INTERACTION TO CHANGE
A qualitative study about how leadership behavior influences employee participation during change efforts at Organization X
Master Thesis, Msc Business Administration – Change Management University of Groningen, Faculty Economics and Business
August, 2013 Nienke Groeneveld Student number: 1629433 Van Speijkstraat 57-3 1057GM, Amsterdam Tel: +31 (0)6 23806336 Email: groeneveld.n@gmail.com Supervisor/university: dr. J. Rupert drs. J.C.L. Paul Acknowledgements
I would like to thank dr. Joyce Rupert for her helpful comments and support during the process of writing this thesis. I would also like to thank Robin Colard for his feedback at the start of this research. Furthermore, I thank Noor Schoenmakers for giving me the opportunity to gather my data at the ORGANIZATION X. Last but not least, I would like to thank my
2 ABSTRACT
To due the economic decline in the past years governments have been forced to cut back in cultural investments. As a result, public enterprises receive fewer subsidies every year. ORGANIZATION X is such a non-profit organization that connects young people in the city of Rotterdam by using art and culture. They rely on government funds to exist. Currently and in the future, ORGANIZATION X aims to be a more efficient and professional organization. Changes have been made concerning the work processes as well as a forced shrinkage in staff to cut costs. This resulted in major changes for the whole organization. In that context, this study investigated the relationship between leadership behavior and employee participation during change efforts at ORGANIZATION X. Furthermore, the role of communication and trust on that relationship is investigated. The results clearly indicated leadership behavior influences employee participation. And this relationship can be influenced positively or negatively by the variable trust. Communication plays an important role in change and employee participation but does not clearly influence the relationship between leadership behavior and employee participation.
CONTENT ABSTRACT………....………..………2 CONTENT………..…………..……….………...3 INTRODUCTION………...……….………4 ORGANIZATION……….4 CHANGE PROCESS………5 RESEARCH QUESTION……….6 THEORY……….……….8 EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION………..……….………...8 LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR…………..………10 COMMUNICATION………..………13 TRUST………..………..15 METHODS……….18 DATA COLLECTION…….………..18 MEASSURES………,………18 DATA ANALYSIS……….………20 RESULTS………22 EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION………22 LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR………...26 COMMUNICATION………..29 TRUST………34
CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION……….………38
LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH………44
4 INTRODUCTION
Although a lot of effort has been put into the research of organizational change in the last decades, companies keep struggling to get to the point of a sustainable change. According to many authors, up to 70% of all change initiatives fail (e.g. Kotter, 1990; Hammer and Champny, 1993; Higgs and Rowland, 2000, 2005). Since hardly any major corporation is free from the challenge of developing and implementing successful strategies for managing change (Kotter, 1994; Senge et al., 1999; Carnall, 1999; Higgs and Rowland, 2000), it is important to know the reasons for failure. The opinions of why change fails differ among authors. Some argue that it is the lack of effective leadership in change is the main contributor to the failure (e.g. Higgs and Rowland, 2005, 2010, 2011; Gill, 2003) others highlight the lack of employee participation as the biggest pitfall when implementing change (Brown and Cregan, 2008; Price and Crahal 2006).
Countless leadership studies in the last decades describe the role of the leader in a change process as crucial (Cummings & Worley, 2009; Miller, 2002). Just more recently, the term “change leadership” is used in the literature (Herold et al., 2008). The aspects of change leadership can be linked to other leadership theories, including transformational and transactional leadership (Bass, 1985; Kotter, 1996; Herold, 2008). Burns (1978) introduced the concept of transformational and transactional leadership, whereas Bass (1985) applied it to organizational management. Transformational leadership is based on the relationship between the leader and employees, highlighting the importance of trust and commitment (Jung & Avolio, 1999). Higgs & Rowland (2000, 2005) have linked specifically leadership behavior in change processes to activities involved in implementing change.
Organization
primary and secondary schools and also in higher education. Furthermore, ORGANIZATION X organizes projects to get children and teenagers in touch with art and culture. Last but not least, ORGANIZATION X is an active organizer of several festivals. Around 250 people are working at ORGANIZATION X who are together responsible for a broad supply of art for more than 100.000 students every year.
Change process
6 As ORGANIZATION X is an organization with many long-term employees, the shock of colleagues getting fired and the reality of having a chance to lose their own job, has been a tremendous impact on the organization. And because of the prospect of being forced in another round of changes and lay offs, the organization wants to know how to best handle this process by looking back on the last years.
At ORGANIZATION X, it is believed that a high degree of employee participation will lead to a better chance of a successful change. The company has been changing and will be changing in the future to a more efficient organization and it is argued that this can only be accomplished with the support of all employees.
In ORGANIZATION X, departments have always been little companies on their own, with the employees as well as their supervisors having their own way of working, which might completely differ from another department’s way of dealing with things. Therefore, in this research the attention goes to the leadership behaviors of those supervisors during the change process. Specifically, how leadership behaviors influences employee participation within change.
In this research, focus lies on the leadership behaviors as described by Higgs and Rowland (2011). They identified three broad sets of leadership behavior: Shaping behavior, Framing change, and Creating capacity (Higgs and Rowland, 2011). Because those leadership behaviors as described here are relatively new, empirical evidence for a relationship between those behaviors and employee participation is lacking. However literature shows a clear positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee participation (e.g. Bartram & Casimir, 2007; Bono & Judge, 2003; Walumba & Lawler, 2003). Others recognized participative leadership as having an influence on employees’ behavior (e.g., Huang, Iun, Liu, & Gong, 2010; Krause, Gebert, & Kearney, 2007; Somech, 2003; Yukl, 2010; Delbecq, House, Sully de Luque, & Quigley, 2013).
Communication and trust are important variables in this research, they are expected to have a mediating influence on the relationship between leadership behavior and employee participation.
orders. Avolio & Bass (1995) elaborate on the role of transformational leaders in building trust to result in higher levels of commitment (Jung & Avolio, 2000).
This leads to the following research question:
“How do leadership behaviors influence employee participation during a change process at ORGANIZATION X and what is the effect of communication and trust on this relationship?”
In this research employee participation is the dependent variable and leadership behaviors the independent variable. Communication and trust are mediating variables. In this research, both leaders and employees are interviewed to get a close look at the interaction between them. Current literature mostly highlights the topics of this study by focusing on the leaders or on the employees. To get a more complete view about the interaction between the two during this study both leaders as employees are interviewed.
Sub-questions:
1. How do leadership behaviors (shaping/framing/creating) influence employee participation?
2. What is the effect of communication on the relationship between leadership behaviors and employee participation?
THEORY
In this theoretical section, all variables will be explained based on a literature review. First, the dependent variable employee participation is discussed, followed by an elaboration of the independent variable leadership behavior. Finally, the mediating variables communication and trust are explained.
Employee participation
Employee participation in organizations during change efforts is a widely discussed topic in research (Coch and French, 1948). Allowing employees to participate in the change process is recognized as one of the most popular strategies to overcome resistance to change (Chirico and Salvato, 2008). Due to its recognition, participation has been defined in a variety of ways. Multiple authors formulated their own definition of employee participation and have been mixing it up with concepts as employee involvement (Leana and Florkowski, 1992), employee commitment (Macy
et al, 1989) and employee empowerment (Conger and Kanungo, 1988).
Consequently, the term employee participation is sometimes used interchangeably with the concepts mentioned above with a few commonly agreed definitions for any one of them (Marchington, Goodman, Wilkinson, Ackers, 1992).
Despite the frequent attention participation gain in the literature over the years, a well-developed and widely accepted definition of participation is hard to find (Glew
et. al, 1995). Examples of definitions involve influence sharing (Mitchell, 1973), joint
decisionmaking (Locke and Schweiger, 1979), and degree of employee involvement in decisions (Miller & Monge, 1986). Vandervelde (1979) defines participation as the who, what, where, and how aspects of involvement whereas Neuman (1989) defines participative decision making as “structures and processes for organizing individual autonomy in the context of group responsibility and linked to system-wide influence” (Neuman, 1989). After reviewing all these different definitions of participation, Glew
et. al (1995) proposed a new definition that will be used as the main definition of
behaviors and by highlighting the importance of the interaction between at least two individuals. In this study we will both talk to supervisors and the employees, which is why this interaction is a very important aspect in this investigation.
Besides mentioning different definitions of employee participation, authors also describe distinctions between different forms of participation. Two important distinctions are described here to get the best understanding of the concept of employee participation. First, Dachler and Wilpert (1978) distinguished participation in three dimensions; formal vs. informal, direct vs. indirect and as a location along a continuum which shows the amount of influence an employee can have during decision making processes. This continuum contains several levels; (1) no information is given to employees about a decision, (2) employees are informed in advance about a decision, (3) employees can give their opinion about the upcoming decision, (4) employees opinions are taken into account, (5) employees can negatively or positively influence veto a decision, and at last, (6) the decision is completely in the hands of employees (Dachler and Wilpert, 1978). Another distinction is made by Cotton et. al (1988) by defining six types of participative decision-making. These six types are; participation in work decisions, consultative participation, short-term participation, informal participation, employee ownership, and representative participation. The first three types describe employees’ influence on the type of work, and whether it’s long- or short-term influence. The latter three involve participation among employees and their subordinates and the direct or indirect influence an employee has on decisions made by management (Cotton et al., 1988).
10 results in higher organizational commitment, motivation and lower emotional distress (Spector, 1986) which effects organizational performance.
Looking at participation in the context of organizational change, prior research indicates that change recipients reported higher degrees of readiness to change when they experienced high levels of participation. Besides that, employees experienced change as less stressful and presented more overall support for the whole change process (Amiot, et at, 2006; Coch and French, 1948; Coyle-Shiapro, 2002; Holt et al, 2007; Sagie &Koslowsky, 1994). Also, Wanberg and Banas (2000) found that participation in the decision-making process during change efforts was related to a more positive view of the change. Bartunek et al. found similar things, for example more positive emotions, a better understanding of the meaning of change, more involvement in the implementation of behavior change and a more realistic view of the possible gains of the change effort (Bartunek et al., 2006). Participation is suggested to lower the level of uncertainty by increasing the employee’s level of knowledge about decisions (Bordia et al., 2004).
To conclude this paragraph, it can be stated that participation has a positive influence on employee’s emotions and their attitudes during change interventions. Assumed is that this will also work this way at the ORGANIZATION X. More influence of employees during changes within the ORGANIZATION X will lead to more positive outcomes. To find out what influences the level of participation this theoretical section will continue to describe the independent variable, leadership behavior. Leadership behavior
During the 21st century, research has begun to highlight the importance of the roles of managers as change agents and has explored the links between leadership behaviors and change implementation (Caldwell et al., 2009). Just more recently the term “change leadership” is used in the literature (Herold et al., 2008). The aspects of change leadership can be linked to other leadership theories, including transformational and transactional leadership (Bass, 1985; Kotter, 1996; Herold, 2008).
respond to lower level subordinate basic and security needs (Burns, 1978). The relation between both is thus based on a transaction, or an exchange process (Van Eeden, 2008; Bass & Avolio, 1994). Transactional leaders are thought of as maintainers of the status quo and stability. Opposed to that, transformational leadership behaviors go beyond transactional leadership and motivate followers to identify with the leader’s vision and sacrifice their self-interest for that of the group or the organization (Bass, 1985). The relationship of between the leader and employees is based on trust and commitment. It involves a closer relationship between leaders and followers (Jung & Avolio, 1999).
This last sentence on transformational leadership demonstrates clear linkages between leader behaviors and a variety of follower behaviors and performance measures (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995; Higgs, 2003). This is the central theme in this thesis, by followers behaviors researched in terms of participation.
Higgs and Rowland (2000, 2001, 2005) have examined the leader’s role and behavior in change processes in multiple studies. They have linked specifically leadership behaviors to activities involved in implementing change (Higgs and Rowland, 2000, 2005). They identified five areas of leadership competency associated with successful change implementation; (1) creating case of for change, effectively engaging others in recognizing the business need for change; (2) creating structural change, ensuring that the change is based on depth of understanding of the issues and supported with a consistent set of tools and processes; (3) engaging others in the whole change process and building commitment; (4) implementing and sustaining changes, developing effective plans and ensuing good monitoring and review practices are developed; and (5) facilitating and developing capability, ensuring that people are challenged to find their own answers and that they are supported in doing this (Higgs & Rowland, 2005, p. 127). In 2005, Higgs and Rowland studies leadership behavior within 70 change stories and their impact on change success in different contexts. From that analysis they identified three broad sets of leadership behavior:
1. Shaping behavior: The communication and actions of leaders related directly to the change: “making others accountable,” “thinking about change,” and “using an individual focus”;
12 3. Creating capacity: Creating individual and organizational capabilities and communication and making connections.
(Higgs and Rowland, 2011, p. 312).
Following these behaviors Higgs & Rowland (2011) indicated that leader-centric behaviors (shaping) have negative impact on successful change, whereas the more enabling behaviors (framing and creating) appear to facilitate successful change implementation. The specific characteristics of these three different behaviors as composed by Higgs and Rowland (2011) are shown in Appendix II together with the associated interview questions.
As described at the beginning of the paragraph, leadership has often been linked to having an influence on change efforts. However the specific link between these specific leadership behaviors and participation is lacking empirical evidence. The discussed leadership behaviors of Higgs & Rowland (2005, 2011) are relatively new. Consequently, evidence for a possible direct relation between these behaviors and employee participation during change efforts, is not present.
However, prior research has indicated that participative leadership might influence workplace behavior through two distinctive ways: a cognitive, decision quality effect (e.g. Scully, Kirkpatrick, & Locke, 1995; Delbecq, House, Sully de Luque, & Quigley, 2013) and a motivational/satisfaction effect (e.g. Locke & Latham, 1990; Smylie, Lazarus, & Brownlee-Conyers, 1996; Somech, 2002; Delbecq, House, Sully de Luque, & Quigley, 2013). Participative leadership refers to shared-influence in decision-making between leaders and followers (e.g., Huang, Iun, Liu, & Gong, 2010; Krause, Gebert, & Kearney, 2007; Somech, 2003; Yukl, 2010; Delbecq, House, Sully de Luque, & Quigley, 2013).
With respect to transformational and transactional leadership, which were mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, the literature shows a clear positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee participation (e.g. Bartram & Casimir, 2007; Bono & Judge, 2003; Walumba & Lawler, 2003). 20 years of research on leadership conclude that leaders who possess some values of transformational leadership would generate high levels of employees’ commitment and satisfaction (Walumba et al., 2005).
communication and trust are believed to play an important role in this relationship.
Therefore these mediators will be discussed in the next paragraphs. Communication of the change
Many researchers demonstrated the importance of communication during change efforts (Armenakis, 1999; Elving, 2005; Lewis, 2006). Communication is mentioned as one of the main reasons why change efforts fail (Elving, 2005), therefore it is important to understand how to communicate an intended change (Jones et al., 2004). To provide a good understanding of what communication is we need to explore the communication literature. The well-known and very basic model of Rakich et al. (1992) describes communication as a process, starting with the sender, which is a person, department, or unit of an organization or system, who sends out the message by using a particular medium, to finally reach the recipient (Rakich et al, 1992; Guo & Sanchez, 2005). Communication is the creation or exchange of thoughts, ideas, emotions, and understanding between sender and receiver. It is essential to building and maintaining relationships in the workplace (Guo & Sanchez, 2005). However, the leading definition of communication in this thesis is provided by Dolphin (2005) because it highlights the importance of communication being present in the interaction between individuals at different levels of the organization; “communication is based on transactions between individuals and groups at various levels and in different areas of specialization (Frank and Brownell, 1989) and these transactions are intended to design (or redesign) organizations and coordinate day-to-day activities” (Dolphin, 2005, p172).
Now that the basics of communication are clear, this paragraph continues to describe the role of communication in change management. Kotter (1995) argues the importance of communication during change. A transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing and incompatible projects when there is no transparent, clear, and accurate communication. During and after changes such as mergers or reorganizations, effective communication helps organizations deal with employee uncertainty (Bastien, 1987). The quality of communication affects people’s willingness to change (Armenakis & Harris, 2002; Miller, Johnson & Grau, 1994) and therefore their attitude about change.
14 as a result, a higher level of recipient’s readiness to change (Armenakis & Harris, 2002). These five message components are (1) Discrepancy, which is demonstrated by illustrating differences between organizations’ current performance and the desired end-state. People must believe that something is wrong and that there is a real need for change (Katz and Kahn, 1978). (2) Personal valence, has to do with the change recipients’ “what’s in it for me?” question. (3) Efficacy, concerns the confidence of organizational members in their ability to succeed, (4) Appropriateness, is needed in the change message because recipients may feel that change is needed, but disagree with the specific change that is proposed (Armenakis & Harris, 2002). At last, (5) Principal support is needed for change to institutionalize, resources and commitment from change agents and principals are essential (Nutt, 1989). These five main messages resulted in three strategies to communicate change (Armenakis & Harris, 2002). (1) Persuasive communication, refers to direct communication efforts like speeches, newsletters, memo’s etc. (2) Active participation refers to involving people directly to change activities. (3) Managing internal and external information strategy makes views of others available, which generates a change message from more than one source (Armenakis et al, 2002).
Several authors have demonstrated the relation between communication and employee participation. Lawler (1989) states that managing the openness of communication is one of the most effective and easiest ways to enhance employee participation within companies.
However, in this research the focus is on how communication mediates the suspected relationship between leadership behaviors and employee participation. As mentioned before, empirical evidence for the relationship between the specific leadership behaviors of Higgs and Rowland (2011) is lacking.
(4) Intentionality, how leaders convey strategy (Groysberg & Slind, 2009). Those four elements tend to reinforce one another, they coalesce to form a single integrated process leading to higher levels of employee engagement and with that, better organizational performance (Groysberg & Slind, 2009).
The above gives an indication of how important communication is between leaders and employees and the influence of that conversation on employee participation. In the next paragraph the role of trust in this relationship will be elaborated.
Trust
Trust is considered to be a multidimensional concept and extremely important in predicting interpersonal relations (Bouma, 2009; Yang, 2010). Trust has been researched from different scientific perspectives by economics, sociologists and psychologists, which resulted in multiple views on trust (Bouma, 2009). First, those views are discussed to get a clear understanding of the multidimensional concept of trust. After that, the role of trust in change interventions will be elaborated.
The economic relevance of trust is that it reduces the need for specification and monitoring of contracts, leading to lower transaction costs (Nooteboom, Berger and Noorderhaven, 1997). Stated in a different way: trust pays. But this economics pay-off is not undoubtedly quantifiable (Nooteboom et al, 1997). From a sociological perspective, trust is considered rewarding for employees (Costa, 2000). Trust is rewarding through the provision of security in a group setting, whereas the opposite, distrust, is considered an important collective insecurity element in social relationships (Costa, 2003). Furthermore, trust secures the process of cooperation for employees with each other, whereas distrust is perceived as disturbing and raising obstacles for cooperation (Costa, 2003; Nurick, 1982). Others described the psychological view of trust, which implies that trust is an exchange process of informal, mostly implicit obligations toward others (Morgan & Zeffane, 2003). In this exchange process, trust can grow with each positive personal experience, while one negative experience may wipe out trust for a long time. Loss of trust means loss of reputation (Nooteboom et al, 1997), which can affect the culture among employees within an organization negatively (Huang & Dastmalchian, 2004).
16 latter trust, while the first expects trust in return (Bouma, 2009; Morgan & Zeffane, 2003). This does not implicate that trust necessarily is reciprocal (Schoorman et al, 2007). Trust does not always have to be returned. It consists out of two separate dimensions that independently operate from each other. Those two dimensions are leading in this research.
The first dimension is “being trusted reflects a perception of the amount of respect and confidence that is received from others around the individual” (Scott, 1980; Bouma, 2009). The second dimension is “trusting others consists of beliefs about others, together with some confidence in the others and overt behavior towards others (Scott, 1980; Bouma, 2009).
In a change context those dimensions are (1) being trusted means that others are believed to respect individual employees to make the right change related decisions; (2) Trusting others means that individual employees reflect the belief that others make the right change related decisions (Bouma, 2009).
The relationship between trust and participation was supported by some empirical findings. Tzafrir (2005) found evidence for a positive relationship between being trusted by others and participation. Spreitzer & Mishra (1999) concluded that participation in decision making was positively related with trust in others (Bouma, 2009). Again, the relationship between trust and the leadership behaviors of Higgs and Rowland (2011) is lacking empirical evidence. However, leadership, trust and employee participation are clearly linked in the literature.
Welker & Johnson (1996) reported in their study that those who participated in an evaluative program, showed more trust in their supervisor. This may indicate the mediating relationship of trust on the relationship between leadership behavior and participation.
Furthermore, Clarke & Ward (2006) studied employee safety participation at a UK manufacturing company and found that it is positively and significantly correlated with leaders’ use of rational arguments (transaction-based leadership), efforts to involve employees in decision-making, and efforts to generate enthusiasm for safety (transformation-based leadership) (Conchie, Donald & Taylor, 2006). The effectiveness of these influence tactics was partly mediated by trust (Conchie, Donald & Taylor, 2006).
METHODS
This section describes the methodology used in this research. The aim of this study is to get an understanding of how leadership behavior influences employee participation with mediating variables communication and trust at the ORGANIZATION X. Therefore, this study has been designed as a qualitative research. Typically, qualitative research is used to get a deep and thorough understanding of individuals, groups or situations (Baarda, de Goede & Teunissen, 2005). As opposed to quantitative research, qualitative research is designed to tell how (process) and why (meaning) things happened (Cooper & Schindler, 2006). Furthermore, qualitative research provides explanations of beliefs and behaviors (Kvale, 1996).
Data collection
In-depth interviews formed the foundation for the data collection of this research. All interviews were conducted between the 18th of March 2013 and the 10th of April 2013 and all lasted about one hour. The interviews were held at the ORGANIZATION X office, in the city centre of Rotterdam. The semi-structured interviews were conducted individually and the questions were all open-ended. By using open-ended questions interviewees could speak freely and share facts as well as opinions and feelings (Baxter & Babbie, 2003).
As mentioned in the introduction chapter of this thesis, interviews were held with leaders as well as employees. In total, five supervisors of all different departments and per supervisor two employees, with a total of ten employees. For a qualitative study, “an appropriate sample size is one that adequately answers the research question” (Marshall, 1996, p.523). By questioning two employees per leader, and five leaders in total, enough reasonable information was gathered to answer the research question. The leaders were selected on basis of referral, their departments have had the biggest changes and challenges to deal with over the last years and were therefore considered to be most valuable for this investigation. Three of the respondents were male, twelve of them were female. Every respondent had the Dutch nationality.
Measures
Employee participation - In this thesis the definition of Glew et al (1995) is leading:
“a conscious and intended effort by individuals at a higher level in an organization to provide visible extra role or role-expanding opportunities for individuals or groups at a lower level in the organization to have a greater voice in one or more areas of the organizational performance” (Glew et. al, 1995). It highlights the importance of employees at the lower levels to make a contribution to organizational performance, and in this particular case, to the change. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of the interaction between at least two individuals. In this study we will both talk to supervisors and the employees, which is why this interaction is a very important aspect in this investigation. Since Glew et al. (1995), provide no instruments to measure employee participation, two other instruments were selected. The first scale is extracted from the questionnaire of Bouckenooghe et al. (2009). They designed the “Organizational Change Questionnaire-Climate of Change, Processes, and Readiness, which can be used “to gauge the internal context, or climate of change, the process factors of change, and readiness for change” (Bouckenooghe et al., 2009, p. 559). Besides those, it also measures the participation of employees during a change activity (Bouckenooghe et al., 2009). A selection of the most applicable items were used to design the Dutch interview questions for this study. These can be found in Appendix I.
The second scale used in this study is extracted from the CATOCQ (Communication and Attitudes Towards Organizational Change Questionnairre) questionnaire (2008), which is based on the COCQ (Communication and Organizational Change Questionnaire) questionnaire designed by Bennebroek Gravenhorst, Elving, and Werkman (2005). This contains several items to measure employee participation. The selection that is used for this study can also be found in Appendix I.
Leadership behavior- In this thesis, the study of Higgs & Rowland (2005, 2011) was
20
Communication - The leading definition of communication in this thesis is provided
by Dolphin (2005) because it highlights the importance of communication being present in the interaction between individuals at different levels of the organization; “communication is based on transactions between individuals and groups at various levels and in different areas of specialization (Frank and Brownell, 1989) and these transactions are intended to design (or redesign) organizations and coordinate day-to-day activities” (Dolphin, 2005, p172). Again, a instrument is not provided, therefore the questionnaire of Bouckenooghe et al. (2009) is used again. The focus is on information sharing (transactions) and the process of that. The original scale plus the associated interview questions in Dutch can be found in Appendix III.
Trust - In this research, both employees and their supervisors are interviewed.
Therefore the interaction between the two of them and the role that trust plays in that, is highly important. Trust is therefore two-sided: (1) being trusted means that others are believed to respect individual employees to make the right change related decisions; (2) Trusting others means that individual employees reflect the belief that others make the right change related decisions (Bouma, 2009). Again, the questionnaire of Bouckenooghe et al. (2009) is used the design interview questions. These can be found in Dutch in Appendix IV.
Data analysis
RESULTS
In this chapter, the results of the interviews will be discussed. First, the dependent variable employee participation will be presented, followed by the independent variable leadership behavior. To make the most optimal analysis the teams are called cases, each case containing 1 leader and the 2 employees who work in the team of that specific leader. By doing this, the teams are analyzed from within, as well as comparing to other teams (cross case analysis). With this type of analysis conclusions can be made concerning the specific team and also organization wide. All variables are discussed from the leader’s perspective as well as the employee’s perspective. After discussing the dependent and independent variable, the mediating variables
communication of the change and trust will be described, again both from a two-sided
perspective. The actual research questions will be answered in the conclusion section of this thesis. In appendix V a general overview can be found of the variables and their illustrative quotes.
Employee Participation
During the data-gathering phase of this research, it soon turned out that employee participation has been low during the change processes at ORGANIZATION X. On most topics the leaders and the employees share a similar view on how this process has been performed. However, they also agreed on the fact that it would have been very hard, or nearly impossible, to accomplish the changes with high employee participation. One reason for this is the fact that the workforce was confronted with forced lay-offs. Below the sub-topics of employee participation are discussed,
involvement, input, influence, contribution, and stimulation. Those sub-topics refer to
the interview questions, which can be found in the Appendixes.
Involvement – When discussing employee participation with the leaders, all five of
them argued that the participation during this change process has been low. Employees were not involved in decision-making or any other type of involvement during this change process. All five leaders described the change process as a very top-down process whereas the management team and the director made the decisions and communicated them into the lower layers of the organization. The leader of Case 3 gives an explanation: “The ultimate organizational goal was to cut costs, by making
to ask an employee how to cut cost. They will come up with ideas if you ask them in terms of being easier with the printer or other small savings. That would never result in the major cuts ORGANIZATION X needed to stay alive. Furthermore, making a decision about who should leave the organization is not something you can ask a team, no one wants to go voluntarily”. Looking at it from the perspective of the
management team you can say that the leaders of the departments were involved in the changes. The team leaders made the decisions, together with the management team, on who was going to be fired in their department. Together they made the decisions about how to make the department more efficient and which employees to let go.
Overall, the employees share the same opinion on employee participation and involvement as their leaders. All ten employees described the change process as a top down process in which they had no say about what was going to happen. However, 2 employees of Case 5 did argue that they were and still are involved in how to make their tasks and their department as a whole more efficient. All 10 employees explained that they did not have influence in who was going to be let go, but they were well informed about that is was about to happen and that it could be anyone in any department.
Input – When discussing until what extent employees had the possibility to give any
input during the change the five leaders partly shared the same views, partly they also differed from each other. All five emphasized the importance for their employees to give input in a normal, stable work situation. All five literally described this, as “they
need the input and professional views of their people because otherwise the leader himself/herself is not able to perform their job correctly”. When looking at this
specific change process, the employees never had the chance to give suggestions or a remark concerning the lay offs as is mentioned before. Three out of five leaders (Case 2, 4 and 5) did argue they asked for input from their employees to redesign the work processes to more efficient ones. One leader (Case 5) described this as: “I ask for a lot
24 Looking at this subtopic from the employee perspective the responses varied. The employees in case 1 described how during the process of changing to new ways of teaching their input was asked. “I was one of the first who decided to participate in a
training to learn about new ways of teaching at ORGANIZATION X. Most of my colleagues did not want anything to do with that. During this process my input was asked because what we were doing was new to everyone, so we had to figure out what worked best for us and therefore everyone’s input was necessary.” This way of
asking for input is a very practical one, because it immediately concerns the daily tasks. Employees of case 2, 4 and 5 described the same as the leaders in those cases. Input was asked in terms of thinking about the future and how to create an environment in which every employee can freely speak and question all kinds of topics. In case 3, the leader asks for input in a very specific manner, mostly about daily tasks. “He/she asks us about how to handle certain things in specific ways, but
we don’t really talk about the future of our department of how we (the employees) see that.”
Influence – As argued before, the change process at ORGANIZATION X has been a
real top-down process. It is clear, also from what is written above, that the employees did not have influence on who was going to be asked to leave the organization. Two leaders (case 1, 2 and 5) do point out that they tried hard to encourage their employees to become more influential during the whole change process. “I tried to decide
together with my employees how to handle the changes in our department and how to implement them in our daily routines.” In case 4 the leader attempts similar ways but
he/she feels being hold back by the management. “Often when I decide with my team
to do things a certain way, there is another department or team who interferes with that and demands another way. It bothers me because we are pushed into a corner and I think that my employees feel the same.” The team leader in case 3 describes
that he/she is the one who is in control and the one who makes the decisions. The employees have no influence in the implementation of the changes.
The employees in case 1, 2 and 5 describe the same as their leader concerning this subtopic. They know their leader encourages them to be more influential. And although the employees experience this a positive thing, it is also hard for them. One employee of case 1 argues: “I have done my work in a certain way for more than 20
insecure, usually I focus on my own tasks and do not really think in terms of the whole organization or even our department.” Employees from case 5 described something
similar to that. It reflects the important fact that not every employees aspires to be influential. Some people just want to perform their job and are fine with others deciding what to do and how to do it. This is also the case at case 3. Like the leader described, he is usually the one who decides what to do. The employees argued that they are fine with that; they are not interested in being influential. Concerning case 4 the employees do feel encouraged to be influential within their team, but as the leader pointed out, it has happened countless times that their team gets confronted with the opinions and requirements of other departments. “Within our team we have a big
influence on how the changes get implemented, or at least our leader wants us to be. But often we get into discussions with other teams because it is not clear which team is responsible for what tasks.” This makes them feel like eventually they do not have
influence at all.
Taking this all together we see differences among the cases on how influential the employees are and also on which level. Some can influence their tasks directly; others attempt to be more influential on the organizational or department level.
Contribution and stimulation – In this paragraph we combine the last two subtopics,
namely the willingness of the employees to contribute to the change process and the extent to which leaders stimulate them to contribute. The leaders of the 5 cases commented differently on these subtopics. In case 1, the leader describes that some of his employees are not willing to contribute to anything out of their comfort zone, and others are willing to contribute. This is slightly the same in case 3, the leader describes that his employees just want to perform their tasks well and are not interested in contributing to the (creation of) the changes. Although the difference between case 1 and 3 is that the leader of case 1 stimulates his/hers employees to contribute, while in case 3 this stimulation is missing. “I want my employees to be
willing to contribute to the changes we are going through, but not everyone aspires that. I cannot force them to be like that. Most important is that they perform their job right (case 1).” The leaders in case 2, 4 and 5 describe their employees as more
willing to contribute to the change process. Case 5 leader comments: “They are
26
not in their systems to be very pro-active.” This comment reflects the fact that the
leader in case 5 wants and stimulates their employees to contribute.
The employees in case 1 whom the researcher has spoken to were both willing to contribute to the change processes. However they describe that some of their colleagues have different attitudes (more negative). It is nice to mention that the employees who are willing to contribute try to influence the less positive employees to change their attitude.
The employees in case 2, 4 and 5 see themselves as willing to contribute to the changes. Although one employee of case 4 does say: “I am willing to contribute to
the change process but our department has changed so many times during the last years that I am also tired to try new things over and over again. That not good I think.” Another comment from case 5: I am willing to contribute but it is not my character to be very pro-active all the time. Our leader emphasizes this over and over again that it is important to be pro-active in such processes. So I am learning.” In
case 3 the employees describe something similar as their leader. “I just want to
perform my job as good as I can, and that is why I am here. Others can break their brains about what is best for the organization and how we should reach that.”
It is interesting to see that the employees have different opinions about their willingness to contribute to the change or not. This indicates that it is impossible to lump all employees together and assume they will all feel the same. Besides that the cases differ in the extent to which the leader stimulates the employees to be willing to contribute.
Leadership behavior
In this paragraph the leadership behavior is considered. The three types of leadership behavior shaping, framing and creating are presented in order of most dominant type observed to least dominant type.
Creating behavior – This type of behavior is described by Higgs & Rowland (2011)
as an enabling type of behavior, “Creating individual and organizational capabilities and communication and making connections.” In 3 out of 5 cases creating is observed and is described by the leaders as well as their employees.
important is that he/she pointed out to his/her employees that he/she also was insecure about the whole process. More importantly, he/she needed help from the employees to make it through the whole change period. “I talked a lot with my employees about
everything that was going on and what was about to come. So that everyone could speak freely and feel save within our team.” At some point in time all team leaders (in
all the cases) knew more about the upcoming redundancies than they could share with their employees. The employees agree with this description. They define their leader as: “someone who is always open for questions and critique and always tries to
involve the employees if possible.” Although this organization as a whole was in a
top-down manner, the employees from case 2 do feel they have been involved where that was possible in their team. This leader opened up to his/her employees about that so that they could understand why the leader sometimes could not be totally honest and open with them. In case 4 creating behavior is also recognized by the leader as well as the employees. The leader in this case describes his/herself as some one who values teamwork and coaching in his/her team and besides that tries to empower the employees as much as possible. “I want my people to feel free in making decisions, I
try to give them as much responsibility for their own job as possible.” The creating
aspects can be seen in stimulating his/her employees to the fullest to think about for example new ways of working. “My department has changed so often and so much in
the last years that I really want to find a way that works for everyone. And I think the employees have the best knowledge to say something about it.” Furthermore, because
of all those changes through the years the leader has learned to emphasize and react on things that happen abruptly, even it is outside the regular routines. This is also an aspect of creating behavior.
The employees in this case define their leader as very much approachable and always open for critique. Furthermore they also recognize the most of creating behavior in their leader since he/she is always busy with finding new ideas on all fronts and encourages the employees to do the same. They also describe the many changes this department has been through the last couple of years and the consequences for the team. “Our department is very important for ORGANIZATION X and still we do not
28 Case 5 its leader shows also characteristics of creating behavior. He/she describes his/herself as someone who is a very intuitive type of leader. He/she wants the team to deal with the tough situation the organization as a whole is in, and make the best out of it by being innovative and pro-active. “From the moment I became the head of this
team I encourage my employees to step up to me and work together to gain the best performance. I tell them almost everyday to break out of old habits and think outside the box.” Furthermore, some framing behavior is also recognizable. This leader has
been clear from the start of the change process and tells the employees as often as possible how serious the situation is for ORGANIZATION X and how important it is to work hard and be open towards the changes.
The employees immediately highlighted the amount of freedom they have in their team to think outside regular routines. Furthermore they feel very much involved and empowered within their team. “Our leaders wants us to adapt to new activities and be
active in finding new ideas ourselves, it is really nice feel so supported by your team leader.” This indicates creating behavior because the leader provides the emotional,
temporal and psychical space to enable employees to think and act differently.
Framing behavior – When a leader shows framing behavior he/she establishes
starting points for change by “designing and managing the journey” and “communicating guiding principles in the organization”.
In case 1 this type of behavior is dominant. The team leader shows mostly characteristics of framing behavior and this is also how he/she describes him/herself. Framing behavior is recognized because the leader made his/her employees aware of the change process and its effects in an early stage. Furthermore, he/she kept telling them the importance of the changes and the reality of it. He/she encouraged the employees to leave their comfort zone and reach for the highest results because efficiency was playing a more and more important role at ORGANIZATION X. Besides framing behavior, framing and creating behavior can also be recognized. This is due to the fact the leader tried to create a safe environment in which delicate topics could be discussed. “I think mutual trust was very important during the change
process. I tried to increase this by personal communication and making use of key actors in my team who were positive about the change. He/she was as open as he/she
The employees share the same view, they particularly recognize the framing behavior because that is exactly what he/she is they think. “Our team leader is very realistic,
open and down to earth. Furthermore he is someone who tries to connect personally with his employees. However, in his/her opinion everyone is responsible for his/herself. He/she brings the reality to you everyday but as an employee you have to figure out what to do with that.”
The leader of case 2 also showed some aspects of framing behavior because the leader was clear about the purpose for the organization as a whole of this reorganization. And he/she encouraged the employees to work at their best and beyond.
Shaping behavior – Shaping behavior is defined as “the communications and actions
of leaders related directly to the change: Making others accountable, thinking about change and using individual focus”. This type of leadership is recognized in case 3. This leader keeps strong supervision on his employees and does not give them a lot of room for input or creativity. A remarkable point to make here is that the leader argues that he/she wants to be another type of leader, less supervision and controlling, but he/she thinks that that kind of behavior does not fit his/her employees. He/she is convinced that this type of leadership behavior is needed to make his/her teamwork at its best. Furthermore, the leader is convinced of his/her past experiences and uses those to handle the current change process. “I have a lot of experience in a variety of
companies so I know what is best for my department.”
The employees describe something similar when talking about their team-leader.
“The culture in our team is very much that everyone does its own tasks and does not interfere too much with the tasks of the others or of the whole organization. Our leader has a clear vision about our department and what we should do, so that is what we do.”
Communication
Way of communicating – To communicate the reorganization plan, the management
30 was announced, including the redundancies. After this announcement, the management organized six-weekly meeting for the whole organization to talk about everything that was going on in the organization in an informal setting. Those meetings were called “Bier & Bitterballen sessies” (Beers & Snacks meetings). During those informal meetings, the management provided updates on how the process of the change was going and was going to be the next step. Besides those ways of personal communication, the intranet and email was used to provide more information and summaries of the meetings for everyone to read afterwards. All five leaders believe that the changes have been communicated very well. One of them (Case 02) describes: “The meetings we had were open to everyone, and we tried to
keep all employees as updated on the developments regarding the change as possible. When things got more serious, when people were getting nervous on who was in risk of losing their job, the meetings got more private and serious. Everyone had the opportunity to get things of their chest.” Another leader (Case 1) points out that the
organization did everything possible to inform all employees about what was going on, but that some employees at the operational level were not interested in joining the meetings: “There have been so much opportunities for all employees to know and to
ask what was going on and going to happen in the organization. But if people simply do not care, stick their heads in the ground believing it is not their business, then there is not much left to do as a team leader. Everyone who works here is a grown-up and is responsible for their selves.” The other leaders described something similar
during the interviews. Looking at how the leaders communicated the changes in their teams, there are some differences. Three leaders (Case 2, 4 and 5) stated that they talked about the changes during team meetings and one-on-one talks with their employees. “I wanted my team to be as informed as possible and I wanted to be as
open about the changes as I could.” The other two team leaders (case 1 and 3) have a
different view. They think it is their employees’ own responsibility to be as informed as possible. “Of course my people can come talk to me about all the changes, but I
think they are getting well informed by the management so it is not my first goal to provide them with updates.”
came up during all interviews with the employees is that everyone agrees that the communication about the change has been good, but still for absolutely everyone the redundancies came almost out of nowhere and shocked everyone. One employee (Case 4) comments: “I knew from the information meetings that people were going to
be fired, I just thought that it would be somewhere else, on another department, not in my team. Till the day the names of those who were going to be let go were announced I had no clue it would be someone from my team.” Another from Case 5 says: “I know we all were well informed on what was going on but still the fact that people had to leave the organization remained very abstract to me till the very point that the names of those were announced.” Remarkable is that the employees do not have
distinct opinion on how this could have been prevented.
Concerning the communication in the teams the opinions differ slightly but are similar to what the leaders provided. The employees of case 1 and 3 commented both similarly: “I just want to do my job and when something changes for me specifically I
will probably hear that. I don’t have to know every single step of the change process and talk about that over and over again.” The employees of case 2, 4 and 5 had a
slightly different opinion: “My leader keeps me informed as far as that is possible, I
understand that he/she can not provide all information. But what is nice is that when I went to one of the meetings (initiated by the management) hardly anything is new to me because my leader already has provided us with all the information”.
Summarizing it must be said that the way the change has been communicated at the ORGANIZATION X has been good, making use of different communication types and channels. On the other hand it is clear that the real message, the fact that people were going to be fired and that this could be any one at any level in the organization has not really penetrated into the minds of the employees. Resulting a big shock when the list of people who were going to be fired was announced. Furthermore, it is clear that the leaders differ in what they talk about with their teams; differences are recognized between the cases. It is a good thing though that the employees also describe these differences. There seems to be a fit in how the leader is handles those things and what their employees expect from them on that point.
Frequency – In the part written above, things have been mentioned about the
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enough to give everyone an update. More often would have been resulting in providing the organization with the same information over and over again”. All
leaders explained that it is their regular routine to have one-on-one conversations with their employees, varying between once in two weeks and once every 2 months. Three of them (Case 2, 4 and 5) specifically pointed out they increased the frequency of those personal talks at the time the change process was in full process. The other two leaders (Case 1, 3) let it more depend on what the employees requested, if an employee wanted to have an extra talk this was always possible but it needed to be initiated by him/herself.
The employees also agree on the frequency of communication. They have been informed about the reorganization before it all started, so everyone knew what the organization was going through. One employee (Case 3) argues that for her, the change process was really slow. “It was nice to be able to go to the information
meetings and know exactly in which step of the change process we were, but to me this was a long process. I would have been okay with hearing what the change plans were and than executing that in just a couple of months. But I understand maybe that is not realistic because of all the work that needs to be done to execute the change process in a right way.” The other nine employees did not share such a strong opinion
on this topic; they think the frequency of the communication was sufficient. The six employees of case 2, 4 and 5 described the increase of the bilateral talks with their leaders during the change process and see it as a positive thing. “Because my leader
spoke with us frequently on an individual level we all knew what was going on an how it (could) affected it us personally. This made me feel more appreciated and made me more willing to give my best effort to do my work and make the best of the whole change process.”
Content – Besides the way of communication and the frequency it is also important to
have a close look at the quality of the communication with regard to employee participation. The content of the communication is hard to evaluate because it judged in two opponent manners by both the employees as the leaders. At first both all leaders and all employees are positive about the content of communication, one employee describes: “We have been informed about the whole change processes and
provided with updates during the process. Everyone knew what changes were going to be made and what these would result in. Everyone understood in what position ORGANIZATION X was situated and it was clear that dramatic changes were needed to keep the organization alive.”
However, as mentioned before, all employees were shocked when the list of names of who was going to be let go was revealed. No one expected he redundancies in their team, or their department. The leaders were better informed because they decided, together with the management, who was going to be fired in their team. One of them explains (case 2): “I really thought we informed our employees the best we could, that
we prepared them for the bad news, but still they had not see this coming. But I don’t know what we could have done differently, because you can only tell such news when you are completely sure. Otherwise you’ll create a untenable situation.” Another
leader from case 1: “People are naturally averse for bad news, so only when it hits
them, when they cannot go around it for any longer, than they start to realize the seriousness of the situation.” The employees share similar thoughts about this topic. “The team leaders and the management have been clear that the redundancies would be through the whole organization, in any layer, team or department. But because similar comments have been said before, no one took it really serious I think. I guess we all thought that another solution would be found to solve the problems of ORGANIZATION X.” One employee of case 2 shares his/her opinion: “If I would have known that people were going to be fired in my team, I would have panicked, because I would be afraid it would be me. So I don’t know what the team leaders and management could have done differently to make it clear to us. Bad news will always be bad news, that is never going to change.”
34 the same time, they do not know what would have been a better way to communicate this.
Rumors – When asking both the leaders and the employees till what extend rumors
played a role in this change process, the answer was very clear; rumors did not play any role during this change process. The leaders were clear; they never heard any rumors but did admit that maybe they were not the right persons to ask. One of them (case 2) commented: “I think that we provided enough information so there was no
sense in talking about that (rumors). All employees received the same information, so no one could tell stories about it.”
The employees did admit that sometimes there was some gossiping at the coffee corner but this is normal in every company. “Of course, everyone talked with each
other about all the changes that we were going through, but it did not play any role in the change process (case 4).” And case 5, “We all had the same information provided by the management and by our team leaders, there was no reason to spread rumors about that.”
Based on the findings above, it must be said that the communication of changes plays a role in the relationship between leadership behaviors and employee participation. In this research the communication has been rather good, but because the change process was a very top down process, employee participation was very low. Still, the quality of communication affected the way the employees coped with all the changes and redundancies.
In the next section the mediating variable trust will be discussed. Trust
Personal consequences – This subtopic reflects how much attention the leader pays to
leaders claimed to be highly concerned with the personal consequences of the reorganization for their team members. But the way they handle those concerns differ among them. Leaders of case 2, 4 and 5 both are very concerned for their team members and try to talk about that with them and make plans with them to ensure their future within the organization. “I know how serious the situation is for our
whole organization, and I know that if a specific person or team does not contribute to the benefit of the organization it is likely that you will be kicked out, or at least will be cut back in hours. To make sure this will not happen to my employees, I try to make our team, together with my employees, as important for the organization as it can possibly be. Together, we think of new activities, we try to be innovative. I support my employees and encourage them to think and act out of the box. Furthermore my goal is to highlight the importance of my team when I speak with the management. I want to get things done.” The leaders of case 1 and 3 have a different
approach. “Of course I am concerned for my team, but it their own responsibility to
fill up their hours and make sure they are seen within the organization. I can and will help them with that but it is up to them to make the best of it.”
The employees of case 5 described the same as their leader. They see and feel the concerns of their leader and that makes them feel reassured. “Recognizing the effort
our leader makes for our team to shine is great. It makes me want to work harder and deal with the tough times we are in as an organization.” The employees of case 4
share a similar view but remain concerned because they feel that their team does not get the credits from the management that it deserves. ”I see our leader work hard to
get the recognition it deserves but some how, management does not value our department as it should. This makes me feel insecure. Our department has been through a lot of changes in the last years, nothing seems to be right.” The employees
of case 1 and 3 have a different feeling: “I know my leader is concerned for us, and
he/she warned us for the personal consequences this reorganization can have for us. But it remains our own responsibility to do something with that. But I think he/she is right with that, he does not have to hold our hands. But I’ll just wait and see what the future will bring.”
