Are you ready to Change?

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1 Are you ready to change?

Are you ready to Change?

Merging in the Public Sector

by

Kim Griek

University of Groningen

Faculty of Economics and Business

Pre-MSc Change Management

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2 Are you ready to Change?

Are you ready to Change?

Merging in the Public Sector

“Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflicts have not learned their history”

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-3 Are you ready to Change?

ABSTRACT

This research has been conducted to research the Readiness to change at three municipalities within the Financial Administrations. This research lays out how organizational culture, leadership and personality traits influence readiness to change. Important theories in this research are the Big Five personality traits, Transformational and Transactional leadership, Competing Values model from Cameron and Quinn, and the Organizational Change Questionnaire. This research shows that there is a correlation between all the former mentioned theories, but aphesis based on Cronbach’s alpha and the marginal significance of some theories, that more research is needed in the area of readiness to change combined with the theories.

Key words: Readiness to change, Organizational Change Questionnaire, Big Five personality traits, Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership, Organizational Culture, Competing Values, Municipality, Ooststellingwerf, Weststellingwerf, Opsterland (OWO), Financial Administration.

Research theme: Readiness to change at municipalities OWO, Financial Administrations.

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INTRODUCTION

“Businesses are confronting continuous and unparalleled changes. In the past decade, organizational change initiatives have continued to dramatically increase as firms have struggled through economic downturns, employee shortages, technological advancements, downsizing, mergers, and general instability. For others, ongoing change has been essential because of rapid growth, new business ventures, exciting opportunities, innovative inventions, and novel leadership and management approaches. Whatever the reason, embracing constant and continuous change is now a necessity for business success” (Madsen, Miller, & John, 2005)

This study is about the readiness to change of the Financial Administrations (FD) of municipalities Ooststellingwerf, Weststellingwerf and Opsterland (hereafter called OWO municipalities). In 2007, the team leaders of OW municipalities started to cooperate, without any pressures from the management of these municipalities. In May 2008, the client, municipality Ooststellingwerf, and municipality Weststellingwerf, made the decision, official, to collaborate on three components. In 2012 municipality Opsterland joined with a fourth component. The goals of this collaboration or merge were cost control, reduction in vulnerability of civil service organizations, knowledge sharing and investing in expertise, and improvement of service to citizens. This growth in collaboration started with Taxes/Property, followed by back office Social Affairs and Computerization & Automation (Kalfsbeek, 2012).

The merge of these three departments is completed, but not yet fully implemented. One conclusion, after an mid-term evaluation, was that individual work processes stayed exactly the same in the new situation, as that they were in the old situation. The merge created different isles, which were formed by every municipality individual. Questions that raised, why are the work processes in the new situation continued on the ‘old way’ of working? Is this anxiety of the involved employees, the differences in organizational culture, or is this located in the leadership style involved during the merge, or was it something else?

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new national legislation. The foundation of Social Affairs was the policy of the desire to merge the back offices. The process of merging Computerization & Automation was a process which took four years, which had a difficult start, but after a view changes went smoother. The overall conclusion of the interim evaluation is that the mergers are not complete in the sense of full implementation.

Now the merge of the FD is launched. In a informal meeting in 2010, the members of the FD of the OW municipalities were informed that their departments would merge. In December 2010, also municipality Opsterland had decide to join this collaboration. The formal merge of FD is scheduled in January 2015. For the merge of FD, the OWO municipalities developed four work groups (delimitation, system and work processes, culture and personnel). All these work groups have their own task in realizing the merge of FD in January 2015. Together these work groups have to meet the goals that where set before the mergers of the four different departments, the achievement of cost control, reduction in vulnerability of civil service organizations, knowledge sharing and investment in expertise, and improvement of service to citizens.

The important question in this paper consists of why employees, involved in a merge, don’t adapt their individual work processes in the OWO collaboration. Regardless of the new situation, ‘the collaboration’, the old system is still in de mindset and work processes of the employees. Important in this given fact, is to determine the readiness to change of the employees of FD. The goal of this research paper is to identify the social drivers that influence the readiness to change of employees, and how these can influence mergers in the public sector. In order to make the research not to broad, there will be focused on three social drivers. These social drivers are explained in the theoretical chapter of this paper. In order to reach the research goal, the following research question needs to be answered: What are the main social drivers for readiness to change, and how do they influence a public sector merge?

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this chapter, the theoretical background of this research will be presented, together with the conceptual model. The next section will discuss the dependent variable readiness to change and the independent variables: personality traits, organizational culture, and leadership. By using the literature, this section will deepen the variables and show the connection between the variables, by research questions. First, the conceptual model will be represented, which translates the dependent and independent variables, see figure 1.

In the next paragraphs, readiness to change, personality traits, organizational culture and leadership will be discussed.

Figure 1: Conceptual model

Readiness to change

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as well as the extent to which readiness to change leads to a successful implementation of the change.

Readiness to change, according to Metselaar (1997), is an individual’s positive behavioural intention regarding the change implementations. This positive behavioural intention consists of the participants perception of the change being necessary, the willingness to take part in the change and the ability of the organization to make the change happen.

According to Weiner (2009) readiness to change is ´a multi-level, multi-faced construct’ (Weiner 2009:1-2). He implies that readiness can be present at all the different levels within the organization. Readiness to change as an organization-level construct refers to the members’ change commitment to implement a change and their shared belief to do so collectively.

Following Armenakis et al. (1993) the notion of readiness to change can be defined as the level to which employees hold a positive mindset about the need for organizational change, also called change acceptance, as well as the level to which these employees believe that the change have a positive outcome for them and for the wider organization. They say that organizational leaders often introduce purposeful and system-wide changes to realize specified goals, but that when these purposeful changes are introduced the organizational leaders and members may be confronted with differences and conflicts. In order to let the change occur, leaders have to resolve these conflicts in order to meet these desired goals, a state of readiness has to be created. They also say that readiness to change reflects beliefs, feelings, and intentions regarding the extent to which the changes are needed and the perceptions of the individual and organizational capacity to successfully enact those changes. Researchers have tried to classify the elements that shape receivers’ readiness to change, from all the factors being identified, only two have been distinguished as key components that make or break the readiness to change: (1) climate of change and (2) the way change is dealt with (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Holt et al., 2007).

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Eagly and Chaiken (1998) explain cognitive readiness to change as: “beliefs express positive or negative evaluation of greater or lesser extremity, and occasionally are exactly neutral in their evaluative content”.

Emotional readiness to change refer to how an individual is feeling in response to, in this case, the change. Eagly and Chaiken (1998) define this as: “feelings, moods, emotions, and sumpathetic nervous-system activity that people have experienced in relation to an attitude object and subsequently associate with it”.

This type of readiness to change is described as the most complex and controversial. Research in the tripartite view on this topic is mixed (Bagozzi, 1978; Breckler, 1984; Kothandapani, 1971). In the traditional tripartite view, intentional readiness to change reflects on an individual’s evaluation of the change, that is based in past behaviours and future intentions to act. In some cases, researchers place more emphasis on past behaviours, whereas other researchers focus more on future intentions (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993).

Based on the tripartite view, Bouckenooghe (2009), has developed an instrument called “Organizational Change Questionnaire-Climate of Change, Processes, and Readiness (OCQ-C, P, R)” measuring the three kinds of readiness discussed above. With this instrument, the readiness to change is researched before the change is taking place. Some of the components of this questionnaire will be used in this research.

Personality traits

Often there seems to be a natural aversion against change by individuals in an organization. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) their explanation of this phenomenon is that every change is a disturbance of the status quo, which threats the employees’ comfort zone. An employees’ personality traits determine what the comfort zone of this employee is, how an employee behaves.

The framework of personality, called the Big- Five framework, and mostly researched based on teamwork in combination with performance, distinguishes five factors: agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion and openness to experience (De Raad, 2000; McCrae & John, 1992; Wiggins, 1996). These factors, or personality traits, remain stable and consistent over time and situations.

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(1959) a single disagreeable team member disrupts cooperation and is costly for social rewards.

According to Hurtz & Donovan (2000) and Salgado (2003) conscientiousness is the most consistent predictor of individual performance. Barrick & Mount (1993), Costa & McCrea (1992) and Goldberg (1993) say that a high conscientious employee is hardworking, responsible, has self-discipline, is organized, self-motivated, achievement oriented. According to Van Vianen & De Drue (2001) similarity in conscientiousness leads to cohesion, and dissimilarity according to Mohammed & Angell (2003) and Molleman et al. (2004) will lead to conflict diminishes the effectiveness.

Emotional stability, or sometimes called Neuroticism, reflects to employees being anxious, defensive, insecure, and emotional (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Emotional stable employees are employees with self-confident and know how in their objectives and decisions (Molleman et al.;2004 and van Vianen & De Drue; 2001). Emotional stability can foster cooperation and provide coordination of work behaviour and task cohesion (Barrick et al, 1998; Molleman et al., 2004; Neuman et al., 1999).

Costa & McCrae (1992) describe extraverts as social, active, energetic, assertive and adventurous. Research do express caution of too many extraverts. The focus on pleasurable social interaction is expected to distract them from their work, and extraverts are very dominant, which can to conflicts.

Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne(1999) associate openness to experience with intelligence, perceptiveness, creativity, imagination, tolerance, culturedness, and inquisitiveness. According to LePine (2003) and Molleman et al. (2004) employees with high in openness are creative and willing to experiment. They are expected to adapt easily, build upon ideas and look for alternative solutions to solve problems. Openness to experience provides a learning environment and experiences satisfaction.

Personality traits and readiness to change

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There is little research about which personality trait, based on the Big Five Framework, best to use to see what the readiness to change is at an employees’ individual level. Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne(1999), go deeper in on personality, not linked to the Big Five. They identified seven personality variables: locus of control, generalized self-efficacy, self-esteem, positive affectivity (PA), openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity, and risk aversion. Based on these personality traits, linking it to the Big Five Framework, only openness to experience is useful in determining readiness to change. Employees high on openness, are according to Judge et al. less likely to perceive change as stressful, and cope more effectively with organizational change.

This result in the first research question:

Research question 1: Within the merger of the Financial Administrations, how do the personality traits have influence on readiness to change?

Organizational culture

Organizational culture is, according to Hofstede et al 1990, difficult to define. However, many researchers used Schein’s (1990) three dimensional view of organizational culture. This three dimensional view consists of assumptions, values and artefacts. Assumptions are the taken-for-granted beliefs about humans and the environment of the organization that are not seen at the surface. Values are the shared beliefs that govern the behaviours of employees, and decides what is social acceptable within organizations (Rokeach, 1973). Artefacts is more visible in the organization. It is the behaviour, the language, and the material symbols that exist in the organization. The values, of Schein’s three dimensional view, are seen as the most reliable representation of organizational culture. It is considered as central in the understanding of the organizational culture. So, measurements of organizational culture focus mainly on values.

Besides Schein’s view on organizational culture, Eldrige and Crombie (1974:89) define culture as: “Culture is a unique configuration of norms, values, beliefs, ways of behaving and so on, that characterize the manner in which groups and individuals combine to get things done”. Or in terms of Coolican and Jackson (2002) “Just the way we work together”.

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Cameron and Quinn (1999) classified culture based on four different summary profiles, resulting in the Competing Values Framework (CVF). Because CVF was the base in earlier researches within the municipalities, it will be valuable to use it also in this research.

The CVF developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1981,1983) has as central point that organizational effectiveness depends on the organization’s ability to satisfy multiple criteria based on four types of cultures that comprise a combination of two dimensions; flexibility and discretion versus control and stability, and internal focus and integration versus external focus and differentiation. Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) developed the Competing Values Framework through analyzing the relationship among Campbell’s effectiveness criteria. “It represents what people value about an organization’s performance” (Cameron & Quinn, 1999 p. 31). The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is based on the Competing Values Framework. The culture types that underlie the Competing Values Framework are; the clan culture, the adhocracy culture, the market culture, and the hierarchy culture. Every culture possesses a unique set of behaviours, values, beliefs and assumptions that affect the organization in different ways.

The clan culture is internally focused, and characterized by flexibility and discretion. As Cameron et al. (2006 p. 38) describe it: “organizations succeed because they hire, develop, and retain their human resource base”. Internal relationships are the focus in this culture. Core values of the clan culture are social equality, cooperation, consideration, agreement and fairness. An organization characterized with this culture type is a friendly place to work, it is like a family.

The adhocracy culture type has a flexible organizational structure and is oriented to the external environment of the organization. The organization is generally a dynamic, creative and entrepreneurial place to work, where the employees stick their necks out and take risks. The belief is that people behave appropriately when they know and understand what the importance and the impact of a task is. An adhocracy culture values variety, risk, creativity, stimulation and autonomy (Quinn & Kimberley, 1984).

A market culture is, externally focused, but the structure of the organization is a structure of stability and control mechanisms. The market culture, according to Cameron and Quinn (1999), is result oriented and aggressive, which results in shareholder value and productivity on short to immediate term. Employees in a market culture value perfectionism, personal initiative and diligence.

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culture places a high value on order, obedience, economy, formality and rationality. Leaders in this culture need to be good coordinators and organizers.

Quinn points out that all four culture types can exist in a single organization, but some values will be more dominant than others (Quinn, 1988).

Organizational culture and readiness to change

Looking at what is said above, and adding to this what Armekanis et al. (1993) mention, that perceptions of readiness to change may differ within an organization, which not only contributes to individual differences, but also to the cultural memberships that polarize the attitudes, beliefs and intentions of its employees. In the merger of OWO’s Financial Administration, it’s not only the readiness to change within the organization, but combining probably three different cultures, which can have a rational impact on the cultural membership within the ‘new’ Financial Administration.

Furthermore, Zammuto and O’Connor (1992) acknowledge that an organizational culture with a flexible structure and a supportive, or differentiation focus, were more helpful to the successful implementation of change, than organization with a more inflexible and control structure.

This results in the second research question:

Research Question 2: How do the cultures, as existing right now in the municipalities, have an influence on the amount of readiness to change of the merger of the Financial Administrations?

Leadership

To make this research not to broad, in terms on leadership, the research will focus on transactional and transformational leadership.

In most recent research, the focus in researching leadership lies on the difference between transformational, charismatic or inspirational leadership and transactional leadership. According to Bryman (1992) referred to as “The new leadership” approach. The values, vision, and management of meaning in this so called ‘new approach’ have a strong link with the organizational culture.

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environment of the follower fail to provide motivation, direction and satisfaction, it is the leader, and his or her behaviour who will compensate this failing. The leader has clear expectations, and will reward them in return.

Since the 1980s, one of the most popular approaches to leadership is transformational leadership. Transformational leadership motivates and inspires followers to perform beyond expectations (Bass, 1985). According to Hater and Bass (1988, p.695): “The dynamics of transformational leadership involve strong personal identification with the leader, joining in a shared vision of the future, or going beyond self-interest exchange of rewards for compliance”. Leaders use the interests of the followers, they create awareness and the acceptance of the followers of the purpose and mission of the group and motivate them to not go for their self-interest, but work in favour of the group (Yammarino & Bass, 1990). Fundamental characteristics of transformational leaders are; idealized influence which refers to role modelling, inspirational motivation describes inspiring followers to become more engaged and leads to more task-oriented commitment, intellectual stimulation are the characteristics of the leader for stimulating creativity and innovation, and last, individualized consideration is the support of the leader for two-way communication with followers and serve as mentor or coach.

Where transactional leadership is using rewards and punishments to motivate followers, transformational leadership relies on the abilities and talents of the leader to influence followers, relying more on the intrinsic member motivation, follower development and emotional caring (Khurana, 2002; Bass & Riggio, 2006). But, it doesn’t mean that transformational and transactional leadership are unrelated (Hater and Bass, 1988). Bass (1985) views these two theories as separate dimensions, which implies that a leader is both transformational and transactional. In his view, transformational leadership builds on transactional leadership, not the other way around. The theories differ on the type of goals and the way in which leaders motivate their followers.

Leadership and readiness to change

Judge et al. (2002) found out, that it is not only the challenge to select a set of actions that are achievable within the capacity of the organization to absorb change and resource constraints, but also that the situation plays a vital role in determining leader effectiveness and that, leaders must behave differently in different situations. Bass (1995) suggests that leaders have to create a vision to promote change.

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(change acceptance). For example, a transformational leader functions as a role model, through which he or she stimulates followers to think about existing methods in a new way and challenge them to go beyond their own values, traditions and beliefs (Hater en Bass, 1988).

So, when leadership is a process of social influences, and transformational leadership, provides, according to researchers, the best result in the acceptance of the change, and thereby determines the readiness to change, the third research question is:

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METHODOLOGY

To investigate how the social drivers; personality traits, organizational culture and leadership style influence readiness to change, a proper research methodology had to be set up. The main question of the research that needed to be answered was: What are the main social drivers for readiness to change, and how do they influence a public sector merge? In order to answer this research question, different data was needed. Data from the organizations and theoretical data.

The dependent variable of this research was ‘readiness to change’. In order to decide upon the independent variables, an interview was held with the team leader Business (Bedrijfsvoering) and a Senior HRM Advisor of the municipality Ooststellingwerf, also the client. Concluding this interview, the independent variables that were depict, were; personality traits, organizational culture and leadership style. To collect data on these subjects, an online questionnaire was held, were every employee of the OWO Financial Administrations could participate in. Beside the online questionnaire and the interview, also research materials of earlier merger in OWO connection was used.

Besides the above described data, also data about previous research about the topics was needed, to investigate the relationships between them. This was investigated using theoretical data.

Data collection

This research was trying to proof the link between the independent variables; the Big Five personality traits, Cameron and Quinn’s organizational cultures and transformational and transactional leadership, and the dependent variable readiness to change. The tests used, are used more in other research.

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readiness to change were put in an online questionnaire were employees could decide if they disagree or agree on a five point Likert scale.

For the Big Five personality traits, the Ten-item Personality Inventory – TIPI (Rammstedt & John, 2007), was used. Rammstedt & John, abbreviated the well-proven 44 items from the Big Five Inventory (BFI) to ten items, with just two items per scale. In order to guard against capitalization they broadened the TIPI in two ways; they used multiple samples and required that the short scales had to hold up not only in the US but also in Germany, another language-and-culture context. In total ten questions about personality traits were asked in the online questionnaire, where employees had to answer the question I see myself as, with ten options, which they could disagree or agree with on a five point Likert scale.

The questions about Organizational Culture, are based on the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI model) of Cameron and Quinn. Based on a total of twelve questions, six subjects, the four cultures (Clan, Adhocracy, Market and Hierarchy) are researched. The employees were asked to divide 100 points, on four options. The more they agree, the more points that option deserves. Each subject was questioned in the current and desired situation.

Using a part of the MLQ of Den Hartog et al. (1997) and Bass & Avolio (1989) leadership was questioned, based on two leadership styles; the transformational and the transactional leadership style. The transformational leadership style was questioned by fourteen questions, and the transactional leadership style was questioned by five questions. Employees could answer the questions based on a five point Likert scale, in which they disagree or agree with a statement.

Besides the questions, as described above, some control variables will categorize the questions. In the appendix the questionnaire of the Financial Administrations is displayed. Also some abbreviations will be used, the following table will translate them.

Table 2: Abreviations Research EMR Emotional readiness for change

CONG Cognitive readiness for change INR Intentional readiness to change EXTR Extraversion

AGRE Agreeableness CONS Consciensciousness EMS Emotional Stability OTEX Openness to Experience CLAN/CLND Current Clan/Desired Clan

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Participants

To research the dependent and the independent variables, information was needed from the employees of the Financial Administrations of OWO. To get this information, all variables were put together in an online questionnaire which could be filled in by every employee individually. This online questionnaire, was introduced by an introduction mail, with an link to the online questionnaire, attached. Every employee working at one of the Financial Administrations of OWO, was invited via this introduction mail to participate in the research. The Financial Administrations of OWO consist of an total of 18 employees, of which eleven employees filled in the online questionnaire completely.

Cronbach’s Alpha

The underlying coherence between the questions will be measured with the use of Cronbach’s Alpha. Cronbach’s Alpha explains if the items are consistent or not and is expressed as a number between 0 and 1. In table 3, a summary of Cronbach’s Alpha of this research.

Table 3: Cronbach’s Alpha

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RESULTS

In the previous chapter, the methodology has been described. The results conducted out of the questionnaire will be presented in this chapter.

The result will be shortly summarized, using the structure of the questionnaire, as stated in the appendix.

Of the total of 18 employees of the Financial Administrations of OWO, twelve employees filled in the questionnaire, of which ones has been deleted, because of incompleteness. The employees were free to participate. All questionnaires were filled in completely.

Figure 2, displays the attendance of the questionnaire distributed over the municipalities. In total there were six male respondents and five female respondents, of which the age varied

between 31 years till older than 51 years Figure 2: Distribution municipalities

Questionnaire employees

In the following sections of each variable, the results will be briefed quickly, followed by an univariate regression analysis and a correlation table.

Readiness to change

As described in the methodology chapter, readiness to change was research based on three components. Figure 3 shows the overall results of the readiness to change questionnaire.

Figure 3:

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Interesting to see out of figure 3 and table 4 is that the respondents experience intentional readiness to change as the highest component of readiness to change.

Table 4: Statistics Readiness to change

The difference between cognitive readiness to change and emotional readiness to change doesn’t vary that much. When looking at the maximum and minimum of these two, the scaling of the answers does differ. There is more variety in how the respondents experience cognitive readiness to change. This can mean that the respondents can reflect on their individual evaluation of the change, and that their feelings towards the change are relatively positive.

Personality traits

In figure 4, the results of the TIPI Big Five questionnaire.

Figure 4: Results TIPI

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Table 5: Statistics TIPI Big Five

Organizational culture

The organizational culture part of the questionnaire was based on the OCAI of Cameron and Quinn. The analysis results in the following models.

Figure 5 and figure 6 show that the cultures in the municipalities current and desired at the Financial Administrations doesn’t differ that much.

Figure 5: Current Culture

All respondents see the hierarchy and clan culture as the most current culture within the different Financial Administrations. Also their desired culture lies in these hierarchy and clan culture, with a bit

more adhocracy culture. Figure 6: Desired Culture

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cultures are internally focused and cover flexibility but also control. This can have a positive and negative effect on the change project.

Leaderships style

Leadership in this research is based on the transformational and transactional leadership style. Figure 7 shows the results out of the questionnaire.

Figure 7: Results TFL and TAL

Interesting to see is that almost all respondents see transformational leadership as the most positive. Also table 6 shows that transformational leadership, is the leadership style mostly experienced in the three municipalities. Interesting to see is that both leadership styles do not differ that much in the table.

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Univariate Regression

The univariate regression explains how much the model is explaining the variation. estimates the values of the dependent variable and the independent variables. This means, when increasing a independent variable with 1%, how will the dependent variable change. R-squared explains how much of your variance is explained by your independent variable.

The tables of analysing the dependent and independent variables can be find in the appendix. In this section, only the significant variables will be discussed briefly.

Regression emotional readiness to change

In the regression analysis of emotional readiness to change, only one independent variable showed significance. Figure 8 shows the relation between emotional readiness to change and extraversion.

Extraversion has a R-squared of

Figure 8: EMR- extraversion 60.76%, which means that 60.76% of emotional readiness to change is explained by extraversion, with a correlation of 37.32% at a significance level of 99%. Also resulting out figure 8, is the grey area is being relatively small, meaning that every respondent is close to average. Thus, there is a relation between extraversion and emotional readiness to change. Further it is interesting to see that transformational leadership has a negative correlation with emotional stability in this model with -37.27%. Overall, researchers find that transformational leadership supports change acceptance, in this model there is no relation.

Regression cognitive readiness to change

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Figure 9a and 9b show a positive regression with cognitive readiness to change. Figure 9a shows a regression with openness to experience based on a significance of 90%. Openness to experience has a R-squared of 27.57% and a coefficient of 74,61%. As openness to experience becomes larger in the figure, the variance decreases, and the respondents are more close to average.

In figure 9b the positive regression with the market culture is pictured based on a significance of 95%. The R-squared of the market culture is 39.57%, with a coefficient of 2.91%. Here, the respondents differ in opinion. As the share of market culture grows, the variance grows, which means that the respondents are not close to average.

Regression intentional readiness to change

Figure 10a: INR – Openness to Figure 10b: INR – Market Figure 10c: INR-

Experience culture (c) Transformational

leadership

Figure 10a, 10b and 10c, show the regression with intentional readiness to change. Not only does openness to experience has a correlation with cognitive readiness to change, it has also a correlation with intentional readiness to change at a significance of 90%. The coefficient of openness to experience is 65.20%, with a R-squared of 35.70%. As can be seen in figure 10a, more openness to experience means a smaller grey area, which means that the respondents are closer to average.

The market culture in figure 10b, has also a correlation at a significance level of 90%. The coefficient of the market culture is 2.04% with a R-squared of 32.95%. Interesting to see in figure 10b is that the more the market culture grows, the further away the respondents are from average. This means that there is more variance and that opinions differ about a growing market culture at the financial administrations.

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Correlations

The correlation table, is made of the means of each dependent and independent variable.

Table 7: Correlation dependent and independent variables

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Readiness to change is important in achieving a successful change, it is an indication for the rate to which change is embraced (Bouckenooghe et al. 2009). Looking at the results described earlier in this section the overall readiness to change under the respondents is higher than three. The answers, based on the mean, vary from 3.15 till 3.85, which indicates a neutral till agreeing position of the respondents.

During the analysis of table 7, there were no correlations at a 99,9%. Interesting to see, is that intentional readiness to change and cognitive readiness to change have a positive correlation of 99% under the respondents. The research questions below, are answered based on the regression analysis and the correlation table.

Research question 1: Within the merger of the Financial Administrations, how do the personality traits have influence on readiness to change?

Combining the results of personality traits in the correlation table (table 7) with the dependent variables of readiness to change, there is a positive and correlation between extraversion and emotional readiness (0.74) to change with a significance of 99%. Also the regression analysis show this correlation with 37.32%.

Openness to experience also correlates with the dependent variable. Openness to experience has a correlation with both cognitive readiness to change and intentional readiness to change. In the correlation table cognitive readiness to change scores 0.53 and intentional readiness to change 0.60 based on a significance of 90%. In the regression analysis openness to experiences also scores on those both variables. Thus, based on the regression analysis and the correlation table, the conclusion can be made that there are personality traits that influence change readiness to change. Though, in earlier in this research we saw that extraversion doesn’t have a high score under the respondents, which is interesting comparing with the results of the correlation table and the regression analysis, because extraversion is the only trait, and the only independent variable, with a significance of 99%.

Research Question 2: How do the cultures, as existing right now in the municipalities, have an influence on the amount of readiness to change of the merger of the Financial Administrations?

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significance with cognitive readiness to change and 0.57 at a 90% significance with intentional readiness to change.

However it is interesting to see that the current Market culture has a negative (-0.01%), not significant, relation with emotional readiness to change.

The Clan and Hierarchy culture are the current and the most desired cultures within the Financial Administrations of the municipalities. However the Clan culture (current and desired) has negative, but not significant, relations with all variables of readiness to change. And also the hierarchy has a negative, but not significant, relations with to variables. With intentional readiness to change, the current culture scored -0.28%, and at the cognitive readiness to change the desired culture scored -1.20%.

Thus, only the market culture has a positive influence on readiness to change, based on the intentional and cognitive readiness to change. More market culture would lead to more readiness to change within the Financial Administrations of the municipalities. However, increasing the Clan culture, would decrease the readiness to change within the Financial Administrations.

Research question 3: How do the leadership styles, existing within the municipalities, influence the readiness to change of the merger of the Financial Administrations?

Looking at the correlation between readiness to change and leadership, transactional does not have any correlation (-0.06, -0.01, -0.13) with any of the variables of readiness to change. Also in the regression analysis, there is a negative relation with all the readiness to change variables. Which means that if this leadership style increases within the Financial Administrations, the readiness to change will decrease.

Transformational leadership however, does have a correlation with one of the variables of readiness to change. With a 90% significance there is a correlation with intentional readiness to change (0.53). Also within the regression analysis these correlation is noticed. Here the correlation is 69.01% on a 90% significance. Looking at the results analysed earlier in this section, transformational leadership is also the leadership style experienced mostly under the respondents.

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change in a positive way. When transformational leadership increases with 1%, the intentional readiness to change will increase with by 69% within the model.

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CONLUSION AND DISCUSSION

The overall research question during this research was: What are the main social drivers for readiness to change, and how do they influence a public sector merge? Based on the interview with the team leader Business and Senior HRM manager, the main social drivers were set. After theoretical research on those topics, and a questionnaire spread out over the three Financial Administrations of the municipalities, the results in the previous chapter showed that within every component of readiness to change, there is an independent variable related.

Extraversion and openness to experience are the personality traits, that according the results, influence readiness to change. Here extraversion has a high correlation with emotional readiness, and openness to experience a marginal significance with both cognitive and intentional readiness to change. Which is according to Judge et al. (1999) a personality trait that can be useful to create readiness to change.

Among the organizational cultures, the market culture is the only culture that has an influence on the independent variable. Market culture scores on weak on the intentional readiness to change, and higher on cognitive readiness to change. This is in line with what Zammuto and O’Connor (1992) mention, that a flexible structure and a differentiation focus is more in favour to provide readiness to change, than is a more mechanistic and control structure. Which means that moving away from the hierarchy culture and clan culture, and moving more to a market culture can provide more readiness to change.

Comparing transformational and transactional leadership with readiness to change, the results show that only transformational leadership has a correlation with these variables. Following Hater & Bass (1988) transformational leadership is the style that would enhance readiness to change.

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What was also interesting is, that in this research, the market culture was significant related with two variables of readiness to change, and that increasing the market culture would, based on the models, would provide more readiness to change within the Financial Administrations. But how can Public Organizations become more market oriented? How can they take a differentiation focus and become more flexible, when they have a lot of rules and regulation to oblige.

At the end of the questionnaire, respondents had the opportunity to add some comments about the merge of the Financial Administrations. Some interesting comments were added. For example ‘the merger isn’t does not run efficient because of the preferences of the three municipalities that aren’t negotiable. It would be positive for the process and the merger to reconsider the decision of the merging the Financial Administration, because now every municipality keeps its own Financial Department. Is this really true? This could for example explain why the mergers of the other departments aren’t successfully completed yet. Employees think that everything stays the same, they work for the same municipality in their opinions, so why then merge and change location?

Furthermore, the clan culture showed a negative, but not significant, correlation with all of the readiness to change variables. at the municipalities, also based on the merger of the other departments, there is a lot changed, which led to a lot of stress. This could have let to other results, than under other circumstances.

Recommendations

This research give the municipalities great insight in how the different Financial Administrations experience the culture, see the leadership style and what the personality traits of the individual employees are. This can help in the future understanding in why, for example, employees follow their ‘used to’ work processes. Also they can give insight in how to form teams, to implement the change and how to work together in the future. Although the respondents per municipality weren’t proportional, I would recommend the municipalities to use this information, as background in the further merge of the Financial Administrations.

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municipality experience and desires the same cultures, it has a negative effect on readiness to change, and though can be a blockade in future changes.

Limitations

One of the main limitations of this research is Cronbach’s alpha: An acceptable Cronbach’s alpha lies between the 0.7 and the 0.95. In this research the lowest Cronbach’s alpha was 0.5278 and the highest Cronbach’s alpha was 0.6808 which is poor till questionable.

Another main limitation of this research is the number of participants: eighteen employees working in the Financial Administrations, of which only eleven filled in the questionnaire, which makes it difficult to come up with viable and reliable conclusions. Adding to this, that also not every municipality was proportional represented. There were five respondents from Ooststellingwerf, four of Opsterland and only two of Weststellingwerf.

Also another great limitation is the lack of existing theory, which made it hard to link the social drivers to the readiness to change. Every driver individually is well explained, and in combination with other topics like job satisfaction well researched, but almost nothing combining it with readiness to change. Therefore to know if the conclusion made about the readiness to change are appropriate, a much broader research on this topic is necessary.

This research within the Financial Administration can best be seen as a pre-research,

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Questionnaire Financial Administrations OWO

Questionnaire exists out of five parts; control variables, change readiness, personality traits, organizational culture and leadership. Every part has its own scaling level.

Control variables

Age Leeftijd

Gender Geslacht

Financial Department in OWO Financiële afdeling in:

Ooststellingwerf Weststellingwerf Opsterland

Readiness for change = Deel OCQ

Sterk mee oneens

Mee eens Neutral Mee eens Sterk mee

eens

1 2 3 4 5

Emotional readiness for change (EMRE) Cognitive readiness for change (COGRE) Intentional readiness for change (INRE)

I have a good feeling about the change project

(EMRE 1) Ik heb een goed gevoel over de beoogde veranderingen I experience the change as a positive (EMRE 2) Ik ervaar het verandertraject als een

positief proces

I find the change refreshing (EMRE 3) Ik vind de beoogde verandering verfrissend/vernieuwend

I am somewhat resistant to change (COGRE 1) Ik bied enigszins weerstand tegen de beoogde veranderingen

I am quite reluctant to accommodate and

incorporate changes into my work (COGRE 2) Ik ben vrij terughoudend om de beoogde veranderingen in mijn werkzaamheden in te passen I think that most changes will have a negative

effect on the clients we serve (COGRE 3) Ik denk dat de meeste beoogde veranderingen een negatief effect zullen hebben op onze in- en externe relaties/klanten

Plans for future improvements will not come too

much (COGRE 4) Er zal niet veel terecht komen van de toekomstige verbeterplannen Most change projects that are supposed to solve

problems around here will not do much good (COGRE 5)

De meeste veranderactiviteiten in het kader van het verandertraject, zullen niet veel bijdragen aan de veranderdoelen

The change will improve my work (EMRE 4) De beoogde verandering zal mijn werkzaamheden verbeteren The change will simplify my work (EMRE 5) De beoogde verandering zal mijn

werk vereenvoudigen

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40 Are you ready to Change? (INRE 1)

I am willing to make a significant contribution to

the change (INRE 2) Ik ben bereid om een belangrijke bijdrage aan de beoogde verandering te leveren

I am willing to put energy into the process of

change (INRE 3) Ik ben bereid om energie in het veranderproces te steken Personality traits

Based on the Big Five questionnaire (Ten-item Personality Inventory – TIPI). Here the employee can agree or disagree with the answer varying from:

Sterk mee oneens

Mee eens Neutral Mee eens Sterk mee

eens

1 2 3 4 5

I see myself as:

1__ Extraverted, enthusiastic Extravert, enthousiast 2__ Critical, quarrelsome Kritisch, snel ruziemakend 3__ Dependable, self-disciplined Betrouwbaar, gedisciplineerd 4__ Anxious, easily upset Angstig, gemakkelijk van streek 5__ Open to new experiences, complex Open voor nieuwe ervaringen,

ingewikkeld

6__ Reserved, quiet Gereserveerd, rustig

7__ Sympathetic, warm Sympathiek, warm

8__ Disorganized, careless Ongeorganiseerd, onzorgvuldig

9__ Calm, emotionally stable Kalm, emotioneel stabile 10__ Conventional, uncreative Conventioneel, niet creatief Organizational culture

Cameron and Quinn: Huidig is de oude situatie, Gewenst is na de samenvoeging

1. Hoe ervaar jij de volgende dominante kenmerken binnen het huidige team van de financiële afdeling? (verdeel 100 punten onder de 4 onderstaande opties).

2. Hoe wens jij deze zelfde dominante kenmerken binnen het nieuwe team van de financiële afdeling te ervaren? (verdeel eveneens 100 punten onder de 4 onderstaande opties).

1. Dominante kenmerken Huidig Gewenst

A. Het team heeft een zeer persoonlijk karakter. Ze heeft veel weg van een grote familie. De mensen lijken veel met elkaar gemeen te hebben.

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C. Het team is sterk resultaatgericht. Het werk af zien te krijgen is de grootste zorg. De mensen zijn erg gericht op competitie en op het boeken van resultaten.

D. Het team is strak geleid en gestructureerd. Formele procedures bepalen in het algemeen wat de mensen doen.

Totaal 100 100

3. Hoe zie jij de leiding binnen het huidige team van de financiële administratie? (verdeel 100 punten over de 4 onderstaande opties).

4. Hoe wens jij dat deze leiding moet zijn binnen het nieuwe team van de financiële administratie? (verdeel eveneens 100 punten over de 4 onderstaande opties).

2. De leiding van de organisatie Huidig Gewenst

A. De leiding van het team gedraagt zich in het algemeen als mentor, faciliteert en stimuleert. B. De leiding van het team verspreidt

ondernemerschap, evenals innovatie en risicobereidheid.

C. De leiding van het team geeft in het algemeen blijk van een no-nonsense instelling,

agressiviteit en resultaatgerichtheid.

D. De leiding van het team geeft in het algemeen blijk van coördinerend en organiserend gedrag en maakt de indruk van een soepel draaiende, efficiënte machine.

Totaal 100 100

5. Hoe ervaar jij de managementstijl binnen je huidige team van de financiële administratie? (verdeel 100 punten over de 4 onderstaande opties).

6. Wat is de gewenste managementstijl binnen het nieuwe team van de financiële administratie? (verdeel eveneens 100 punten over de 4 onderstaande opties).

3. Personeelsmanagement Huidig Gewenst

A. De managementstijl van het team wordt gekenmerkt door teamwerk, overeenstemming en deelname.

B. De managementstijl van het team wordt

gekenmerkt door persoonlijke risicobereidheid, vernieuwing, vrijheid en uniekheid.

C. De managementstijl van het team wordt gekenmerkt door niets ontziende competitie, hoge eisen en prestatiegerichtheid.

D. De managementstijl van het team wordt

gekenmerkt door zekerheid omtrent de baan, de voorschriften, voorspelbaarheid en stabiele verhoudingen.

Totaal 100 100

Are you ready to Change?

Are you ready to Change?

Merging in the Public Sector

by

Kim Griek

University of Groningen

Faculty of Economics and Business

Pre-MSc Change Management

Are you ready to Change?

Merging in the Public Sector

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

METHODOLOGY

RESULTS

CONLUSION AND DISCUSSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY