Factors in organizational change: a framework for contextual variables in organizational change.

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Factors in organizational change: a

framework for contextual variables in

organizational change.

Author: Mathijs Hatt Student number: S1998757 E-mail: j.n.hatt@student.rug.nl

Phone: 0611168440

Word count (ex. references & appendices): 14.184 First assessor: Ms. Hille Bruns

Second assessor: Mr. Van der Schueren Study programme: MSc BA Change Management

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the ways in which individual organizational change factors are interrelated. To conduct theory building, semi-structured interviews were held with ten research participants who had various levels of involvement in the change initiative. The results shows that commitment to change is a central factor that is significantly impacted by many other variables. Three root factors have surfaced, factors that were found to be the „starting point‟ of many of these relationships. These factors were change communication, change approach and change urgency. Another key insight from this study is that a strong enough sense of urgency can replace change vision and communication from management to increase change readiness and change commitment to a particular change initiative. These findings may help management scholars and managers to better understand how commitment to and readiness for a change initiative may be achieved.

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Introduction

Firms are constantly working to align their business with a changing environment (Ackoff, 2006). As Micklethwait (1999) concluded: „‟in this new, dynamic environment, the only constant is change‟‟. Researchers have found different kinds of factors that are vital in organizational change, but most of these have been researched in isolation of other factors (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999) and have neglected the empircal investigation of interconnectedness between these factors (Walker, Armenakis & Bernerth, 2007). For example, Gilley, Gilley & McMillan (2009) found that communication in change initiatives is an important part of change management, as it can influence commitment and readiness for change. Furthermore, Kotter (1996) argues that the way in which a change is approached, being top-down or bottom-up, may have significant impact on a change initiative, and may influence commitment, participation and readiness for change. Research has also indicated that commitment is a significant factor in change projects, as it may influence the degree of participation, resistance and change capacity (Coopey & Hartley, 1991; Guest, 1992; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Iversion, 1996). Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder (1993) argue that readiness for change is a key factor in organizational change, as this will in turn influence resistance and adaptation behaviours. Furthermore, in the research of Holt, Armenakis, Field and Harris (2007), the importance of employee participation surfaced and was found to influence acceptance of the change. Further research has indicated that employee participation may lead to higher acceptance of and commitment to change in general (Heller et al., 1998; Kozlowski, Chao, Smith & Hedlund, 1993). Finally, job insecurity may impede organizational changes (Elving, 2005) and negatively influence commitment and participation (Wittig, 2012; Worrall & Cooper, 2006).

As becomes evident, many factors impact organizational change, and many of these factors may impact each other. There exists plenty of literature for each of these factors in isolation (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999).However, most of these relations remain underexplored (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010; Walker et al., 2007), for example, the relation between commitment and participation and readiness for change (Peccei, Giangreco & Sebastiano, 2009). It therefore seems highly relevant to investigate the interconnectedness of factors in organizational change.

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further influence each other. Based on this, the main research questions of this paper will be as follows:

How are individual factors (communication, change approach, commitment, readiness for change, resistance to change, employee participation, perceived job security, change urgency and change vision) interconnected in organizational change?

The objective of this paper is to identify a set of change factors that have been established as vital to change initiatives in the literature and to explore how these are interconnected in the setting of technological change in a financial service organization, as compared to a public school and a municipality. By answering this research question, the author will offer a framework of factors relevant to organizational change and elaborate the ways in which they co-exist. Therefore, this paper will contribute to management theory and to change management theory, as the current literature of this interconnectedness is lacking. To counter this, research will be conducted in a financial assets service organization to study the interconnectedness between factors in organizational change.

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Literature review

This chapter will report the main findings regarding the topics of interest in this research, which are the factors relevant to change management as described in the introduction section, and any interconnectedness they have that has been found in existing literature. The concepts that were selected to investigate represent the nine most commonly discussed and interesting concepts in the literature.

Communication

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7 Change approach

The change approach, the way in which the change initiative is implemented, is an important factor in organizational change (Kotter, 1996). The selected approach can have effects on employee participation, readiness for change and commitment to change. For this research, a distinction in change approach will be made: top-down change as opposed to bottom-up change. According to Conway and Monks (2011), the relative merits of „bottom-up‟ as opposed to „top-down‟ approaches in change initiatives has received considerable attention. Bottom-up approaches focus on employee involvement and participation in change processes, while top-down approaches focus more on „commands from above‟ (Quinn, 1980). Top-top-down change usually entails top management being the change initiator, often portraying the middle managers as reluctant executors of the change (Carpenter, Geletkanycz & Sanders, 2004; Balogun & Johnson, 2005). In contrast, bottom-up change puts emphasis on the vital role of middle managers in initiating change (Wooldridge, Schmid & Floyd, 2008), but in turn assumes that top management is not always receptive of these changes (Burgelman, 1983; Glaser, Stam & Takeuchi, 2016; Huy, 2001). Top-down change is often perceived as „radical, strategic change‟ (Pettigrew, 1985), while bottom-up change is considered to be more related to incremental change (Quinn, 1980).

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8 Commitment to change

In general, commitment is thought to lead to multiple positive outcomes and is a key factor in the management of change (Coopey & Hartley, 1991; Guest, 1992; Iversion, 1996). Much of the existing literature emphasizes the importance of individual commitment to change in achieving change efforts (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne, 1999; Klein & Sorra, 1996; Kotter, 1995). Achieving high levels of commitment is linked to positive behavioural intentions and actions of employees, which is paramount in achieving organizational change programmes (Swailes, 2007). In organizational context, commitment can be defined as „‟the relative strength of an individual‟s identification with and involvement in a particular organization‟‟ (Mowday, Porter & Steers, 1982: 27). This can easily be translated to „the relative strength of an individual‟s identification with and involvement in a particular change initiative‟ in the context of organizational change. More extensively, Armenakis and Harris (2009) have developed a model of five factors that constitute employees‟ commitment to a change initiative. These factors are the discrepency between the status quo and the desired state, the appropiateness of a change initiative, the change efficiacy, which is the perceived ability of an individual and organization to implement the change, change support by their leaders, and perceived personal valence, which represents the belief that the change is valuable to the individual.

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9 Readiness for change

Readiness for change has been considered a critical success factor in implementing successful organizational change (Armenakis et al., 1993; Hardison, 1998; Kirch et al., 2005). Indeed, Kotter (1996) even goes as far as stating that research has found that up to half of organizational change failures can be traced back to a lack of readiness for change. Thus, it is by many researchers regarded as one of the most important factors in getting the initial support of employees for change initiatives (Armenakis et al., 1993). A multitude of researchers (Armenakis et al., 1993; Schein, 1979) have compared creating readiness for change with Lewin‟s (1951) „unfreezing‟ step in his three step model for organizational change. Schein (1979: 144) argues that many change efforts run into resistance or flat out failure, because there is no effective freezing process before the change induction.

Organizational leaders initiate changes with the best intent, with the goal of realizing specified organizational goals. However, as these change projects often bring out the differences between managers, between employees and between these two groups, their beliefs and cognitions must be aligned with the change leader‟s (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). Essentially, a state of readiness for change must be created (Holt et al., 2007). Readiness for change can thus be defined as „‟the organizational members‟ beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the organization‟s capacity to successfully make those changes. Readiness is the cognitive precursor of the behaviours of either resistance to, or support for, a change effort.‟‟ (Armenakis et al., 1993). Creating a sense of urgency, as described by Kotter (1996), was found to be one of the key factors for developing organizational readiness for change. This was confirmed in research by Smith (2005) and Weiner (2009), although the latter indicated that creating a sense of urgency may only be useful in high complacency change situations.

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resistance to change, and with that, increase the likelihood of successful organizational change (Armenakis et al., 1993).

Resistance to change

It has been thoroughly discussed in change management literature that change initiatives are very likely to fail if the individuals affected by and involved in the change initiative do not accept the change initiative. Organizations change only through their organizational members (Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne, 1999). Resistance to change is widely recognized in literature as the main reason of failure in organizational change initiatives (Amarantou, Kazakopoulou, Chatzoudes & Chatzoglou, 2017) and is therefore an important factor to investigate. There are many factors that can contribute to employee resistance to change initiative. Amarantou et al. (2017) found that, among others, perceived job security, communication quality and participation in decision making were found to be either directly or indirectly related to resistance to change.

Some studies have provided contradicting insights into the effect that resistance to change has on change commitment. While many traditional studies on resistance to change have pointed out the negative effects on commitment to change (e.g. Coch & French, 1948; Lewin, 1951), more recent studies found that these findings need to be reconsidered (Dent & Goldberg, 1999; Ford, Ford & D‟Amelio, 2008; Piderit, 2000). Foster (2010) found empirical evidence in his study that no relationship between resistance to change and commitment to change exists.

Employee participation

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1998). Mikkelsen, Saksvik and Landsbergis (2000) confirmed this in their research, finding that participation interventions during change processes lead to positive effects on work-related stress, job characteristics and learning climate.

In other research, it was found that through participation, psychological ownership of the process of change is often created when employees participate in it actively (Pierce, O‟Driscoll & Coghlan, 2004; Pierce & Jussila, 2011). Stimulation of employee participation in the planning of organizational changes may help greatly in modifying or even completely removing any resistance to change. Furthermore, Van Dyne and Pierce (2004) found that when employees were actively engaged in a change initiative, their involvement will develop positive personal experiences with this change and feel a sense of belonging and integration. This will, in turn, possibly lead to more positive cognitive schemata for the individual towards the change (Bartunek & Moch, 1994; Lau & Woodman, 1995). This was confirmed by Herscovitch & Meyer (2002), who found that participation in a change, for example through training, voice or identification with a cause, helps develop commitment to a change initiative.

Perceived job security

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12 Technological change

As the focus of this study is the implementation of an IT system, it is useful to provide a basis of literature regarding technological change in organizations. Markus (2004) explains how she believes there are three different approaches to technological change in organizations. She identifies IT projects, which focus on on project cost, schedule and functionality; organizational change management, which focuses on the people affected by the change, and technochange, which combines these two worlds into one approach. She found that many organizations focus on either the IT or the organizational aspect, and this is a major cause of failure in technological organizational change. Markus argues that a technochange approach, a simultaneous and coherent combination of these two into one approach, is the most effective approach for technological change in situations of using IT to drive organizational change (Markus, 2004).

Markus explains that simply combining an IT project with organizational change management does not produce the best results, as „‟this additive approach does not effectively address the many failure-threatening problems that can arise […] and is not structured to produce the characteristics of a good technochange solution‟‟ (Markus, 2004: 4). IT projects do not take into account factors such as resistance, the need for new processes and behaviours, and social dynamics, which can all be a source of failure, even with high quality IT solutions. On the other hand, organizational change management overlooks other risks, such as technology taking predecence over human concerns, or an IT solution that is simply not appropiate and may hold negative consequences for employees and the organization (Markus, 2004). Evidently, there are important distinctions to be made between these approaches, and must therefore be taken into account in this study to understand the impact of how the change initiative is addressed.

Change urgency

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must exist among change recipients in order to achieve organizational change. Firstly, it is needed to persuade the change recipients that the status quo is no longer acceptable. Secondly, it stresses that and why change is preferred to the status quo (Kotter, 2007). Achieving change can only occur when most of the stakeholders in the change cooperate. Change urgency thus helps create readiness for change and change commitment.

Change vision

Continuing with Kotter‟s eight step model, the third step is to form a strategic vision and initiatives. This is defined as clarifying how the future will be different and how to accomplish this through initiatives directly linked to the vision. The fourth step is then to communicate this vision and strategy to create buy-in and grow the volunteer army, which should be bought-in and urged to drive change (1996). Kotter emphasizes the importance of a strong change vision, as it fulfills three purposes. Firstly, it simplifies hundreds of decisions that have preceded the change initiative. Secondly, it helps motivate people in taking action in the desired direction. Lastly, a clear change vision helps coordinate actions of different people in an efficient way (Kotter, 2012). After establishing a change vision, it is important to communicate this vision to the rest of the organization. However, Kotter (2012) states that most companies undercommunicate their change vision by at least a factor of 10. He explains that the vision must not be simply communicated in one memo announcing the change, but should be repeated over and over in for example emails, meetings and presentations. Even more importantly, leaders should “walk the talk” and become a living example of the change vision. He stresses the profound effect a management team that all embody the change they want to see has on the rest of the organization, as this increases commitment, inspires confidence and decreases cynicism (Kotter, 2012).

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Methodology

This chapter will describe the process through which theory building took place during this research. First, the research site that was selected will be described, followed by the position of the researcher. Secondly, the way in which data was collected is explained and rationalized. Thirdly, the method of data analysis will be expanded on. In addition, the ways in which reliability, validity and controllability were accounted for is elaborated in appendix 1. As part of the data analysis, a multi-site analysis was conducted.

Research site

Due to time limitations, it was not possible for the researcher to collect data from multiple organizations himself. Therefore, data collected by two other researchers, that seeked to answer a similar research question in different contexts, will be used to create a stronger case. By consulting data from multiple research sites, inferences can be made about consistencies or differences among these different contexts and will therefore increase the power of this study. The site that the researcher collected data from himself is referred to as the „primary site‟, while the sites at which other the researches collected data are referred to as „secondary sites‟ in this paper.

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this research. The unit of analysis chosen for this study was the implementation of an IT tool called Vermillion. This tool is meant to automate and standardize the production and publication of client reports for TKP Investments, which were being generated by hand before. The implementation of Vermillion has severe consequences for the organization. It drastically decreases manual labour, increases the efficiency of several work processes, lowers the frequency and possibility of mistakes, reduces the time needed to produce reports and thus production costs, and reduces the flexibility of the work employees do.

It is important to specify the position of the researcher in a research site (Pratt, 2009) and especially if the research site is a familiar one. Before this research started, the researcher was employed in this company on the department of Finance & Control. Here, the researcher was a junior process manager who helped map the current organizational processes. This means that the researcher knows the colleagues of this department on a more personal level and this may lead to a bias on the side of the researcher, but also on the side of the research participants. Therefore, it was decided that the unit of analysis should not have the Finance & Control department as primary focus. The research participants, in this case the interviewees, were employees of this company that the researcher did not know personally, to avoid this kind of bias. The researcher has repositioned himself within the company on a different department, both physically as well as regarding the research.

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Since several layers within the organization (principal, section representatives and teachers) are affected by the changes, individual, group, organizational and social phenomena can be studied.

Another secondary research site is the „Gemeente Leeuwarden‟ (Municipality of Leeuwarden), which is situated in the Northern part of the Netherlands. It is a public services organization that serves over 108,000 inhabitants of the municipality of Leeuwarden. The organization employs over 1200 employees, it structures the board, the policies, and development of the city. In 2013, the city of Leeuwarden was awarded „Capital of Culture 2018‟. In five years, a lot of changes within the city came along with this to prepare for the year 2018. Therefore, it is a growing and dynamic organization. Very recently, the organization also decided to drastically change their way of working, going from fixed hours, offices, and departments to working flexible hours, having flexible work spaces, and inherently flexible departments. For this, the entire office building was remodelled, having all employees work temporarily in the old employee insurance agency building. Now that the employees have moved back to their own office, they are starting to make sense of their new working environment. This change project, the switch to flexible working, is therefore particularly interesting to study because it happened very recently and involved and affected a lot of employees.

Data collection

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based on their involvement in the change initiative. This interview protocol can be found in appendix 2.

The selection of research participants adhered to the following guidelines to ensure that relevant participants were selected and in-depth collection of data was possible. Firstly, the research participants must have been directly impacted or involved in the change. This ensures that the interviewees have relevant knowledge and in-depth insights in the respective change, and that they have experienced the process and results. Furthermore, the research participants should not be anyone that the researcher personally knows, to avoid a variety of biases. Lastly, the interviewees must include change agents and change recipients, to ensure that both perspectives are taken into account. Here, change agents are classified the initiators of a change initiative, while change recipients are classified as the actors affected by this change initiative (Heyden et al., 2017).

Interviews

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Table 1 below provides a detailled outlook on the research participants in this study.

Table 1: Interviewee data

Code Gender Role Date Duration

PM1 Female Project manager 09-04-2018 1:11:47

PT1 Male Project team member 05-04-2018 1:05:14

PT2 Male Project team member 09-04-2018 55:05

DM1 Male Departmental manager 30-03-2018 55:44

DV1 Male Developer 05-04-2018 41:06

CR1 Female Change recipient 20-03-2018 51:25

CR2 Male Change recipient 26-03-2018 Unrecorded*

CR3 Male Change recipient 16-04-2018 33:24

*: Research subject preferred not to be recorded during interview.

Data analysis

Before the interviews are held, deductive codes were set up based on the literature. As becomes evident, a deductive code is a code based on findings in the literature review (Balogun & Johnson, 2005). An example of a deductive code would be the definition of „change commitment‟. After the recording, the interviews were transcribed using Atlas.ti, a qualitative data management tool provided through the University of Groningen. Inductive codes were then formulated based on these interviews, which are codes that are derived from the collected data by the researcher (Balogun & Johnson, 2005). This means that these codes did not derive from the literature review. To illustrate this, „change clarity‟ was an inductive code that simply arose from the interviews as important and was not discussed in the literature section, but deemed important by interviewees. With these two kinds of codes, a code book was developed which categorized the codes through first order codes. Using Atlas.ti, all interviews were coded and this has led to an elaborate code book including all codes and relevant quotations. The completed code book was then be analysed to find inferences between the researched factors. The code book with example quotes can be found in appendix 3.

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Results

In this section, the gathered data will be displayed and analysed. First, the results from the primary case will be expanded on, followed by a brief display of the results of the two secondary cases. The similarities and discrepancies will then be identified in the cross-case analysis. The results reflect the patterns that emerged from the interviews.

Primary site: TKP Investments

The first case is the primary object of this research, which took place at TKP Investments and regarded the implementation of an information system, which was designed to replace a multitude of manual activities.

Communication and commitment

During the change process, a multitude of communication methods were used to keep stakeholders informed. According to the project manager, the company newsletter, presentations and status reports were used to this end. Contrastingly, almost all of the change recipients indicated there was little formal communication regarding the development and implementation of Vermillion. One recipient that was more closely involved than others due to their role said that

“I was never formally informed about Vermillion. For example, there were supposed to be demonstrations of Vermillion, but these never occurred.”. That recipient went on to explain that “I got most of my information through oral communication or from meetings. […] I think there may have been two or three short reports in our company newsletter, in which the current situation was explained in general terms.”. Another change recipient said that “We mostly only heard [from the project] when they needed us to do something, for example, if they needed us to test something.”. It was therefore not always clear to people how the initiative was progressing,

and what the next steps were going to be. Change recipients had a feeling that they were being left out and wanted to be better involved. According to one departmental manager “It

[communication] happened very scarcely. It was only later in the change journey that this happened somewhat more frequently, as by request of the business.”. most of the participants

stated that the change was more frequently communicated in the last few months of the initiatives.

The project manager held a slightly different view, explaining that “Of course, the program

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presentations and demonstrations, to show what had been accomplished, and what we still wanted to accomplish”. The project manager shared some of the sentiment as expressed by the

change recipients, saying that “In hindsight, it [communication] should definitely have happened

more frequently.”. Since the increase of communication that occurred a few months ago,

opinions were more divergent, some stating that communication was sufficient, while others still found it wanting. The change recipients who were more closely involved, such as in the project team or meetings, belonged to the former group, while the recipients that were not so closely involved were primarily of the opinion that the level and frequency of communication was not sufficient.

According to the research participants, this lack of communication had some effects that may not have been desirable. One change recipient stated that “It is good to keep the organization

associated, and I think that it [communication] should have happened more frequently. I feel like it should be much more lively throughout the organization.”. The majority of change recipients

expressed some kind of concern regarding the degree to which their colleagues are being informed, and how this might impact their commitment. A departmental manager elaborated:

“Great that we have a strategic project, but no one is actually involved. It is never going to work that way.”. Another departmental manager explained that “There is very little communication [regarding the change] between the departments. I do not think they all even see the relevance of Vermillion.”. The research participants indicated that the change initiative was not very present

on the work floor in the minds of their colleagues. A developer went on to explain that “The

project mainly took place in a project room, and as a consequence, not many people in the organization were able to follow it. There was a dot on the horizon where the developers wanted to go, and this made it too abstract for others. This made it really hard to follow.”. One

departmental manager agreed with this statement, saying that “Seven people were sitting in that

room doing something, and no one knew what it was and how they were progressing. So nobody was enthusiastic. I think it‟s very important to embed [the change] to make people enthusiastic, or the change will never work out.”. The recipients agreed that the communication was

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22 Vision and commitment

Despite the fact that vision communication could simply be considered a part of communication, the results of this research stressed vision to such an extent that a separate subchapter could be justified. Change recipients repeatedly mentioned that they felt like there was a lack of vision as expressed or even developed by management in regards to the change initiative. These recipients pointed out that they felt like management had not expressed the necessity, importance or benefits of the Vermillion initiative enough, if at all. The project manager of Vermillion said that, regarding the importance of automation and standardization, “From management, the vision of

that is the direction in which we are going, should have been prioritized more. […] The importance of this automation, from a visionary point of view, that is where we want and need to be, that did not come through properly.”. The project manager continued by stating that “Management should definitely have stressed this vision more.”. Other change recipients held

similar views, and no contrary views were found. One departmental manager, who also shared this view, said that “Look, you can just say that this is the system that we need to work with, but

when that is not properly picked up, then it is management‟s job to clearly state what the direction of our company is – which is more standardization and automation. The carrying out of this vision was lacking.”. Other recipients agreed, for instance simply stating that they felt that

“There needs to be more visionary work regarding the utility of standardization, and it needs to

be more visible. What does it offer us, and why is it good for TKP Investments.”.

Some research participants even went as far as saying that management simply had no vision, or at least did not express any, regarding the importance of automation and standardization of practices within TKP Investments. The project manager said that in order to communicate the vision, “There first needs to be a vision. That is the most important part. […] We were not

lacking in communication channels, but the communication and vision were completely absent.”.

The project manager frustratingly continued by saying that “This has been indicated multiple

times, that we needed this [management] vision, but nothing was done about it.”. The change

recipients who also spoke of vision generally agreed that there was a lack of a vision, or at least of the communication thereof. Interviewees indicated that this led, or could potentially lead, to a lower commitment to the change initiative. A departmental manager explained how this effected his employees: “People are like, okay, so my manager wants this, but what about the directors?

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going to reverse this [Vermillion]? That is why it is important for management to carry out a vision. There was a shortage of support because the vision was not communicated well.”. It was

thus found that a lacklustre communication and development of a proper vision led to a lower level of commitment among change recipients.

Communication and readiness for change

While analysing how communication, or the absence thereof, and readiness for change were related, one interesting insight came up in all interviews: all interviewees were eager and ready to embrace and institutionalize the change initiative. The major reasons why recipients felt the need for change included excessively high workloads, lagging behind competition, efficiency and company growth. One recipient expressed his astonishment when he started working at TKP Investments two years ago: “I was actually surprised when I came work here and saw how we

created reports using Word and Excel. We lag ten years behind competitors. So if we want to keep playing, we need to go through this [change].”. One of the departmental managers added

that “The market, the competition and the cost pressure of clients, it just forces you to find more

efficient ways of working.”. This reasoning for the change initiative came primarily from the

departmental managers.

The excessive workload was a factor that really made change recipients ready and willing to conduct this change initiative. One recipient went on to say that “It is definitely necessary. The

current way of working is not of this time – it is not efficient nor healthy.” and “They [co-workers] are increasingly aware that this way of working is not sustainable. That sense is increasing more and more over time, that we really do need to change.”. The excessive

workload was also seen as a major reason to change by a departmental manager, who explained that employees from his department were very happy to hear about the change initiative: “They

know that this level of pressure is barely sustainable. […]. The project is being cheered on by them – they actually see it as an opportunity.”.

A final main reason for employees to feel the necessity for change was company growth and scalability of operations. A departmental manager explained that

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an equal amount of labour.” and went on to explain that “Currently, an extensive report may take two full days to create, while Vermillion can do it in just twenty minutes.”.

These reasons as to why to change, as expressed by the research participants, were not communicated in such a sense by management. One recipient noted that “There was not really

some kind of introduction with the reasons as to why we need this change.”. Indeed, it seems

from these results that the readiness for change was present among change recipients despite how communication was carried out, rather than because of the communication. One departmental manager explicitly stated that “There was mainly support [for the change initiative] because

people sensed that change was needed. Maybe management knew this. People do really want this change, but not because of management, but because people saw the need to change themselves.”. The sense that change was positive and needed existed among employees, which

seemed to be the main cause for their readiness for change. In this case, communication has not led to an increased readiness for change.

Change approach and participation

The interviews revealed some distinct change approaches that were used at different stages of the change initiative. Three main approaches were mentioned by the change recipients and change agents. The first of the two approaches was the so called „Waterfall methodology‟, which was described by the project manager as “Setting up goals at the start of a project, deciding on how

to reach these goals, and then to act to work towards these goals.”. It has a distinct start and a

distinct goal to work towards in the far future. This method was used in the beginning phase of the change initiative, according to both change recipients and the project manager. This approach akes towards a more rigid, top-down change approach. Change recipients and project team members were found to disagree with this change approach, as well as the project manager further down the road. The project manager explained that “This [waterfall] method is mainly

the choice of management. They want all information and progress reported in a waterfall methodology.”. A departmental manager stated that “It was a kind of a „big bang‟ theory. One big goal and hope that we are moving towards it. When I came to work here, they were working on it for a year, and a year later, they still had nothing.”. Other change recipients shared this

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[customers] whether that is good.”. The lack of flexibility in the methodology to adapt to

emerging changes in the environment was pointed to as the main problem with this method. The second main method that was mentioned was „agile scrum‟, which was explained to consist of shorter cycles, two or three week sprints, more frequent reporting and communication, a higher level of participation and a higher level of adaptability. This can be considered as a more participative, bottom-up approach. However, this method was not fully adapted, leading to the third change approach that was mentioned. This third approach was referred to as a „hybrid‟ between the waterfall methodology and agile scrum. The project manager explained this with a few examples: “Instead of daily scrums, which does not make much sense for Vermillion, we use

weekly scrums. […] We do not do [strict] three week sprints for a demo.” and went on to say

that ”It is thus not pure agile, but we use elements of it. We are not trying to plan out the entire

process. I am looking for a form that fits with the organization, without only using the waterfall method.”. It was deemed necessary to use parts of an agile scrum methodology to be more

flexible as a project group and adapt to emerging changes, which was very limited in the traditional waterfall method.

Both change recipients and change agents alike noted that this alteration of change approach has led to more progress and more opportunity for participation. The project manager shared the observation that “I can see that people are getting more used to working like this and that we are

making more progress” and that “It also certainly works [positively] for the team to work in shorter cycles”. Generally, research participants felt that using a more agile scrum method rather

than the waterfall methodology allowed for more participation and involvement. One departmental manager expressed that he felt it was a much better method, and said that “It led to

a much better project structure. […] With the agile method, we can show our customers our progress every few weeks and see if this is still [consistent with] what they want.”. All of the

change recipients, even those not aware of or not talking about the shift in change approach, noted that they were able to participate more for the past six months, around the time in which the hybrid project form replaced the waterfall methodology. One change recipient elaborated that, during the past six months: “I got to join more meetings, do tests and provide feedback. […] It is

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change initiative indicated that they were already participating in weekly meetings regarding Vermillion. They clarified that “At some point we decided that we needed to work on it more,

and so we invoked „Vermillion Tuesday‟, during which people [change recipients] spend the entire day with me to learn the new system.” He found that this led people to “Get the sense that this is what we [as a company] are working on”. These statements were commonly shared

among other research participants. The process manager explained that employees got another opportunity for participation through his brown paper sessions to map Vermillion-related process flows, which started after the shift in change approach. One of the departmental managers further noted that since the change in approach, “People from my department have received training

[…] and a sandbox mode to freely test Vermillion in.”. Project team members, including the

project manager, agreed that the shorter cycles and adaptability of the hybrid change approach has allowed people to participate in the change initiative. Based on these findings, it seems that the more flexible, participative, bottom-up appraoch – working agile – has led to an increase of participation by employees in the change initiative as compared to the previously used, more stale method.

Change approach and timing

In addition to participation, the change approach was also found to severely impact the timing of the change initiative – in particular the pace thereof. Many of the interviewees stressed that there was a significant change in pace and achievement when the change approach was altered. One departmental manager said that “We had five years with almost no progress [with the waterfall

method], and now the past six months [since the agile method] it has suddenly progressed so quickly.”. Other interviewees agreed, with another departmental manager explaining “The project started with the old fashioned waterfall method. There is one big, final product that you are working towards. And two years later, we still barely had anything to show for. It just didn‟t work at all.”. All of the research participants that spoke about the speed of the change initiative

agreed with these statements.

Timing and commitment

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his department, “It is just lingering in the air that we are some day going to do something with

it”. Other research participants agreed that the slow pace of the change influenced the way they

felt towards Vermillion. One of the project team members said that “A high speed and

compressed actions, allows people much more to get into the flow [of the change], which increases their commitment. With a spread out process, that some other people are doing, people tune out.”. He continued to express that he believed the change recipients have lost the

connection to the change programme. This sentiment was shared by the project manager, who said that “People are waiting for this [part of] work to get automated and they were getting

frustrated that is just wasn‟t coming off the ground. Some people were even cynical that the project might just not succeed at all.”.

The project manager‟s claim was confirmed by all change recipients. They observed among their colleagues that the lack of progress and long duration of the change initiative had an impact on the way felt towards the change. One change recipient explained his observations, saying that “I

saw cynical reactions surface, making jokes, but also disappointment in people. People became dissatisfied with the way projects are handled here. Faith in projects, and especially in Vermillion, substantially decreased.”. One departmental manager saw similar reactions to the

slow pace of the change initiative in his department. He explained that after two years of work, there was still hardly anything to show for. About his department, he observed that “Frustration

was starting to surface, because it took alot of time, expectations were created and these are not managed, and people [from the department] spent time on it [Vermillion].”. These results

indicate that the low pace and slow progress of the change initiative severely impact the degree to which employees felt committed to Vermillion.

Participation and commitment

The interviews also revealed that the participation of change recipients in the change initiative impacted the degree to which they felt committed to the change. Change recipients generally indicated that they did not really participate in the change initiative until six months ago. Even in the last six months, not all change recipients felt like they were properly involved. One recipient, who was involved in Vermillion testing, explained this by saying “I got the chance to participate

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an opportunity to participate or get involved in the change by the project team for the majority of the change trajectory. One of the project team members explained that there was a large discrepancy between change recipients who were involved, for example by testing, and change recipients that were not involved at all. He clarified this by saying that “While they [who were

participating] are becoming experts, the others are not. The people who are not participating in this project […], we need to do a lot of work to get them involved.”. Most of the other

interviewees shared a comparable view to this.

The departmental managers also held an identical view. They too felt that their employees were not being properly involved in the change, and that this had consequences for their commitment to the change initiative. To illustrate this, one departmental manager said about his employees that “At some point, I started to try to involve them more [in the change]. I invited them to

meetings, and asked them to speak from their perspectives there, and I tried to explain why it [Vermillion] is important.”. A second departmental manager shared this viewpoint, and

explained that the employees had been allowed to participate more in the change initiative in the past few months. He mentioned that they received training, got a sandbox mode to experiment with Vermillion and started to develop some components in Vermillion. Regarding this, he stated that “It has definitely helped to let them participate more [to build commitment].”. This was confirmed by one of the project team members, who had previously noted that he observed that many people found it difficult to go along with this change. He mentioned that this had become better in the past few months, and said that “The most important step we took for that

[commitment] was to keep involving people. Trying to get representatives of departments to deliver input.”. Commitment to the change has thus increased as compared to the earlier phases

of the trajectory as a result of higher levels of participation.

Change urgency and change readiness and commitment

The importance of the perceived change urgency was the final significant relationship that surfaced in the interviews. All interviewees shared the perception that this change initiative was needed for them and for the organization for a multitude of reasons. The first reason was that the current way of manual work could simply not be sustained, due to intense work pressure. One departmental manager explained that “They all see that the pressure is barely sustainable [for

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interviewees agreed, one change recipient explaining that people see that they cannot continue this way, and that the realization change is needed has surfaced among them. Change recipients showed serious intent to embrace the change because of it. The two other departmental managers mentioned that they felt that their departments held views similar to this. A second reason why Vermillion was perceived to be urgent were environmental changes. In the words of one departmental manager, “The market, the competition, the cost pressure from customers, it forces

us to find more efficient ways of working.”. This aspect was not mentioned as much by change

recipients, but was shared by most other departmental managers and project team members. Practical reasons were also named as reasons why the change was necessary. Improving consistency, decreasing error sensitivity of reports, decreasing time needed to deliver the report to the customer and increasing work process efficiency were among the most important reasons that interviewees cited. Company survival and growth and healthy working conditions were thus the main reasons why people felt it was urgent.

This perceived urgency for the change initiative mostly originated from the perceptions of employees themselves. One change recipient clarified that “People realized themselves that this

change was needed. […] People wanted this, but not because of management, but because people realized the importance [of the change initiative] themselves.”. Other research

participants held similar views, stating that management did very little to convince them that the change was necessary for the organization. Interviewees even expressed concern, stating that they did not feel that management thought of Vermillion as a high priority, or at least did not express so. The project manager simply stated that “Vermillion is still of low priority among

management”. When asked how employees felt about this, she revealed that in the final quarter

last year, management decided to put a complete hold to Vermillion. She continued: “I did not

have to do anything to prevent that from happening. The departments took care of that by themselves, preventing that the project would be put on full hold. People really want this.” which

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30 Research framework

Based on the above findings, the following framework in figure 1 was developed to illustrate the relational interdependence of factors in this study. As becomes clear from the framework, resistance to change and job security were not included in the results, as there was a lack of significant findings in this study regarding the topic to incorporate them. The implications of this framework are elaborately expanded on in the discussion session of this paper.

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31 Case 2: Werkman Stadslyceum

The study at the first secondary case, the Werkman Stadslyceum, had some interesting findings that were relevant to this study. At the Werkman Stadslyceum, an established sense of urgency to change was also found to be an important factor in creating readiness for change and change commitment. However, in contrast to the study conducted at TKP Investments, the sense of urgency was instilled by outside sources – management and the external inspection agency – as compared to the internal sense of urgency felt by employees of TKP Investments. This was mentioned by multiple interviewees, one explaining that the external inspection agency simply said that “If you do not do anything [change], you simply have to close. You have one year to

change, and if it is then still not adequate, your doors will have to close.”. Another interviewee

explained that the school board was trying to get this across to their employees: “The school

board is trying to communicate that we have no choice. We have to change. We have to get with the times.”. Elaborating further on this, another research participant said that “It was more of a negative urgency. It was like: you all doing it wrong, and that has to change, or the school has to close down.”. These results imply that an urgency to change might not have been perceived by

employees had the inspection agency not gone down on them.

Similar to the TKP Investments study, the change approach was altered during the change initiative, from a more top-down focussed approach to a more bottom-up approach. Interviewees stated that initially a top-down approach was used, one interviewee explaining that “The initial

measure was simply top-down. This is how the inspection wants to see it, so that‟s how we [management] want to see it. And that is what we are going to hold you [employees] to.”. Many

research participants did not like this approach, but most understood why it was necessary. When the dust had settled, a more participative, bottom-up approach was adopted. One interviewee cited: “We now have money and time for that. We have ambition, direction, room and trust.”. However, in contradiction to the TKP Investments study, the pace of the change initiative tended to slow down once a more bottom-up approach was used at Werkman Lyceum. One of the change recipients explained that “It now has to come from our side more. […] And that is hard.

And you can tell that the school board also finds it hard here and there.”. Due to a lower

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32 Case 3: Municipality of Leeuwarden

The other secondary study took place at the Municipality of Leeuwarden. Many of the change recipients here did not perceive a high urgency to change, while some noted that simply the shortage of work places in the office was the reason why it was urgent. Other reasons why recipients felt change was needed were outdated office utilities, such as the bathrooms and window frames. Deeper change, on the level of work processes, behaviour and digitization, was only scarcely mentioned by interviewees. According to the research participants, no urgency to change was clearly communicated by management. The goal of the change included having flexible working spaces, but as one interviewee cited: “Eventually, everyone will end up sitting

at their initial work place”, illustrating that the commitment to the change may not be very high.

Another research participant noted that “We had a shortage of a clear message in that regard.

The sense of urgency has been undercommunicated.”. Another interviewee agreed, stating that “The question now is, what were our goals? I do not know what our goals were. So, when that is unclear, the sense of urgency is missing.”. From these results, the assumption that low levels of

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Discussion

The main objective of this research was to discover patterns between individual organizational change factors that occur during organizational change. This led to the following main research question:

How are individual factors (communication, change approach, commitment, readiness for change, resistance to change, employee participation, perceived job security, change urgency and change vision) interconnected in organizational change?

This study has found that multiple of such patterns of interconnectedness existed within the boundaries of this study‟s cases. The patterns that were identified include communication and commitment, vision and commitment, communication and readiness for change, change approach and participation, change approach and timing, timing and commitment, participation and commitment, change urgency and change readiness, and change urgency and commitment.

These research findings indicate that there are three root factors, being communication, change approach and change urgency, that are interconnected with and have influence over other individual change factors. Eventually, all of these end up influencing either participation or commitment. It was found that improper and infrequent communication of both the progress of the change initiative and the change vision impacted the commitment of change recipients directly. Change recipients felt left out or disconnected from the change initiative, and perceived that parts of the organization did not have proper knowledge of the change or its importance. As a consequence, they felt that they and their colleagues were less commited to the change initiative. In addition, the majority of interviewees felt that top management lacked a change vision regarding Vermillion. This has led to commitment problems among change recipients, as they had no idea whether this change initiative was supported by top management, or just a manifestation of their own manager, which would later be dismissed by management. Interviewees emphasized the importance of a shared change vision, backed by top management, in gaining commitment, readiness and momentum for change.

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within the walls of the project room. As a consequence, people did not have, or feel like they had, an opportunity to participate in the initiative. This in turn led to the loss of ideas, enthusiasm and commitment towards the change initiative. Furthermore, this method was found to be highly inefficient in regards to the pace of the change initiative. The method was inflexible and caused delay after delay in the initiative, without adapting to internal changes, such as changes in work processes, products and technology, stalling any further possible progress. When the change approach was shifted towards a hybrid version of the waterfall methodology and agile scrum, towards a more flexible, bottom-down approach, change recipients actually started to feel involved and to participate in the change initiative. Employees received training, attended project meetings and participated weekly in newly organized departmental days to work together, learn about and improve the Vermillion system.

Additionally, the pace of the change also significantly increased after the shift in change approach. In six months, more progress was made than in the previous three years. In turn, a higher pace of the change made the initiative more lively among change recipients, and again gave them the belief that the initiative could succeed, increasing their commitment to the Vermillion system. When the change approach transitioned from a top-down approach to a more bottom-up approach at the Werkman Lyceum, the change initiative actually slowed down, in accordance to most literature, as decisions took longer to make and there was some lack of direction (Conway & Monks, 2011). However, this was further influenced by the fact that change recipients felt like they now had the time and money to do things more calmly, implying that a lower sense of urgency also contributed to this. This difference among contexts may thus be a consequence of divergent perceptions of urgency regarding the change initiative.

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leader alike. Research participants both displayed and expressed high levels of readiness for change and commitment to change, because they felt like change was really needed – for them, but also for the organization. These results imply that when the internally perceived urgency of a change initiative is beyond a certain threshold, it may actually be able to substitute for management communication and change vision in achieving commitment and readiness for change. In the Werkman Lyceum study, a sense of urgency was also found to be a main factor contributing to commitment and readiness for change. However, here the sense of urgency was actually instilled by their management, and this urgency was in turn instilled in the school board‟s management by the external inspection agency.

In the Werkman Lyceum study, change urgency was thus developed through communication of management, congruent with Kotter‟s work (2007), and not individually like in the TKP Investments study. A possible cause for this is personal valence (Armenakis & Harris, 2009), as employees of TKP Investments personally saw benefits to changing, while at the Werkman Lyceum this personal valence was less prominent before the external inspection agency threatened with closing the school if no changes were made. However, the study at the Municipality of Leeuwarden supported the findings of the TKP Investments study. In this study, change urgency was perceived to be low, with low change commitment as a result. These results are the total opposite of the TKP Investments study, where high change urgency had led to high change commitment among employees. Therefore, these results imply that absence or presence of change urgency may lead to the absence or presence of change commitment respectively, suggesting a positive relationship between the two.

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resistance did occur was mainly among project team members, and not among change recipients. Therefore, no substantial interconnections were identified regarding resistance to change. A reason for this might be that all interviewees were very supportive of the change initiative. However, they also expressed that they observed little resistance among their colleagues, aside from some individual resistance to change. This may be a result of high levels of overall change commitment and readiness among change recipients.

Theoretical implications

This study makes several theoretical contributions. Firstly, these findings indicate important links among factors that are considered vital for change success, such as commitment (Coopey & Hartley, 1991; Guest, 1992; Iversion, 1996) and readiness for change (Armenakis et al., 1993; Hardison, 1998; Kirch et al., 2005). Some key factors that influence commitment and change readiness have been identified and these can now be considered, not dichotomously, but in a non dichotomous manner, by both change agents and managemers in change initiatives.

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As indicated by Van de Ven and Poole (1995), communication is a significant factor in readiness for change. In this study, no significant results were found indicating that a certain type, amount or content of communication had led to a higher readiness for organizational change. However, these results do not contradict those of Van de Ven and Poole, in the sense that in this study, there was simply a lack of data on this subject. Research participants indicated that they perceived a lack of communication, both in frequency and substance, and consequently no link was found between communication and readiness for change in this study. While research participants indicated that lacklustre communication would lead to lower levels of commitment, involvement and readiness, they still displayed high levels regarding all three of those factors, stemming from other sources. This implies that the absence of such appropiate communication does not essentially mean that the change recipients will display low levels of change commitment and readiness.

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38 Practical implications

This study illustrates the high level of complexity of change initiatives and interrelatedness of different factors. Many change theories attempt to explain change with one single motor and “this runs the risk of oversimplification and selective attention to one aspect of the change process at the expense of others“ (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995: 526). However convenient this may be for change agents and management alike, it is not an accurate representation of reality and it is therefore important to be reminded of the complexity of change situations. One should also keep in mind that this study can still be considered an oversimplification, as there may be dozens or hundreds of other factors at play, which can not all be captured in one single study, both for reasons of comprehensiveness and time restraints.

A second practical implication is the importance of proper, timely and frequent communication during a change process. Research participants indicated that they perceived communication as lacking and mentioned multiple, negative consequences, such as a lower level of commitment, a lower organizational readiness for change and resistance to the change initiative. When communication was increased in frequency and content, change recipients indicated that they felt more connected to and involved in the change. With higher levels of communication, the change initiative seemed to be more lively on the work floor, which also stimulated people to share their ideas, get involved and participate in the change.

The third practical implication is that the pace of a change initiative has significant influence on the degree to which a change initiative is perceived by change recipients. During the first years of the project, there was very little progress and delay after delay occured. This made change recipients indifferent, disconnected or even cynical regarding the change initiative. When a change project takes too long, it simply vanishes from the presence in the hearts and minds of the change recipients. In the last six months of the Vermillion project, when the pace significantly increased, people actually started talking about it again, and believed in a satisfactory outcome for them and for the organization.

Factors in organizational change: a framework for contextual variables in organizational change.