THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGERS’ SENSEGIVING ON THE
EMOTIONS OF EMPLOYEES DURING ORGANIZATIONAL
CHANGE: A QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY
Master Thesis
MSc BA Change Management University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
June 24, 2019
Supervisor: dr. I. Maris-de Bresser Co-assessor: dr. C. Reezigt
Liesanne Veenstra
S3539865
l.veenstra.10@student.rug.nl
Abstract
Employees’ emotions are often neglected in research regarding sensegiving during organizational change, even though a growing body of literature acknowledges emotions as determinant of employees’ initial responses towards change initiatives. The aim of this research is to investigate the degree to which managers’ sensegiving has influence on those emotions of employees during organizational change in order to manage their initial responses. Therefore, a single case study has been conducted at an organization in the financial services industry. In total, fifteen interviews have been conducted of which three with managers and twelve with employees. It turned out that among several other factors, managers’ sensegiving does have an influence on employees’ emotions, at the introduction of the change as well as during the change process. In particular, it appeared that the use of a discursive sensegiving strategy, i.e. openness and transparency, or an encouraging sensegiving strategy especially had a positive influence on employees’ emotions. It can be concluded that in order to increase the likelihood that employees will respond positively to organizational change, managers should actively try to understand and manage their emotions.
Introduction
In today’s organizations, change is the only constant factor (Hogan & Warrenfeltz, 2003; Jones, 2010). While being indispensable, organizational change is still a very complex phenomenon. The results of a McKinsey & Company survey indicate that 70 percent of all change initiatives fail due to employee resistance or lack of management support (Ewenstein, Smith & Sologar, 2003). Recent research has argued that the success of a change initiative depends strongly on the initial reactions of the recipients of change, i.e. the employees in an organization (Sparr, 2018). In trying to explain the factors influencing these initial responses, prior research has mainly focused on the cognitive process of how employees’ initial reactions emerge in order to create a perception and interpretation of the change initiative (Steigenberger, 2015). However, humans are not purely cognitive beings. The introduction of a complex event, such as organizational change, is laden with affective experiences and can cause a variety of emotional reactions among employees (Bekmeier-Feuerbahn, 2016). Other research suggests that employees’ initial reactions are heavily impacted by several emotions that employees experience during the introduction of change, which will in turn determine their attitude towards the change initiative (Kotter, 1995; Strebel, 1996; Klarner, By & Diefenbach, 2011). Thus, employees’ emotions should not be neglected when introducing a change initiative.
In order to create a shared understanding towards supporting a change initiative, managers use sensegiving as an attempt to influence their employees (Kraft, Sparr & Peus, 2015). According to Gioia & Chittipeddi (1991: p. 442), sensegiving can be defined as “the attempt to shape the interpretations of others towards a preferred redefinition of the situation”. Through the use of sensegiving, managers could shape the initial reactions of their employees to facilitate desired responses towards the change process. Nevertheless, in order to successfully shape employees’ initial reactions to change, there has to be a clear understanding of how these initial reactions emerge. As was already mentioned in the previous paragraph, employees’ initial reactions to change are strongly influenced by their emotions in response to the introduction of a change initiative. This was also explained by Klarner et al. (2011), who suggest that resistance to change results from negative emotions, whilst positive emotions help employees to cope with change, as they increase the level of commitment and emotional engagement to the organization. Thus, emotions appear to play a crucial role in shaping, directing and priming individual sensemaking during organizational change, and as such their responses to the change.
emotions in sensemaking has been growing, there is still a gap in literature regarding the role of sensegiving in managing employees’ emotions during organizational change. It is important to close this gap, since sensegiving is a key activity during organizational change and cannot be fully utilized if emotions, as determinants of initial responses, are not considered. The need for such a research is also discussed in the recent study of Will & Pies (2018), who suggest that managers need to understand how effective sensegiving requires an understanding of employees’ emotions that might emerge during organizational change. When managers acknowledge the importance of emotions and understand how they can exploit their sensegiving to influence those emotions, which in turn will influence employees’ responses to organizational change, organizations will increase the quality of their change management and more change initiatives will likely to be implemented successfully (Steigenberger, 2015; Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010).
Therefore, the research question in this study is: “How do the sensegiving processes of managers influence the emotions of employees during a period of organizational change?” The aim of this research is to investigate the degree to which managers can influence the emotions, and with that the responses, of their employees through sensegiving. This study strives to accomplish four objectives. The first objective is to provide a clear understanding, and a structured overview, of the current literature regarding sensegiving. Further, the second objective is to gain more knowledge about the particular employees’ emotions that arise during an organizational change process. The third objective is to investigate which sensegiving strategies are being used by managers during organizational change. Finally, the fourth objective is to understand which sensegiving strategies are effective in managing employees’ emotions in order to obtain a positive response to change.
emotions. Next to the theoretical relevance, this study has relevance for practice as well. Through creating an understanding of the emotions that emerge during organizational change which in turn determine employees’ initial responses, managers can better exploit and adapt their sensegiving strategies in order to manage those employees’ emotions. Consequently, this will increase the amount of successful change initiatives as well as the quality of an organization’s change management practices.
This paper has the following structure. After this introduction, the main theoretical concepts will be discussed in the literature review, including sensegiving, employees’ emotions and the role of emotion during the process of sensegiving. Then, the next chapter presents the methodology that is used to conduct this research. After that, the findings from the data analysis are presented in the next chapter, followed by a discussion of those findings in the final chapter including theoretical and managerial contributions and suggestions for future research.
Literature Review
In this chapter, the concept of sensegiving is thoroughly described, including the definition of sensegiving, sensegiving strategies and contextual factors, followed by a review of the current literature on emotions. The chapter concludes with a brief review of the literature that has already paid attention to the role of emotions in sensegiving with the aim of stating the directions this study is taking.
The Concept of Sensegiving
Definition of sensegiving. As defined in the introduction, sensegiving is “the process
sensegiving throughout the last decades are discussed to get a comprehensive view of sensegiving.
Especially in times of change, where multiple interests are at stake, managers engage in sensegiving to affect another person’s initial response towards a specific direction (Kraft, Sparr & Peus, 2016). With the use of sensegiving, managers communicate the need for change and aim to manage their employees’ uncertainty (Sparr, 2018). As Van den Bos (2009) argues, the more something is meaningful to an individual, the less they feel uncertain. So, as has been discussed in multiple studies, the ultimate desired outcome of sensegiving is to create a shared understanding of the change initiative (Smith, Plowman & Duchon, 2010; Vlaar Fenema & Tiwari, 2008; Kraft et al., 2015). In addition, Maitlis & Christianson (2014) argue that if managers accomplish to successfully influence the sensemaking of their employees, these employees will feel more motivated to change their roles and practices. The empirical study of Kraft et al. (2016) adds to that, that creating a shared understanding of a change initiative through sensegiving can foster a positive attitude toward the change. Thus, an essential task of managers is to pay attention to how their employees make sense of the change and use their sensegiving to let the change initiative succeed.
The fact that managers can use their sensegiving to let a change initiative succeed has also been studied by Kraft et al. (2016). They explained the potential success of sensegiving through the leader-member exchange theory (LMX). This theory suggests that leader sensegiving and employee sensemaking can be seen as an exchange process: leaders provide their sensegiving to their employees to help them cope with the organizational changes, whereas in exchange, employees develop a positive attitude toward the change. The authors state that the willingness of employees to be positive toward the change depends on the degree to which a leader uses targeted and relevant sensegiving activities.
the change process. They conclude that the CEO, together with the top management team, should be seen as the architects, assimilators and facilitators of strategic change and are the main “sensegivers” during this process.
In contrast to Gioia & Chittipeddi (1991), another body of the literature focuses on the role of middle managers and sensegiving during organizational change (Balogun, 2003; Balogun & Johnson, 2004). These studies suggest that middle managers have an intermediary role during organizational change, because they both have to make sense of and cope with the information that they get from the top and interpret and translate it to pass it on to the employees. According to Balogun (2003), middle managers have four inter-related roles during change: undertaking personal change, helping others through change, implementing necessary changes in their departments and keeping the business going. From this part of literature, it can be concluded that a hierarchical position can provide privileges for the effect of sensegiving, but it does not necessarily have to be the most senior position within the organization.
Altogether, every manager can engage in sensegiving to influence their employees. As Maitlis & Lawrence (2007) conclude in their study, sensegiving can be a crucial element in facilitating acceptance, enthusiasm and energy for organizational change. However, sensegiving does not automatically happen and managers have to carefully choose their strategies. Therefore, in the next part, the possible strategies of sensegiving are discussed, followed by a discussion regarding context-specific triggers of sensegiving that have been studied in the past decades.
Strategies of sensegiving. Most of the literature regarding sensegiving strategies
metaphors and artifacts. As Maitlis (2005) explains, such a symbolic activity can represent a certain idea regarding the change initiative and so give sense, and thus, influence others. Another distinction in strategies is discussed in the study of Sharma & Good (2013). These authors distinguish between two separate strategies of sensegiving: sensegiving through situated discourse, where managers actively share the rationales behind the decisions that have to be made during the change process, and sensegiving by designing structures, where the manager structurally defines expectations, creating roles and clear time lines to achieve goals and provide clarity to the employees. The authors acknowledge that both processes can interact with each other. These strategies are somewhat in line with the level of sensegiving that Will & Pies (2018) suggest. They have applied the ordonomic approach to the concept of sensegiving and found out that two activities can help to guide how employees will perceive change: provide the situational logic, which can be compared to the situated discourse, and the use of discourse, which is partly in line with both strategies of Sharma & Good (2013).
As can be concluded, sensegiving can be executed in many forms depending on the situation. In their empirical study, Balogun & Johnson (2004) discuss that whatever strategy may be used, it is important that change recipients develop new understanding and interpretations of the organizational change. They add that change recipients not only make sense of the sensegiving from their superiors, but also from stories, gossip, behavior, actions, discussion and sharing of personal experiences of their peers. Hence, there are many strategies for sensegiving, but it is not clear whether these strategies actually contribute to the effectiveness of sensegiving or not. However, one strategy has been found to be ineffective for giving sense to employees, which has been studied by Stensaker et al. (2008). They found that the use of plans to reach a shared understanding of organizational change is insufficient to actually gain that shared understanding. The reason why the use of plans is insufficient, is that plans are often not used.
that in some instances, standard templates and methods were used to provide clarity and understanding, and in other instances, team members provided each other with explanations about the reasons and backgrounds for their decision-making. A third approach to sensegiving was the use of examples, analogies, and metaphors. The strategy of sensegiving that was used by the team members depended on the other’s needs. So, the form that a manager’s sensegiving should take was dependent on the needs of the recipients. These findings are in line with the study of Kraft et al. (2015), who have stated that sensegiving is not a context-free activity at all, which means that the needs of recipients as well as other contextual factors have to be taken into account. This is discussed in the next section.
Contextual factors. In order to create a shared interpretation and understanding of a
change initiative, managers have to consider the current state and needs of their employees to adjust their sensegiving strategy upon (Kraft et al., 2015; Kraft et al., 2016). Consequently, Vlaar et al. (2018) argues that an incongruent understanding of employees’ needs frequently causes problems in communication which produces outcomes that are inconsistent with other’s expectations or reduced value creation.
Moreover, Maitlis & Lawrence (2007) have studied the triggers and enablers of sensegiving in organizations through a longitudinal, qualitative study in 27 domains across three organizations. Their main findings were that managers were only triggered to engage actively in sensegiving when their own perceptions of the issue were uncertain or ambiguous, and when the issue was associated with complex stakeholder interests. Furthermore, they conclude that a high level of sensegiving will be enabled under the conditions that the managers have significant expertise regarding the issue and when the issue arises in an area in which the organization performs strongly. Finally, Kraft et al. (2015) argue that the degree to which sensegiving is received and incorporated by employees depends on the social context within which the sensegiving process occurs. Especially when external factors, i.e. other influences from the environment such as colleagues, become more important, the sensegiving activities from leaders can have limited impact on their employees.
to Green & Haidt (2002), an individual’s response to a triggering event mainly depends on affect-laden intuition. This is confirmed by Steigenberger (2015), who adds that experiencing an ambiguous or unexpected event, such as organizational change, is particularly laden with emotions. However, the role of employees’ emotions in relation to managers’ sensegiving during organizational change is little addressed in current literature. Therefore, the role of emotions during organizational change should not be neglected and is discussed in the next section of this literature review.
Employees’ Emotions
Definition of emotions. Maitlis, Vogus & Lawrence (2013, p. 233) define emotions as
“a transient feeling state with an identified cause or target that can be expressed verbally or non-verbally”. In addition, Kiefer (2005) suggests that emotions can be seen as a specific reaction to an event, which indicates the importance of the event to the individual. Thus, emotions result from an individual’s evaluation of the meaningfulness of such an event. Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010) distinguish two categories of emotions, felt emotions and expressed emotions. Felt emotions shape the meaning that an individual makes of an event, which results in an interpretation, whereas expressed emotions are the emotions shown by an individual, which provide valuable data about how they feel. However, the felt emotion of an individual can differ from his/her expressed emotion.
Emotions are triggered by certain cues and alert people to unexpected events (Maitlis et al., 2013). They influence how issues or events are interpreted, beliefs are constructed, and decisions are made. Also, in the empirical study of Bekmeier-Feuerhahn (2016), she found that emotions are a source of information in complex and novel situations, and substantially affect judgment processes before individuals can behave. This is explained by Will & Pies (2018), who suggest that emotions are a cognitive solution dealing with unexpected, complex events in which people are not likely to react rationally. This is in line with the study of Bartunek, Balogun & Do (2011) who argue that individuals tend to make judgments that are consistent with their felt emotions. Moreover, Steigenberger (2015) argues that emotions have a predictable influence on human behavior, which implies that some consequences of occurring emotions on human behavior can be predictable.
change, which seems to be an important trigger for emotional responses. This is discussed in the next section.
Emotions during organizational change. According to Steigenberger (2015), the
introduction of a change initiative triggers a variety of emotional responses because it is an unexpected, uncertain event that has the potential to threaten an individual’s material wellbeing or status. Such emotional responses could be either negative, like fear and anger, or positive, like hope. In addition, Bekmeier-Feuerhahn (2016) argues that individuals can feel anxious, frightened or frustrated, but also hopeful or pleasant in response to organizational change. Altogether, it can be stated that organizational change triggers different emotional responses that have to be taken in consideration.
The basic assumption in much of the literature is that organizational change triggers mainly negative emotions. For example, Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010) argue that crisis situations, such as organizational change, are often triggers of intense negative emotions, for instance fear, panic or desperation. But also lower arousal emotions, such as sadness and guilt can be triggered by change. Will & Pies (2018) add to that, that negative emotional responses to change are often strong triggers for resistance. According to Kiefer (2005), another consequence of negative emotions is a decrease in trust in the management, which obstructs the change process.
Even though much of the literature is focused on the negative emotional responses triggered by organizational change, there is a body of literature that argues that change can also trigger positive emotions. Bartunek et al. (2011) suggest that change recipients do not automatically react negatively to change, and that they could also experience positive emotions, such as happiness, enjoyment and enthusiasm. These positive emotions occur when change recipients perceive support, trust and fairness from the change agents. Actually, these emotions might be beneficial. Kraft et al. (2015) suggest that positive emotions, such as excitement and enthusiasm, have positive effects on their attitudes towards organizational change. In addition, Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010) suggest that positive emotions are important resources in building capacity, increasing resilience and the ability to cope with stressors. The consequences of positive emotions have been discussed by Will & Pies (2018), who argue that individuals perceive organizational change as something they should support, resulting from positive emotions.
emotions construct a positive judgment. However, neither positive, nor negative emotions are fixed states that are always experienced in the same way. Bartunek et al. (2011) suggest that emotions are transient and evolve over time. As organizational change goes through different stages over time, so do change recipients’ emotions. Thus, understanding and monitoring employees’ emotions is a crucial task of change management. In fact, in the recent work of Will & Pies (2018), they suggest that emotions that emerge during organizational change are too important to be ignored. Therefore, as sensegiving is a part of change management, a thorough understanding of how to influence and manage employees’ emotions in order to create positive responses towards the change is required.
Role of Sensegiving in Managing Emotions
As discussed in the recent study of Will & Pies (2018), sensegiving, as an activity in organizational change, requires a deep understanding of employees’ emotions that might emerge during the change process. In their study, they have also found that emotionally-driven processes of sensemaking are likely to fail, and that appropriate management of emotions might be the remedy. According to Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010), when appropriate change management is absent, individuals have no plausible understanding of the change, resulting in an increase of anxiety, fear and frustration. They also suggest that the expressed emotions of managers, such as enthusiasm or excitement, act as a sensegiving resource to help employees create an understanding and potentially trigger positive emotions.
change process. Although these authors did take the role of sensegiving into account, they studied this role as a response to employees’ sensemaking. This research focuses on the other way around, namely how sensegiving can influence employees’ emotions, and with them their responses, during organizational change.
Even though there have also been a few studies on sensegiving and the role of emotions, it is suggested that further research is needed to investigate how change management can be improved through taking emotions into account in the process of sensegiving (Will & Pies, 2018). Actually, Steigenberger (2015) even suggests that change management can benefit from active emotion management, since emotions are important contingencies for successfully implementing change. In order to address this existing gap in the current literature, this research focuses on how sensegiving can influence the emotions of employees and thereby their response to organizational change. Particularly, this study builds on the existing literature regarding emotions and focuses on gaining more knowledge about what sort of employees’ emotions arise during organizational change processes, aiming to find out under which conditions employees’ emotions are either positive or negative. Besides that, this study investigates which sensegiving strategies are used by managers during change in order to influence their employees’ emotions. Finally, as the existing theory does not agree on which sensegiving strategy is most effective, this study focuses on understanding under which conditions particular sensegiving strategies are most effective in managing employees’ emotions in order to obtain a positive response toward a change initiative. An explanatory, qualitative case study is used to execute this research, which is clarified in the next chapter.
Methodology
This chapter contains the method of this research. First the research design is explained. After that, the data collection and data analysis are described. The final section presents an explanation regarding the research quality.
Research Design
i.e. a “how” or “why” question, a case study should be considered. A case study can be defined as “An empirical inquiry about a contemporary phenomenon (e.g. a “case”), set within its real-worldcontext - especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (Yin, 2009: p. 18). The aim of a case study is to produce a deep understanding of the context and other complex conditions related to the case that is being studied. Since this study concerns employees’ emotions and opinions about sensegiving strategies, a case study is appropriate to get a deeper understanding of the context in which the managers and employees operate and thereby, develop new theoretical implications. This study is explanatory, because it studies a phenomenon within the context of real-life situations and aims to explain how two concepts influence each other. Furthermore, this case study is characterized as an embedded single case study, since it is executed within the context of one organization, but the unit of analysis is on a relational level: the interaction between managers’ sensegiving and employees’ emotions.
Data Collection
Primary data was collected to answer the research question. The data in this research is collected through in-depth, personal interviews. The interviews were semi-structured, which made it possible to anticipate on and better investigate respondents’ emotions by asking probe questions next to a number of established topics. The units of observation are managers and employees working on one of the following three departments: sales (SAL), information technology services (BIS) or customer service (AKS). During this study, fifteen interviews were conducted, of which three interviews with managers and twelve with employees. Since there are two units of observation, two interview protocols have been developed aiming to be able to investigate both the managers’ sensegiving and the employees’ emotions more precisely. The main topics in these interview protocols were the introduction of the change, the felt emotions about the change and the communication regarding the change. Regarding the introduction of change, the employees were asked for example, ‘How was the change introduced to you?’. Also, they were asked to describe their emotions, for instance, ‘What did you feel during the introduction of the change?’ The interview protocol for managers was slightly different and focused more on the sensegiving strategies that were used by the managers, for example, ‘How did you introduce the change to your employees?’ and ‘How did you respond to the initial emotions of your employees?’ The detailed protocols can be found in Appendix 1 and 2.
In order to properly research the emotions of respondents, the interviews were face-to-face in order to observe a respondent’s non-verbal communication and anticipate on that. All interviews have been recorded and later transcribed for analysis. All respondents applied voluntary to participate in this research, after receiving an invitation via an e-mail with background information about the research including the reason for this study and the main topics of the interview.
the interviews were held anonymously and in separate offices. The length of the interviews varied between 30 and 60 minutes and all interviews took place in April 2019.
Respondent Code Unit of observation Gender Tenure
1 SAL10 Manager Male 6 years
2 SAL11 Employee Male 13 years
3 SAL12 Employee Male 39 years
4 SAL13 Employee Female 9 years
5 SAL14 Employee Male 2,5 years
6 BIS10 Manager Male 1,5 years
7 BIS11 Employee Male 14 years
8 BIS12 Employee Male 3,5 years
9 BIS13 Employee Female 13 years
10 BIS14 Employee Male 28 years
11 AKS10 Manager Female 4 years
12 AKS11 Employee Female 3,5 years
13 AKS12 Employee Female 5,5 years
14 AKS13 Employee Female 5 years
15 AKS14 Employee Male 3 months
Table 1: Overview characteristics respondents
Data Analysis
After the open coding of the data, the codes were listed and grouped into different categories of codes through axial coding. The codes were categorized into six categories: employees’ initial emotions, managers’ sensegiving strategies, contextual factors for a sensegiving strategy, managers’ influence on employees’ emotions, current responses of employees and other factors that influenced their initial emotions. After the axial coding, the connections between the categories were analyzed through selective coding, aiming to discover the relations between the categories. The data analysis was an iterative process of reading the transcripts and identifying, modifying and deleting codes. The codes, their description, and examples of the codes are merged into one codebook, which can be found in Appendix 3. In order to write the discussion, the findings have been compared to relevant literature regarding the subject of this study in order to look for differences, similarities and implications for further research.
Research Quality
of open-ended interviews, to avoid influencing the respondents with leading questions, and through continuously challenging existing assumptions during the data analysis. Furthermore, the respondent bias is characterized by social desirability issues experienced by the respondents (Rubin, 2000). According to Barribal & While (1994), asking probe questions during semi-structured interviews maximizes the potential for interactive opportunities between the respondent and the researcher, which reduces the risk of socially desirable answers. As semi-structured interviews were used in this case study, probe questions were asked in order to exploit interactive opportunities and overcome the respondent bias.
Results
This chapter presents the findings of the data analysis. First the initial emotions of the employees are discussed, including factors that influenced those initial emotions. After that, the sensegiving strategies that have been used by the managers are presented, which also includes contextual factors that determined which strategy they used. The final part presents the findings regarding the actual influence of managers’ sensegiving on employees’ emotions.
Employees’ Initial Emotions
Initial emotions described by employees. The introduction of change has caused
different emotions among employees, which are generally identified into four main categories: positive, negative, neutral and mixed emotions. From the twelve employees, five respondents described their initial emotions as positive. One respondent described her initial emotion as positively surprised: “My first reaction was, “What are we going to do? How are we going to do that?” It was a totally new concept for me, I had never heard of it before. (...) I was surprised, in a positive way” (AKS11). Besides surprised, another respondent described her initial emotions as being curious to what this change exactly means for her, but also hopeful because she thinks this change could improve their way of working. The positive emotion that was mostly mentioned, namely by three respondents, is enthusiastic. For example, respondent SAL14 describes his initial emotion as: “I think I would choose to say that I’m enthusiastic. I like to experience a transition like this, that appeals to me”.
other respondents that were initially skeptical about the change, but they rather felt a mix between positive and negative emotions. One of these respondents described his initial emotions as “I believe in this way of working, but, and that is where I’m more skeptical, I wasn’t sure whether it would work out in this organization” (AKS14). So, he believed that the change could bring something good, but was not sure if that would work out well. Another respondent felt the same way, he said: “I believe in this change. I think, that if you really want to make your organization more agile, you need this change. However, I’m also critical, because it only works if you apply it the right way, otherwise it will be one big puppet-show” (BIS12).
The final category of initial emotions is the category of neutral emotions, also described as “wait-and-see”. Four of the twelve employees stated that they felt neither positive nor negative about the change. One respondent described her initial emotions as: “I was like, okay, another change. They don’t know what will happen exactly, I will just wait and see when they expect action from me” (AKS13). She did not feel a particular emotion at the introduction of the change, because she felt that she should wait until the change was more concrete. Another respondent described her initial emotions as “Well, as I told you, we have experienced more changes and this one didn’t really come unexpected. We have been talking for years that we wanted to work more agile. (...) It didn’t come as a surprise or something” (BIS13). Through the fact that the change did not come as a surprise, the introduction of change did not cause either positive or negative emotions for the respondent. However, the data indicates that the initial emotions of the employees were not only triggered by the change itself but were influenced by several other factors too. These factors are discussed in the next section.
Factors that influence the initial emotions. Even though the introduction of change is
be the first time, so we’ll just wait and see what happens” (AKS12). Even though these were not her own emotions, from this statement it appears that past experiences with change have a negative influence on employees’ initial emotions when a new change is introduced.
Another factor, which could be related to past experience, is age. As mentioned by one respondent: “You saw that the older a person, the more resistance that person shows. Of course, I completely understand because they have experienced many transitions” (BIS11). However, this factor does not necessarily have to be related to past experience, because a younger employee can also have experienced several changes that can have influence on the initial emotions. Furthermore, it is doubtful that age really influences the initial emotions of employees, because one of the employees that felt initially “enthusiastic” has been working for the organization for 28 years and can be seen as a senior employee. Therefore, it is hard to draw a conclusion about this finding.
Besides the factors mentioned above, another influencing factor concerns the reactions of colleagues. It appears that the reactions of colleagues did influence others. For example, “The introduction of the change caused a lot of stress, especially for colleagues that cannot deal with change that well. Then, you perceive that a lot of people start talking and asking questions, but nobody knows the answers. That gave everybody a lot of chaos and stress on the work floor” (AKS13). In fact, another respondent stated that people always influence each other on the work floor. He said: “Yes, I think so. I think that people within teams always influence each other. There are always some dominant players that can have big influences on the rest of the team” (SAL14). Thus, employees do not work in isolation, they are always influenced by the other people around them.
The final factor that appears to have an influence on employees’ initial emotions is the relevance of the change. For instance, one respondent stated: “It is not that I’m not interested, but as long as the change doesn’t have a great impact, meaning, that there’s changing something for me or my work, it doesn’t have my attention” (SAL12). Another respondent shared this opinion and said: “Actually, I want to know more when the change really has impact on our department. For example, when our process of working changes. But otherwise, if it doesn’t have direct impact on my work, to be honest, I’m not really interested” (SAL11). From these statements, it can be concluded that as the change is of less relevance for an employee, the employee feels neither positive nor negative emotions regarding the change. Consequently, this factor leads to a neutral emotion felt by employees.
other factors, such as past experiences with change, age, reactions of colleagues and relevance of the change. Another essential influencing factor is identified as the sensegiving strategy of the manager. The different sensegiving strategies that emerged from the data are discussed in the next section.
Managers’ Sensegiving Strategies
Sensegiving strategies used by managers. The sensegiving strategies that can be
distinguished from this study are a discursive strategy, a non-discursive strategy, situated discourse, an encouraging strategy and an individual approach.
To begin with the discursive strategy, characterized by providing clear and consistent information to the employees through meetings and newsletters. An employee described the discursive sensegiving strategy of her manager as following: “From the first presentation, our manager mentioned concrete facts about the change. (...) Our communication is very open and transparent. As soon as our manager has new information from the top, we also know about it. I think that’s very positive in our way of working, that we’re very open toward each other which leads to more clarity and a better understanding” (AKS13). Besides this employee, also a manager mentions the explicit use of this discursive strategy: “Every Monday morning we start our week with a so-called “week-start” at 08:30, and then we talk about subjects like this change. Further, we have a team meeting every month in which we also talk about the change. On those moments, I want to discuss the change with the employees, and I want them to see the necessity of this change. Also, in these moments, you immediately reach the whole team” (SAL10).
we heard about how our work would change. It was a lot of falling and rising again, but it was nice to do it in such as session” (AKS11).
Even though the discursive and the non-discursive strategy seem to be the two main categories of sensegiving strategies used, other strategies have also been recognized in the findings of the study. For example, the sensegiving strategy of situated discourse, characterized by sensegiving through sharing the rationales behind decisions. One of the employees, who is also a project leader of a small team, discussed this strategy as following: “In my team, I definitely need to substantiate my opinion and my decisions, I’m being challenged. All employees are high-educated, so I can’t just inform them about my decisions without proper reasons. I need to explain why we are going in a certain direction, and why not going somewhere else” (BIS12). Other strategies that were mentioned by existing literature were designing structures, situational logic and the use of discourse. However, this study did not find any evidence for those sensegiving strategies.
In fact, two other strategies emerged from the findings: an encouraging sensegiving strategy and the individual approach. The encouraging strategy is characterized by giving sense through making the employees enthusiastic and encourage them to actively think about the change. One of the activities in this strategy is to show the employees what is in it for them, since that will make the change easier to sell. As stated during an interview: “You should translate per organizational layer what the change will mean for the employees. If that’s clear for everybody, you should build a communication plan and provide the necessary information and trainings to make sure that everybody sees the importance of the change” (BIS12). But another respondent was encouraged by her manager through tips and guidelines. She said the following: “My manager gives some tips and guidelines. Then, you can think about it for yourself before making a decision. I like that way of working, he discusses what’s going to happen in a timely manner and gives us the time, space and chance to think about that” (BIS13). From these quotes, it can be concluded that this encouraging strategy of sensegiving is applied through two activities: making the employees enthusiastic through showing what is in it for them or encourage them to think about the change themselves.
individual meetings, and I try to make them ready for the next step in the process”. Furthermore, he states that the individual approach is a good sensegiving strategy, because it differs per employee what they need and when they feel comfortable or not. Actually, this argument also suggests that it might not be effective to apply the same sensegiving strategy to every employee or team of employees. Therefore, it is important to consider the contextual factors that determine which sensegiving strategy should be applied. The next section elaborates on these contextual factors.
Triggers for sensegiving strategies. The choice whether to use one sensegiving
strategy or another is triggered by a few contextual factors, also known as the triggers for a sensegiving strategy. These contextual factors determine which strategy is most appropriate and probably the most effective to use in a certain situation. The contextual factors that emerged from the findings of this study are the state of the recipients, i.e. the employees’ needs, initially expressed responses of employees to the change and the personality of the manager.
First the state of the recipients, which can also be described as the needs of the employees. For example, employee and project leader BIS12 mentioned that the employees in his team are highly educated, so that he has to properly substantiate his decisions. This means that the reason why he used the sensegiving strategy of situated discourse, is because his team is highly educated and therefore very challenging. When asking another manager why he chose a particular sensegiving strategy, he said: “I always try to look at what feels right for the team, for example, arranging an external agile coach, helping the scrum master, organizing trainings that support the team. I always look at what the team needs and approach them often individually” (BIS10), which suggests that the choice of the sensegiving strategy depends on what the employee or the team needs.
(...) As they were very positive, they are already a few steps ahead of the others, so you can look further in the future”.
The final trigger that can determine a sensegiving strategy does not depend on the employees, but on the manager. The findings indicate that the manager’s personality also plays a role in the choice of which strategy to use. Evidence for this trigger comes from an interview with a manager, she suggests the following: “I like to use a lot of metaphors during meetings to explain the change. I have always been very interested in positive psychology, and I think I can transfer my enthusiasm to the employees through using funny metaphors. I think they will remember that better than when I just tell them a boring story with the facts” (AKS10). So, it appears that whilst the state of the employees and their initial expressed responses can determine the appropriate sensegiving strategy to use, the manager still has the final influence on which one to choose, which is based on their personality rather than on the recipients.
Influence of Managers’ Sensegiving on Employees’ Emotions
Managers’ influence on employees’ initial emotions. Now that the findings of employees’ initial emotions and managers’ sensegiving strategies are presented, the findings regarding the actual influence of managers’ sensegiving on employees’ emotions are discussed in this section. To begin with the influence of managers’ sensegiving during the introduction of change in order to see whether the sensegiving did have influence on the initial emotions of employees. One employee stated that his manager always has some kind of influence on him with the following statement: “I think that someone unconsciously always has influence on you. If someone tells you something with a very uninterested attitude, you won’t think “oh yes, let’s do this!”, you will be less interested too. So, I think it’s important that the manager is enthusiastic, and that the manager tells you what the benefits of the change are. If I’m aware of those benefits, yes, then I would follow my manager” (SAL14). Even though this statement seems to be more in general, this study has found evidence that a manager did have influence on the initial emotions in particular: “I think so, yes, because we had a kick-off session with our manager. He was very enthusiastic. He had had a kick-off session before and he told us that this change would give us a great opportunity for a new way of working. So yes, I think that my manager’s positivity and enthusiasm influenced my initial emotions and made me enthusiastic” (AKS11). From this statement, it appears that the expressed emotions of the manager influenced the initial emotions of the employee.
twelve employees claimed that their initial emotions were influenced by their managers, which is presented in the upper chart of Figure 1. The following example shows that an employee was not influenced by her manager: “On that moment, I was quite skeptical about the change and thought, “well, I first want to see what it is, whether it works, whether everybody can take that responsibility and if they will be happy with the change”. So, no, I wasn’t influenced by his positivity. Rather, I thought, “well, if you say it works, it probably will but I need to see it first”” (AKS12). But as was mentioned before, besides a managers’ sensegiving, there are other factors that influence employees’ initial emotions too. These factors can explain the fact that eight respondents stated that their initial emotions were not influenced by their managers. For instance, two employees argued that their manager did not have significant influence on their initial emotions, since the change was not relevant for them yet. Another remarkable factor that has not been discussed yet, is that two employees mentioned that their initial, very positive, emotions were not influenced by their manager, because the change emerged from bottom-up at their department. Thus, they state that they were already very interested in the new way of working without any influence of their managers.
However, these results do not imply that the manager did not influence employees’ emotions at all. In some cases, the manager influenced the employees’ emotions during the process rather than during the introduction of the change. These findings are discussed in the next section.
Figure 1: Managers’ influence on employees’ emotions both initially and during the process Managers’ influence on employees’ emotions during the change process. The
findings regarding managers’ influence on employees’ initial emotions differ from the findings regarding managers’ influence on employees’ emotions during the process. The lower chart in Figure 1 presents whether employees’ emotions have changed during the change process or not,
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Emotions changed during process through managers'
influence
Manager influenced initial emotions
Managers' influence on employees' emotions
and whether the managers did have an influence on that. The majority of the employees, namely eight out of twelve, did not feel a change in their emotions during the change process, so they could not give any information about how their manager influenced them. The respondents that did not feel a change in their emotions during the process gave several reasons for this: four respondents were already enthusiastic about the change when it was introduced, they still feel that way, two respondents felt mixed emotions about the change, both positive and skeptical, and still feel that way during the process. Remarkably, both of these respondents have told that they have a very open communication with their managers: “he tells the things that I should know” (BIS13) and “I do not want to be surprised and I do not want her to be surprised either” (AKS14). This implies that even though some employees’ emotions do not change during a change process, the manager should still use sensegiving strategies in order to keep them informed, and thereby, try to keep them feel positive about the change. The other two respondents whose emotions did not change during the process found that the change was not relevant enough yet for their department, but they stated that when the change would become more relevant, they were open for the change.
Then, there were three respondents that felt that their emotions had changed during the change process so far. For example, respondent AKS13 felt neither positive nor negative during the introduction change, she felt the “neutral” emotion. But when asking what her current emotions regarding the change was, she enthusiastically answered with: “Shall we call that a happy smile?!”, which means that there has been a change in her emotions. According to AKS13, her emotions have changed during the process through the influence of her manager: “Through conversations and showing us concrete examples. (...) I think that was very important, that way of open communication”. The sensegiving strategy that was used by the manager can be characterized as a discursive strategy, as the manager provided clear and consistent information which resulted in an open way of communicating. To conclude, it is suggested that the neutral emotion of this employee at the introduction of change turned into a very positive emotion, leading to championing the change, through the influence of a discursive sensegiving strategy used by her manager.
following: “Yes, he had influence. I like that he provides us clarity about what the change can mean for us and he really encourages us to think about the roles that we want to play and in which direction we would want to go. That helps, that he made us think about that” (BIS13). As similar to the changing emotions of respondent AKS13, the manager influenced those emotions through providing clarity, i.e. a discursive sensegiving strategy. Moreover, this manager seems to use a mix of sensegiving strategies, namely a combination of the discursive sensegiving strategy and the encouraging strategy, which has induced the curiosity of this employee. And once again, there is evidence that the sensegiving strategy of the manager influenced the employees’ emotions towards a more accepting response.
Another example shows more evidence for the influence of managers on employees’ emotions, but this time, the respondents’ emotions changed from positive initial emotions into mixed emotions. First the employee told that her manager was a very critical thinker when it concerns the change. When asking whether that influenced her initial emotions, she answered: “Yes it does. You start a bit to feel like, not per se skeptical, but also because we have seen some small things go wrong around here now. I started to feel more reserved now through not saying that the change is fantastic. On the other side, I still feel hopeful” (SAL13). This example shows that even though managers always want to create a shared understanding regarding the change, they can also warn their employees to be critical and not to believe everything that is said.
In contrast to the examples mentioned above, one example showed that employees’ emotions can also change without the influence of a manager. When the change was introduced, respondent AKS12 was the only one feeling skeptical about the change. However, currently she describes her emotions as following: “I’m now very positive. Yes, I think this change is definitely of value for me and my colleagues. Looking at the communication within the teams and with my colleagues, and if I look at what this change has meant for my colleagues, I’m very positive”. Her emotions were changed through the fact that she saw positive consequences of the change that proved that the change initiative had positive results for her department, rather than through the sensegiving of her manager.
influences is shown in Table 2. This table presents that the number of respondents that felt positive emotions regarding the change increased, whereas the number of negative emotions and neutral emotions decreased. One remarkable finding is that the respondents who felt mixed emotions, still feel those mixed emotions, and that the number of respondents feeling those mixed emotions even increased. Additionally, the table shows that the emotions of only half of the employees were somehow influenced by their manager’s sensegiving. The main conclusions that can be drawn from these findings will be discussed in the next chapter.
Respondent Employees’ emotions Factors of influence Positive Negative Neutral Mixed
AKS11 X Initial: Managers’ enthusiasm
During process: Guidance from manager
AKS12 X X Initial: Own feelings
During process: Positive results
AKS13 X X Initial: Past experience
During process: Managers’ enthusiasm and positivity, discursive sensegiving
AKS14 X Initial: Past experience
During process: Past experience, discursive sensegiving
BIS11 X Respondent was already very interested in
the concept of agile.
BIS12 X Initial: Past experience
During process: Past experience, but values the trust he gets from his manager
BIS13 X X Initial: Past experience
During process: Discursive and encouraging sensegiving
BIS14 X Respondent was already very interested in
the concept of agile.
SAL11 X Relevance of the change
SAL12 X Relevance of the change
SAL13 X X Initial: Own curiosity
During process: Manager being critical
SAL14 X Own open attitude toward change in
general and managers’ enthusiasm
Discussion and Conclusion
The aim of this study is to investigate the degree to which managers can influence the emotions of their employees through sensegiving during organizational change. In the first section, the main conclusions per research objective are discussed. After that, theoretical and managerial implications are defined, followed by the research limitations and suggestions for future research. Finally, an answer to the research question of this study is provided in the concluding section.
Main Conclusions
As defined in the introduction of this paper, this research strives to accomplish four objectives. The first objective was to provide a structured overview of the literature regarding sensegiving, which was already accomplished in the literature review. The other three objectives are discussed in this section.
First the objective to gain more knowledge about the particular emotions that arise during organizational change. The findings of this study confirm the studies of Green & Haidt (2002) and Steigenberger (2015), who suggest that the introduction of change causes a variety of emotional responses since change is an unexpected, uncertain event that has the potential to threaten an individual’s wellbeing. The present study indicates that this variety of emotions ranges from either positive or negative to mixed or even neutral. However, existing literature argues that the basic assumption of emotions during organizational change is that mostly negative emotions are triggered, leading to negative responses (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Will & Pies, 2018; Kiefer, 2005). This study shows evidence that contradicts this basic assumption in literature, since it appeared that the respondents felt more often positive emotions than negative. Thus, the findings are more in line with the study of Bartunek et al. (2011) who state that change recipients do not automatically experience negative emotions during organizational change.
Proposition 1: The emotions that arise during organizational change are not either positive or negative emotions but can also be a mix of both positive and negative, or neither of those, i.e. neutral.
Kraft et al. (2015) distinguish between discursive and non-discursive strategies of sensegiving. The data indicates that both of these strategies are used by managers during organizational change. Besides that, this study also identified the sensegiving strategy of situated discourse, which is in line with the research of Sharma & Good (2013). However, no evidence is found for their sensegiving strategy of designing structures. Next to actual sensegiving strategies, the data shows that the expressed emotions of a manager can act as a resource of sensegiving to trigger emotions among the employees, which supports the ideas of Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010). From the data, it appears that a manager’s enthusiasm about the change initiative can influence both employees’ initial emotions as their emotions during the change process. Also, when the manager shows that he feels critical about the change, this reflects on the emotions of employees too. Finally, as concluded in the literature review, there is no agreement in the existing literature about which strategy is most effective in sensegiving to employees. This is partly supported by the findings of this study, since different sensegiving strategies were used based on a number of contextual factors. In contrast, the data indicates that no matter which emotions were felt by the employees, they strongly valued openness and transparency from their manager, which points to a discursive strategy of providing clear and consistent information to the employees.
Proposition 2: During organizational change, employees mostly value openness and transparency from their managers, which indicates that a discursive strategy is most desirable to effectively give sense to employees.
The final objective was to understand which strategies are effective in managing employees’ emotions. As has been suggested by the studies of Kraft et al. (2015, 2016) and Vlaar et al. (2018), the effectiveness of a sensegiving strategy depends on contextual factors. This study supports this line of research, since the findings show that all managers use an individual approach of sensegiving, including personal conversations. Through using this individual approach, they adapt their sensegiving strategy to the context, i.e. the feelings of the employees. Thus, the findings indicate that the managers take the emotions of their employees into account.
literature of Will & Pies (2018) who suggest that effective sensegiving requires a deep understanding of employees’ emotions, but it adds to the existing literature that managers can only fully benefit from understanding and managing employees’ emotions if they also investigate which other factors are of influence on their emotions.
Proposition 3: The effectiveness of a sensegiving strategy to manage employees’ emotions is influenced by other factors, such as past experience, age, relevance of the change and reactions of other colleagues, which strongly influence employees’ emotions too.
The results of this study indicate that the managers that succeeded in influencing their employees’ emotions provided open communication, clarity and enthusiastically encouraged their employees to think about how they could participate in this change. Sensegiving through open communication and providing clarity is part of a discursive strategy, which again supports the study of Kraft et al. (2015) and relates to Proposition 2. However, the encouraging sensegiving strategy provides evidence of the fact that many sensegiving strategies can be used but is also an addition to the existing literature since it has not been researched in previous studies. Remarkably, the encouraging sensegiving strategy fits with change context in this study, since the organizational structure changes into more self-serving teams of the agile way of working in which employees also are encouraged towards self-organization. This fits with the encouraging sensegiving strategy, since managers encourage their employees to think about the change and how the change can be meaningful for them. Therefore, in order to understand which sensegiving strategies are effective in managing employees’ emotions, it is also essential to take into account the organizational circumstances, such as the change context.
Proposition 4: In terms of changing an organizational structure into self-serving teams, an encouraging sensegiving strategy is effective in managing employees’ emotions.
Theoretical Implications
necessarily purely positive or negative. Employees can also feel a mix of positive and negative emotions or even neither a positive nor negative emotion, identified as a neutral emotion. Regarding strategies of sensegiving, this study contributes to the existing literature by showing evidence for a number of sensegiving strategies that were identified in previous studies (Kraft et al, 2015; Sharma & Good, 2013). Also, this study confirms the ideas of Kraft et al. (2015) regarding the need to respond to individual needs of employees and introduces the individual approach of sensegiving. Additionally, the empirical findings in this study advance the existing literature by identifying a new sort of sensegiving strategy, namely the encouraging strategy.
Finally, this study contributes to the existing literature regarding effective sensegiving strategies for managing emotions by acknowledging that the effectiveness of sensegiving depends on specific conditions, which confirms the existing literature that argues that the effectiveness of a sensegiving strategy depends on contextual factors (Kraft et al, 2016; Vlaar et al., 2018; Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007). The findings advance these studies by identifying that the change context is also a specific condition under which a sensegiving strategy, in this case the encouraging strategy, is most effective. Looking at the state of employees as a contextual factor, this study advances the ideas of Kraft et al. (2015) by showing that the situated discourse sensegiving strategy is effective in managing emotions of higher educated employees.
Managerial Implications
Besides theoretical implications, several managerial implications can be drawn from this research as well. First, managers should be aware of the variety of emotions that arise during organizational change. This study also supports the research of Bartunek et al. (2011) suggesting that emotions evolve over time, which implies that managers should not only try to actively influence employees’ emotions at the introduction of change, but also monitor and manage those emotions during the process.
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
As a research is hardly ever executed under perfect conditions, so does this research have its limitations. First of all, the generalizability of the findings is limited due to the fact that the research was limited to one organizational focusing on one particular change process. Therefore, the findings might not be generalizable to other change processes and other organizations. Future research should conduct similar studies in other cases and organizations to increase the generalizability of these findings.
Another limitation regarding the generalizability is that the present study only used interviews as data collection method. Future research should also observe managers and employees during change processes in order to actually see how sensegiving influences employees’ emotions. Moreover, as only fifteen interviews were conducted in this study, future research should extend this study by interviewing more managers and more employees in order to get a broader and more generalizable perspective.
Then, as the present study suggests, the effectiveness of sensegiving in managing emotions depends on a lot of contextual factors. Future research is encouraged to execute more studies regarding the effectiveness of sensegiving strategies in different organizational change contexts to investigate those particular factors and conditions and extend the existing literature. The final suggestion for future research is to explore the propositions that were made in this study in other contexts.
Conclusion
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