1
Master Thesis MSc Change Management
The influence of sensemaking and sensegiving processes on the interpretive schemes of consultants, managers and employees during organizational change
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
September 2015
Supervisor: Dr. J.F.J. Vos 2
ndAssessor: Dr. A.G. Regts-Walters
Charlot Profijt Mutua Fidesstraat 14
9741 CB Groningen
C.profijt@student.rug.nl
Student number: 1980955
2 ABSTRACT
This study aimed to find out how processes of sensemaking and sensegiving between consultants, managers and employees influence their interpretive schemes during organizational change. To answer this research question three different cases were studied in which organizational change was initiated.
Within the investigated organizational change projects twelve semi-structured interviews were held with three consultants, three managers and six employees. To analyze the data first within-case analyses of the three change projects were executed. Subsequently, patterns were identified by means of a cross-case analysis. This study found that sensegiving efforts were initiated by all actors in the consultant-manager- employees triangle, although different sensegiving tactics were utilized by the different actors.
Furthermore, this research recognized the influence of context factors. Both the influence of senior management and the influence of non-participating colleagues on the sensemaking and sensegiving processes within the consultant-manager-employees triangle were identified. The study showed that while actors participating in a change project are likely to experiences changes in their interpretive schemes, they are also likely to be confronted with old interpretive schemes still present in the rest of the organization. This study contributes to the existing literature by taking a tri-partite perspective, complementing the commonly found unilateral research. Furthermore, it answers the call of various authors for further research on the concept of meaning construction in agent-recipient interactions, by taking a sensemaking and sensegiving perspective. Finally, it sheds more light on the consultant-client relationship as in extant literature much is unknown about the interactions between the consultant and the client.
Keywords: change management, agent-recipient interaction, consultant-client relationship, sensemaking, sensegiving, interpretive schemes
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 4
Literature review 7
Sensemaking 8
Sensegiving 9
Interpretive schemes 10
Relationship between sensemaking, sensegiving and interpretive schemes 11
Methodology 12
Case selection and participants 12
Data collection 16
Data analysis 27
Results 22
Analysis case 1: Towards Sustainable Employability 22
Analysis case 2: Towards new HR procedures 27
Analysis case 3: Towards Working Energetically 32
Cross-case analysis 37
Discussion 42
Discussion of findings 42
Limitations of the study and future research opportunities 54
Theoretical implications 55
Practical implications 56
References 57
Appendices 61
Appendix I: Interview protocol consultant 61
Appendix II: Interview protocol manager 63
Appendix III: Interview protocol employees 65
Appendix IV: Coding results case 1: Towards Sustainable Employability 67 Appendix V: Coding results case 2: Towards new HR procedures 72 Appendix VI: Coding results case 3: Towards Working Energetically 77
4 INTRODUCTION
As described by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, „The only thing that is constant is change‟ (Kahn, 1979). For organizations this nowadays turns out to be more true than ever. Managers within organizations experience increasing internal and external pressures for organizational change (Jones, 2010). Although the need for change in organizations is thus growing, effective organizational change seems to be rare.
The low success rate is indicated by a global business study of McKinsey, revealing that that only one- third of the change initiatives were perceived as successful by their initiators and leaders (Meaney &
Pung, 2008). This has led to an increased awareness of change being a complex process that needs to be extensively studied (Senge, 1997). In the organizational change literature there is a growing interest in the micro processes that underlie organizational change, paying attention to the different actors involved in strategic change processes (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010).
Studies focused on the concept of organizational change often differentiate between change agents and change recipients. Change agents can be defined as the ones responsible for creating and directing the implementation of a change within an organization (Higgs & Rowland, 2011). Change recipients are those responsible for carrying out or adapting to a change (Ford, Ford, & D'Amelio, 2008). While organizational change literature has concentrated on the role of change agents (e.g. Higgs & Rowland, 2011; Eisenbach, Watson, & Pillai, 1999) and of change recipients (e.g. Bouckenooghe, 2010; Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011) separately, the interaction between these two actors has received little academic attention. This is underlined by Ford et al. (2008) and Sonenshein (2010) who describe that the current research on change is mostly unilateral, thus neglecting the role of one of the actors. The necessity of a bilateral perspective is stressed by research findings that there is no reason to assume agents and recipients share the same understandings (Bartunek, Rousseau, Rudolph, & DePalma, 2006). Thus, the same intervention can be interpreted quite differently, creating distinct experiences and differences in action focus (Kanter, Stein, &
Jick, 1993).
In most academic articles that study the role of the change agent this role is filled by the internal
management of an organization (e.g. Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2012; Higgs & Rowland, 2011; Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache, & Alexander, 2010). Besides the internal management occupying the role of the change agent, consultants have become increasingly crucial in the creation and direction of change.
Research has shown that management consultants are nowadays considered as one of the most important providers of new management ideas and practices (Armbrüster & Glückler, 2007). It is even stated that consultancies do not only have a strong influence on clients but also on the society as a whole (Mohe, 2008). However, although the consultant-client relationship warrants close attention and study, consultants
5 and clients have shown aversion to discussing this relationship. Due to this aversion there is still much unknown about the interactions between consultants and clients (Pellegrinelli, 2002) and the way in which the consultant-client relationship can influence the consultation success (Mohe & Seidl, 2011). Since the consultant-client relationship has proven to be central to the process of generating shared constructions and in this way shaping the emergent organizational reality (Pellegrinelli, 2002), clarification of this relationship is necessary.
This division of change agents into internal management and external consultants results in a tripartite perspective comprising the consultant, management and employees. This „triangular‟ perspective is emphasized by Smith (2002) who explains that the interactions of consultants with both managers and employees should be considered. Furthermore, Pellegrinelli (2002) describes that consultants and
members of the organization (managers and employees) co-create the reality they experience and partially share. Therefore, a tripartite perspective will be adopted in this study to complement the described limited research on the agent-recipient interaction.
Since in various studies it is stated that a sensemaking and sensegiving perspective would provide a valuable addition to the agent-recipient interaction literature (e.g. Balogun & Johnson, 2005; Sonenshein, 2010), this study will analyze the consultant-management-employees triangle by applying such a
perspective. According to Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) sensemaking and sensegiving are two
complementary and reciprocal processes. The authors define sensemaking as “having to do with meaning construction and reconstruction by the involved parties as they attempt to develop a meaningful
framework for understanding the nature of the intended strategic change” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991:
442). Sensegiving is defined as “the process of attempting to influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991: 442).
Several authors have acknowledged the existence of a theoretical gap when it comes to the concept of meaning construction in agent-recipient interactions, which this research aims to fill. One of the studies in which such a gap is described is the research of Balogun and Johnson (2005). The authors suggest that managers may be able to influence in some way the sensemaking processes of their employees. Since the authors did not take into account this idea in their own research, they emphasized the necessity for future research to focus on these influence tactics. Furthermore, Sonenshein (2010) indicates the existence of this theoretical gap by stating that contemporary research overlooks the dynamic interplay between managers‟ and employees‟ meaning constructions. This additionally shows that a sensemaking and
6 sensegiving perspective, which is focused on meaning construction and influencing meaning construction, adds to the current literature. The concept of meaning construction in agent-recipient interaction is also underexposed in the consultancy literature. Buono (2004) states that a sensemaking perspective might hold great potential in clarifying the consultant-client relationship. Furthermore, Argyris (1999) describes that attention to the negotiation and construction of meaning by management and employees may offer new insights into the studying of the consulting process. Since meanings shape social realities and actors‟
reactions to such realities (Hardy, Palmer, & Phillips, 2000), an increased understanding of meaning construction may improve the understanding of responses to change. This in turn may provide more insight in problems that are faced in many change implementations. This is emphasized by Pellegrinelli (2002) who states that understanding individual conceptions of a change is critical where consultancy interventions attempt to address fundamental strategic issues such as the nature of the organization, its relationship with its environment and its core structures and processes.
Due to the lack of literature on the agent-recipient relationship and more specifically on the sensemaking and sensegiving processes involved, this study will take a sensemaking and sensegiving perspective.
Although these processes may be looked upon as individual processes, what should not be overlooked is the importance of the social processes through which sensemaking occurs, leading to the emergence of shared meanings among members in organizations (Maitlis, 2005). Consequently, this research will investigate if and how sensemaking and sensegiving processes may lead to changes in interpretive schemes, which can be defined as the “fundamental shared assumptions that determine the way the members of an organization currently conceive of their organization and their environmental context and how they act in different situations” (Balogun & Johnson, 2005: 1575). A visual representation of this study design is shown in Figure 1.
Alongside the theoretical contribution of this study, a greater understanding of the interactions between external consultants, internal management and employees would additionally provide practical value since researchers have shown that leaders and managers by interacting with employees play a central role in influencing their understanding of changes, subsequently influencing employees‟ willingness to commit to change projects (Portoghese, Galletta, Battistelli, Salani, Penna, & Allegrini, 2012) and employees‟
attitudes and behaviors (Balogun & Johnson, 2005).
The foregoing leads to the following research question:
How do processes of sensemaking and sensegiving between consultants, managers and employees during organizational change influence their interpretive schemes?
7 This paper starts with a selection of extant studies on the concepts of sensemaking, sensegiving,
interpretive schemes and the relevance of these constructs from a tripartite perspective. Second, the research design of this study is explained. Then, the within-case and cross-case results of this study are discussed. Finally, these results are compared to extant related literature and limitations, future research opportunities and implications for theory and practice are examined.
FIGURE 1
Visual representation of study design
Processes of sensegiving
LITERATURE REVIEW
As shown in Figure 1, this study focuses on the sensemaking processes of the consultant-manager- employees triangle during organizational change. In addition, sensegiving efforts may be initiated by all three actors to influence the sensemaking processes of others. These sensemaking and sensegiving processes may lead to changes in interpretive schemes, in order to „fit‟ the organizational change into the actors‟ interpretive schemes. In this literature review the extant literature on the concepts of sensemaking,
Consultant sensemaking
Manager sensemaking
Employees sensemaking
Revised interpretive
schemes
8 sensegiving and interpretive schemes is discussed. For every concept first several available descriptions are provided, followed by a discussion of their relevance from a tripartite structure (consultant-manager- employees).
Sensemaking
Sensemaking has been defined by several authors. Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld (1995: 409) define sensemaking as “the process of social construction that occurs when discrepant cues interrupt individuals‟
ongoing activity, and involves the retrospective development of plausible meanings that rationalize what people are doing”. Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991: 442) state that sensemaking has to do with “meaning construction and reconstruction by the involved parties as they attempt to develop a meaningful framework for understanding the nature of the intended strategic change”.
Maitlis (2005) warns in her research that while sensemaking may be understood as a process of social construction on the individual level, the importance of the social processes through which sensemaking occurs and the shared meanings that can emerge from these social processes should not be overlooked.
Balogun and Johnson (2005) specifically focus on the social aspects of sensemaking by referring to these as social processes of interaction. The authors explain how managers engage in conversational practices to make sense of the strategic changes they are faced with. In their study the social processes of interaction that are distinguished are storytelling, rumors or gossip, sharing of experiences, sharing of interpretations, discussions, negotiations and non-verbal signs and signals.
The tripartite perspective taken in this research, encompassing the consultant, manager and employee, is also relevant for the concept of sensemaking. While the common focus of sensemaking literature has been on the sensemaking processes of management, research increasingly concentrates on how employees make sense of organizational changes (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010). These studies have indicated that employees may develop their own sense of a change that can deviate from those of management to a large extent (Bartunek et al., 2006). This is underlined by Sonenshein (2009), who has shown that while top managers may see certain changes as solely strategic, thus being ethically neutral and with little emotions involved, in many instances employees make sense out of these same changes in different manners. In the research of Sonenshein (2009) 40% of employees translated a strategic issue into an ethical one with strong social and emotional overtones, despite efforts of management to present the change in ethically
9 neutral ways. Furthermore, Pellegrinelli (2002) states that a consultant‟s own conception of reality may be subtly influenced by members of the client organization. These findings underscore the importance of investigating sensemaking processes from a tripartite perspective.
Sensegiving
Sensegiving refers to the processes of attempting to influence the sensemaking of others (Filstad, 2014).
Sensegiving is described by Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991: 442) as “the process of attempting to influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality”. Foldy, Goldman and Ospina (2008) describe sensegiving as the shaping of how people understand themselves, their work, and others engaged in that work. The authors state that the desired outcome of the sensegiving process is a cognitive shift. This cognitive shift is defined as “a change in how an organizational audience views or understands an important element of the organization's work” (Foldy et al., 2008: 516).
Examining the extant research on sensegiving from a tripartite perspective, current studies have tended to focus on identifying the sensegiving strategies utilized by leaders to influence the process of
organizational change (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007). These studies mainly focus on how leaders may be able to influence followers' perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs, subsequently strengthening their
commitment to their organization's goals (Foldy et al., 2008). However, increasing attention is paid to how sensegiving strategies are applied by organizational stakeholders other than leaders (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007). One of the studies in which such a perspective is taken is the study of Maitlis (2005). This study analyzes sensegiving processes by both leaders and stakeholders. The stakeholders in this study include government, customers, employees, unions, and local communities. Examples of sensegiving activities described by the author include “contesting a proposal, calling a meeting, explaining a situation, issuing a warning, expressing an opinion, writing a report, justifying a view, promoting a position, gossiping, and taking minutes” (Maitlis, 2005: 29). Furthermore, the study describes that while some of these sensegiving activities were unique to leaders, the majority were common to leaders and stakeholders. Although this study is not specifically focused on organizational change, the results do show that sensegiving should not be looked upon as a unilateral process from agents to recipients but as a process that can flow from all organizational levels, and even from actors outside the organization. Maitlis and Lawrence (2007) further describe that while for leaders sensegiving might be crucial in facilitating acceptance, enthusiasm and energy for change, for stakeholders sensegiving strategies are applied to voice issues to which they want
10 leaders and others to attend. The concept of issue selling by stakeholders is recognized in more studies. In the research of Heller (1998) it is found that middle and lower-level employees influence a range of decisions through the construction and communication of issues in committees. Furthermore, Dutton, Ashford, Lawrence and Miner-Rubino (2002) found that subordinates try to influence the organizational agenda by getting those above them to pay attention to an issue. These studies highlight the existence of sensegiving attempts by actors on all organizational levels. Based on this current research, this study will therefore not only focus on the sensegiving strategies employed by leaders (consultants and managers) but also by the employees, thus providing a triangular perspective.
Interpretive schemes
As stated, since sensemaking is largely a social process, it is likely that shared meanings will emerge from this process (Maitlis, 2005). In this research we will utilize the definition of Balogun and Johnson (2005:
1575) who describe these interpretive schemes as the “fundamental shared assumptions that determine the way the members of an organization currently conceive of their organization and their environmental context and how they act in different situations”. Labianca, Gray and Brass (2000) state that
organizational schemes provide meaning to the everyday activities of organizational members. When these interpretive schemes are established they are rather persistent, even when members are confronted with disconfirming information (Reger & Palmer, 1996).
Again, several extant studies on interpretive schemes can be linked to the tripartite perspective utilized in this research. According to Labianca et al. (2000) an underlying concern in the research on interpretive schemes is the extent to which they are shared. Individuals in different groups (Meyerson & Martin, 1987) or with different status levels (Smith, 1982) may perceive the same event very differently. Labianca et al.
(2000) state that these differences in interpretive schemes are especially prevalent when certain subgroups feel that their interests are being overlooked. These findings, indicating possible differences in
interpretive schemes between different groups in organization, highlight the importance of looking at this concept from a tripartite perspective.
11 Relationship between sensemaking, sensegiving and interpretive schemes
Current research on sensemaking and sensegiving processes and the existence of interpretive schemes already indicates certain links between these concepts. The connection between sensemaking and interpretive schemes is for instance recognized by Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991), who describe how strategic changes in organizations are likely to create instability in members‟ ways of understanding their organizations. This leads to members having to make sense out of these changed circumstances.
Consequently, revised interpretive schemes develop so that the organizational changes make sense to the individuals involved and fit into the interpretive schemes again.
Although there is agreement on new interpretive schemes replacing the old ones by means of sensemaking processes (e.g. Labianca et al., 2000; Bartunek, 1984; Balogun & Johnson, 2005), research differs on their view on how these changes occur. Whereas Labianca et al. (2000) describe a process in which old
schemes are replaced by new schemes by means of scheme comparison, Bartunek (1984) explains how scheme conflicts can lead to a new interpretive scheme that is a synthesis of the old and new scheme.
Furthermore, Balogun and Johnson (2005) state that the new individual schemes constitute a mixture of old schemes that have not been challenged, schemes in the process of transition, and schemes that have already been changed.
Likewise, the concept of sensegiving can be linked to changes in interpretive schemes. For instance, Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) indicate that the disconfirmation of an existing scheme and the subsequent
replacement by a new scheme creates opportunities to advocate the preferred interpretive scheme. Fleming (2001) describes how individuals through storytelling can locate important themes and communicate these to others, thus influencing their sensemaking processes. In this way, obsolete interpretive schemes can be questioned and new interpretive schemes can be framed.
Although the links between both sensemaking and sensegiving processes and revised interpretive schemes are established, to my knowledge the processes of how sensemaking and sensegiving are related to
changes in interpretive schemes have not been studied until so far. Furthermore, research on sensegiving has primarily focused on how leaders might attempt to influence the sensemaking processes of the employees (Filstad, 2014), while this study analyzes sensegiving efforts by actors in three different roles.
This research thus aims to provide more insight in the specific ways consultants, managers and employees make sense of organizational changes and if these sensemaking processes lead to a shift in their
interpretive schemes, thus changing how they conceive of their organization. Furthermore, this study aims to discover in which ways consultants, managers and employees try to influence the meaning
12 constructions of each other, and if these strategies have indeed led to the intended changes in interpretive schemes by means of a cognitive shift.
METHODOLOGY
In this section the methods used in this research are explained, paying attention to the selection of cases and participants, collection of data and analysis of data. As previously discussed, this research aims to contribute to the limited extant literature on the agent-recipient interaction by explaining the processes of how sensemaking and sensegiving between consultants, managers and employees may lead to changes in interpretive schemes. Therefore, a theory development approach is utilized to generate theoretical insights that are not yet covered by existing theories (Ozcan & Eisenhardt, 2009). Since case study research is the preferred strategy when "how" or "why" questions are posed and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context (Yin, 2003), this is the chosen approach in this study. In this research three cases have been investigated as multiple cases make replication logic possible by viewing these cases as separate experiments. This makes the results of a multiple case study better grounded than those of single-case studies (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) and increases external validity (Yin, 2003).
Case selection and participants
According to Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007), in multiple case studies theoretical sampling should be utilized to select cases, indicating that cases are chosen because of their suitability of highlighting relationships and logic between constructs. Yin (2003) describes that each case in a multiple-case study should be selected so that it either predicts similar results (a literal replication) or produces contrary results but for predictable reasons (a theoretical replication). To ensure literal replication logic, cases with similar settings should be chosen, whereas the theoretical replication approach requires cases with different settings. According to Yin (2003), the satisfactory number of cases is between six to eight for a theoretical replication and three to four for a literal replication. As the satisfactory number of cases for theoretical replication is beyond the scope of this research the case selection of this study is based on literal
replication logic. To ensure literal replication logic change projects led by the same consultancy firm were selected. A requirement for these chosen cases was the existence of a tripartite structure. Thus, cases were selected in which consultants, managers and employees were cooperating in a change project and were willing to participate in this study. Furthermore, cases were chosen in which the change projects were just
13 finished or close to completion. In this way it was ensured that participants still had the change project fresh in mind.
In order to find suitable cases, first contact was established with consultants from a network consultancy firm. Introductory conversations were held with the consultants to explain the research objectives. These consultants contacted managers with whom they had worked together on a change project. Subsequently, the managers contacted participating employees. A drawback of this way of case selection might be that selection can be biased due to an increased chance of selection of participants positive regarding the change project. However, the main advantage is that it ensures participants are chosen that are fully aware and better informed of the change.
In this study change projects at three organizations were examined. In order to investigate the tripartite structure at a change project, for every case interviews were held with a consultant, a manager and one, two or three employees participating in the same change project. This thus resulted in twelve interviews.
The demographics of the interviewees are provided in Table 1. Following are short descriptions of the organizations and the content of the change projects.
Case 1: Towards Sustainable Employability
The first case analysis in this paper is based on interviews conducted at a Dutch organization owning and managing the gas and electricity distribution networks in several Dutch regions. The organization has approximately 4200 employees and offers 5.7 million customer connections. The organization requested the help of the consultancy firm in order to flesh out the concept of Sustainable Employability as it had to face several trends that nowadays take place in the Dutch energy sector: in the next five years one in five employees will leave the organization due to reaching of the retirement age, the increased retirement age in the Netherlands leads to more difficulties in the execution of physically demanding tasks and the labor market for technical function is relatively tight. Due to these developments the concept of Sustainable Employability became increasingly important for the organization. First, this project was handled top- down. However, several problems encountered led to a vision that a bottom-up approach was needed.
Based on this new vision a „Pioneering with Change‟ movement was initiated with the help of the consulting firm over the previous two years. The idea behind this movement is that a small group of professionals and team leaders should come up with change ideas and preferences themselves, under supervision of the consultant and manager. This philosophy led to the formation of a so-called pioneer group, consisting of twenty volunteering team leaders and professionals. This group developed change initiatives, experimented with them and made these initiatives and results wider available in the
14 organization by means of scale expansion. Some results of this „Pioneering with Change‟ project are the development of an intervision program in which currently over a hundred managers participate and the development of an online program that brings together the demand and supply of temporary jobs in the organization.
In order to analyze this case from a tripartite perspective five interviews were conducted. Two consultants of the network consulting firm were involved in this change project, of which one was interviewed.
Secondly, an interview was held with an HR-business partner from the client organization, responsible for the execution of the Sustainable Employability project within the organization. Furthermore, three
employees belonging to the pioneer group were interviewed.
Case 2: Towards new HR procedures
Case 2 concerns a change project within an organization providing support to mentally disabled persons.
The organization has around 1150 employees and supports approximately 950 clients. Employees of this organization described that before the change project took place little attention was given to their personal and career development. Some employees did not have conversations with their executives regarding these topics in the last three years. The organization therefore requested the help of the consulting firm to support them with the implementation of a new program establishing rules and guidelines concerning career development conversations. In these annual conversations the experiences of the previous year and expectations for the coming year are discussed. In this change project the consultancy firm aimed to achieve employee participation by means of the formation of „sounding boards‟. These small groups of employees could provide input in the change project. The results of this change trajectory were the implementation of annual personal and career development conversations and the development of formats for conversation reports and trainings.
Three interviews were held to analyze this case towards new HR procedures. First, one of the consultants involved in this change project was interviewed. Secondly, the manager responsible for this project within the organization was interviewed. Finally, an interview was held with one of the employees participating in one of the sounding boards.
15 Case 3: Towards Working Energetically
The third case analysis of this study concerns a change project at a Dutch utility company operating in the distribution of electricity and natural gas in part of the Netherlands. Approximately 7000 employees are currently working for the organization. The organization requested the help of the consultancy firm since it noticed that its workforce was aging in an unhealthy manner. Together with the consultancy firm the project „Working Energetically‟ was initiated. This project aimed to draw more attention to the concept of Sustainable Employability. Twenty employees were chosen to participate in the change project, which were called the ambassadors. Then, four pillars were established: culture, skills and know-how, content and organization, and vitality. For every pillar several instruments were invented and launched. Concrete results flowing from this „Working Energetically‟ project are the introduction of an employability scan, determining for every employee the current level of employability, and the development of a program for organizational members that are less employable or that will become less employable in the near future.
Four interviews were conducted to study this case from a tripartite perspective. Firstly, one of the two consultants that were involved in this project was interviewed. Secondly, an interview with the project leader of the project „Working Energetically‟ was held. Finally, two employees participating in the project as ambassadors were interviewed.
TABLE 1
Demographics of participants
Participant Gender Age Years of
experience in organization
Years of experience in current function Case 1: consultant (1-C)
Case 1: manager (1-M) Case 1: employee 1 (1-E1) Case 1: employee 2 (1-E2) Case 1: employee 2 (1-E3) Case 2: consultant (2-C) Case 2: manager (2-M) Case 2: employee 1 (2-E1) Case 3: consultant (3-C) Case 3: manager (3-M) Case 3: employee 1 (3-E1) Case 3: employee 2 (3-E2)
m f m f m m f f f f f f
38 44 56 48 37 42 45 38 42 29 30 40
5 13 6 3 6 3 5 16 3 3 10 6
5 3 2.5 3 3.5 3 2 5 3 2 6 1.5
16 Data collection
Data was obtained by means of semi-structured interviews since these allow for the collection of
consistent data across individuals as well as a more in-depth examination of individual experiences (Hill, Knox, Thompson, Williams, Hess, & Ladany, 2005). The interviews took approximately 60 minutes.
Three interview protocols were developed, adjusted for the consultant, manager and employees (see Appendix I, II and III). The interview protocols were employed as a guideline, while probing questions were used to delve deeper into the answers provided.
The questions included in the interview protocol were divided into five sections. The interviews began with general questions concerning the content and context of the change. Example questions are „What was your role in the change project?‟ and „To what extent has the change project changed your work activities?‟. By employing such factual questions before asking the opinions of participants, memories are retrieved resulting in increased reliability of the answers (Boyce & Neale, 2006).
The following three sections were respectively targeted at the concepts of sensemaking, sensegiving and interpretive schemes. These questions were based on the definitions that are available of these concepts.
The interview protocol first focused on sensemaking. As described, sensemaking can be defined as the
“meaning construction and reconstruction by the involved parties as they attempt to develop a meaningful framework for understanding the nature of the intended strategic change” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991:
442). Questions in the interview protocol addressing this meaning construction and reconstruction are
„What was your first impression when you engaged in the change?‟ and „To what extent did your attitude towards the project altered during the process?‟. Furthermore, several authors have argued that the social aspect of sensemaking, for instance by means of storytelling, rumors or gossip, sharing of experiences and sharing of interpretations, should not be overlooked. This led to the question „Have you consulted with your colleagues concerning the change project? To what extent have the interactions with your colleagues influenced your attitude towards the change?‟. Finally, since this research aims to investigate whether and how sensemaking might be influenced by sensegiving processes of other actors in the consultant-client- employees triangle, questions focused on the influence of these other actors on the process of meaning construction were asked. For instance, managers were asked to what extent they felt that the consultant and the employees have influenced their view on the change project.
The interviews subsequently concentrated on the concept of sensegiving. In order to investigate the existence of sensegiving processes in the consultant-manager-employees triangle, questions regarding sensegiving efforts towards the other two actors were asked. For instance, in the interview protocol of the
17 manager it was asked „To what extent have you tried to influence (or are you trying to influence) the way the consultant views the change process and change outcomes in the organization?‟ and „To what extent have you tried to influence (or are you trying to influence) the way the employees view the change process and change outcomes in the organization?‟. As described, the desired outcome of the sensegiving process is a cognitive shift. In the interview protocol of the manager this was reflected by the question „To what extent do you think you succeeded in influencing the views of the consultant and employees regarding this change project?‟ In this way the perceived effectiveness of the own sensegiving efforts was measured.
Then, attention was paid to the interpretive schemes and possible changes in these schemes, thus
analyzing if the fundamental shared assumptions that determine the way the members of an organization conceive of their organization is changed. These questions focused on old interpretive schemes („Please try to think back to the situation at (name organization) before this change project started. Could you describe in a few sentences what your image of the organization and the change project was?‟), revised interpretive schemes („Could you describe in a few sentences what your current image of the organization and the change project is?‟) and changes in interpretive schemes („To what extent is your image of the organization changed during the change project? To what extent is your own behavior in the situations you encounter during your work activities changed?‟) These questions made it possible to analyze the existence of differences between the interpretive schemes of consultants, managers and employees.
Finally, questions were asked concerning the satisfaction of the interviewees with the change project.
Example questions are „To what extent are you satisfied with the content of the change?‟ and „To what extent are you satisfied with the process of the change?‟.
Thus, based on existing definitions of the investigated constructs (e.g. Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Maitlis, 2005; Foldy et al., 2008) interview protocols for consultants, managers and employees were developed.
These were used as a guideline during the interviews. In addition, probing questions were asked in order to understand the underlying reasoning of the answers that were given.
Data analysis
After the data was gathered, each recorded interview was turned into a verbatim transcript. According to Hennink, Hutter and Bailey (2010: 211), verbatim transcripts are essential “as these reflect participants‟
emphasis and emotions relating to the issues discussed and as these provide the rich detail that is so valuable in qualitative research”. This resulted in approximately 50,000 words in raw data. In order to
18 transfer these transcripts into a meaningful representation of the data, the verbatim transcripts were
analyzed by means of coding. These codes can be deductive or inductive, thus deriving from existing theory or purely deriving from the original data. Due to the limited current research on this research topic a general inductive approach was applied. This is an approach in which data analysis is determined partly by the research objectives (deductive) but primarily by multiple readings and interpretations of the raw data (inductive) (Thomas, 2006). While the literature review already provided some directions for possible interpretations which were utilized in the data analysis process as deductive codes, the findings were mostly directly extracted from the data and were therefore inductive codes.
Concrete examples of deductive codes are the codes „old interpretive schemes‟ and „new interpretive schemes‟, derived from the study of Balogun and Johnson (2005). As described, the authors have defined interpretive schemes as the “fundamental shared assumptions that determine the way the members of an organization conceive of their organization and their environmental context and how they act in different situations” (2005: 1575). The existence of old interpretive schemes, before the change project took place, and new interpretive schemes, after the change project took place, is recognized in all investigated cases.
An example of a statement indicating an old interpretive scheme is “The way of changing in our organization before this change project was: managers separate themselves from the rest of the
organization, come up with a step-by-step plan, tell this plan repeatedly to the employees and in this way believe that the plan will be adopted” (1-E2). One of the statements underlining the existence of new interpretive schemes is “After the project the openness towards other change methods has increased, because it has worked. Nowadays you hear more often in our organization: maybe we can handle this by means of bottom-up pioneering” (1-M).
In addition to these deductive codes, inductive codes were developed. By this inductive coding important issues for participants were revealed instead of issues by the researcher perspective, which is valuable for theory development (Hennink et al., 2010). An example of an inductive code is „asking questions‟, one of the sensegiving tactics of the consultants of which the relevance only became clear after analysis of the raw data. This inductive code is for instance indicated by statements as “I often aim to influence by means of asking questions. In this way I show them other perspectives” (2-M) and “The consultant asked many questions and his manner of asking questions was very unique. With that he really involved us and he was also leading the process with those questions” (2-E1).
As described by Weber (1990), the basic coding process in content analysis is to organize large quantities of text and resulting codes into much fewer content categories in order to get a better overview of the large
19 amounts of data. These categories are themes that are directly expressed in the text or are derived from them through analysis. Based on this described basic coding process, codes were grouped into categories.
For identifying a category the number of times and the consistency in the way it happened were
considered (Miles & Huberman, 1994). For instance, in the data analysis process it emerged that besides the sensemaking and sensegiving activities of and between the consultants, managers and employees additional factors played a role. Both the influence of senior management and the influence of non- participating colleagues were identified, more elaborately explained in the results section. As these factors played a role in answering this research question but were not included in the consultant-manager-
employees triangle, they were aggregated into the category of „context factors‟. Table 2 shows the resulting coding scheme.
In this coding process first three separate within-case analyses of the three change projects were executed to become more familiar with the data. Subsequently, cross-case analysis was applied to search for patterns (Eisenhardt, 1989).
20 TABLE 2
Coding scheme
Code Example from data
Sensemaking Meaning construction
(deductive, Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991)
Employee 1-E1: “At first the concept was not really clear to me.
Sustainable Employability is really a catch-all term. You can add all sorts of things and eventually something sustainable will come out.”
Consultant 2-C: “In the beginning I wondered: do they only need a trainer in this project? I like to consult in change projects in which I can deliver a greater change contribution to the organization.”
Manager 1-M: “I began with a traditional, top-down approach. However, I noticed that little urgency was felt by the employees.”
Meaning reconstruction
(deductive, Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991)
Employee 1-E2: “Many people find it a no-strings-attached concept but if you are really actively involved you notice that that is not true and that concrete steps can be taken.”
Consultant 2-C: “Eventually I more and more got the feeling that what they asked in the organization fitted to what we as consultants had to offer.”
Manager 1-M:“Due to this experience I became increasingly convinced that another approach was needed in which the employees are more involved.”
Social processes of interaction (deductive, Balogun & Johnson, 2005)
Employee 1-E2: “There have been many discussions but I mainly see that as something positive. It helps to keep each other focused.”
Consultant 1-E: “The other consultant is really results-focused while I am more focused on reflecting and analyzing. Sometimes that conflicts with each other but I think that has had a positive influence on the process.”
Manager 3-M: “I haven‟t consulted with colleagues as they were not involved in this project. I did miss that cooperation with colleagues. It really was a solo function.”
Sensegiving
Sensegiving by consultant to employees Facilitating role by delegating responsibility (inductive)
Employee 1-E3: “The consultant encouraged us to come up with our own ideas. Their main role was the positive guidance of our ideas.”
Asking questions (inductive)
Manager 2-M: “I often aim to influence by means of asking questions. In this way I show them other perspectives.”
Focusing on results (inductive)
Employee 1-E1: “We had to achieve certain results. Therefore, he guided our meetings and tried to accelerate the process.”
Seperating from company culture (inductive)
Employee 1-E3: “The design of this change process helped us to diverge from the usual way of doing things so that you could not be influenced by those. That led to feelings of freedom.”
Adjusting to company culture (inductive)
Employee 3-E1: “She supported us in how to create change in a big and cumbersome organization as this. How we still can be able to achieve things in this kind of organization.”
Influencing by means of personality (inductive)
Employee 1-E3: “He was very enthusiastic in encouraging the development of new ideas. That enthusiasm really helped.”
Stimulating sensemaking processes under own guidance
(inductive)
Consultant 3-C: “I stimulated the employees to come up with ideas together and to ask each other for feedback on the invented ideas.”
Providing practical recommendations (inductive
Employee 2-E1: “He provided many practical recommendations, for instance how to handle HR conversations that do not run smoothly.”
21 TABLE 2
Coding scheme (continued)
Code Example from data
Sensegiving by manager to employees Shared sensegiving role with consultant (inductive)
Employee 1-E3: “I find it difficult to distinguish the influence of the consultant and the manager as most of the time they stood in front of our group together.”
Personal involvement (inductive)
Employee 1-E2: “She appealed to us to help her to reach results. Every time she did this she gave us some insight into her personal
circumstances.”
Sensegiving between consultant and manager
Choice consultancy firm (inductive)
Manager 2-M: “In this change project I consciously chose for a
consultancy firm that shares my vision on how change projects should be approached.”
Partner in change project (inductive)
Manager 2-M: “We work very cooperatively. After one and a half years it feels more as a companion.”
Sensegiving by employees to consultant and manager
Providing ideas related to content change (inductive)
Employee 2-E1: “I think I was able to influence the consultant and
manager with my personal experiences. This was confirmed by things that I had brought up and which I recognized in some final documents later.”
Conveying company culture (inductive)
Employee 1-E1: “We really are a hierarchical organization with a great focus on controlling and on KPIs. I personally really like the experimental pioneer approach of this project but some pioneers were not used to it. I believe this did influence the change process.”
Context factors
Influence colleagues not participating in the change project
(inductive)
Employee 3-E2: “We have tried to spread our ideas outside the building blocks. That was also a bit what was expected from the ambassadors.”
Influence senior management (inductive)
Consultant 1-C: “During the change project still control was exercised by senior management, which kept recurring: „You need to have something that we can use to assess your performance.‟”
Interpretive schemes Old interpretive schemes
(deductive, Balogun & Johnson, 2005)
Employee 2-E1: “Before this project you could „hide behind the manager‟
in this organization so that you did not have to provide feedback to colleagues.”
New interpretive schemes
(deductive, Balogun & Johnson, 2005)
Employee 2-E1: “Because of these new HR procedures you look at each other in a more critical manner. You have to show more courage to provide feedback. So I believe this project helped to change the daily routines in this organization.”
Rigidity old interpretive schemes (deductive, Reger & Palmer, 1996)
Employee 1-E3: “I believe that this change method becomes more and more important within the organization, but we still have many people who are raised with blueprinting.”
22 RESULTS
In this section first each of the three cases is discussed separately. This is followed by a cross-case analysis, thus focusing on similarities and differences between the three cases. Every case analysis is structured along four sections. Based on the research design the concepts of sensemaking, sensegiving and interpretive schemes are discussed. Furthermore, the coding process revealed additional factors playing a role in this study which were not included in the research design. These will be described under the heading of „context factors‟.
Case 1: Towards Sustainable Employability
First, the case of the utility company initiating a „Pioneering with Change‟ movement in order to enhance the Sustainable Employability of the organizational members will be discussed. The results of the coding process are presented in Appendix IV.
1. Sensemaking
With regard to the sensemaking processes of the employees, the interviews show that the initial meaning construction of the employees concerning this change project was rather negative. According to the manager the employees experienced a high level of change fatigue. This is underlined by employee 1-E3
who described: “My first impression was: there we go again. Another top-down, planned change program”. However, meaning reconstruction took place rather quickly due to the organic, bottom-up approach and the voluntary nature of participation. After this initial round of meaning construction and reconstruction, a second round of meaning construction and reconstruction among the employees can be distinguished. The employees, while having a positive attitude towards the change, found the change project rather vague and difficult to make sense of. Employee 1-E1 stated: “At first the project was not really clear to me. Sustainable Employability is really a catch-all term. You can add all sorts of things and eventually something sustainable will come out.” However, over time the project became more concrete for the employees. This is shown by statements as “Many people find it a no-strings-attached concept but if you are really actively involved you notice that that is not true and that concrete steps can be taken” (1- E2) and “Over time I gained more insight in how to take concrete steps, which clearly facilitated the change process” (1-E1). The interviews show that certain sensegiving activities played a key role in this meaning reconstruction process, which is more elaborately explained in the subsequent sensegiving section. Social processes of interaction additionally played a role in the sensemaking processes of the
23 employees. In this change project all three interviewed employees described that much discussions were held in their pioneer groups. However, these discussions were not viewed negatively. Employee 1-E1
described these discussions as “part of the process to reach certain results” while employee 1-E2 stated that these discussions “influenced the process positively as it helped us to stay focused”.
The sensemaking process of the interviewed consultant revolved around the approach of the client organization towards this change project. Initially, the consultant had a critical view on the project as he found the approach of the client organization concerning Sustainable Employability too much planned and too rigid. During the change process the consultant took a more positive view on the change project as he felt he was able to provide feedback to the client organization and in this manner develop a change approach together. Also in the case of the consultant the positive influence of social processes of interaction on the sensemaking process is described: “The other consultant and I, we really complement each other. She is really result-focused while I am more focused on reflecting and analyzing. Sometimes that conflicts with each other, but I think that has a positive influence on the process” (1-C).
In this case towards Sustainable Employability the manager initially handled the change in a top-down manner. She described: “We wanted to do something with Sustainable Employability and began with a traditional, top-down approach. However, I noticed that little urgency was felt by the employees” (1-M).
The difficulties she encountered led to a process of meaning reconstruction: “Due to this experience I became increasingly convinced that another approach was needed in which the employees are involved and in which behavioral change is the point of focus” (1-M).
2. Sensegiving
In this case various sensegiving tactics were initiated by the consultant towards the employees. Both the consultant and the employees consider the consultant role as a facilitating one, stimulating employees to take responsibility for the change. Employee 1-E3 for instance stated: “The consultant encouraged us to come up with our own ideas. Their main role was the positive guidance of our ideas.” A notable finding is that both the consultant and the employees describe that one of the influence strategies of the consultant to stimulate this own responsibility of employees was by asking questions. Employee 1-E2 stated: “He was really focusing on asking supplementary questions to concretize the plans we made. In this way he prevented that Sustainable Employability would just become a superficial concept.” Thirdly, the consultant influenced the sensemaking processes of the employees by means of a constant focus on
24 results. According to the employees, the consultant aimed to accelerate the change process by the
formulation of interim results. This was described as „positive pressure‟ to achieve results. Moreover, the personality of the consultant emerged to be an influencing factor in the process. According to employee 1- E3, “He was very enthusiastic and always encouraged the development of new ideas. That enthusiasm really helped.” Finally, the interviews showed that the consultant initiated in sensegiving activities by both separating the employees from the current company culture and adjusting the change process to the current company culture. The utility company was collectively described as a rather hierarchical
organization in which planned, top-down change with a strong focus on the establishment of key
performance indicators (KPIs) is the norm. The design of this change project helped to „break away‟ from the company culture for a while. According to employee 1-E3, “The design of this change process helped us to diverge from the usual way of doing things so that you could not be influenced by those. That led to feelings of freedom.” On the other hand, the consultant described the importance of fitting the change in the normal structure of the organization. In this case this was done by linking KPIs to the change process, although this did not fit the normal change approach of the consultancy firm. According to the consultant,
“The challenge lies in connecting those two worlds: the enthusiastic pioneers and the current organizational systems” (1-C).
Besides these sensegiving efforts by the consultant towards the employees, the manager additionally engaged in sensegiving activities towards the employees. The interviews show that the manager took a shared change agent role together with the consultant, leading to joint sensegiving attempts. Employee 1- E3 stated: “I find it difficult to distinguish the influence of the consultant and the manager as most of the time they stood in front of our group together.” Next to this shared change agent role, the sensegiving activities of the manager mainly revolved around her personal involvement with the concept of Sustainable Employability. She referred to herself as the „Miss Sustainable Employability‟ of the organization, which was affirmed by the employees. According to the employees, the manager was the one who was always promoting the project. As noted by one of the employees, “She appealed to us to help her to reach results. Every time she did this she gave us some insight into her personal
circumstances. I thought that was a really strong way to give a human face to the change project” (1-E2).
With regard to the sensegiving processes between the consultant and the manager, both actors described a relationship mainly based on cooperation and co-creation in which little sensegiving between them was present. The lack of sensegiving attempts between these two actors can be partly explained by the influence that the manager had on the choice of the consultancy firm. As the manager was increasingly convinced that a different change approach was needed, she specifically opted for a consultancy firm
25 working according to a rather bottom-up, experimental change method. The manager thus chose a
consultancy firm working in line with her vision. It is likely that this free choice has affected the
sensegiving activities between the two actors. Although the cooperative relationship is described by both actors very positively, the manager did mention a word of caution: “We work very cooperatively. After one and a half years it feels more as a companion. However, sometimes that can obscure the relationship.
At some moments in time I believed the relationship could be a bit more business-like again” (1-M).
Besides the previously described top-down sensegiving activities by the consultant and manager to employees, this case underlines the existence of bottom-up sensegiving processes. In this case towards Sustainable Employability, these bottom-up sensegiving processes took the form of employees influencing the change process by conveying the existing company culture towards the consultant and manager.
According to employee 1-E3 there was ample room in this change project for input from employees. She described that the employees had more insight in which changes would work within the organization and which were likely to be resisted and were able to transfer these insights upwards. This was confirmed by employee 1-E1 with the following statement: “We really are a hierarchical organization with a great focus on controlling and on KPIs. I personally really like the experimental pioneer approach of this project but some pioneers were not used to it and did not like the insecurity of it. I believe this did influence the change process.”
3. Context factors: non-participating colleagues and senior management
This aim of this research is to investigate how processes of sensemaking and sensegiving may influence changes in interpretive schemes of consultants, managers and employees. In answering this question additional factors came to light in this study initially not incorporated in the study design, but related to the researched constructs. These will be described under the heading of „context factors‟.
A first influencing factor which emerged in the interviews was the role of managers and employees not participating in the change project. As described, this change project revolved around an involved pioneer group that developed change initiatives, experimented with them and made these initiatives and results wider available in the organization by means of scale expansion. In this case, a clear distinction can be made in terms of sensegiving efforts, sensemaking efforts and interpretive schemes between
organizational members participating in the change project and organizational members not participating in the change project. Several interviewees described the rather skeptical attitudes of their colleagues not
26 participating in the change project and how they have tried to influence these attitudes. Employee 1-E2
stated: “My colleagues did not influence my view on this project. I did try to influence their views. I do now know if that worked out because my colleagues are rather stubborn. I have tried to stress the importance of our methodology: the participative, the oil stain strategy. I do not know if I have been able to influence them. The manager described a similar situation as this employee. According to the manager, the change project was not in the spotlight, leading to little influence strategies from non-participating colleagues. Although not involved in clear influence attempts, the non-participating colleagues did have a skeptical attitude towards the change, wondering if “only fun activities instead of work activities were performed” (1-M). The manager engaged in sensegiving attempts by showing the intermediate results to these skeptical colleagues. She described that “We just began and as we went along in the process we showed the non-participating colleagues that it worked” (1-M).
Furthermore, during the research process a second context factor came forward. It became clear that sensemaking and sensegiving efforts were not solely initiated by the actors in the consultant-manager- employees triangle. The influence of senior management in this change project was mentioned in both the interviews with the consultant and the manager. It is described that during the interaction with senior management a certain tension arose between the non-binding nature of the pioneer approach and the top- down approach of planned change programs, which was the „normal‟ way of changing at the organization.
Although senior management provided the freedom to experiment, the consultant described that still sensegiving efforts were initiated by senior management. He stated: “During the change project still control was exercised by senior management, which kept recurring: „You need to have something that we can use to assess your performance‟” (1-C). The consultant additionally described: “When things go well, the reflex of senior management is: „This is going to become an important theme, let‟s stick a KPI to it and put it on our dash board.‟ I do not believe in that change method but that‟s their reflex” (1-C).
Eventually this led to the formulation of certain KPIs. Furthermore, it led to new insights of the consultant that effective change needs to combine free experimenting, separate from senior management, but also needs to be in accordance with the language of senior management and fitting the existing organizational systems. Therefore, it can be derived that the sensegiving efforts of senior management have been effective to a certain extent.
27 4. Interpretive schemes
The interviews held in the case towards Sustainable Employability showed a differentiation between old interpretive schemes, before the change project was initiated, and new interpretive schemes, after the completion of the change project. According to the old interpretive schemes of the interviewees, the organization is rather hierarchical and focuses mainly on top-down, planned change programs. Employee 1-E3described this as follows: “The way of changing in our organization before this change project was:
managers separate themselves from the rest of the organization, come up with a step-by-step plan, tell this plan repeatedly to the employees and in this way believe that the plan will be adopted.” All interviewees in the case towards Sustainable Employability described a similar change in their interpretive schemes, related to the way organizational change is handled. A slow but steady transfer of the organization
towards more bottom-up, emergent change methods is described by the consultant, the manager and by the employees. For instance, the manager stated: “After the project the openness towards other change methods has increased, because it has worked. Nowadays you hear more often in our organization: maybe we can handle this by means of bottom-up pioneering” (1-M). Employee 1-E3confirms this by describing that due to this project he uses the pioneering change method in his current reorganization project.
Although all interviewees thus spoke of certain changes in the way they and their colleagues look at the organization, it was emphasized that the „old way of doing things‟ at the organization was still existing.
This is for instance shown by quotes as “I believe that it is still an organization in which structure and certainty are the point of focus” by the consultant (1-C) and “I believe that this change method becomes more and more important within the organization, but we still have many people who are raised with blueprinting” by employee 1-E3. Thus, while a bottom-up pioneer approach spread through the organization, the old assumptions regarding what organizational change is about co-existed.
Case 2: Towards new HR procedures
Secondly, the case of the healthcare organization striving towards new procedures for their HR conversations is discussed. The results of the coding process are depicted in Appendix V.
1. Sensemaking
The interviews held in this case towards new HR procedures showed that the distinction between the different functions of the employees influenced the sensemaking processes of the employees considerably.
