GAINING SUPPORT FOR CHANGE INITIATIVES:
Experience of Middle Managers
Master thesis, MSc BA – Change Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
31 August 2011
by
Raushanna Sarkeyeva
Student number: 2066106
14 Ashkhabadskaya str.
720017 Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan
Tel.: +996 312 549783
e-mail:
rsarkeyeva@gmail.com
Supervisor/University
dr. K.S. Prins
Second supervisor/university
drs. H. P. van Peet
ABSTRACT
The important role of middle managers in mediating top-down change has been widely
investigated, while exploration of their participation in bottom-up initiatives has been limited. The
purpose of this study is to describe the process of gaining support for change initiatives by middle
managers. The conceptual framework encompasses concepts of support for change, practices,
antecedents and competencies. Grounded theory methods were used to interpret data from sixteen
in-depth interviews and to develop inductive framework. The study finds that managers gain
support for change gradually, through iterative process of choice and action, in which they develop
the content of change, coordinate process and engage into sensemaking and learning practices. The
findings also reveal that change-specific attitudes of the managers shape enactment of practices,
and that these attitudes along with competencies are objects of experiential learning and
development. The grounded framework and knowledge about micro-processes and factors
pertinent to middle managers’ agency in the bottom-up change constitute main contributions of
this study to academic knowledge. It is concluded that given non-linear character and complexity of
the process, organizations should enable mechanisms for experiential learning and pay attention to
managers’ ability to make contextually-grounded decisions. Due to limited access to organizational
data case-studies or research within the specific content of change are recommended as future
research possibilities that can build upon the proposed framework.
Table of contents
1.
INTRODUCTION ... 4
1.1.
Middle Management... 4
1.2.
Perspectives of middle managers’ role in change. ... 5
1.3.
Bottom-up Approach to Change... 6
1.4.
Objectives and Research Questions... 6
2.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK... 7
2.1
Outcome Level – Support for Change ... 7
2.2
Process level – Practices and their Enactment ... 8
2.3
Antecedents... 10
2.4
Competencies ... 11
2.5
Conceptual Framework ... 12
3.
METHODS... 13
3.1
Data Collection... 13
3.2
Overview of the Cases... 16
3.3
Data Analysis... 16
4.
RESULTS... 18
4.1.
Practices by the middle managers ... 18
4.2.
Antecedents... 22
4.3.
Choice as Core Category... 23
4.4.
Support for Change and Pathways... 24
4.5.
Competencies and Learning ... 27
5.
THEORETICAL INTEGRATION AND DISCUSSION ... 29
5.1.
Integration of Results... 29
5.2.
Theoretical Discussion... 30
5.3.
Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research... 31
5.4.
Implications for Practice... 32
REFERENCES... 33
1.
INTRODUCTION
Change has become the nature of organizational life and change management is now one of the most wanted capabilities (Gossage, Silverstone, Leach, Lovelace and Laijtha, 2010). The necessity for organization to respond to rapidly changing environment as well as to internal changes has been widely asserted in academic literature (Burnes, 2004; Cummings and Worley, 2001; Higgs and Rowland, 2005). As number of triggers and situations that demands attention increases, more companies turn to devolving responsibility for change and encouraging employees to initiate and implement change (Burnes, 2009). However, according to the recent survey of 674 executives conducted globally by the management consulting company Accenture, nearly forty five percent of respondents were not sure that “their workforces were prepared to adapt and manage change through periods of economic uncertainty” (Gossage et al, 2010: 2). Intriguing question is how companies can develop change agility if executives think that their employees are change incapable? Is there really place for internal change agents? This study adopts the premise of Wooldridge, Schmid and Floyd (2008) that states that “middle managers are central to explaining key organizational outcomes” and proposes to explore emerging from the bottom changes through the perspective of middle managers as the agents of such changes. Both positive and negative influences of middle managers on change success have been acknowledged in the literature. The former considers roles of translators and contributors to change, while the latter create images of middle managers as key resistant political force. It is important to note, though, that previous work is mainly based on cases of planned, radical change that was initiated and directed in a top-down manner (for example, Balogun, 2006; Balogun and Johnson, 2004; Hope, 2010; Meyer, 2006 etc). There is a small number of researchers that explored upward tactics used by middle managers (Dutton, 1997; Dutton 2001; Hope, 2010). Though emergent change approach is argued to be the most effective in current business environment (Higgs and Rowland, 2005), only few works can be found about middle managers’ role in the bottom-up, emergent change. One of those works is the recently published study by Conway and Monks (2011). This research actually represents both approaches mentioned above which, out together, form a niche for:
1. a study with focus on the perspective of middle managers as co-creators of change rather than change recipients,
2. a study of change agents in the context of bottom up, emergent change.
The following subsections elaborate further on these approaches and logically lead to the research questions.
1.1.
Middle Management
The term “middle management” is usually defined as a level in the organizational hierarchy, between top management and first-line supervisors. However, it will be inappropriate to understand it only as a middle level in the organization hierarchy. First of all, because the number of middle managers has reduced as a result of downsizing and re-engineering projects, as observed by Balogun (2003). Secondly, because the nature of their work has changed (Stoker, 2006; Caldwell, 2003).
their knowledge of operation”. They call to comprise under this term different types of mid-level professionals, such as general line managers, functional line managers and team- or project leaders.
The nature of the middle management can also be described as manager being both object and subject of the same action. For example, Stoker (2006) defines middle managers as those who receive and give direction, they are subordinates and leaders in one. Stensaker et al (2008) shows that managers are engaged simultaneously in sensemaking and sensegiving during the strategic change and Caldwell (2003) cites Storey (1992), saying that middle managers represent both object and the agency of change.
In this research, definition given by Wooldridge et al (2008) is applied; so both line managers and managers from the support and advisory functions are considered to be “middle managers”.
1.2.
Perspectives on middle managers’ role in change.
The idea that middle managers play an important role in organizational change is in fact a long-held, it has been developed in strategic agency and change management literature. The main trend in the prior literature is a shift from seeing managers’ role as primarily implementing strategies to the role of creating change. Research also varies in the locus of downward, upward or lateral direction of the middle managers’ influence.
Middle managers as implementers. Wooldridge et al (2008) explains that it was a “choice perspective” on strategy making that distinguished between decision-making and implementation, assigning former role to top executives and latter – to middle managers. After Mintzberg had “opened up the strategy process to substantive, emergent influence by middle managers” (Wooldridge et al, 2008: 1193), it has been proved by numerous studies that middle management’ participation in strategy positively influence success. This belief formed the ground for participatory models of strategy and change processes. Nowadays organizations strive to maximize contribution of middle managers’ to the strategy (Floyd and Wooldridge, 1997) and to develop their leadership potential by devolving responsibilities for the change implementation (Burnes, 2009: 373).
Middle managers as intermediaries. Perspectives in the change management literature also were developing from assuming middle managers’ role in change to be passive – manager as so called “change recipient”, to the change agency perspectives that explores active participation of middle managers as “change intermediaries” (Balogun, 2003), “enablers of radical change” (Huy, 2001) and mediators between units (Balogun and Johnson, 2004), Studies of the former stream provided numerous theories on managers’ responses to change, both convergent and divergent, on the sources of their resistance to change (e.g. Giangreco and Peccei, 2005; Hope, 2010; Kim and Mauborgne, 1991).
Middle managers as change agents. Studies that treat managers’ as being capable to bring about change and focus on their generative capacity constitute the third group. Those studies share in common the constructivist orientation, and see change through the lens of mental frameworks, social interaction, conversations, and politics. Roles of middle managers that have been recognized are: potential change agents (Huy, 2002) and “capability builders” (Floyd and Wooldridge, 1997); “boundary-shakers (Balogun, Gleadle, Hailey and Willmott, 2005) and initiators of change (Frohman, 1997).
1.3.
Bottom-up Approach to Change
The definitions of the bottom-up approach to change are often based on contrasting it to the “top-down” approach, and vice versa. We will consider the definition given by Burnes (2009):
“Instead of change being driven by a few senior managers from the top, this approach sees change as coming from bottom-up initiatives which emerge from local responses to issues, threats or opportunities in the environment. The size of such responses will vary but, because they are local responses, they can never be large-scale”.
And compare it with another statement, which belongs to Moon (2008):
“[…] organization change does not happen solely in a top-down, leader-led, strategic manner. Employees at all levels can and do engage in change that holds potentially broader implications for organizational culture and functioning beyond localized levels.”
Both authors use the contrast with the top-down direction of change initiation and implementation. However, this opposition is difficult to apply in the real-life cases, when, for example, change might be initiated by the top management but then be developed and implemented by the employees. Thus criteria of the change to be considered as bottom-up become blurry, and variety of changes can be united under this umbrella. Moon indicates explicitly that it is “employees” who stand behind this change, so when somebody is speaking about abstract “bottom” we understand that he or she means “employees”. Hence, the feature of employees being the source and driver of change is one that distinguishes bottom-up.
Moon’s definition also adds up to our understanding with the following accents: 1) approach applies to non-strategic issues as well, 2) it may trigger organizational changes beyond boundaries of the current change project. The first accent can be explained by lack of organization-wide overview needed for strategic decisions and therefore speaks for using bottom-up in incremental improvement initiatives (Balogun and Hailey, 2008). The second raises the question of context and culture favorable for the bottom-up approach.
Bottom-up approach suggests the culture based on mutual trust, in which senior managers significantly change their style from directing to facilitating (Burnes, 2009). What is more important is that not all managers are ready to reject traditional understanding of their functions and let employees be in charge of the change.
In this study, term “bottom-up change” is used interchangeably with “bottom-up approach” for change, in which non-executive employees (either employees or middle managers) define direction of change and implement it.
1.4.
Objectives and Research Questions
Objective of this study is to contribute to the knowledge about middle managers’ change agency in case of bottom-up approach. It is supposed that with this knowledge organizations would be able to create supportive environment for bottom-up initiatives and management development.
factors form the basis for the enactment of different roles and practices by them. Two sub-questions were designed to help answer the central question:
1. How do individual antecedents influence the process of gaining support? 2. What role do competencies play in that process?
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The second chapter defines the central concepts of the research derived from the review of existing literature and presents the deductive conceptual framework. Chapter 3 justifies the choice of research methods, data collection and analysis. Chapter 4 presents findings that help in answering the research question and also topics emerged from the data. In the fifth chapter these findings will be discussed and compared with deductive conceptual model and the inductive framework will be presented. The conclusions, limitations of the research and implications for practice are provided in the last chapter.
2.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Conceptual framework of this study presents the etic, or the researcher’s perspective on the topic and is based on existing theory and research (Hennink et al, 2011). Prior literature on middle managers’ participation in strategic processes and change implementation was reviewed to identify concepts that can help to answer the research questions. We use the Organizing Framework for Research from a Middle Management Perspective, proposed by Wooldridge et al (Wooldridge et al, 2008: 1210) as a layout for structuring concepts into one model. First, we will subsequently introduce concepts starting from outcomes and unfolding process backwards to the antecedent factors. Using extant research we will justify choice of our concepts and make propositions for the conceptual framework.
2.1
Outcome Level – Support for Change
As observed by Caldwell (2003) and Moon (2008) to make change happen, change agents of all types (top managers, consultants, managers and employees) must coordinate their efforts with other members of organizations; in a nutshell, they depend on support from other members. The notion of “support” is frequently mentioned in the change management studies as the opposite of resistance to change and as a critical success factor for the planned organizational change (Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder, 1993; Todnem, 2007 etc). From the perspective of the manager driving change from below support for change is a desired outcome as well. As middle managers have access to executives, employees and other middle managers – given their central role in the hierarchy and their oversight of processes – the wider concept of support for change was divided accordingly into support from top management, support from employees and support from middle managers or peer support. Proposition 1: Acting as agents of change from below, middle managers aim at gaining support for change from top management, their peers (other middle managers) and employees.
to further discussion and joint development of ideas (Raes et al, 2011; Bouquet and Birkinshaw, 2008). Finally, top management support positively influence midlevel corporate entrepreneurship along with work autonomy, rewards and time availability (Hornsby, Kuratko and Zahra, 2002).
However, support from top management team per se is not sufficient for successful implementation. Change agents need to convince and gain support from stakeholders who will participate in implementation or will be affected by it. This group includes other middle managers, to whom we refer as “peers” and employees. Balogun (2004) found that in case of distant top managers change implementation depended largely on success of internal negotiations between heads of units. Studies of the planned change treat peer support as a necessary antecedent of change acceptance by employees (Armenakis, 2007). In this research peer and employee support would be expected to differ from planned change definitions. From the perspective of middle manager initiating change, we define peer support as positive feelings, commitment to change and supportive actions by the other middle managers. Similarly, employee support will be approached as positive attitudes and willingness to work on change implementation.
2.2
Process level – Practices and their Enactment
Under “practices of bottom-up change” we consider the set of deliberate actions that managers undertake in relation to the change initiative. Lempiala (2010: 2) refers to Büger and Gadinger (2007) who define practices as socially shared and temporally sustained activities. Other meanings from the literature are “influence strategies” (Armenakis et al, 1993), interventions and “action strategies” (Argyris, 2002). The prior research on roles and agency of middle managers in change has identified a variety of roles and activities. As was mentioned before, only few works were conducted in the context of the bottom-up change approach and several studies can be found that consider middle managers’ as co-creators of change or internal change agents. An overview of these studies is presented in Table 2.1.
TABLE 2.1
Upward practices of middle managers derived from prior research
Study Roles Activities Level of analysis Context
Balogun (2003)
Change intermediaries
Undertaking personal change, helping others (sensemaking);
implementing necessary changes, keeping the business going (coordination and management) Experience of middle managers (diaries) Reorientation of a privatized utility company Bouquet and Birkinshaw (2008) Entrepreneurs (developing local business)
Taking initiative, building profile Model of attracting positive attention of Headquarters by foreign subsidiaries (large-scale survey) Large multinational enterprises practicing inward investment (UK, Canada and Australia) Conway (2010) Targets of the top-down change, agents of change from below
Design initiatives, leverage enthusiasm of the small group, promote change to other groups, implement pilots, help to unlearn old working practices.
Middle managers’ experiences in the interface between top-down and bottom-up approaches to change (interviews)
System-wide change of Irish health service, introduction of local change programmes Dutton et al (1997), Detecting new ideas and Assessing context’ favorability for issue selling,
Issue-selling process (interviews, 2 studies)
Dutton et al (2001)
mobilizing resources around them
Packaging issues, involving others, managing process of issue selling
telecom company and regional non-for-profit hospital Floyd and Wooldridge (1994) Potential reservoirs of core capability Championing strategic alternatives, synthesizing information, facilitating adaptability, implementing deliberate strategies Middle managers’ involvement and performance (large-scale statistical survey) 25 innovative and reengineered organizations (various industries) Raes et al (2011) Accomplices of executives in strategy formulation & implementa-tion Managing information exchange, mutual influencing towards win-win solution
Interaction of executives and middle managers in strategy formulation and implementation (theory development based on literature)
N/A
Source: Rouleau (2005) “Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers Interpret and sell change every day”; adapted and completed by the author
Numerous practices had been identified in prior research. But how do these practices work in reality? Organizations are now viewed as complex-adaptive systems, with non-linear systems and processes that require a different approach to change and leadership (Lichtenstein, 2000; Saka, 2003). In case of initiating change from below, managers deal with high uncertainty and risk, and have to choose their own approach to the situation (Balogun, 2008). We propose that managers do not choose practices only once, they go through series of decisions, actions and changes of their behavior. Hence, in order to understand “how” of middle managers’ agency, we propose to study enactment of practices. This concept can be defined similarly to “enactment of roles”, which “involves agency and context” (Mantere, 2008).
Illustration of enactment can be found in the study of Balogun (2003). Among four practices that she described the pivotal role belongs to “undertaking personal change”. Managers’ approach to helping others experiencing change depends on their interpretation of their role and change happening to them (see figure 2.1). Thus, middle managers’ role as change intermediaries is enacted via a sensemaking mechanism. Sensemaking is also inherent to the practices and activities of managers who sell strategic change (Rouleau, 2005), and we assume that similar micro-processes occur when managers drive change from below.
FIGURE 2.1
Interpretation as key middle-manager task
Stensaker et al (2008) have illustrated how the choice between “first thinking” and “first doing” can affect outcomes of the change implementation. According to their study, organizational sensemaking in case of experimenting, rather than planning everything ahead (“first act, and then think”) leads to more effective implementation. They suggest that inclusion of the “learning by doing” elements in the change programme will help employees and managers make sense of change faster.
However, most of previous studies were conducted in the top-down change context, and results of this research can reveal additional aspects of enactment by middle managers.
Proposition 2: Managers’ actions of promoting change from below can be described as a process of deliberately choosing and applying practices that will help them to gain support for change.
2.3
Antecedents
In the Organizing Framework of Wooldridge et al (2008) the level of antecedents is presented by individual, group, organizational and environmental antecedents. Our study focuses on individual antecedents and opts for including the following three factors as antecedents of managers’ participation in change from below: commitment to change, Intrapreneurial attitude and relationship with top management.
Commitment to change
Under commitment we understand the extent to which managers want to support and promote the idea. More specifically, according to Herold, Fedor, and Caldwell (2007) change commitment “reflects not only positive attitudes toward change but also intentions to support it, and a willingness to work on behalf of its successful implementation”. Researching middle managers’ experience of mediating top-down and bottom-up changes in Irish health services Conway found that for implementation to be successful managers “had to feel involved and engaged with the change initiative” (Conway, 2010). Engagement is often defined as “feeling committed” (Chalofsky and Krishna, 2009: 189). According to Raes et al (2011) active engagement of MM enables managers and executives to negotiate to find win-win solutions. Therefore, we assume that commitment plays an important role in shaping managers’ behavior in the change process.
Proposition 3: Level of managers’ own commitment to change influences the enactment of practices by determining the extent of active participation and persistence.
Relationship with top management
The relationship with the direct supervisor, top management in this case, is an important context for issue selling and sensegiving practices, according to Dutton et al (2001), which either facilitates or complicates their success. Several observations about this relationship were made by Raes et al (2011) who explored interaction between top and middle management in regards to strategy formulation and implementation. According to them, trust between managers of two levels positively influence the quality of strategic decisions and success of its implementation. Two success factors of strategic discussions – managers being “open to new ideas” and “thinking win-win” – are mediated by the level of trust (Raes et al, 2011). In addition, Mantere (2008) observed that when top managers expect middle managers to facilitate change, managers in their turn expect top managers to trust them. To sum up, prior research suggests that the relationship between middle manager and their supervisor influence their behaviour and effectiveness of their cooperation in change.
Intrapreneurial attitude
This term was derived from Huy’s (2001) observation about qualities of middle managers with high potential to become effective change agents: he mentioned the concept “intrapreneur” as someone who “builds something that could improve the organization’s effectiveness and leave the lasting monument” (Huy, 2001:75). Thus, the “intrapreneurial attitude” can be characterized as thinking about an organization’s needs at first hand and the desire to make a difference in that sense (Frohman, 1997). It is not only about knowing what to change as Moon (2008) argues, but thinking about it from the perspective of end-users. In simpler words, it is an attitude of serving company interest above personal interests.
Proposition 5: An intrapreneurial attitude is proposed to positively influence enactment of bottom-up approach due to increased ability to communicate change message and gain the broader perspective.
2.4
Competencies
For completing our deductive model we propose to include the concept of managers’ competencies and examine its’ interconnection with enactment of practices and experiential learning.
The link between competencies and managers’ success as agents of change has been widely discussed in previous research on change agency and management development (Shanley, 2007). As has been demonstrated by Caldwell (2003) who examined managerial model of change agency along with agencies of top management, external consultancy and employees’, managers need to develop new skills that would assist them in dealing with change. He further claims that managers are challenged to have better interpersonal communication skills and to be able to handle uncertainties and ambiguities of change – to have a so called change orientation competence (Caldwell, 2003: 135). Balogun and Hailey (2008) also indicate at specific technical and process skills for change agents (Balogun and Hailey, 2008:239). Caldwell (2003) also refer to Buchanan and Boddy’s seminal work about change agency (1992), in which they observed three areas of expertise required in change – problem solving, ownership and legitimacy; further, they organized change agent’s competencies into “agenda’s” - managing content, managing process and managing control (Caldwell, 2003: 136). Finally, the competencies typically identified in the literature can be grouped as: goals, roles, communication awareness and political judgement (Balogun and Hailey, 2008: 239) – see Figure 2.2.
FIGURE 2.2 Change agent competencies
• Goals: clarity, flexibility, creativity
• Roles: team building, networking, tolerating ambiguity, showing courage and perseverance
• Communication awareness – communication/interpersonal skills, enthusiasm, visibility/role modeling, common touch
• Political judgement – influence, persuasiveness and negotiating Source: Balogun, J. and Hailey, V. (2002).
ticking-the-boxes of the competency list does not provide a sufficient base for understanding how competencies are used by managers. Furthermore, this approach fails to acknowledge that the situation of middle managers being perfectly prepared and competent for a particular change rarely exists and that competencies evolve in practice (Caldwell, 2003; Saka, 2003).
This brings us to the role of competencies in the enactment of practices and whole experience of middle manager to promote the change. Several questions arise: what competencies does bottom-up approach require from middle managers? To what extent managers who drive change from below rely on their competencies and do they develop new skills based on this change experience? In order to answer the second sub-question, we propose to include the concept of “competencies” in the framework with the following proposition:
Proposition 6: There is a reciprocal relation between managers’ competencies and enactment of practices – current competencies determine the preference for one practice over another, and actual enactment of practices serves as feedback on the level of competencies.
2.5
Conceptual Framework
The research explores how middle managers promote change initiatives to gain support from their supervisors and colleagues. The concepts of support, practices, competencies and the antecedent factors proposed above can be integrated into the following framework (Figure 2.3).
The framework suggests that enactment of practices by middle managers results in supportive behaviour of top managers, employees and other middle managers. Enactment of practices, in its turn, is influenced by antecedent factors – relationship with top management, intrapreneurial attitude and commitment for change. All three of them are considered on the individual level. The concepts of antecedents, practices and support together form the process model. The relation between middle managers’ competencies (MM competencies) and their practices is bi-directional: they influence and inform each other.
FIGURE 2.3
Deductive conceptual framework of the research
3.
METHODS
The data was collected via in-depth interviews with middle managers. The method was suitable for research due to its’ ability to provide insight into participants’ perspective, so valuable for the interpretive and explanatory studies (Silverman, 2001). As previous section suggests, not a lot known about middle managers’ agency in case of change driven from below, therefore we chose grounded theory as method for data analysis in order to capture various contexts that can help in answering research question (as proposed by Birks and Mills, 2011). This section elaborates on data collection and analysis in more details.
3.1
Data Collection
Sample and procedures
For answering our research question an access to an array of middle managers with bottom-up approach experience was needed. The choice to approach individuals from different companies, instead of recruiting participants via human resource department or top management, was made after several companies refused to grant access to their managers and data due to “delicate” nature of the topic and high workload of their middle managers. The few probing invitations were sent to individuals, who expressed their interest and willingness to give a one-hour interview, which would be anonymous and confidential.
Around 30 invitations to participate in the research were then distributed via researcher’s personal and professional networks. Potential interviewees, regarded by their peers as “having experience with bottom-up approach to change”, were contacted and asked for an interview. “Snowballing” tactic was also applied – some interviewees recommended persons from their network. In total, 19 interviews were conducted in the period 15th of June – 15th of July, 2011 and data from 16 interviews were used in analysis. Three interviews were excluded from the data analysis because change cases did not meet the requirements (Figure 3.1). The main criteria were the source of change and extent to which project contained elements of the bottom-up approach. Any content of change was accepted.
Managers
A profile description of the managers participated in the study is presented in Table 3.1. The sample was predominantly male, with roles distributed from Heads of Business Unit positioned just one level below the top management level to Managers three levels from the CEO. The range of their subordinates was spread from 5 to 80. Eight interviewees were from line management, six were heads of support functions and two had advisory roles (programme manager, strategic planning).
TABLE 3.1 Profile of the managers
Number
Gender Male 13
Female 3
Tenure in organization 1-3 years 6
4-7 years 5
8-12 years 3
More than 12 years 2
Years as a middle manager 1-2 3-5 More than 5 4 7 5 Industry Retail 4 Health services 4
Consulting and education 1
Electronics 2
Oil & Gas 2
Telecommunications 1
Financial services 1
Supply Chain Management 1
# of levels to the CEO 0 (advisors) 2
1 level between 4
2 levels 8
3 levels 2
Position regarded core processes Line manager 8
Support manager 6
Strategic advisor 2
Education Business Administration/Management 5
Other (medicine, engineer, physics, IT) 11
Interviews
The interview guide was changed after one pilot interview with test participant and after the interview with the first manager. The style of the questions was changed to a less “scientific” one; straight-forward questions that asked about relation between the concepts were deleted. For example question “in what way participation in this project/change influenced your competencies/professional development” was rejected, based on the argument of Silverman that “asking interviewee the actual research question (or sub-question) decreases quality of the research” (Silverman, 2007:34). It was evident from the first interview that these questions had to be explained by the researcher to the manager and then manager had difficulties answering such question. In the subsequent interviews we did not follow the prescribed sequence of questions or exact wording, using interview guide mainly for checking completeness of the information gathered.
The interviews were conducted face-to-face, mainly in offices of the managers. One week prior to the interview a memo was sent to the participants, in which purpose of the study, format and content of the interview were explained.
Each interview started with an introduction – the researcher explained purpose of the study and format of the interview, and then asked the managers about their background, tenure and current position within a company. Issues of confidentiality and anonymity were addressed also in this section and informed consent for recording the interview (audio) was obtained. The managers’ questions about change cases were also addressed in the beginning; it happened when the manager proposed to choose between several cases from his/her experience. The main part of the interview consisted of two sessions: 1) unstructured session, in which the managers were asked to tell the story of change “from below” that they had supervised or participated in within the last couple of years, 2) semi-structured session, in which the researcher asked more main and probing questions from the interview guide. The open-ended question from the first part aimed at building rapport and learning about context. Based on this information, the researcher adjusted sequence and wording of questions of the second part of the interview in order to make it smoother.
The concluding part was reserved for any additional information about the case, for feedback from the interviewee about process and format of the meeting and for discussing next steps (follow-up questions, sending results of the research etc). Duration of the interviews varied from 50 minutes to 2 hours. All interviews were audio recorded. Data generation
Along with collecting data in form of the interviews, several “data generation” strategies were used (as suggested by Birks and Mills, 2011):
• The interviews were transcribed verbatim (every utterance was written down), to reduce bias and ensure that not only “what” but also “how” of answers and questions is taken into account (Strauss and Corbin, 1990)
• Two types of notes were generated during data collection and transcribing:
o Field notes on researchers’ observation during interviews were written down during after the each interview;
o Transcribing notes – ideas and contextual notes written down during transcription procedure.
• Discussions of preliminary findings were conducted with two consultants in August 2011.
• Research literature was consulted as data, when insights were needed for coding, defining categories and integrating findings (Birks and Mills, 2011).
3.2
Overview of the Cases
The unit of analysis in our research was a case of middle manager promoting change from below to his/her supervisors and colleagues. Although the cases were treated as “process”, it is worth to overview their content, scope and context (see Table 3.2).
The content of change presented by participants is diverse. Five cases comprise the change of working practices – via redesign of business processes and introduction of new performance management methods. Three cases deal with introduction of new products or expansion of the business to a new market. Three managers were interviewed about ongoing outsourcing of support business function, and two managers shared cases of improving internal training and management development systems. There was also one case about participation in strategy development process and another case about creating communities-of-practice with aid of corporate social media.
TABLE 3.2 Overview of the cases
Number of cases
Current status Ongoing 9
Completed 7
Scope of change Organization-wide 7
One department 9
Change context Ongoing organization-wide change
8 Multiple local changes 2
No changes 4
When the interviews were conducted, nine of the managers were participating in an ongoing bottom-up change, so they chose to talk about this experience. Seven managers provided information about completed projects. Also not all projects were localized in one department, namely, seven projects were implemented organization-wide Finally, it is worth to know whether organizations had another change programmes at the same time the project was proposed and implemented. We can see (Table 3.2) that majority of bottom-up initiatives reported by the managers were implemented in the multiple changes environment (Meyer and Stensaker, 2007).
Thus, the cases from our sample were varied. Being aware of the content and context was necessary on the next stage – analysis – to prevent from bias in cross-case comparison.
3.3
Data Analysis
We used grounded theory methods for interpreting the data. Our analysis followed tasks described by Birks and Mills (2011) as analytical process: Initial coding – Comparative analysis of codes– Intermediate coding and development of categories – Defining categories – Identifying core category – Theoretical integration.
The categorization of the codes started after one third of the data had been coded and initial coding had reached the point of saturation (Gibbs, 2007). Mind mapping software Mindjet Mind Manager Pro was used to map, group and redefine codes in hierarchical maps and to derive the categories. Memoing was used extensively at this stage for capturing emerging themes, comparing categories to each other and noticing different properties of them in the data. When this task was finalized, all transcripts were transferred into software for qualitative data analysis Atlas.ti. With aid of the software we re-studied the first five transcripts and coded the rest, introduced new codes and dimensions and linked them to the categories. We also used software for managing quotations and analytical memos, for performing the data search (queries) and for tracing relations between the categories and the quotations. The software also provided statistics on code frequency and density (see Appendix 2). Taken together, these two indicators are used to assess the level of groundedness of the category. We only include category in our findings if it was mentioned at least in 3 interviews (20%), has code frequency higher than 10 and is linked to at least 2 other categories.
When intermediate coding was completed we read the coded data through and came up with preliminary findings. To further interpretation, we discussed these findings with two consultants, who specialized in change management and programme management. This allowed us to compare our results with their practice and returned to the analysis with new questions.
The iterative analysis of categories and themes facilitated emergence of the main pattern of how practices were enacted to achieve the support for change. This task is equivalent of “identifying a core category” as performed in grounded theory (Birks and Mills, 2011: 100). Core category is a concept that encapsulates the process apparent in the categories and sub-categories constructed in the study, in other words, it helps to explain what is happening in the data (Birks and Mills, 2011; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). We discuss our core category – the “choice” – in the next Chapter.
Before integrating all categories into the framework we performed two additional analyses. First, we assumed that role of manager’s department play in organization is another important attribute that can cause differences in the data. We ran data search for key concepts – “Support” and “Practices” in the subgroups “line managers”, “support managers” and “advisors”. While examining sequences of the practices applied by these subgroups we also noted what events or factors were mentioned as a success factor, a challenge or turning point. By “turning points” we mean events that a manager indicated were decisive for gaining support for change. From this sequences and turning points we were able to describe four pathways to support. Few cases, but no more than 2 per paths, matched one or another path completely; the rest contained only elements.
4.
RESULTS
This research explores nature of the process “gaining support for change initiatives”. We first present our findings about enactment of practices by the middle managers since they provide a basis for answering research questions. Subsequent sub-sections on antecedent factors and “choice” provide material to answer the first sub-question “How do individual antecedents influence the process?” Then we complete exploration of the process with an emerged theme of “pathway to support”. The findings related to the second sub-question “What role do competencies play in the process?” are given in the last sub-section.
4.1.
Practices by the middle managers
Most of the managers were involved into change directly – as initiator, project leader, sponsor or member of transition team, and were able to report on the process from its’ beginning. More than 200 accounts of practices were coded in total.
In order to progress from these very detailed codes to categories of practices, we chose to use the dimensions developed by Balogun (2003) for her model of practices (see also Figure 2.1). She differentiated between practices according to “nature of activity” (coordination and management, sensemaking) and “orientation” (peers/self orientation, team orientation). We had to adjust the axis “orientation” to fit the context of bottom-up approach. This was done by adding “top management” orientation. Further, we had to change orientation “peers/team” into subgroups that emerged from our data: 1) “change team” – for accounts of communication with initiators of change and members of the transition team, and 2) “recipients and peers” – for practices oriented at stakeholders that are affected by the proposed change, both employees and managers.
As intermediate coding progressed, two more categories on the dimension “nature of activity” were created: idea development and learning. As a result, a four-to-four grid was filled with 16 subcategories (see Figure 4.1). The following subsections describe how each group of practices was enacted to achieve support in detail.
FIGURE 4.1.
Sub-categories of practices identified in the data Nature of activity
Idea development Process coordination Sensemaking Learning Top management “Packaging” idea, working on concerns Managing involvement into process Issue selling / sensegiving Providing feedback (unlearning) Change team Facilitating, creating
vision
Monitoring, Managing risks, Protecting team
Balancing ambitions Creating community-of-practice Change recipients and peers
Ensuring alignment Managing engagement Helping to interpret Sharing knowledge, building networks O ri e n ta ti o n
Self Developing opinion, Contributing
Managing personal
investment Self-reflection
Idea development
The interviews show that the managers had primary responsibility for the content of change, thus, they were actively involved in developing an original idea from “out of blue” format into blueprint or business case. Although the name of the practice seems similar to the conceptual phase of Project Management (Pinto, 2006), the experience of the managers suggest that the change process cannot be presented as a chain of phases, and the managers were returning to content practices as the change progressed.
First, managers who had their own vision for change or had been approached by an employee or colleague with an idea had to develop their own opinion about it. Some managers referred to these processes as “growing accustomed with an idea”, “getting convinced” or “working on the vision”. To the moment of communicating idea to top managers or recipients, the managers were already supportive for the change idea themselves and had helped initiators or their team to elaborate the idea into a proposal.
Second, the managers highlighted the importance of discussing their ideas with colleagues or top managers as source of valuable feedback. Managers who supervised the initiative of their employees paid attention to the feasibility and a match of the proposed change with broader agenda (vision, goals).
Third, the practices of the managers oriented towards top management are best described by the term of Dutton (2001) “packaging”, which refer to using different format and constructs to present an idea in the persuasive manner. Some managers “packaged” their idea as a business case, knowing that “language of executives is the language of numbers” (manager 3). Quite often, this was done after receiving critical feedback from top managers (“working around concerns”).
In cases with mixed bottom-up and top-down approaches the main activities of managers were oriented towards team and recipients, since the blueprint for change was already defined by top-management. They key roles of managers were facilitating teams in working out the change programme and ensuring alignment of the results with broader agenda (strategy) and with changes ongoing in other departments. In the bottom-up cases, middle managers were instigating discussions in work groups on topics from the executives’ agenda:
“(…) you pick up ideas from the discussion with directors and then you brought it to the lower level and trying to initiate discussion of this issue. The final product is the agreed outcome of the outcome of working group.” (manager 16)
As this quotation shows, the managers often used employees’ participation in the idea development for assessing and working on their commitment to change.
Thus, enactment of idea development practices led not only to a better quality of change content (decisions) but, more importantly, to cooperation between initiators, top managers, peers and recipients which is a form of supportive behaviour. The next group of practices –process coordination – deals with engagement of organizational members into change implementation in more detail.
Process coordination
implemented. Alongside with project management activities and arrangements, several practices unique for the bottom-up approach were described by the managers.
All managers had to actively engage change recipients, managers of other department and top management into the process of change. Different purposes of engagement were mentioned by the managers, among them: “to motivate people to participate in the process” (manager 16), “to get volunteers from the field staff” (manager 2), “get people enthusiastic about change” (manager 3) and others. Some managers had to overcome fear of employees while engaging:
“that’s what we have to overcome, and get them on board and show them that it isn’t that difficult or that you don’t start punishing them for every mistake they make” (manager 5)
Often such fear came to the fore when the change of working practices implied a change of values and management style – moving from a blaming and “shooting-the-messenger” to an appreciative, transparent and result-oriented working culture. In this case, the managers had to create a new working environment in the change team and gradually gain trust of other members by keeping their promises:
“… Every time when people joined the team - they became affected by the energy, willingness and positive attitude towards the change. They became aware of the possibilities of working in such environment…” (manager 8)
Middle managers who supervised a team in change implementation were engaged into monitoring and managing risks of reputation, burnout and failure to deliver promised outcomes. An interesting practice emerged both from bottom-up and top-down cases: protection of the team and employees working on change from top-managers’ interference. In case of a so called “forced bottom-up”, a blueprint was descended to employees by top-management the middle manager and supervisor of transition team played role of barrier or referee, trying to prevent top managers from imposing their view and putting a pressure of delivering the “right” results on employees. In another case, interim consultant protected the team members who became “more enthusiastic every day” from critique of the executive manager who “didn’t see possibilities of the new organization”. Regarding to the top-management involvement, which was also included by Dutton et al (2001) into list of issue-selling moves, the managers used it for getting top-management “on board” and spreading the change message organization-wide.
Reflecting on their own participation in change the managers drew attention to the importance of managing personal investment. In one case that meant that the manager had to distance herself from the change initiative as top management was concerned with losing focus on the core business process. Other managers highlighted the importance of keeping a balance between time and efforts spent on the change as sometimes it is not worth it, mentioning also the need of “not taking things too personally”.
Sensemaking
The data from both changes driven from below and from the top provide evidence that the middle managers had to interpret actions and messages, make sense of events and their own role in change. In other words, they were actively engaged into sensemaking1 activities.
1
The managers who instigated change felt responsible for the results of the process, so it was important for them to make sense of the reaction of employees and peers to their actions. In a nutshell, managers needed feedback and although some managers regularly asked for feedback (on meetings, informally during conversations at coffee-spots etc), all managers had to constantly think and reflect on behaviour of others. When supervising bottom-up idea development, the managers interpreted the level of employee’s interest, motivation and the actual progress on the change to judge about the success of their approach and subsequently to decide whether a change of the approach is needed:
“I need to learn to appreciate the small steps, sometimes I would want things to go faster, and that’s also some impatience of mine. But I also need to be happy with the steps we make.” (manager 5);
A significant part of sensemaking activities was devoted to sensegiving, or “helping others to make sense” of change (Balogun, 2003: 76). That was evident from the way they communicated need for change and other messages. At plenary discussions, brainstorming sessions, in conversations and coaching sessions with employees and managers of other departments, they used opportunity to communicate on the level of vision, to facilitate sensemaking of others by asking questions and to explain the nature of change. By doing so, the managers often appealed to a vision and shared values, but as was observed by one manager, it was also enough to “appeal to common sense”.
To conclude, we found that the practice of self-reflection is a major mechanism of sensemaking that not only governs manager’s own understanding of change but helps him or her to influence the sensemaking process of other members of an organization. What is more, self-reflection and sensegiving were mentioned throughout the whole storyline of the managers, including period after change implementation. That brings us to the fourth group of practices – learning, where self-reflection and other practices resulted in individual, team and organizational learning.
Learning
Several practices described by the interviewees were enacted to stimulate learning of the team, the change recipients and the individual learning of the middle manager. Given uncertainty brought by the new change it seems logical that along with reflecting on outcomes of their actions, the managers sought knowledge and advice from their colleagues and experts (consultants). In case knowledge could not be obtained within the company or from consultants, the managers looked for it in their professional networks, discussing ideas with peers from other companies and gathering benchmarking information.
The middle managers also provided feedback to top-management that was often provoking or challenging for current status quo. Provided that the managers were not treated as “bad-news-messenger” and top managers were able to discuss things openly, shared understanding and constructive solution were achieved in some cases.
4.2.
Antecedents
Three individual factors were proposed as antecedents of managers’ behaviour in change: Intrapreneurial attitude, level of commitment for change and the relationship with top management. From these three concepts “intrapreneurial attitude” and “commitment for change” were more evident in the data comparing to “relationship with top management”. Both have also appeared together in interviews (test for cooccurence of codes using Atlas.ti software), and it was evident that the intrapreneurial attitude antecedes the commitment for change.
After analyzing accounts of commitment from all transcripts we came to the conclusion that a high level of commitment in our data was featured with two types of motivation (attitude) – company-driven, thinking about benefit for the company, and value-driven – more personal motivation, when a manager finds misalignment between his or her personal values and current practice in company.
Regarding to enactment of practices, it was found that change managers who were committed to change from the very beginning had overseen the importance of gaining support from other managers or employees, and jump to implementation too early. That was evident in their post-factum reflection – they stated, for example, that “we underestimated importance of managing process of change”, or “I would have involved other managers earlier in process”. However, the managers who reported high commitment to change (based either on intrapreneurial attitude or personal motivation) were found to be very persistent when their efforts were pulled back and sidelined, what also helped them in overcoming resistance and resolving conflicts.
Another type of attitudes that was frequently mentioned by the managers is set of beliefs and values that managers held about change management and potential of using bottom-up or top-down approach in their organization. It is interesting to note here, that all managers expressed these beliefs in one or another form (without being intentionally asked to do it) and their perceptions varied from case to case.
“I understand the [bottom-up] process, and how it works... but as there are no means to steer it, to influence it... Then you just have to wait and see what will be the outcome. And I... also don’t like it.” (manager 10)
Overall, these and many other examples (in total, 43 accounts of attitudes were coded in the data) suggest that enactment of practices is shaped by the attitudes of the managers towards change approach and their organization. Intrapreneurial attitude was found to be one of such attitudes next to beliefs about change approach and organizational values and culture.
Hence we can revisit our deductive propositions about influence of the antecedent factors on the enactment as follows:
- Commitment to change increases manager’ persistence and motivation for promoting and implementing change
- Managers’ intrapreneurial attitude is associated with high commitment to change.
- Enactment of practices is influenced by attitudes towards organization, change approach and by personal values of managers.
- Quality of middle managers’ relationship with top management does not define enactment of practices. There was evidence that good relationship (based on mutual trust and open discussion) is helpful for managers during change process, but there was no sufficient evidence that managers took that in consideration when approaching change at first.
In addition, studying antecedents revealed two types of attitudes and variety of contextual factors influencing enactment of practices by the middle managers. The task of getting all antecedents right seems to be not relevant for the main research question which is “how do managers promote change from below?” What can help is to explore how middle managers choose their actions given so many antecedent and moderating factors. For this purpose we will discuss the concept of “choice” that emerged from our data in the next subsection.
4.3.
Choice as Core Category
In our data, accounts about practices and factors influencing their enactment, occurred side by side. When connections between them were analyzed, the notion of “choice” was identified as core category, or concept that encompasses all patterns in the data. It was evident from the managers’ narratives that they had to make a lot of different decisions during a change process.
The content of decisions varied from choosing the right time to submit proposal to dilemmas of solving interpersonal conflict or overcoming resistance. Sensemaking aided the decision-making process when the managers tried to answer the questions like: “which practices are appropriate in this situation? How should I approach it? Do I have resources and knowledge for this option?” etcetera. We labeled this type of choices as “design choice”, using term of Balogun (2008). Design choice at the starting point of the narratives had form of “choosing the right approach” and was tied with the context of change and need for change; further in the process choice was featured as new challenges (e.g. resistance) or failures occurred (“it didn’t work out”, “I got sidelined”, “they had concerns”). The findings suggests that each manager went through the loops that bring him from choice to action and its outcomes and then back to the situation of choice. In some cases, decisions made by managers were reflected upon as “the best thing” and “success factor” that drove change.
In the case where there was misunderstanding about approach implemented by top management, the middle manager decided to provoke the open discussion of an issue, thus, triggering the “design choice”:
Another type of choice was labeled “personal choice” – it was evident in the managers’ reflections about personal challenges and situations in which their values and assumptions were tested. One manager called the cooccurent process of organization-wide change driven by the top “a big game” and motivated his deliberate decision to keep the distance from it. An illustration of choice based on personal values was provided by the other manager:
“ […] if I haven’t chosen something which I felt so passionate about, that wasn’t values-driven, I would have ran out of stimuli, very quickly. Cause it’s just not worth everything. I wasn’t hired for this, I was hired just to set up the system and to make sure people would get documents. I could have done this. (manager 14)
Finally, all choices had one thing in common: they drove process of gaining support for change and implementation. Therefore, we can conclude that Proposition 2: “managers’ actions of promoting change from below can be described as a process of deliberately choosing and applying practices that will help them to gain support for change” was confirmed by identification of “choice” category that is sufficiently grounded in the data and possesses an explanatory power.
4.4.
Support for Change and Pathways
Our first proposition in the conceptual framework was that “middle managers aim at gaining support for change from top management, their peers and employees”. Our analyses indicate that success of managers in gaining overall support for change differed based on the need in particular type of support and interplay created by managers’ actions and reactions of the other organizational members.
First, we found that managers did not distinguish between the support for change coming from top managers, peers and employees explicitly as we did in our proposition. Rather they talked about acceptance of change by employees of their own department and acceptance by the other members (both midlevel and bottom-line) as recipients of change. “Acceptance” was used instead of support mainly in the cases when bottom-up adaptation of the blueprint designed by the top was needed. In the bottom-up case employees who actively supported managers were often members of the change or transition team.
Second, when the managers mentioned support from their peers they mainly talked about heads of the other departments being open to cooperation and willing to give resources for implementation of change. At the same time, supportive behaviour of peers like encouragement, demonstration of consent and shared understanding were also important for the managers who initiated the idea. Often, only after knowing that peers are interested in the change, managers started to sell issue to the executives. Hence, the managers needed not only formal but also informal support to promote change upwards. In the same way the managers talked about support from their supervisors: not only had they sought formal approval of an idea, but also supportive feedback indicating that their efforts “fell on the good ground” (in vivo) and appreciation.
In other words, the managers’ actions and choices can be represented as incremental “pathway” leading to support. On these pathways the managers dealt with intermediate outcomes – partial support or resistant behaviour – and based on these outcomes they steered the process by changing practices and approach. For example, one intermediate factor that helped manager to progress towards the support was credibility. The managers in our study gained credibility by means of 1) practices – being honest while communicating message (sensemaking) and delivering promised results (coordination of process) (mentioned by 8 managers) and 2) involving external advisors who would be seen as being “objective” comparing to the managers themselves (three managers used this approach).
Description of the four pathways identified in the data is presented in Table 4.1 on the next page.
These pathways were chosen by the managers from different group in the following way: 1) the first path was used by the heads of support functions; 2) the path “Sponsorship spine” was preferred by line managers with no exceptions (for all of them consent of the supervisor was a “must-have”); 3) the third path was used by line and support managers and 4) the last one – enabling self-steering teams – by the line manager and the advisor. It is interesting to note here that not all managers had followed logic of gaining support from all levels in organization. The manager who was developing community-of-practice based on corporate social media referred to his initiative as “grass roots” change and stated that top-management support is not needed for this type change. The other way around, he argued that formal decision would be destructive at this stage:
“it is just thing that pops up now, if you would make an official project for it, then there’s also coming a lot of pressure – time pressure, all kinds of expectations, politics, who gains a credits etcetera. And now it’s just me doing some stuff… no pressure on it, no budget issues. Cause there’s no budget. So in complete freedom you can sort of develop it, grow to a certain maturity when you might say we want to make it official.” (manager 3)
4.5.
Competencies and Learning
In the conceptual framework (see Chapter 2) we proposed the reciprocal relation between competencies and enactment. Based on our analysis, we can claim that such reciprocity exists, and in addition to this experience of change enables management development. In this section we will summarize findings related to these two processes.
However, it was observed that the managers rarely reflected on their skills and knowledge before change. In fact, decisions about design and approach (“design choices”) were more influenced by the contextual factors, rather than competencies. For some managers experience of managing change was the first in their career, or they were not used to bottom-up approach so they did not know what to anticipate and acted according their own preferences in the given context.
Later in the process they experienced which skills of them were valuable and which skills did they lack. Frequently mentioned competencies were compared to 4 domains of practices and then difference between the managers who had been trained or received education related to the Change management(CM) (Business Administration, CM training, Coaching, etcetera) either in university or on-site (previously worked as management consultants, for example) and the managers who had not received such training (see Table 4.2).
TABLE 4.2
Practices – Competencies by the managers with different education
Mentioned as challenges Mentioned in “Lessons” Domain of
practices
Competencies (examples) Trained managers No training Trained managers No training Idea/Content development
“work with other departments”,
“persuade top that it is needed” 1 5 0 5
Coordination of process
“how to handle huge amount of work”, “how to motivate team”, “be more patient with the team”
1 9 1 8
Sensemaking and sensegiving
“make myself clear”, “listen more and stop talking”, “open to great ideas”, “get everyone on the same page”
2 5 3 3
Learning/self-reflection
“recognize my limitations”, “how to be authentic”, “thinking in new direction”
1 1 3 2
5 20 7 18
