vision of opportunity.
This work supports the study of Venus (in prep) greatly as it also shows that employees with higher uncertainty will show more support for change as in a vision of continuity than ones that indicate a lower level of uncertainty. This phenomen that indicates the importance for realising change sucessfully, the company definig key feature must reside clearly in the future picture. With this statement it replicates also the work of Venus, Stam, and Knippenberg (2013). It’s important topic of communication for effective change is omnipresent and only few researchers have studied it.
New contribution of this work is brought by the theorization of the vision of opportunity. M.Venus, as the thesis supervisor, has layed of the cornerstone for this construct and kept the work on track with continuous guidance. With this, a vision-categorization is now possible. It is now possible to state that there are followers who are searching for change, trying to circumvent continuity.
It is important to show both effects, because now we can say that not only the way of commmunication but also the content of the leader’s vision is important for the support for changes.
As support is the breaking point for real and effective change this work will help managers, too. Those who lead employees can now better asses the acceptance for changes and therefore estimate more precisely the likelyhood of effective change. Communicating such that changes
are accepted, when the leader feels a lot of uncertainty in the group of followers, is now shown to be more effective when a vision of continuity points on keeping the core identity. On the other hand, leaders who assess dissatisfaction should make room for changes. The vision of opportunity is the right choice to get more support for changes as communicated in the vision.
Strength of this thesis is in the replicability, through a big sample and thus an enhancement of the existing work by Venus et al. (2015). The high number of dyads in the study allows to make general statements about vision communication and effectiveness. Additionally, the use of vision of continuity and opportunity offers a wide range for usage of findings in the thesis, applicable in the daily business routine of managers.
Limitations can be seen in regional focus of companies located in central European, especially in Amsterdam. Also, the usage of only one survey as data-collection type limits the respondents to explain answers in more detail. It is not a longitudinal survey. The findings of only one point in time limit the statements of generality. Similar to the study of Venus (in prep), uncertainty is senn as a reason for resistance to change “because change implies a discontinuity of the organizational identity... but ... other purpoted sources of resistance, such as loss of control and loss of meaning“ (Venus, in prep) have not been examined in more detail.
Further Research Suggestions
Building on what we know now, future research could look for a new category of vision. As it is stated that change is a natural thing in evolution, also decease is a valid company status in business evolution. It might just be a short time during a company life cycle, but there a vision as a vision of destruction can be hypothesized to be effective for change. When closure is indispensable, this vision emphasizes on the destruction of the old to make room for something new.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
Followers’ Dissatisfaction – 7 items - Yuan & Woodman (2010) - Smidts, Pruyn & Riel (2001) Follower career orientation – 3 items
- Wrzesniewski et al 1997 (3 items) Follower uncertainty 7 items
- General uncertainty; Colquitt et al., 2012 (7 items) Vision (independed variable) (Venus et al, 2015) - 13 items
- continuous (4 items)
- discrepancies between vision & status qou (3 items) - opportunistic (3 items)
- leader vision general (3 items)
Followers’ support for change (as the depended variable) - 25 items - Company surrounding & colleague behavior (15 items) - Self behavior to support change (10 items)
Leader behavior and expectancies – 14 items Control variables – 6 items
Appendix 2
