30-06-2018
THESIS
AGE, TENURE AND OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE AS MODERATORS IN THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORKLOAD AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHANGE AND
BETWEEN WORKLOAD AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
STUDENT NAME: MARIEKE WOLFF STUDENT NUMBER: 11206055 PROGRAMME CODE: MSc EPMS MASTER TRACK: LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT SUPERVISOR: CORINE BOON Thanks for the opportunity to read your thesis, Marieke. You choose an interesting topic, exploring the relationship between perceived workload and attitudes towards change, along with moderators of openness to experience and tenure, and age. You do well to highlight the importance of the topic – the world is changing faster and faster and your literature review was good. One thing to keep in mind with the literature review and rationale is that you are not just describing theory but your are also trying to build theory. You do well with the descriptions but the logic behind your theoretical rationales is not always as clear as it could be, and tends to come quite late in the introduction. You might consider flagging these earlier on, so the reader has a chance to follow along with your conceptual framework. The method is clear and well done collecting such an impressive response rate! The results are not as clear as I would have liked. I think clarifying whether “attitude toward change” reflects a positive or negative attitude would have helped at some key points. Some interesting results but not all supporting your hypotheses, no matter. Similar to the largely descriptive level of the introduction I also found there to be more room in the discussion to link to theory, and also now application. You conclude that a low level of openness to
experience will make people better able to deal with change, which is surprising and perhaps could have been explored a little more in the discussion. Overall a nicely written and executed thesis. 7.5/10
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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
This document is written by Student Marieke Wolff- Trieschnigg who de-clares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is origi-nal and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its refer-ences have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the
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ABSTRACT
This study examines the moderating effect of openness to experience, tenure, and age on both the relationships between workload and attitude towards change, as well as workload and performance. In a sample of 107 employees from a retail company in the Netherlands, employees were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether performance and attitude towards change will be influenced by the personality trait openness to experience, tenure, and the age of employees in an environment in which the workload is perceived as high. A regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis. Results indicated that workload was significantly related to performance. In addition openness to experience significantly influenced the relationship between workload and attitude towards change, in a way that employees with a low level of openness to
experience positively affect attitude towards change in a high workload
environment. Besides the outcome that employees with a low level of openness to experience affect attitude towards change, education was also found to influence this relationship. Employees with a high level of education are less impacted by workload and are generally positive towards change.
This study presents two factors for managers of retail organizations, on how to influence the relationship between workload and attitude towards change and that of workload and performance. These are the level of openness to experience of the employees, as well as their the level of education. Focusing on a well-balanced mix of employees with the personality trait openness to experience and the required level of educations is important in situations where employees experience a high level of
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workload. This research demonstrated the importance of this, since a high workload has a negative impact on the organization’s performance level.
Future research could focus on how individuals with various personality traits respond in the relationship between workload and attitude towards change, to get a more complete view of which employees are to be hired in organizations with change related challenges and the potential of a high workload. Besides investigating the complete set of personality dimensions it would be interesting to explore the longitudinal effects in other branches.
Keywords: performance, workload, attitude towards change, openness to experi-ence, age, tenure, education, moderators.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION ... 5 RESEARCH GAP ... 6 MODERATORS ... 8 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 11 WORKLOAD ... 11 CHANGE ... 11WORKLOAD AND CHANGE ... 13
PERFORMANCE ... 15
WORKLOAD AND PERFORMANCE ... 15
MODERATORS ... 17 OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE ... 17 TENURE ... 19 AGE ... 21 CONTROL VARIABLES ... 23 3. RESEARCH DESIGN ... 24 METHOD ... 24 SAMPLE ... 25 MEASURES ... 25 DATA ANALYSIS ... 27 4. RESEARCH RESULTS ... 29 5. DISCUSSION ... 34 IMPLICATIONS ... 37 LIMITATIONS ... 39 6. CONCLUSION... 40 REFERENCE LIST ... 41
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1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays companies face many challenges to keep up with their competitors. According to Hussain, Akram, and Haider (2017), for highly competitive business environments it is vital to change. The demanding environment leads to intervals between technological and organizational changes becoming shorter and shorter. The same can be said for cycles of change in the workplace. Organizations are constantly under pressure to change, something which strongly relies on the capabilities of employees to deal with change. According to Stensaker and Meyer (2012), employees who have more experience with change will recognize the process and struggle less to understand the need for change. Part of these challenges for organizations is the way they successfully manage to implement the changes. Successfully in a sense that the performance stays at the same level or even exceeds this level.
Another element is the reaction of employees towards change, since we know that people can react with resistance to changes (Piderit, 2000). The attitude and reactions towards change is an element that influences the success of the change implementation. According to Piderit (2000) it is important to be aware of the evolution of employee responses towards change, especially since the reactions to change can be ambivalent and therefore valuable. We know that changing is necessary to keep up with the competitors, and organizations can influence the success of the implementation of changes by managing the employees’ attitude towards change.
At the same time organizations must deal with employees that perceive high workload which leads to absence and in some cases even to burnout. In 2015 one
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third of the Dutch working population experienced a high workload (Bierings, 2018). Observing these challenges was the inspiration for this research. So, for organizations to stay ahead of their competition and to achieve their targets, they have to change and so do their employees. For companies this change is vital, despite the fact that they might experience negative attitudes and reactions from their employees. These reactions and attitudes, as well as the (perception) of high workload, might influence the change process. In other words, if failure or success of a change is influences by employee attitude, which in itself is possibly influenced by a perception of high workload, then workload can be the determining factor for the success (or a failure) of the change. According to Lombard and Crafford (2003), organizations are as successful as their effort to respond to change. Therefore, it is interesting for organizations to know what the relationship is between (perceived) high workload and the attitude towards change, as well as the relationship between (perceived) high workload and employee performance.
RESEARCH GAP
Although there is an enormous amount of management literature on the individual topics; there is not much research available on the relationship between workload and the attitude towards change. Change is, and always has been, an interesting subject of investigation to answer questions how to manage and implement change. Over the past years, research has addressed the complexity of change from different perspectives, resulting in a framework of organizational change (Jacob, Witteloostuijn van, & Christe-Zeyse, 2013). Organizations have taken a more pragmatic approach and they have transformed into more agile and flatter structures, to respond to the pace of change by involving employees in the decision making process with regards to change. The involvement of employees in the
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decision making process has become more important. The question is how the perception of a high workload influences this process and what it does with the attitude towards change.
Vakola and Nikolaou (2005), and Piderit (2000) describe that (negative) attitudes of employees towards change could create resistance. According to Van den Heuvel, Schalk, and Van Assen (2015) the different components of resistance have varying relationships with a variety of work related outcomes, which might have an effect on the change process. Besides resistance, there are more factors that might influence the attitude towards change caused by workload. McHugh (1997), for example, is in favor of including stress in change management agendas since this acknowledges the pressure that is put on employees because of a change. The negative effect of stress on change processes is agreed upon, but the influence that stress has on change is unknown (Vakola & Nikolaou, 2005). This current study aims to contribute by researching circumstances by which workload influences change.
Besides the effect of workload on change, companies want to keep track of the performance. Previous studies have demonstrated that high workload as a job demand has an impact on the well-being of employees, according to Bakker and Demerouti (2007). Whereas job resources such as social support and feedback, have a positive impact on work engagement and commitment; factors that could lead to excellent performance. At the same time, the reaction of employees to a given workload will not be the same due to the different abilities of employees.
For some employees a certain level of workload can be seen as positively challenging, while others cannot handle it (Landsbergis, 1988). The impact of high workload can even lead to performance-protection strategies, according to Hockey
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(1993) (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). This means that when different strategies are used to keep up the desired performance at the cost of an individual’s energy, that in the long-term an individual’s energy is draining and this could eventually lead to a breakdown and reduced organizational outcomes. In addition, the job demands-resource model describes that when job demands are high and job resources are limited, employee motivation will be low, and so will be their willingness to perform (Demerouti, Nachreiner, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2001). Adding to that, Hancock, Williams, and Manning (1995) state that under certain conditions performance could improve as workload increases, and vice versa. In addition, Vakola and Nikolaou (2005) state that stress at work is one of the factors that could lead to a decrease in performance. There seems to be a relationship between workload and performance but whether it is positive or negative is unclear. This research aims to give more clarity on this relationship.
MODERATORS
Besides the investigation whether the influence of high workload on change as well as on performance exists and what that relationship will be, organizations will benefit from knowing which factors will influence these relationships in order to be able to influence them. As mentioned before, employees react differently to the levels of workload because of their difference in abilities. According to Piderit (2000) attitudes towards change can be ambivalent, which can be divided into three dimensions: emotional, cognitive, and intentional. In extension of these ambivalent reactions and the knowledge that people react differently towards the levels of workload, it is interesting to know if employees that are older and have a longer tenure have developed different abilities to deal with change. In addition, it would be beneficial to investigate if there are certain personalities that have
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better abilities to deal with change? This research will provide a better understanding of the differences between subgroups of people with different ages, tenures, and one of the personality characteristics described by Barrick & Mount (1991); ‘openness to experience’. According to Blickle, et al., (2013) the organizational behavior and openness to experience have been underappreciated regarding their effects on performance and therefore need further research. This is one of the reasons why this personality was chosen. Another reason is that since the perception of workload seems to be high, the organization where the research is performed is looking for personality traits that they can influence and which could positively influence the relationship between workload and attitude towards change, as well as the relationship between workload and performance. The third reason is that the innovative and creative traits of openness to experience can lead to a positive attitude towards change and is therefore interesting to research (Raja & Johns, 2010). In addition, Barrick and Mount (1991) found that the personality openness to experience has a positive impact on performance, another interesting finding to research.
This paper aims to show that the perception of a high workload is related to attitude towards change, as well as performance, and that these relationships will be influenced by the above-mentioned moderators. These moderators could be of help to organizations to know how to influence the relationships as previously described. By answering the following research question, organizations will obtain clarity regarding the relationship between the perception of workload and performance/ attitude towards change and whether this can be influenced by the mentioned moderators:
Why? What is the theory that leads to this? Unoack the theoretical rationale!
Questionnable whether personality traits can be influenced. These are stable. Some theorising on “trait activation” however.
Cite for this suggested relationship?
Direction or nature of relationship?
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What is the influence of the perception of workload on performance and on attitude towards change, and what is the moderating effect of openness to experience, tenure, and age in this relationship?
In summary, this study contributes to the literature in different ways. Firstly, this study investigates whether there is a relation between the perception of workload and attitude towards change, something which has not been investigated so far. Secondly, in previous studies the relationships between perception of workload and performance have been investigated, but with different directions. This study will provide clarity about the direction of this relationship and the effect of the chosen moderators. The next chapter will offer an overview of the current state of the relationship between workload and the attitude towards change and between workload and performance and three moderators, including corresponding hypotheses. Chapter three outlines the testing of the relationships, and the analysis. This will enhance the understanding of the effects of workload and whether the moderators might alter these effects. Finally, the last chapters contains directions for future research, limitations and conclusions.
Again, there could be a clearer theoretical rationale for identifying these moderators.
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
WORKLOAD
To answer the research question, the key factors of interest for this research need to be analyzed. Firstly, it is important to define what is meant by workload. Workload is the amount of effort invested in fulfilling a job or task experienced by an employee, according to Rusnock and Borghetti (2016). This experience is influenced by the context of the employee, the ability to fulfill a task, the experience, training, and the personality of an employee. According to Gonzalez (2005), high workload has a greater effect on people with low cognitive ability than on people with high cognitive ability. There are also external factors that influence this experience, such as task quantity, task difficulty, and time availability. Workload can be measured by the output of employees, the diversity of work an employee has to do, but also by the effort employees spend to fulfill their jobs. Workload cannot be specified as explicit as goal-setting, it is often characterized by “very busy or too difficult”. In this paper, the people’s perception of how hard and fast they have to work is measured, since it is difficult to determine an objective measure for workload, as stated by Kyndt, Dochy, Struyven, and Cascallar (2011). Workload starts to become a problem when the balance between what is asked, and the capabilities of an employee do not match (Rusnock & Borghetti, 2016).
CHANGE
Change is the first outcome variable in this paper, especially the attitude of employees towards change. In literature analyses of organizational change, it is suggested that there is an evolving difference between discontinuous and continuous change from Here perhaps it would be better to describe the personality relationship a little more, as you focus on that rather than cognitive ability.
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the perspective of the observer (Weick & Quinn, 1999). Continuous change implies that organizations are emergent and self-organizing; change is constant and evolving (Dunphy & Stacey, 1988; Weick & Quinn, 1999). Discontinuous change occurs during periods of divergence, when organizations are moving away from their status quo because of the environment demands. Another important part of change is the acceptance and the attitude towards the change by both the employees and the organization.
In this research, change is about ongoing adaptation and adjustments in an organization, but the changes itself have a discontinuous character. To understand the dynamics of this organizational change the following definition will be used: “The event in which something appears to become, or turn into, something else.” stated by Ford and Ford, 1994, p.759. From this perception, change consists of two elements, firstly being: “the something”, what does it contain? And secondly the change process, the movement from one status to another.
The change process can be divided into several types; change can be episodic, discontinuous, and infrequent, but also continuous, evolving, and incremental (Weick & Quinn, 1999 and Dunphy & Stacey, 1988). For a long time, most organizations used an incremental way of changing, meaning that organizations are developing and evolving in a constant pace. Since the appearance of a more demanding environment the type of change has also evolved. Transformative change occurs where organizations move away from their status quo in a more radical way. A rapidly changing environment desires constant learning and changing at all levels throughout the organization; this is seen as transformative change (Dunphy & Stacey, 1988). These changes that are externally driven, come top down, and are intentional. Employees
This also seems contradictory and so needs some further explanation.
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experience changes that have to be done because it is needed for the existence of the organization.Organizational change is an integral part of most organizations.
A very important part of the success of the change process is due to the attitude of the employees towards the change, according to Eby, Adams, Russell, & Gaby (2000) (Vakola & Nikolaou, 2005). The willingness of employees to invest energy in the change process is dependent on their attitude. A negative or positive attitude is a critical success or failure factor towards the change. Creating a positive attitude towards organizational changes is important. According to Vakola and Nikolaou (2005) resistance to change and organizational commitment has an effect on the attitude towards change. Beyond positive and negative attitude towards change Piderit (2000) introduced a multidimensional perspective of resistance, where resistance is defined as a tridimensional attitude towards change (Oreg, 2006). Piderit (2006) states that attitude towards change involves more than only the person’s cognition about change. She implies that employees might experience an emotion or have a strong belief about the change. To get a more complete and better understanding of the attitude towards change, the three dimensions together will help provide this: the person’s cognition about change, the emotional reactions towards change, and his or her behavior towards the change (Piderit, 2000).
WORKLOAD AND CHANGE
Change in relation to workload, how is the attitude towards change affected by the “perception” of workload? The job demand-resources model divides the working circumstances into two categories; job demands and job resources (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). “Where job demands require cognitive and emotional effort or skills, and job resources refer to physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job” according to Bakker & Demerouti (2007). Gonzalez (2005)
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stated that “cognitive workload is generated when the satisfactory performance of a task demands more resources from the operator than are available at any given time”. According to De Cuyper and De Witte (2006) the effect of a high workload violates the economic deals for attendance of the employees and employees experience a low level of control which therefore negatively influences the commitment. This, in combination with the findings of Herscovitch & Meyer (2002) who found that the attitude towards change was better for people who are committed to their job, could result into a negative effect of workload on the attitude towards change. Vakola & Nikolaou (2005) state that people who perceive a high workload are very reluctant to accept change. According to the job demands-resource model, chronic job demands will lead to a high workload, decreased organizational outcomes, and a low level of individual’s energy. Low energy levels can negatively influence attitude towards change. The other part of the job demands-resource model explains the relationship between job resources and motivation; willingness, ability, and dedication to work tasks are much stronger in an environment where many resources are offered (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Another important finding from the job demand-resources model is the effect of high job demands on the gain of potential motivation by job resources; meaning that increased workload affects the motivation (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). A study among 818 faculty members from a Dutch university showed that high workload was negatively related to evaluations of organizational change (Emmerik, Bakker, & Euwena, 2009). Considering positive attitude towards change as a motivation, high workload will negatively influence attitude towards change.
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Hypothesis 1: Workload has negative influence on attitude towards change.
PERFORMANCE
Performance is the second outcome variable in this paper, and because of its importance to businesses, it is one of the most relevant for the majority of companies. Different indicators of performance have been used for research, with profit being the most commonly used. According to Paauwe and Boselie (2005) financial outcomes, organizational outcomes, and HR-related outcomes can be defined as indicators. Financial outcomes concern profit, sales, market share, etc. Organizational outcomes include productivity, quality, efficiency, etc. HR-related outcomes include satisfaction, commitment, and intention to leave the company. In this paper performance is related to individual outcomes which have been the focus of early studies (Schmidt & Kleinbeck, 1997) and were associated with the companies’ outcome. Most measures of performance are on an individual level, such as goals setting and feedback of managers. In addition, working conditions are known to influence employee performance (Brüggen, 2015).
WORKLOAD AND PERFORMANCE
According to Galy, Cariou, and Mélan (2011) performance can be reduced by an increased work intensity which generates workload. A well-balanced workload will lead to a satisfying performance. According to Wickens (2008) if the demand for resources is lower than the available capacity there are resources available for unexpected circumstances. Rusnock and Borghetti (2016) also state that “primary
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task performance is remarkably stable under stress and high demands” in other words, the decision to perform well on certain tasks could be a matter of choosing to invest in certain behaviors over others. In addition, Bakker and Demerouti (2007) explain the job demands resource model by saying that high job demands (e.g. workload) lead to negative outcomes, such as exhaustion of resources and health problems. Adding to this, Hancock, Williams, and Manning (1995) state that performance and workload are sensitive to multiple characteristics of the task demand. They state that prior workload and the level of demand are the key characteristics that workload is most sensitive to. According to Brüggen (2015) high workload is associated with stress and is therefore negatively related to work related well-being which could result in a decrease of performance. Furthermore, this exhaustion of employees’ resources could lead to burnouts and negative outcomes for the organization. This assumes that there is a negative relation between workload and performance. According to Friedman and Mann (1993) high workload can lead to stress and stress limits the thinking of people. So, a workload that is too high influences an employee by distracting from their work.Larsen (2001) confirms this statement by stating that employees lose their ability to deal with complex tasks and to analyze difficult situations when confronted with highly stressful situations. Therefore, based on this theory the following hypothesis has been formulated:
Hypothesis 2: Workload has negative influence on performance.
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MODERATORS
For companies to be able to influence the relationship between workload and the two variables change and performance, an understanding of the perception of different groups of employees is important. The effect of workload on performance and attitude towards change is influenced by differences among employees. When employees have abilities or personality traits that can easily handle workload, the effect on performance or on change will be less compared to employee who do not have these traits. The expectations are that age, tenure, and openness to experience will weaken the mentioned relationships since older employees, employees with a longer work experience, and employees with a favor of variety and innovation will suffer less from the level of demand, which consequently will not affect their performance and their attitude towards change.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
Over the past years, researchers have come to a general concept of personalities. The classification of these personality dimensions has been framed in a big five framework by Barrick & Mount (1991). This framework consists of five personality dimensions: Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. According to Brandt, Chambers, Crawford, Wetherell, and Reyna (2015) openness to experience is a dimension of personalities that differentiates people who favor innovation and variety. These people are
characterized as curious and broad minded, versus those who prefer routines and familiarity. Researchers have examined the interaction of personality traits on behavioral outcomes at work but this was limited to individual performance
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strongly positively related to creativity when the scope of a job was low, meaning that creativity increases when the job itself is less interesting. If we extend this thinking, the innovative and creative traits of openness to experience can lead to a positive attitude towards change. Barrick and Mount (1991) support this thinking by stating that openness to experience is a dimension that was found as a valid
predictor for training proficiency. The explanation for this finding was that a high score on this dimension results into a positive attitude towards development. The assumption is that open mindedness and curiosity lead to creativity and a learning approach which will enable coping with workload and therefore have less effect on the attitude towards change and the level of performance. So, individuals high on the dimension ‘openness to experience’ will be more creative and openminded towards workload, meaning it does not have a strong influence on them.
Therefore, the moderating effect of openness to experience for the relationship between workload and attitude towards change and between workload and performance is assumed to be positive corresponding hypotheses are:
Hypothesis 3a: Openness to experience will weaken the negative relationship between workload and attitude towards change.
Needs more
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Hypothesis 3b: Openness to experience will weaken the negative relationship between workload and performance.
TENURE
A life-long working for the same company in no longer the expectation. The average job tenure of employees has decreased over time due to restructuring, mergers, etc. (Ng & Feldman, 2013). This research states that there is a difference between job tenure and organizational tenure. Where job tenure is the duration of time in the same job, and organizational tenure is the length of time within an organization. In this research, the focus is on the length of time within an organization; since this is of interest for the organization where the research is being performed. The question is what tenure means for the relationship between workload and attitude towards change, as well as for the relationship between workload and performance.
According to Oreg (2006) people with a longer tenure have more experience with change and are therefore less resistant to change. Another reason that people with a longer tenure resist less is that, according to Herscovitch and Meyer (2002), the commitment of employees with a longer tenure is higher, and high
commitment leads to less resistance to change. So, the assumption is that an increase in organizational commitment occurs due to the time an individual
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with longer tenure have more experience with changes, will decrease the
influence of high workload on the attitude towards change. This can be explained by the reasoning that people with a longer tenure feel more comfortable and are more experienced with change and will less experience workload. Employees with a longer tenure have the ability to do the job and are more secure so their attitude towards change will be more positive. In line with these assumptions the following hypothesis is formulated:
Hypothesis 4a: Tenure will weaken the negative relationship between workload and attitude towards change.
Wang, Beatty, and Liu (2012) stated that longer-tenured employees require fewer cognitive resources to perform their job, since they have the experience and knowledge resulting in having more resources available to use. So, the assumption is that due to the availability of resources of employees working long term for the same company, the influence of high workload will be less on their performance. Meaning that people with a longer tenure have more experience to set good performances and they will less experience workload. In line with these assumptions the following hypothesis is formulated:
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Hypothesis 4b: Tenure will weaken the negative relationship between workload and performance.
AGE
In the previous part, the effect of workload on the attitude towards change and the effect of workload on performance was described. High workload will
negatively affect the attitude towards change and performance. The impact of age on this relationship is not clear. According to Warr and Fay (2001) people at older age are more traditionally oriented, less flexible, and are generally against
change. Although people of all ages develop their personality-trait according to Roberts and Mroczek (2008), which has a positive effect on the development of confidence, responsibility, and calmness. In addition, younger people experience more burnout symptoms (Trompetter, 2015) which could be caused by high workload. According to Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch (2013) there is a negative relation between age and resistance to change, since older people are better in finding ways to optimize their own developed resources. This optimization of the use of a person’s resource explains the fact that age does not have a negative effect on performance (Kunze, Boehm, & Bruch, 2013). As described before, workload can lead to negative attitude towards change when it is high. According to Finegold & Otley (2002) for older employees, job-security is more important since they have the feeling that they have less chance to develop themselves
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elsewhere and they will not switch jobs as fast as younger employees do. This job-security makes older employees more cooperative and loyal to their employer and therefore they will resist less to changes. So, older employees are expected to better cope with workload because of their experience and their developed
resources, and at the same time older people are willing to sacrifice their feelings of resistance because of the importance of job-security. In addition, younger people experience more symptoms of workload resulting in stress (Trompetter, 2015). These symptoms consist of the feeling of being completely empty where all the reserves are used up, the feeling of under-performing at work, and the feeling of failure and doubt. This leads to the assumption that older people are more resistant to workload because of their experience and the importance of job-security make them less resistant and because younger people experience more symptoms of workload a positive relation between workload and attitude towards change, and between workload and performance is expected. The corresponding hypotheses are:
Hypothesis 5a: Age will weaken the negative relationship between workload and attitude towards change.
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Hypothesis 5b: Age will weaken the negative relationship between workload and performance.
CONTROL VARIABLES
Research has shown that gender influences performance ratings. Bowen, Swim, and Jacobs (2000) state that men receive better performance ratings than women. Also, the effect of workload seems to be different between women and men (Schulz, Kirschbaum, Prüssner, & Hellhammer, 1998 and Jamal, 2005). Besides gender, education is another variable that can influence performance ratings and will be controlled in the data analysis.
The actual design of this research illustrates the relationships and the moderators age, tenure, and openness to experience:
Figure 1: Conceptual model
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3. RESEARCH DESIGN
METHOD
The empirical study is carried out within a wholesale company in building materials. The company was founded in 1986 and focusses on independent entrepreneurs and smaller contractors. A quantitative approach has been taken to explore the relationships between the different variables; this has been done through questionnaires. A pre-test of the questionnaires has been done to enhance the ease of use. The employees were asked to fill out the survey consisting of 37 questions. The survey was done anonymously in order to collect the desired information and to avoid a feeling of uncertainty among the responders; something which might influence the outcome of the questionnaire. Besides the confidentiality, the data will only be used for the purpose of this research. An explanation of possible benefits for the employees and a clear description of the purpose of this study was part of the process to increase the response rate. This company is facing issues with a fast-changing environment, and the employees working in this company currently perceive their workload as being too high. The outcomes of this research can be of great value to the management of the organization. It can help them to obtain some substantiated directions on what to do in a situation with the challenges it is currently facing. This research will aim to investigate that, as stated in previous literature, there is a relationship between workload and attitude towards change and a relationship between workload and performance. Age, tenure, and openness to experiences influence these relationships. The survey will focus on workload, the attitude towards change, and on performance, it will also include indicators of age, tenure, and the personality
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openness to experience.
SAMPLE
The non-probability sample consists of employees of the head office of a wholesale company in building materials in The Netherlands. Data was retrieved from 107 employees which is a 95.5 % response rate. The respondents vary in jobs, from reception staff, supply chain managers, to information technology managers. The conceptual framework has been tested in this wholesale company because a high percentage of people in this company experience their workload as being too high.
The data was collected within three weeks as a cross-sectional survey. Before the questionnaire was distributed, a test group of three people was used to provide feedback on the questionnaire. This feedback resulted in some small adjustments. The survey focused on the above-mentioned relationships. 56% of the employee were male, with an average age of 41 years of age. The education background was as follows: 1.9% primary school; 33.6% secondary education; 46.7% high education; and 17.8% scientific education. The average tenure of these employees is 7.0 years.
MEASURES
Established scales are used or adapted to ensure that the data is useable, reliable, and valid to perform statistical analysis, see Appendix A for the identified items and sources. The scales were needed in Dutch since the respondents have a Dutch nationality. Some of the scales were not available in Dutch and were therefore translated using a back-translate-back method consulting an excellent English and Dutch speaker.
Impressive!
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Perception of workload is seen by many researchers as multidimensional,
and therefore there is not one best method to assess the level of workload of an employee (Dudek & Koniarek, 1995). In this study two measurement scales are used: the questionnaire of Van Veldhoven and Meijman (1994) and the 5 items measure of Spector and Jex’s (1998) (Hudson & Shen, 2016). The questionnaire developed by Van Veldhoven and Meijman (1994) focuses on the experience and judgement of work. The original measurement consists of 11 items in Dutch. In subsequent studies, it became clear that some items were ambiguous that removing these would further increase the consistency of the scale (Spector & Jex, 1998). So, in this questionnaire the five items about workload are used with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89. Respondents were asked to answer on a 4-point Likert scale from never to always. Example items are ‘Do you have too little work?’ (reversed coded) and ‘Are you behind in your work?’. The five-item measure of Spector and Jex’s (1998) measures qualitative workload using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Example items are: “My job requires me to remember a lot of information; My job requires a high level of concentration”.
Attitude to change: in order to measure the three dimensions of employees’
attitude the three subscales of Oreg (2006) have been used. The affective items include positive and negative feelings towards change, the behavioral items contain employees’ intention to act against the change, and the cognitive items contains employees’ evaluation of the worth and potential benefit of the change (Oreg, 2006). The reliability scores for behavioral, affective, and cognitive components were 0.77, 0.78 and 0.86 (Oreg, 2006). According to Van den Heuvel, Freese, Schalk, and Van Assen (2016) the three-dimenstional composition fitted
Information for the Van Veldhoven scale?
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the the empirical data better than a unidimensional structure. The affective, behavioral, and cognitive components consist of five items. Respondents are asked to answer 15 questions on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Example items are “I believe that changes make my job harder” and “I believe that change would benefit the organization”.
Performance: employees were asked to assess their job performance using
the Van Dyne and Lepine (1998) items. The measurement scale consists of 4 items and is rated on a seven-point Likert type scale ranging from totally disagree to totally agree. The Cronbach alpha for this measurement is 0.93. Example items are: “I fulfill the required tasks of my job” and “I deliver excellent work”.
Openness to experience is assessed with the Mini International Personality
Item Pool which was validated across five studies with a Cronbach alpha of 0.74 for openness to experience (Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). In this assessment, the 4 items for openness to experience are used. An example is “I have a lively imagination”.
Tenure is measured by the length of time (i.e., years) respondents have
been working in their current organization.
Age is measured in years since the birth of the employee.
Control variable: employees are asked to indicate their highest level of
completed education in addition they were asked to fill out their gender.
DATA ANALYSIS
The results of the questionnaires are analyzed using Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS). To ensure that the data is useable and reliable for statistical analysis and to test the defined hypotheses the data have been screened for missing data and univariate outliers. Since respondents were forced to answer every question
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there were no missing items. A frequency check has been conducted and there were no errors in data entry and the number of questionnaires corresponds with the num-ber of input lines.
To assess the normality of the data, the skewness scores and the kurtosis of the questionnaire items were analyzed. Not all scores were normally distributed some were skewed and had a score outside the acceptable values between -1 and +1. These variables have been transformed to normalize the distribution. Except for workload, all the other variables had a normal distribution. Workload has a skewness of 3.280, the distribution is asymmetrical because all respondents gave a 1 and a 2 answer on a 5-point Likert scale meaning that the amount of work is always enough. Upon transformation, the workload score had adequate skewness values. The outli-ers in the data were also investigated but not removed since it was only one and by there were no mistakes found. The analyses were also done without the outlier and the results stayed the same. The reversed-coded items of the different scales have been recoded, so all the answers have the same direction before analyzing the data. The sample size is 107.
The reliability of the factors is determined by analyzing the Cronbach’s Alpha values. According to Connelly (2011), scores from 0.70 are satisfactory to compare groups. The Cronbach’s Alpha scores for each factor are presented below (table 1). One item (I spoke rather guilty of the change to others) was extracted from the three subscales of Oreg (2006) to increase the score of change from .784 to .835.
How?
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Table 1: Cronbach’s Alpha scores.
4. RESEARCH RESULTS
Table 2: Descriptive statistics and Correlations
Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics and correlations of all variables. There is a significant negative correlation between workload and performance (r= -.377, p<0.01). Workload was expected to correlate negatively with performance, because high workload can lead to stress which according to Friedman and Mann (1993) limits the thinking of people and therefore will negatively relate to performance. The cor-relation analysis shows that tenure had significant cor-relationship to change (r=.276, p<0.01), and openness to experience had negative relationship to change (r=-.503, should be itlicised
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p<0.01), while workload and change is not significant related. Openness to experi-ence was expected to correlate positively with change, because open mindedness and curiosity lead to creativity and a learning approach which will enable coping with workload and will therefore have a less strong relationship with the attitude towards change.
Besides the dependent and independent variables, the control variables also showed significant correlations. Gender and education were the control variables. The correlation analysis showed that gender correlated significantly and negatively with workload (r=-.290, p<0.01). Education correlated significantly with change (r=-.403, p<0.01), openness to experience (r=.270, p<0.01), age, (r=-.264, p<0.01) and tenure (r=-.305, p<0.01).
Table 3: Regression: Attitude towards change
Regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis and verify the moderating effects of openness to experience, tenure, and age. The analysis shows the strength of the independent variable β and explains the proportion of variance in
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the dependent variable, measured by R². There is a significant effect if p ≤.05 (Boer, den, Bouwman, Frissen, & Houben, 1994). For each dependent variable, a regression analysis was completed and the regression analysis was performed with standardized independent variables to check for multicollinearity. If the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) was smaller than 10 and the Tolerance was greater than 0.2 then there are no collinearity issues (Field, 2013). The outcomes of the regression analysis showed values for VIF less than 10 and for Tolerance greater than 0.2. So, no collinearity issues were found between the dependent variables or moderators for workload.
The two dependent variables were attitude to change and performance. These two independent variables were regressed on workload. Next to the direct effect, three moderation effects were measured relating to workload (openness to experience, tenure, and age). The regression analysis of the model was conducted in three steps. The first step, the standardized control variables education and gender were added to the model. In the second step, the standardized independent variable workload was added to the model. In third step, the three moderators and the interactions between the moderators openness to experience, age, and tenure with the independent variable workload were added to the model. Table 3 displays the results of this regression analysis of attitude towards change. The results indicate that workload did not explain significant amount of variance. Thus, Hypothesis 1 stating that workload has negative influence on attitude towards change was rejected. However, the workload * openness interaction explained a significant proportion of variance (R² = .411, p < .05) effect of attitude towards change. Although a significant proportion of variance effect of attitude towards change is explained by openness to experience hypothesis 3a, the moderating standardising gender will lead to odd results
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effect of openness to experience, is rejected, since the effect was negative. The moderating effect of tenure, stated in hypothesis 4a was not supported and the moderating effect of age, stated in hypothesis 5a was also not supported. To identify the form of interaction of the moderating effect of openness to experience, the equation at the high and low level of openness to experience was plotted. Table 4 presents the form of the joint relationship of workload and openness to experience on attitude towards change.
Table 4: Moderating effect of openness to experience
As shown in Table 4, Workload positively influenced attitude towards change at a low level of openness to experience.
Besides these main findings which answer the hypothesis of this study, it was found that the control variable education significant improved the predictive power of the regression model of attitude towards change. The results show that education has a significant negative effect on attitude towards change (β = -.404, Positive or negative attitude toward change?
Hard to interpret this. Workload has a stronger effect on change attitude. Does change attitude become more positive or negative?
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p= 0.00). The explained variance for this model is 16.2% (R² = 0.162).
Table 6: Regression: Performance
Table 6 displays the results of this regression analysis of performance. The results indicate that workload (β = -.315, p= 0.001) is significantly related to performance. Thus, Hypothesis 2 stating that workload has a negative influence on
performance, was supported. The workload * openness interaction did not explain a significant portion of variance. So, Hypothesis 3b is not supported. The
workload * tenure interaction did also not explain a significant variance and neither did the workload * age interaction. So, Hypothesis 4b and 5b are also not supported.
The results show that from the control variables only education has a significant negative relationship with change (β = -.404, p= 0.00) and the explained variance for this model is 16.2% (R² = 0.162).
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5. DISCUSSION
The main aim of this paper is to answer the research question: “What is the influence of the perception of workload on performance and on attitude towards change, and what is the moderating effect of openness to experience, tenure, and age in these relationships?”. Another important goal is to give some useful recommendations to the managers and employees of the company who filled out the survey, to help them find a way to cope with workload in a fast-changing environment with challenging goals. And the last aim is to contribute to current literature. To answer the research question eight hypotheses were formulated. Hypothesis 1 stated a negative relationship between workload and attitude towards change. This hypothesis was rejected, since no correlations was found and no direct negative main effect of workload on attitude towards change. It was expected that a high level of workload would lead to a negative attitude towards change. This expectation was based on the findings of the job demands-resource model considering a positive attitude toward change as a motivation. In the previous literature is shown that a high level of workload has a negative effect on commitment and low levels of commitment leads to negative attitude towards change (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2006; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Emmerik, Bakker, & Euwena, 2009; Vakola & Nikolaou, 2005). A potential explanation could be that employees who already felt resistance against change, resulting in a negative attitude towards change, also feel high levels of uncertainty because the change in the organization has resulted in the loss of the organizational identity. This relationship has already been proven in a study conducted by Jacobs, Christe-Zeyse, Keegan, and Polos (2008). An explanation could be that for employees with
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high uncertainty, an increase in workload would lead to a smaller increase in negative attitude towards change. Further research on the topic of uncertainty is recommended.
Hypothesis 2 stated a negative relationship between workload and performance. This hypothesis was confirmed, since a negative main effect of workload on performance was found. This finding is in congruence with expectations based on available literature. The expectations are based on Friedman and Mann (1993) and Larson (2001) who mention that high workload can lead to stress, and stress limits the ability to deal with complex tasks. It also limits the thinking of people and therefore reduces the level of performance. It can be concluded that workload was a valid predictor for performance.
Having described the relationships between workload and attitude towards change and between workload and performance, this study provided insight into the role that openness to experience, tenure, and age play regarding the relationship workload and attitude towards change and workload and performance (hypothesis 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 5a and 5b). Firstly, hypothesis 3a stated that openness to experience would positively moderate the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. The findings showed that a low level of openness to experience has a positive influence on the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. Although there is a significant relationship, this relationship was contrary. So, this hypothesis was rejected. This contrary finding could be explained by the findings of the exploratory study by Raja & Johns (2010) stating that openness to experience is related to creativity and curiosity, but under conditions of low job scope. Saying that openness to experience appears to lead to increased creativity in the situation where the job itself is easy to perform. Since
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the job conditions are not measured in this study and the expectation is that the perception of workload is high, which consiquently influences the job scope caused by a disbalance between capacity and what is asked for, a low level of job scope is not probable. In addition McCrae, (1996), found a relationship between openness to experience and agreeableness which is direcly related to social idenitity and may support the prevailing social environment. Secondly, hypothesis 3b stated that openness to experience would positively moderate the relationship between workload and performance. This hypothesis was rejected, since no moderating effect was found. It was expected that open mindedness and curiosity would lead to creativity and a learning approach which will enable coping with workload and therefore have less effect on the level of performance. As stated before, the impact of the level of job conditions could have influenced the creativity and therefore the ability to cope with workload. Thirdly, no moderating effect of tenure, hypothesis 4a and 4b, and age, hypothesis 5a and 5b was found. The majority of the hypotheses in this study has proven not to be significant. Since the sample size was small and conducted in one retail company it is recommended to perform future research in larger groups and possibly multiple organizations to investigate the relationships.
In addition to discussing the interaction effects, a number of findings regarding the control variables needs to be mentioned. As stated in table 3, education appeared to be a significant predictor for perceived workload. Education explained 16.2% of the variance in perceived workload, meaning that relatively high educated employees are less influenced by workload compared to less educated employees. An explanation for this finding can possibly be found in the positive relationship between low educational level and accelerated cognitive
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decline (Bosma, van Boxtel, Ponds, Houx, & Jolles, 2003). Meaning that when cognitive abilities are not used, since these are not developed by education, they will decline and get lost. In situations of high workload, abilities are needed to deal with complex tasks, and to analyze difficult situations (Larsen, 2001).
Furthermore, when seeking to achieve performance and a positive attitude towards change, it is important to consider how to deal with workload, as this research demonstrates that high workload will decrease the level of performance. Workload will positively influence attitude towards change for employees with a low level of openness to experience and for employees with a relatively high level of education.
Future research could focus on how individuals with various personality traits respond in the relationship between workload and attitude towards change, to get a more complete view of which employees are to be hired in organizations with change related challenges and the potential of a high workload. Besides investigating the complete set of personality dimensions it would be interesting to explore the longitudinal effects in other branches.
IMPLICATIONS
From a theoretical point of view this research contributes to the literature by expanding upon previous research. There is very limited research available on the relationship between workload and change. The retail sector is an interesting sector to conduct this research, since it is generally known as a traditional sector, with all the changes coming up due to the highly competitive environment. Unfortunately, no significant variance of the attitude towards change was explained by workload in the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. However, the
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interaction of workload and openness to experience showed a significant proportion of variance. This research has shown that the personality openness to experience could positively influence the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. A number of studies has examined the connection between individual’s factors of the five-factor model of personality. This study has explored the moderating effect of openness to experience, which according to McCrae (1996) is the personality dimension that most centrally influences social and interpersonal phenomena. According to Raja, Johns and Ntalianis (2004), there is very limited research available on the openness to experience personality. This study increased our understanding of the impact of the personality openness to experience. A low level of openness to experience positively influences the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. In the situation of a high job scope, as measured in this research, the personality trait openness to experience has less impact than was shown in previous research done in different populations.
From a practical perspective, this research contributes to the managerial perspective on attitude towards change and workload, as well as the relationship between performance and workload. Working in highly competitive environments, organizations often have to deal with changes and challenging targets to perform. These environments can lead to a higher workload for the employees. The level of openness to experience of employees, and the level of education has an influence on these relationships. Employees with a high level of education are less impacted by workload and are generally positive towards change. Organizations working in constantly changing environments often experience a high workload for their employees. However, it is not possible, neither necessary, for all organizations to hire only highly educated employees. So, a valuable approach would be to aim for a
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well-balanced mix of employees, including these with a high level of education and a low level of openness to experience.
As employees with a low level of education and a high level of openness to experience are impacted by a high level or workload, organizations need to keep this in mind when recruiting new hires. All organizations should keep track of the level of workload experienced by the current employees in order to establish the best mix of people fit for the available tasks. This link between recruitment and workload will directly improve the performance of the organization. A HR controlling system might help to balance the workload (Brüggen, 2015).
LIMITATIONS
A limitation of the research design was that the study was cross-sectional. Since all data is collected at one single point of time it is not possible to determine any directions or patterns. This research is a snapshot and the subjects workload, performance and, change can develop overtime. This research is done in a period that people of this company feel high work pressure. It could even be that the answers about performance and workload are influenced because of their current state of mind. Another limitation is that the survey was a single source measurement and non-probability. It could be that the results are not applicable for other organizations. The consequence of not randomly selecting can be that the population, in this case the people of one company, does not represent a bigger population. The environment that this company is operating in, is quite conventional which could also attract people with less agility adapting to new situations.
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6. CONCLUSION
The reason for this research was to investigate whether and how workload influences attitude towards change and performance since these are both challenges that organizations face these days. Besides this, informing the company the research is done with, on factors that influence these relationships was also an important reason for this research. Regression analysis proved that two of the relationships in the conceptual model are significant. Meaning that the answer on the research question is that there is no influence of workload on attitude towards change and there are no moderating effects of tenure and age on this relationship. However, openness to experience has a positive influence on the relationship between workload and attitude towards change. Besides these findings, workload negatively influences performance and there is no moderating effect of openness to experience, tenure, or age on this relationship. To conclude, openness to experience is an important personality trait to influence attitude towards change in a high workload environment. And the level of education is another factor that can be influenced by organizations to manage attitude towards change. The higher the level of education, the less influence of workload on the attitude towards change.
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