A case study on employee sensemaking: an emotional perspective
Nienke van der Werf Student number: 2747375
MSc Business Administration: Change Management Faculty of Economics and Business
University of Groningen
Supervisor: dr. I. Maris-de Bresser Co-assessor: dr. B.C. Mitzinneck
Abstract
Research has shown that individual’s emotional, affective component, and individual’s cognitive component, ratio, play a role within sensemaking. However, which role the affective component exactly plays is unexplored so far. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine which role emotions play within employees’ sensemaking process. The role of emotions in employee sensemaking will be studied in an organizational change-context, because change implies novelty and uncertainty and existing research shows that these conditions are necessary for research in the field of sensemaking. This study is based on a qualitative study at a public health organization in the Netherlands, the GGD (Gemeentelijke Gezondheidsdienst). At the time of research GGD is implementing an organizational change. In total, fourteen semi-structured interviews are conducted with employees of GGD. The findings of this study reveal that emotions play a vital role during employee’s entire sensemaking process and these emotions are influencing all three aspects of sensemaking, respectively perceiving cues, creating interpretations and enactment. While perceiving cues, emotions can play the role of triggering sensemaking but they are also present when they do not trigger sensemaking. While creating interpretations, emotions determine how interpretations are created and what they look like, emotions and interpretations are always in line. Furthermore, emotions determine if employees perceive difficulties in understanding the change. Finally, during enactment, emotions influence which roles employees play during change and what their reaction is.
Introduction
The only constant is change, and in a business world with ever-changing consumer needs, organizations need to adapt in order to ensure survival (Burnes, 2004; Moran & Brightman, 2000). However, implementing organizational change is not without risks. Research on organizational change shows a failure rate of almost 70%, and in some cases organizations perform even worse after than before implementing the change (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Gilley, Gilley & McMillan, 2009). Additionally, the risk of failure is higher than ever (Moran & Brightman, 2000), as a result of rapidly changing and competitive environments in which organizations are operating (Mellahi & Wilkinson, 2004). For instance, due to breakthrough innovations such as the Internet (Dhingra & Punia, 2016). Thus, on one hand organizational change is necessary, on the other hand the failure rate of organizational change is incredibly high. As a result, organizational change has received significant academic interest: “the study of change is one of the major topics in organizational sciences” (Bouckenooghe, 2010, p.500).
Multiple academics have tried to explain why successful change is so difficult to achieve (Gilley, Gilley & McMillan, 2009). According to Oreg, Vakola and Armenakis (2011), one’s attitude towards change is a main reason for experiencing difficulties, because one’s attitude highly determines the success or failure of implementing organizational change (Sparr, 2018). Therefore, it is essential to know individuals’ attitudes and how these are formed. According to Elizur and Guttman (1976) an attitude is a tridimensional concept which consists of cognitive, affective and behavioral components. The cognitive component refers to what individuals think about organizational change. The affective component refers to individual’s emotions regarding organizational change, such as anxiety, and the behavioral component refers to individual’s actions that have already been taken or intended actions in response to change (Elizur & Guttman, 1976; Oreg 2006).
Over the last decades, research into sensemaking primarily focused on the cognitive component, i.e. ratio, which resulted in a strong theoretical understanding of the cognitive component in sensemaking, whilst ignoring the affective component, i.e. emotions (Maitlis, Vogus & Lawrence, 2013; Steigenberger, 2015). As a result, the affective component is underexposed during studies on organizational change (Shah, Irani & Sharif, 2017), while researchers argue that organizational changes are emotional processes in which emotions influence success or failure of change (Helpap & Bekmeier, 2016). Moreover, Kotter and Cohen (2012) argue that if there is a change effort, not only ratio will be activated but also emotions, and implementing organizational change has the greatest chance to succeed when both ratio and emotions are taken into account. Neglecting employee’s emotions during organizational change can therefore contribute to the failure of implementing organizational changes (Kotter & Cohen, 2012; Shah et al., 2017). Steigenberger (2015) also agrees that the affective component is underexplored and argues that emotions influence individual’s interpretation of information and provide powerful stimuli for action, which are more powerful than stimuli generated by ratio. Accordingly, Steigenberger (2015) argues that leaving individual’s emotions out of scope while researching sensemaking will lead to an incomplete understanding of the sensemaking process.
Following the aforementioned literature, it is clear that individual’s emotions play a vital role in sensemaking. Nevertheless, there is a lack of theoretical understanding and empirical work on the interplay between emotions and sensemaking. Therefore, academics have increasingly expressed the need for future research into the affective component of the sensemaking process (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Weick, Sutcliffe & Obtsfeld, 2005). To address this gap, this study focuses on how this affective component influences employee sensemaking. Therefore the aim of this research is to study which role and place emotions take in employee’s sensemaking process during organizational change. Next to this the following research objectives are formulated in order to facilitate the achievement of this aim: 1. researching if employees perceived emotions when confronted with organizational change and if yes, which emotions, 2. analyzing how emotions influence interpretation of the organizational change, and 3. analyzing if emotions trigger sensemaking or if emotions result from sensemaking. Resulting from this the research question in this study is: “ How do emotions influence employee sensemaking during organizational change?”
determine an individual’s sensemaking process. So, in order to create a more comprehensive understanding of sensemaking, this study focuses on emotions during sensemaking. Additionally, this research has practical relevance in the sense that when managers are aware of emotions’ role in their employees’ sensemaking process, they are able to respond to these emotions in a desired manner, which can influence the outcome of the organizational change in a positive way (Bartunek, Rousseau, Rudolph & DePalma, 2006).
In the next section there will be a literature review regarding the concepts organizational change, sensemaking, emotions and the role of emotions. Subsequently, the method section will be described. Then, the results will be shown and finally there will be a discussion, conclusion, limitations and suggestions for future research.
Literature review
This literature review presents relevant literature regarding the following concepts: organizational change, sensemaking, emotions, emotions as trigger of sensemaking, and emotions as result of sensemaking. In addition, two conceptual models are presented.
Organizational change
and implement each aspect beforehand (Bamford & Forrester, 2003). In this study a planned approach is used to implement the change, because the change is implemented top-down and the organization made a policy plan for the upcoming years.
Since instituting change is complex, it is important to know which factors determine failure or success of organizational change. As mentioned, attitudes of employees play a key role during the implementation of change. Oreg et al. (2011) reviewed 79 articles regarding reactions to organizational change and came up with criteria, which determine what an employee’s reaction to change look like. This criteria consist of how recipients feel (affective component), what they think (cognitive component) and what action they will take (enactment) in reaction to organizational change. This is in line with how Elizur and Guttman (1976) define attitudes towards change, so employee reaction and attitude are used interchangeable in this study.
Bouckenooghe (2010) reviewed literature on attitudes toward change and found two attitudes, which are the most defined concepts in literature. First, resistance to change, which is considered as an undesired attitude, and second, readiness for change, which is seen as a desired attitude (Bouckenooghe, 2010). Sonenshein (2010) also focused on individual reactions and studied employee reactions to change in a retail setting and found three reactions toward change, two overlapping those found by Bouckenooghe (2010). First, resistance. Resistance can be seen as individual’s intentions and actions that slack or hinder the implementation of change (Bouckenooghe, 2010). Individuals showing resistance, formed a negative interpretation towards change and had a negative score on all three dimensions: the affective and cognitive component and intention (Piderit, 2000; Sonenshein, 2010). Second, championing. Individuals championing the change, formed a positive interpretation towards change and were willing to do everything in order to make the change successful (Sonenshein, 2010). Third, accepting/readiness. Individuals accepting or being ready for the change, formed a positive interpretation towards change and were able to make adjustments if necessary and scored positive on all three dimensions (Piderit, 2000; Sonenshein, 2010). Resulting from this, individual’s positive or negative focus on change, determines his/her attitude towards change where the focus is influenced by different factors, such as personality traits, internal context and perceived benefit or harm (Oreg, 2006).
before the planning and implementation of a change can take place (Bouckenooghe, 2010). Bouckenooghe (2010) argued that these findings can not be applied to an emergent change context because emergent change is more embedded in and originates from employees, which causes employees to feel engaged in the change. As a result, employees undergoing an emergent change have a more positive attitude towards change than people undergoing a planned change (Bouckenooghe, 2010). So, the nature of change influences attitudes and therefore has to be taken into account.
In order to be able to understand how employee reaction towards change is formed, employee sensemaking need to be examined (Balogun, 2006). Therefore, the next section describes the concept of sensemaking.
Sensemaking
Due to the depth and breadth of the sensemaking literature there are a lot of definitions on sensemaking. According to Weick (1995) sensemaking regards involving individuals who are engaged in retrospective and prospective thinking in order to create an understanding of reality. Weick et al. (2005, p.409) definition states: “sensemaking unfolds as a sequence in which people concerned with identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing circumstance from which they extract cues and make plausible sense retrospectively, while enacting more or less order into those ongoing circumstances.” In other words, sensemaking is a process in which individuals try to understand their changed environment and take actions.
Weick (1995) argues that sensemaking consists of three aspects. First, perceiving cues. During this aspect individuals notice and extract cues, such as issues and events, from the environment (Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015). These cues act as a trigger of sensemaking and may result from issues and events which are new, ambiguous, uncertain or discrepant (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Weick et al., 2005).
organizational change, instead they play active roles in a way that they make sense of change, have feelings regarding change and judge it (Bartunek et al., 2006).
Third, enactment. Once the perceived cues have been interpreted, individuals start to act upon this, this is called enactment. Weick (1988, p.306) explains: “enactment is used to preserve the central point that when people act, they bring events and structures into existence and set them in motion.” Orton (2000) and Weick (1988, 1995) argue that individuals play a key role in creating their own environment and this environment constrains and determines the actions they will undertake. Therefore, individuals act and show behavior on behalf of their ratio and emotions and by acting in a specific manner they determine how their environment looks like and this influences them again. Therefore , “people create their environments as those environments create them” (Weick, 1995, p.34). Moreover, Weick (1988, 1995) argues that action is an integral part of and crucial for sensemaking because creating interpretations and understanding the change, lies in the path of action. Meaning that individuals understand and give interpretations to unknown cues around them by taking action.
Sensemaking became an important topic in studies about organizational change, as when employees face moments of uncertainty or ambiguity, they start trying to clarify what is going on and as a result their sensemaking process starts (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014). Sensemaking during organizational change has been researched in different fields. First, there are studies, which focused on triggers of sensemaking (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Steigenberger, 2015; Weick, 1995). They found if individual’s ongoing flow of thinking is disrupted, this triggers sensemaking. Additionally, emotions can be seen as triggers of sensemaking, where negative emotions are more likely to trigger sensemaking (Maitlis et al., 2013).
Finally, there are studies focusing on what sensemaking looks like and what it consists of (Steigenberger, 2015; Weick, 1995). As mentioned, Weick (1995) defined sensemaking as a process that consists of perceiving cues, creating interpretations and enactment. However, Sandberg and Tsoukas (2015) reviewed sensemaking studies and found that the large majority of studies on sensemaking investigated only one part of sensemaking: creating interpretations. Hence, this study focuses on all three aspects of sensemaking in order to contribute to the understanding of the entire sensemaking process.
Sensemaking is influenced by individual’s cognitive and affective component (Steigenberger, 2015). The cognitive component is focused on evaluation and interpretation, the development of frameworks, schemata and mental models (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014), and has a strong theoretical basis (Steigenberger, 2015). To show this, the study of Starbuck and Milliken (1988) is used. This study described how executives use perceptual filtering processes when they observe and try to understand the environment. They found similarities between perceptual filtering processes and sensemaking processes and mentioned that both processes involve placing stimuli into schemata or frameworks in order to make sense of stimuli. Accordingly, they highlighted the cognitive component of sensemaking. Besides, Weber and Manning (2001) illustrate a similar effect. The aim of their study was to explore the use of cognitive cause-mapping techniques as a tool for researching sensemaking during organizational change. When researching sensemaking, they only looked at individuals’ cognitive schemas where individuals can organize and interpret the environment. As a result, their findings suggest that the access to information, degree of change experienced and hierarchical level may influence sensemaking.
(2001) only looked at cognitive schemes during sensemaking while ignoring the affective component and therefore overlooking emotions. Though, from the literature aforementioned it is clear that emotions play a vital role, so letting emotions out of scope results in an incomplete understanding of sensemaking and therefore needs to be taken into account (Steigenberger, 2015). Accordingly, the next section focusses on emotions.
Emotions
Literature on emotions contains different views on how emotions can be seen. Some academics state that there are “basic” emotions, which can be mixed to form new emotions, while others state that emotions are newly formed every time they arise and therefore an immeasurable amount of emotional states exist (Berscheid & Ammazzalorso, 2001). However, even within these two views there is disagreement concerning what “basic” emotions are and how many of them exist (Berscheid & Ammazzalorso, 2001). Additionally, there are academics who define emotions only as a valence, positive or negative, while others define emotions as a combination of valence and arousal, intensity of the emotion (Berscheid & Ammazzalorso, 2001; Maitlis et al., 2013). Research on emotions shows that emotions carrying valence and arousal are experienced more often and remembered better (Berscheid, 1990).
Mandler’s theory of emotion (1984) is used to show how emotions are considered in this study. In Mandler’s theory, emotions exist as response to a changing environment. When an environment is different and unfamiliar to individuals, individuals experience emotions and feel the need to take action. Moreover, individuals are cognitively sensitive to notice discrepancies and this leads to the occasion that individuals experience arousal combined with a positive or negative valence (Berscheid & Ammazzalorso, 2001). Examples of positive, activating emotions are excitement, hope and joy (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Russel, 2003) and examples of negative, deactivating emotions are anger, fear and frustration (Bartunek et al., 2006; Russell, 2003).
which emotions individuals experience during organizational change and see how this affects their sensemaking processes, because Maitlis and Sonenshein (2010) state that organizational change is often associated with negative emotions, which can impede sensemaking. However, they also argue that positive emotions are found in the context of organizational change and that these emotions have a positive effect on sensemaking.
The studies of Weick (1995), Dougherty and Drumheller (2006), and Steigenberger (2015) state that theoretically, emotions are involved in both the beginning and outcome of sensemaking: emotions can be triggers of sensemaking or emotions can result of sensemaking. Therefore, the role of emotions can be two-fold. However, the role of emotions has not been researched empirically. Accordingly, this study takes these theoretical ideas and research them empirically.
Emotions as trigger of sensemaking
Different studies argue that sensemaking derives from individual’s emotional reaction (Bartunek et al, 2006). Weick (1995) argues that if individuals face an interruption, e.g. implementation of organizational change, an emotional response is induced and these emotions are able to trigger sensemaking. This is in line with what Maitlis et al. (2013, p.230) say: “a novel or unexpected event leads to an emotional reaction, which signals the need for and energizes the sensemaker (to a greater or lesser degree) to develop an understanding of the situation”. Therefore, emotions deriving from unknown cues trigger sensemaking.
Additionally, Maitlis et al. (2013) argue that the kind of sensemaking in which individuals engage, is influenced by emotions. Individual’s degree of pleasantness when dealing with a situation in which individuals face uncertainty or ambiguity explains this. Research shows that people pay more attention to negative emotions than to positive emotions, because negative and positive emotions are differently experienced (Maitlis et al., 2013). Maitlis et al. (2013) cite different studies, which shows that positive emotions are interpreted as a sign of safety, while negative emotions are interpreted as a sign of problems. Accordingly, these emotions determine if individuals need an intensive sensemaking process or not. Individuals experiencing positive emotions will receive a signal that everything is going well and therefore do not need an intensive sensemaking process. Whereas individuals experiencing negative emotions receive a signal that it does not run smoothly and therefore need an intensive sensemaking process.
cues are flexible combined in order to develop new cues, it is a “both/and” process. In contrast, integrative sensemaking is a process where different cues are compared with each other to see whether they are consistent or not, and how to adapt these cues in order to develop new cues, this is more an “either/or” process (Maitlis, et al., 2013). Accordingly, individuals experiencing positive emotions engage in generative sensemaking, they do not need an intensive sensemaking process. While individuals experiencing negative emotions engage in integrative sensemaking. They need an intensive sensemaking process, because they search for new information and need to extensively process this information.
According to the literature, none of these two forms of sensemaking is better, but sometimes one form of sensemaking is more appropriate (Maitlis, et al., 2013). However, individuals’ emotions can change during sensemaking, and so the kind of sensemaking can (Maitlis, et al., 2013).
Figure 1 below presents the first conceptual model of this study. This conceptual model is based on the discussed literature above. As can be seen, this figure visualizes how employee’s initial emotions trigger sensemaking, which consists of perceiving cues, creating interpretation and enactment. Based on whether emotions are positive or negative, it will be determined in which kind of sensemaking employees engage, respectively generative or integrative sensemaking.
Emotions as result of sensemaking
existing interpretive schemes and accordingly they start trying to clarify what is going on based on their cognitive thoughts, i.e. ratio (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014).
According to Maitlis and Christianson (2014), studies on sensemaking in organizations have found different situations where violated expectations trigger sensemaking. For instance, environmental jolts, planned organizational change initiatives and organizational crises. In this study the implementation of a planned organizational change is considered as trigger of sensemaking as described by Maitlis and Christianson (2014). They mention that even if an event is planned, it always involves violations of individual’s expectations. This is in line with Balogun and Johnson (2005), who state that organizational change can be characterized as an unpredictable process of disrupting the ongoing flow of individuals’ thinking, where individuals experience discrepancy. Additionally, in this study employees are confronted with a change in the organizational structure and such a change creates contradictions and paradoxes (Lüscher & Lewis, 2008). To overcome these contradictions and paradoxes, individuals have to adapt their existing interpretive schemes into new ones (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014).
When individuals perceive a discrepancy and therefore need to adapt their interpretive schemes, their sensemaking is triggered by ratio. However, sensemaking processes influence emotional states developed by individuals (Steigenberger, 2015). During sensemaking, individuals interpret information. This can be influenced by emotions, because emotions are able to influence the process and content of thinking (Klarner, By & Diefenbach, 2011). Accordingly, individual’s interpretation regarding the change is created based on these emotions and this will influence individual’s emotional state, because individual’s interpretation and experienced emotions affect individual’s overall attitude towards change (Bouckenooghe, 2010). Positive emotions lead to positive attitudes, like readiness for change, while negative emotions lead to negative attitudes, like resistance to change (Bouckenooghe, 2010).
Theoretical summary
Literature regarding sensemaking and emotions show that emotions can play a role during sensemaking and influence the sensemaking process. From the literature it seems that the role of emotions can be two-fold. On one hand, emotions can function as trigger of sensemaking, while on the other hand emotional states can result of sensemaking. However, empirical research on sensemaking neglected emotions within this process, therefore it is not clear which role emotions actually play during sensemaking. Therefore, this empirical research attempts to address this gap by researching which role emotions play during employee sensemaking of organizational change. This is an exploratory research in which interviews are conducted with employees working in an organization which is implementing an organizational change. The apprehended methods and procedures will be clarified in the following section.
Methodology
The methodology section provides an overview and explanation of the methods used in this study. First, the research approach is explained. Second, the case is described, followed by a description of the data collection process. Finally, the method of analysis is explained and the quality criteria are discussed.
Research approach: a qualitative case study
To gain a better understanding of the role of emotions within employee sensemaking, the research question is an exploratory question, which creates the opportunity to apply a case study method (Yin, 2012). A case study emphasizes studying a phenomenon in a real-world context, i.e. collecting data in a natural setting, and is therefore able to provide rich descriptions or insightful explanations about the studied phenomenon (Yin, 2012). Collecting data in a natural setting is important for the topic of this study, because emotions are a sensitive topic. To obtain and clarify respondents’ real emotions it is necessary to do research in a natural setting. Another advantage of doing a case study is that its strength lies in the ability to deal with multiple sources of evidence, such as interviews, observations, and documents. In this study, interviews and documents are applied, this will be explained in more depth later.
In this study a holistic single-case study in one single organization is applied, fourteen employees are randomly selected from the entire organization. These employees are interviewed during a face-to-face interview, therefore the level of observation is at the individual level. The level of analysis is at the collective level, because in the analysis connections between the transcripts were examined and therefore conclusions will be drawn at the collective level.
Case description
The selected case for this study is a public health organization, GGD, which is implementing a change. This GGD is located in Friesland, the Netherlands, and has approximately 500 employees. Employees of GGD are performing different roles, ranging from working at an infant center to holding information sessions for prostitutes. This organization was chosen because GGD is implementing a structural change. GGD had a hierarchical organizational structure and wanted to change this to a more flat organizational structure, where employees are working in self-organized teams. These self-organized teams consist of employees of different disciplines. In order to bring this structural change around, a layer of middle managers was removed and instead teams got a team coach. However, four department managers stayed. The change to self-organized teams resulted in more responsibilities and necessary competencies for employees.
Data collection
The data for this study was obtained by two methods of data collection. The primary data was collected by conducting face-to-face, semi-structured interviews and the secondary data was collected by analyzing documents about the organizational change.
Interviews
In this study face-to-face, semi-structured (standardized open-ended) interviews were used. The aim of conducting interviews was to gain a deeper insight in the emotions and thoughts that employees felt with regard to the change and to see how this for example influenced their interpretations and actions. Moreover, emotions are a sensitive topic. With conducting interviews and creating a confidential atmosphere it was possible to bring these emotions to light.
According to Opdenakker (2006) conducting face-to-face interviews has some advantages. First, there is synchronous communication in time and place. This means that the interviewer and interviewee can directly react on each other. As a result, interviewee’s answers can be more spontaneous which enhances the possibility that his/her answer is honest instead of socially desirable. Second, conducting face-to-face interviews makes it possible to take advantage of social cues during data collection. These social cues, e.g. interviewee’s body language, can offer a lot of extra information added to the verbal answer given by the interviewee.
Semi-structured interviews were used because they use prepared questions about the concepts, while leaving room for the interviewee to elaborate on a given answer (Longhurst, 2003). Accordingly, a mix of structured and extra/follow-up questions was used, which made it possible to gain deeper insights on interviewee’s given answers. Moreover, by conducting semi-structured all interviewees were asked the same questions about the concepts. To ensure this, an interview guide was made (see Appendix A).
The questions included in the interview guide were divided into 5 categories. The first category consists of general questions regarding the organizational change, employees were asked ‘What is the goal of this change project?’ and ‘How did the change affect your daily
tasks?’. The next three categories consist of the three aspects of sensemaking (Weick 1988).
Regarding perceiving cues, employees were asked, e.g. ‘How did you notice that there was an
during the change process?’. Regarding the last part, enactment, employees were asked ‘What actions did you take based on your emotions?’ and ‘How did your emotions influence your behavior?’. The final category of the interview guide is about employees’ overall opinion and
emotions regarding the change, e.g. ‘What is your overall opinion about the change?’ and
‘What is your overall feeling about the change?’.
In total, fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted. Employees were randomly selected by email. An email was sent to GGD-employees with the question if they wanted to participate in this study. The employees had to fulfill one condition when participating in this research: they had to work at GGD before the implementation of the change started. This condition was necessary in order to ensure that the selected employees were really able to speak about how they made sense of the change. When employees fulfilled this condition and were willing to participate, they were selected. Moreover, it was made sure that the selected employees held different roles within the GGD, which enhanced the respondents reliability. To make sure that employees felt free to speak, the interviews were taken anonymously. Interviewees and their roles are shown in the table below.
contain open-ended questions, which result in comprehensive answers and it is difficult to write these down while doing an interview at the same time (Cohen & Crabtree, 2003). Additionally, using a tape recorder is more accurate than taking notes, therefore this enhances the reliability of this study (Opdenakker, 2006)
Documents about the transition to self-organized teams within the GGD
The GGD communication advisor provided Word documents regarding the transition to self-organized teams. The goal of obtaining these Word documents was to gather information and gain insights regarding the change to self-organized teams and what the change implied for employees. One of the provided documents described the need for change and in which way and how GGD would change. Moreover, this document described GGD’s plan for the future, focused on becoming sustainable and meeting the changing needs of their customers. Additionally, there was a document consisting of newsletters, written by management to keep employees up-to-date. Finally, there was a document named “Quickscan”, which contained an evaluation of the change, drafted by policy makers in order to document the course of events and the implementation of the change.
Data analysis
by Strauss and Corbin (1998) were made when interesting or noteworthy cases appeared. Additionally, it served as reminder of preliminary ideas of relationships between codes and important findings. During this study a memo was made, for instance when an interviewee talked about the discrepancy she perceived but also mentioned that she experienced emotions. After applying open codes to text fragments, they were grouped into categories, so called axial coding. During axial coding the relationships between open codes were identified and therefore they could be categorized. An example of an axial code used was ‘reaction towards change’, which corresponded with deductive codes like ‘resistance to change’, ‘readiness for change’ and ‘championing the change’ (Sonenshein, 2010). After this, a codebook was made, which can be found in Appendix B. The codebook shows all codes used and provides definitions of the codes and examples resulting from the data.
Finally, selective coding was used to explain the relationships between axial codes in order to provide an answer on the research question. The core category of this study was emotions and therefore all axial codes on emotions that influenced other codes were connected and interesting findings were identified. These findings are further explained in the results section.
Quality criteria
To ensure that this study contributes to literature in a valuable way, inter-subjective agreement had to be reached (Van Aken et al., 2012). To reach this, this study needed to satisfy the following criteria: controllability, reliability, and validity (Van Aken et al., 2012). According to Van Aken et al. (2012) controllability is the degree to which other researchers are able to imitate this study. To ensure this, the process of collecting and analyzing data were described in detail. Moreover, the interview guide makes the interviews controllable and the codebook provides insights in how coding the data looked like.
honestly and as a result gave general answers without explicitly saying what he/she really felt or experienced. To overcome this problem, some actions were taken. First, it was clearly stated that the interviews were confidential and only used for this study. Second, the data was anonymous so it is not possible to trace answers back to an employee. Third, the interviews were held in separate rooms with only the interviewee and interviewer. Finally, to ensure that employees felt confident, interviews looked like conversations and not like interviews with only asking questions and ticking boxes.
According to Van Aken et al. (2012, p. 209): “validity refers to the relationship between a research result or conclusion and the way it has been generated”. Construct validity was ensured by using interviews and documents as research instruments. Internal validity is reached by ruling out different possibilities of alternative explanations, which was done during the analysis. Finally, external validity was ensured by interviewing employees with different roles and from different teams of GGD.
Results
The results section presents the findings of the interviews and document analysis. The focus of this study is on the role of emotions during employee sensemaking and therefore the outline of this section is similar to the three aspects of sensemaking. First, the perceived cues and triggers of sensemaking were analyzed, followed by the aspect of creating interpretations and finally the third aspect, enactment. The role of emotions is addressed in each aspect. However, first of all GGD’s change is described, based on the documents gained at GGD.
During October 2015, the organization announced the change to self-organized teams and mentioned that this would be an organic process. Three years were given, to change to self-organized teams. During these three years not a lot of direction was given, teams had to work it out for themselves. After these three years, in 2018, an evaluation took place to see what still needs to be done. Resulting from the evaluation document, it became clear that not all teams were yet self-organized and therefore the development to self-organized teams needed to continue. During the evaluation, needs and bottlenecks came to light and from that moment the direction thought about this and evaluated what actions to take in order to make sure that all teams are self-organized by 2021 and GGD as organization future-proof.
Perceived cues
In this first aspect of sensemaking, employees notice and extract cues from the environment. The findings resulting from the interviews are described in order to see firstly, what kind of cues employees perceived and what triggered their sensemaking. Secondly, what kind of first impression regarding the change employees had directly after the change was introduced,and thirdly, how employees became aware of the change.
Perceived cues and triggers of sensemaking. The introduction of the change let employees perceive different cues, which subsequently led to different triggers of sensemaking. First, seven employees perceived cues like excitement and ambiguity. One employee described this perceived cue as: “The why and how behind the change were totally unclear to me.” (Interviewee 9). After experiencing these cues, employees expressed initial emotions. The data indicates that six out of seven employees expressed positive initial emotions. The positive emotions that were most mentioned were feelings of freedom and happiness. For example, Interviewee 2 mentioned: “Well, at the beginning I felt relieved and happy and I got energy
from it.” However, one employee expressed negative initial emotions. She mentioned: “Due to the uncertainty I felt restless and overwhelmed.” (Interviewee 9). Additionally, all seven
employees mentioned that their first impression regarding the change was based on their initial emotions. Therefore, employees’ initial emotions triggered their sensemaking process.
Second, the other seven employees perceived a cue, like discrepancy between the current way of working and the future state. These employees expected that due to the change, tasks regarding their work needed to be performed in different ways. One employee described this perceived discrepancy as follows: “Because maybe you need to do tasks which you have
employees mentioned that after experiencing this discrepancy, they based their first impression towards the change on their ratio and therefore responded to the change with their ratio. Accordingly, employees’ ratio triggered their sensemaking process.
However, almost all employees (13/14) confirmed that they experienced either positive or negative emotions during this aspect of sensemaking. This is obviously the case if emotions trigger employee sensemaking, but even if ratio triggers employee sensemaking, employees experienced emotions. The analyzed data suggests that employees whose sensemaking is triggered by ratio, experienced a variety of initial emotions. The initial emotions that were most mentioned were happiness and skepticism. These skeptical emotions were based on employees experience in the organization and with previous changes, as Interviewee 4 mentioned: “I felt
like oh yeah… a change again. That makes me feel skeptical.” and Interviewee 7 said: “Due to the previous changes, I felt skeptical in the beginning.” Besides positive or negative initial
emotions, one employee mentioned that she did not experience a particular initial emotion towards the change. She felt neither positive nor negative initial emotions. She mentioned: “I
did not have feelings regarding the change, I just thought oh okay we are going to change.”
(Interviewee 8). Therefore, this employee experienced neutral initial emotions.
Employee’s first impression regarding the change. The transcribed data shows that employees based their first impression regarding the change either on their ratio or on their emotions. Subsequently, employees hold different first impressions with respect to the change. Eight employees had a positive first impression, three employees had a negative first impression, and two employees had a mixed first impression. Looking at the initial emotions underlying these different kinds of first impression, the following proved interesting. Employees experiencing positive initial emotions, had a positive or mixed first impression towards the change. An example of this is given by Interviewee 11, who experienced positive initial emotions: “I felt
happiness.” and had a positive first impression of the change: “In my opinion it is a beautiful development.” Besides, employees experiencing negative initial emotions, had a negative first
impression. One employee mentioned the following about her experienced initial emotions and first impression: Well, I was not angry but the change made me feel irritated.” and “Uhm, well
my first impression was like uhm, we need to, we need to do something again…” (Interviewee
Becoming aware of the change. During the interviews it appeared that employees became aware of the change in different ways. Six employees became aware of the change due to an announcement of the manager, either in person or by mail. Next to this, two employees became aware due to the change itself. These two employees experienced differences in the organization and as a result they noticed that the change was upcoming, Interviewee 12 described this as follows: “Well, first of all a layer of management was removed, we had a
manager, but she was taken away. This was the first thing we noticed.” The employees who
became aware of the change due to manager’s announcement or the change itself, mentioned that they expected the change beforehand. Interviewee 5 mentioned: “I expected it, because it
happened also in other organizations and I noticed that our way of working did not longer fit.”
However, there were also employees who were not able to say how they became aware of the change, because they did not expect the change. They experienced the change as surprise: “No,
in my opinion it was just a surprise. I was also thinking like huh what?” (Interviewee 9).
Additionally, by looking at employees’ initial emotions and first impression of the change related to what extent employees expected the change, the following stands out. Employees expecting the change, experienced positive initial emotions and as a result, they had a positive or mixed first impression regarding the change. This is contradictory to the three employees who experienced the change as surprise, because they experienced negative initial emotions and consequently, had a negative first impression.
Creating interpretations
In this second aspect of sensemaking, employees start clarifying what is going on around them. The findings of the interviews are described in order to see firstly, how employees created an interpretation: individually or together. Secondly, which factors were of influence when employees created their interpretation, and thirdly, the extent to which employees perceived difficulties in understanding the change.
meetings. This is further described under the section Enactment because it is about the actions taken by employees.
Factors influencing employee’s interpretation. Resulting from the data it appears that employees interpreted the change in different ways. Seven employees created a negative interpretation during the transition, while the other seven created a positive interpretation. The employees who created a negative interpretation, mentioned that they had doubts about the content of the transition, experienced uncertainty and were afraid that the change was too big for them to work with. The employees who created a positive interpretation, mentioned that they saw the need for change and experienced the advantages of the transition.
Two factors, which (in) directly influence employee’s interpretation during the transition arose from the data. First, emotions. The data showed that all fourteen employees experienced some kind of emotions when creating an interpretation regarding the change. Most employees (10/14) experienced both positive and negative emotions, so called mixed emotions. Interviewee 11 described these mixed emotions as follows: “I felt combative but I felt also
frustration.” Next to this, there were four employees who experienced either only positive or
only negative emotions during change, such as enthusiasm or frustration.
Emotions experienced by employees during the transition are directly influencing employees’ interpretation because the data indicates that employees’ emotions during the transition and the created interpretation are in line. The data shows that employees who experienced mixed emotions during the change, created an interpretation in line with these emotions. This is also the case when employees experienced either positive or negative emotions during the transition. They created respectively a positive or negative interpretation. This is shown by Interviewee 4 who described her emotions during the transition as: “I felt
really happy.” and mentioned about her interpretation of the change: “I thought come on, we are going to do this with all of us, together!” Moreover, the data provides additional evidence
that employees’ emotions influence their interpretations. Only when employees experience emotions during change, which differ from their initial emotions, their interpretation changed. The second factor which influences employees’ interpretation, is that employees gained experience during the transition. This factor is of indirect influence on employees’ interpretation and is described under the section Enactment.
did not. The data shows that the ten employees having difficulties in understanding the change, experienced the implementation of the change as something which was rigorously implemented from the top where no rules and frames were given. Employees mentioned the following about the implementation of the change: “I have the feeling that it is imposed on us.” (Interviewee 14) and “The change was too fast, too rigorous.” (Interviewee 2). To overcome these difficulties in understanding, the ten employees tried to gather information on the change in different ways. These employees had conversations with their colleagues or manager and searched for information themselves.
However, the four employees who did not have difficulties in understanding the change, experienced the implementation of the change as a step-by-step process. They mentioned that they got three years for implementing the change and that they could do it on their own tempo. The analyzed data shows that those four employees searched either for more information themselves or they did not look for more information. Interviewee 13 mentioned the following:
“I did not do anything, I am not going to read books about the transition to self-organized teams or whatever.”
In addition, from the data arose that employees having difficulties in understanding the change, experienced different kind of emotions than those who did not have difficulties in understanding the change. Employees having difficulties in understanding the change, experienced negative initial emotions and negative or mixed emotions during change, such as skepticism and a feeling of being lost: “I experienced a form of lostness, I felt lost.” (Interviewee 3). However, three out of four employees who did not have difficulties in understanding the change, experienced positive initial emotions and positive emotions during change, like excitement and a feeling of being energized: “I felt energized, it feels like a
challenge.” (Interviewee 5).
Enactment
Employee’s gained experience affects employee’s interpretation. Results so far show that emotions are the first factor, which directly influence employees’ interpretation of the change. However, resulting from the data there is a second factor, which indirectly influence employees’ interpretation, i.e. the factor that employees gained experience. This second factor is described here, because this factor arises when employees took actions and dealt with the change, which is part of Enactment. Employees gained experience because they dealt with the change and as a result they experienced the drawbacks and benefits of the change. Drawbacks refer to the negative consequences of the change, such as getting too much responsibility, as mentioned by Interviewee 13: “Everyone wants something of you, you have too much responsibility.” Besides, benefits refer to the positive consequences of the change. An example of experiencing a benefit is given by Interviewee 4, who mentioned: “Due to being self-organized you can make
your own decisions, that is nice.”
The data indicates that employees experiencing the drawbacks of the change, experienced other emotions than employees experiencing the benefits of the change. Employees experiencing drawbacks, experienced negative emotions and employees experiencing benefits, experienced positive emotions. Therefore, the fact that employees gained experience affects their emotions, and based on these emotions and experience, employees created interpretation with regard to the change.
Desire to take action and employee’s role. Further analysis shows that employees differ in the extent to which they have the desire to take action. Subsequently, which roles employees played during the change, i.e. either an active or passive role, differed as well. Eleven out of fourteen employees had a desire to take action. This desire to take action was based on the idea that these employees wanted to transfer their positivity to their colleagues and wanted to make their voice heard. An example of this is given by Interviewee 1: “I wanted to convey my colleagues.” Consequently, these eleven employees described their role during the implementation of the change as being active. Interviewee 4 mentioned: “Within the team, I played an active role. We
needed to do this with all of us and I took the role of leader.”
However, there were also three employees who mentioned that they did not have the desire to take action. The reason underlying was that employees thought and felt that they could not do anything due to the uncertainty. As a result, these three employees were passive during the implementation of the change.
initial emotions and positive or mixed emotions during change. While all passive employees experienced negative initial emotions and negative emotions during change. This is illustrated by Interviewee 3, who described her role as: “Personally I just waited and let the change
coming to me.” and her emotions as: “I felt frustrated, yeah.” and “I felt very sorry for that and I was also a little bit angry.”
Employee’s reaction towards change. The data indicates that employees responded differently towards the change. In this study two employees showed resistance towards change. One of these two employees described her reaction as resisting the change for a period, and the other employee described her reaction as evolving and ended up in showing resistance for some time. Furthermore, there were nine employees who showed readiness for change and one employee who was championing the change. These employees mentioned that they felt positive regarding the change and were willing to change. Interviewee 2 described her reaction as: “My reaction
was positive because I noticed that we could make our own decisions due to the change.”
Additionally, two employees did not show a reaction like resistance, readiness, or championing. These two employees mentioned that they could not remember their reaction towards change. However, one employee remembered that she found the timing of the change undesirable, while the other employee mentioned that she felt shocked when confronted with the change: “I
thought: what are we going to do? What do they want?” (Interviewee 9).
The data indicates that the reactions shown by employees are in line with the emotions experienced during change. The two employees showing resistance, experienced negative emotions during change, and the ten employees who were either ready for or championing the change, experienced positive or mixed emotions during change.
Employee’s type of sensemaking: generative versus integrative. In this study three factors are analyzed to see whether employees engaged in generative or integrative sensemaking. These factors are: 1. The extent to which employees searched for more information, 2. What kind of emotions employees experienced, and 3. How employees perceived that their image of GGD changed.
contacting others, searching for more information themselves on the Internet, or by reading books about the transition to self-organized teams.
2. The data indicates that employees experienced negative, positive or mixed emotions during change. The most mentioned negative emotions were frustration and disappointment, as shown by Interviewee 13: “Well, if everything takes so much time, you feel frustrated and
dissatisfied, right?”. Positive emotions were described as happiness and enthusiasm, and mixed
emotions were a mix of experiencing both positive and negative emotions at the same time. Interviewee 6 described her mixed emotions as: “I got energy from it and it felt like
self-development, so that is nice… but when having a team meeting and the topic is the same as always I felt frustrated and irritated.”
3. During the interviews one question was asked about how the employees perceived that their image of GGD changed. All fourteen employees mentioned that their image of GGD slightly changed due to the transition. They said that the GGD is still a bureaucratic organization, but due to the change, some small adjustments were made. An example of an adjustment is given by Interviewee 13 who mentioned the following: “There is now more scope
for thinking along and expressing opinions.”
Employee’s type of sensemaking: social versus individual. The final insight resulting from the data regards which actions employees took in order to create an interpretation of the change. These actions then determine in which type of sensemaking employees engage, either social or individual sensemaking. Data shows that employees took different actions to create an interpretation of the change. Almost all employees (13/14) took at least two of the following actions: 1. They had contact with their colleagues or manager about the change, 2. They attended information meetings or 3. They looked for information about the change by themselves. As a result, these employees engaged in social sensemaking because they created an interpretation with the help of others. However, there is one employee who created an interpretation by only searching for information herself and did not have contact with others about the change. She mentioned that she followed the information on the Intranet and read a book concerning the transition to self-organized teams: “I read that book about uhm, uh
“verdraaide management” (Interviewee 8). Therefore, this employee engaged in individual
sensemaking.
as neutral: “Well, I felt neutral. I did not experience feelings, like yippee now is everything going
to change or something.” (Interviewee 8). Additionally, the data shows that after employees
engaged in social sensemaking, they experienced still positive or negative emotions. Eight employees currently feel satisfied, as mentioned by Interviewee 3: At the moment I feel well,
satisfied, yes.”, while 5 employees feel dissatisfied: “At the moment, it is not working for me. We have to work more and more…” (Interviewee 13). Moreover, the employee who did not
experience any particular initial emotion, did also not experience emotions after engaging in individual sensemaking.
Discussion
This sections presents the interpretation of the empirical findings resulting from this study. Accordingly, the empirical findings will be discussed and compared to existing literature. After that, the theoretical and managerial implications are presented, followed by the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research. Finally, the answer to the research question is provided in the conclusion.
The aim of this study was to explore which role emotions play in employee sensemaking during organizational change. Hence the research question of this study was: “How do emotions
influence employee sensemaking during organizational change?” This study showed that
emotions are present throughout employees’ entire sensemaking process. Next, the exact role played by emotions in each aspect will be discussed.
Proposition 1: Positive emotions are able to trigger employee sensemaking.
In addition, this study shows that emotions do not only trigger sensemaking, they are also present if employee’s sensemaking process is triggered by ratio. Since these employees also experience emotions during this aspect of sensemaking. Accordingly, this study shows that emotions are always present during the first aspect of sensemaking, even when they are not the triggers. This is in contrast to the theoretical statements of Dougherthy and Drumheller (2006), Steigenberger (2015) and Weick (1995), because they only recognized emotions in the role of triggering sensemaking during this aspect. Next to this, this study finds that employees’ initial emotions affect their first impression regarding the change because employees’ initial emotions and first impression are in line with each other.
Proposition 2: Employees are not only experiencing emotions when their sensemaking process is triggered by their emotions but also when their sensemaking process is triggered by their ratio, and these emotions influence employee’s first impression regarding the change.
Second, creating interpretations. Concerning this study it appears that two factors were (in) directly influencing interpretations created by employees. First, this study shows that employees created interpretations in line with their experienced emotions. This is illustrated by the following finding: if employees’ emotions changed, their interpretations changed as well and if employees’ emotions remained the same, their interpretation remained the same. Therefore, emotions are directly influencing employee’s interpretation. This is in line with Barret and Russell (1998), Bartunek et al. (2006), Sonenshein (2009) and Steigenberger (2015), who mentioned that emotions shape individuals’ interpretation. Second, this study found another factor that indirectly influences employee’s interpretation: employee’s gained experience. As employees gained experience in the transition, they experienced drawbacks and benefits of the change, which subsequently directly influenced their emotions and therefore indirectly their interpretation. This is in line with Weick (1988, 1995), who mentioned that employees’ actions are able to influence their interpretation.
finding contradicts the existing literature because that states that interpretations are based on both the affective and cognitive component (Steigenberger, 2015).
Besides creating interpretations, this aspect is also about understanding the change. This study shows that some employees experienced difficulties in understanding the change, whereas others did not. This can be explained by the fact that employees experienced different emotions. Employees having negative emotions, experienced difficulties in understanding, while those who had positive emotions, did not experience difficulties. Therefore, this study confirms Maitlis and Sonenshein (2010), who suggest that negative emotions can impede sensemaking and positive emotions can have a positive effect on sensemaking.
Proposition 3: Employee’s emotions are the most influential when employees create an interpretation regarding the change and emotions determine if employees experience difficulties in understanding the change.
Third, enactment. This study shows that during the last aspect of sensemaking, employees differs in their desire to take actions and as a consequence which role they played. Regarding employees’ roles during sensemaking, a distinction can be made between employees who played an active role or those who were passive. This result confirms the study of Bartunek et al. (2006), who found that not everyone is passive during change, but employees can play active roles. Interview output reveals that employees who were either active or passive experienced different emotions. Active employees experienced positive emotions, whereas passive employees experienced negative emotions. So emotions’ valence influences employee’s role during change. Moreover, which reaction was shown by employees corresponds with their emotions’ valence. Employees experiencing positive or mixed emotions showed readiness, while employees experiencing negative emotions showed resistance. However, Piderit (2000) and Sonenshein (2010) found that individuals showing resistance do not have the intention to take action, whereas individuals showing readiness do have the intention to take action. This is not in line with the results of this study, because employees showing resistance played an active role during change, and two employees showing readiness, were passive during change.
In existing literature, it is stated that emotions influence the kind of sensemaking employees engage in, either generative or integrative sensemaking (Maitlis et al., 2013). They argue that individuals who actively search for more information and have negative emotions engage in integrative sensemaking, while individuals who do not explicitly search for more information and have positive emotions engage in generative sensemaking. This is contradicting to the findings of this study. This study reveals that employees who did not actively search for more information, experienced negative emotions, while employees who actively searched for more information, experienced positive or mixed emotions. Furthermore, all employees mentioned that their image of GGD slightly changed.
Proposition 5: Employees can engage in generative sensemaking when experiencing positive or mixed emotions and if they actively search for more information.
Finally, this study confirms that sensemaking does not always happen in isolation, which is in line with Weick (1995). Results show that almost all employees engaged in social sensemaking because they had contact with others in order to create an interpretation regarding the change. However, one employee engaged in individual sensemaking because she searched for more information only by herself. Emotions experienced by employees can be the reason why employees engaged in either social or individual sensemaking. This case study shows that employees experiencing positive or negative initial emotions engaged in social sensemaking, while employees who did not experience any particular initial emotions engaged in individual sensemaking.
Proposition 6: Employees’ initial emotions determine in what kind of sensemaking they engage.
Theoretical and managerial implications
study contributes to this literature by showing that emotions are not only present during the first aspect of sensemaking in the role of triggering sensemaking processes, but emotions are also present when sensemaking processes are triggered by ratio.
Second, this study contributes to the literature on triggers of sensemaking by showing that positive emotions are also able to trigger sensemaking, which enhances the arguing of Maitlis et al. (2013) on emotions as triggers of sensemaking.
Third, this study shows that employee’s experienced emotions and interpretation are in line during the entire sensemaking process. Additionally, emotions are the most influential factor on which employees created interpretations. This is a contribution to existing literature on sensemaking, because emotions are often neglected in the interpretation phase. Most empirical studies focused here on the cognitive component (Ercison, 2001; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Moreover, this contributes to existing literature on sensemaking, because Steigenberger (2015) argues that interpretations are based on both the affective and cognitive component.
Finally, this study contributes to the literature on generative sensemaking as meant by Maitlis et al. (2013), as this study shows that employees can also engage in this kind of sensemaking when experiencing positive or mixed emotions and actively search for more information.
The managerial contribution of this study is related to new insights for managers into their employee sensemaking when implementing an organizational change. Due to this study, managers know how employee’s sensemaking process can be triggered and which role emotions play during this entire process. Accordingly, managers can take this into account and deal with it in an appropriate way in order to achieve the desirable outcome of change (Bartunek et al., 2006). For instance, this study shows that employees experiencing the change as surprise, experienced negative initial emotions and subsequently had a negative first impression of the change. This in contrast to employees expecting the change, because they experienced positive emotions and consequently had a positive first impression. This can be valuable for managers to know, as they can take this into account.
Research limitations and further research
when confronted with the change for the first time and figure out their emotions. Now, this is only researched by conducting interviews and it is possible that this is not totally representative, because employees needed to remember their emotions and thoughts from three years ago. As a consequence interviewees sometimes had difficulties remembering their initial emotions and interpretation. Hence, a recommendation for future research is to conduct research directly after the organizational change is introduced to employees.
Second, this study is a holistic single-case study and therefore the generalizability of the results is limited. Since interviews were only held in one type of organization it is difficult to generalize the results which are found by this study. Therefore a recommendation for future research is to research employee sensemaking and emotions in different types of organizations. Third, this study is executed by one researcher and therefore findings can be biased. Finally, the last recommendation for future research is to test the propositions deriving from this study.
Conclusion
