FACTORS INFLUENCING THE READINESS FOR CHANGE AT ZIGGO
Master thesis, MscBA, specialization Change Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Businesses
December 19, 2011 JASPER ESCHWEILER Student number: 1629360
Petrus Campersingel 21 9713 AC Groningen Tel.: +31 (0)6-12169685 E-mail: J.Eschweiler@student.rug.nl
Supervisor/ university Dr. J.Rupert Supervisor/ field of study
F. Bijlenga H. Weewer Ziggo, Groningen
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my university supervisor Dr. J.Rupert for her helpful comments and feedback during the whole process. In addition, I would like to thank my supervisors at Ziggo, Frits Bijlenga and Heleen Weewer. I am grateful that they gave me the opportunity to conduct my research at their organization. Furthermore, I would also like to thank the other employees of Billing & Collecting who helped me conducting the research and who were participant within the survey or the interviews.
FACTORS INFLUENCING THE READINESS FOR CHANGE AT ZIGGO
ABSTRACT
This research represents a case study within the Billing & Collecting department of a national cable operator. The relationship between the independent variables sense of urgency, managerial support, self-efficacy, employee’s trust in the change initiative and quality of communication, and the dependent variable readiness for change is investigated. For the collection of research data two methods are used: a survey and interviews. The survey is used for the determination of the relations between the concepts. The hypotheses are tested with correlation and regression. The interviews are held to obtain deeper insights about the variables. Furthermore, the interviews are held to investigate the change process at Ziggo and to formulate managerial implications. These implications have to contribute to a higher readiness for change at Ziggo. The results indicate that all variables show significant positive relations with readiness for change. However, what strikes is that ´employee’s trust in the change initiative’ functions as mediator. The variables self-efficacy and communication scored the lowest mean among the employees of Billing & Collecting. The interviews show that the reason for the relative low score on self-efficacy lies in the fact that support from the programme team is insufficient and that people feel pressure caused by bad planning and suddenly looming deadlines. The interviews indicate that the score on the variable quality of communication is relatively low, because employees miss face-to-face contact with the programme team (and top management), because the communication messages are missing substance and because the communication about successes is insufficient.
Key words: cultural change, case study, mediation, readiness for change, sense of urgency, managerial support, self-efficacy, trust, communication.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION ... 5
1.1 Context of the research ... 5
1.2 Management problem ... 6
1.3 Background of the HPO ideas of De Waal ... 6
1.4 HPO ideas at Ziggo ... 8
1.5 Research question ... 10
2 THEORY ... 11
2.1 Readiness for change ... 11
2.2 Sense of urgency ... 12
2.3 Managerial support ... 13
2.4 Self-efficacy ... 15
2.5 Employee’s trust in the change initiative... 17
2.6 Quality of communication ... 18
2.7 Conceptual model ... 20
3 METHODOLOGY ... 21
3.1 Survey ... 21
3.1.1 Survey procedure ... 21
3.1.2 Measures ... 22
3.2 Interviews ... 26
3.2.1 Interview procedure ... 26
3.2.2 Interview measure ... 27
3.2.3 Coding procedure ... 27
4 RESULTS ... 28
4.1 Correlation analysis ... 28
4.2 Analysis of the variables ... 28
4.2.1 Readiness for change ... 28
4.2.2 Sense of urgency ... 29
4.2.3 Managerial support ... 30
4.2.4 Self-efficacy ... 32
4.2.5 Employee’s trust in the change initiative ... 33
4.2.6 Quality of communication ... 35
4.3 Multiple regression analysis ... 36
4.4 Additional analysis: mediation ... 37
5 DISCUSSION ... 40
5.1 Conclusion ... 40
5.2 Managerial implications ... 42
5.3 Contributions and limitations ... 45
6 REFERENCES ... 47
APPENDIX A: Organogram customer relations ... 51
APPENDIX B: 35 indicators for HPO’s ... 52
APPENDIX C: Organogram of Billing & Collecting. ... 53
APPENDIX D: Response on the survey ... 54
APPENDIX E: The survey ... 55
APPENDIX F: Interview for agents ... 61
APPENDIX G: Interview for management and team leaders ... 64
APPENDIX H: Item scores ... 68
1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Context of the research
This research contains a case study in the field of change management. In particular this research focuses on the readiness for change during the implementation of a cultural change programme. Nowadays, it becomes increasingly important to adapt dynamically to the environment. Since organizations change more frequently and radically, it becomes increasingly important to find out what the key factors for successful change initiatives are.
According to many practitioners and researchers, ‘readiness for change’ is a critical factor in the change process and change management (Bernerth, 2004; Holt, Armenakis, Field and Harris, 2007 & Jacobsen, 1957). This concept measures whether employees are ready for the implementation of a change initiative and therefore it measures whether the employees are willing to accept the change initiative. This case study will try to identify which factors are important influencers of the readiness for change among employees.
Object in this case study is cable operator Ziggo. Ziggo is founded in 2008 as a result of the merger between Essent, Casema and Multikabel. After this merger, the performance of Ziggo declined and it was clear that the company had to find a way to improve their performance in order to reach the top of their industry. The customer satisfaction among the clients of Ziggo is one of the most important parameters to measure the performance. In 2010, the Customer Relations (CR) department of Ziggo decided to hire A. de Waal (researcher and specialist in the field of High Performance Organizations). De Waal presented Ziggo an image of the ideal High Performance Organization (HPO). De Waal offered a range of ideas, which an organization must satisfy in order to reach the top segment of their industry and to obtain the status of a HPO. Furthermore, he checked the current performance on important HPO indicators in a baseline measurement. However, De Waal sees himself as a researcher and not as a consultant. This means that after he showed his vision on HPO’s, it was up to Ziggo to plan and implement interventions in order to improve their performance and turn the organization into an HPO.
This change process requires a lot of effort from the management, team leaders and agents of Ziggo. HPO requires not only working in a different way; it requires the employees to think differently than they did before. Important keywords in this new way of thinking are cooperation, transparency, coaching leadership, autonomy and helping others. The fact that
each of the three acquisition parties took their own culture into the merger, makes the change programme more important and the change process more difficult.
1.2 Management problem
Ziggo started with the actual HPO programme in the spring of 2010. One of the first steps consisted of the formation of a programme team; this team is responsible for the execution of the HPO programme. The programme team is situated on the level of Customer Relations (See Figure A1 in Appendix A).
In June 2010, De Waal started with doing a baseline measurement at the CR department of Ziggo; after this measurement a project was designed. More detailed information about this project can be found in section 1.4. However, in the spring of 2012, the next measurement of De Waal will take place. Ziggo CR is expected to show improved performance on the HPO indicators by then. This research focuses on a sub department of CR, Billing & Collecting (B&C). The research has been conducted at the level of B&C, because the management of B&C would like to focus on the local change climate and on the local approach of the HPO programme.
The management problem formulated by the management of Billing & Collecting is: Is Billing & Collecting on track with the HPO programme in order to reach the expected improvement or do they need to take some corrective actions before the next measurement in 2012?
1.3 Background of the HPO ideas of De Waal (2010)
Nowadays, companies are confronted with a growing amount of competition. In order to deal with extreme competition, there is a growing interest among managers to identify the characteristics of HPO’s. In order to be able to present a representative summary of HPO characteristics, De Waal (2010) analysed 290 international studies in which high performance characteristics are described.
Because researchers approach the topic of high performance from different backgrounds, there is not yet a common definition for HPO’s. However, De Waal (2010) combined the definitions from the literature and this led to the following statements about HPO’s:
- HPO’s achieve sustained growth (higher than non-HPO competitors) over a long period of time;
- HPO’s have a great ability to adapt to changes;
- HPO’s are able to react quickly to those changes;
- HPO’s have a long-term orientation;
- The management processes of a HPO’s are integrated and the strategy, structure, processes and people are aligned throughout the organization;
- HPO’s are focusing on continuously improving and reinventing its core capabilities;
- HPO’s are spending much effort on improving working conditions and development opportunities of its workforce.
Based on these themes, De Waal (2010) proposed a definition of a HPO: “A High Performance Organization is an organization that achieves financial and non-financial results that are better than those of its peer group over a period of time of at least five to ten years”.
According to De Waal (2010), the financial and non-financial returns of HPO organizations are clear. Substantial financial performance improvements are found in parameters as revenue growth, profitability, return on assets, return on equity, return on investments and return on stock. Furthermore, a significant growth in non-financial indicators like customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, productivity and safety were clearly visible (De Waal, 2010).
In order to create these performance improvements and to obtain the status of an HPO, De Waal (2010) formulated five HPO factors to which an organization must satisfy. These five factors are:
- Quality of management: The management of a HPO is of high quality and is able to combine integrity and coaching leadership with fast decisions.
- Continuous improvement and innovation: The culture of a HPO involves all members intensively through dialogue and actions in order to improve performance.
- Long-term orientation: The long-term orientation applies to all stakeholders.
Management vacancies will be absorbed by promotions.
- Openness and action-orientation: HPO’s are aware of their competitive advantages and gives their employees the opportunity to continuously contribute to the improvements of its processes, products and services.
- Quality of employees: The employees of a HPO are diverse, complementary and can work together well. In addition, they are flexible and resilient in order to improve performance.
These five pillars for HPO’s are divided in 35 measurable indicators, presented in Appendix B.
1.4 HPO at Ziggo
As stated above, in the spring of 2010, Ziggo starts with the transformation into a HPO organization (see Figure 1 for a global timeline). In June, De Waal started at Ziggo with conducting a baseline measurement. After the summer, Ziggo started with the follow-up of the baseline measurement. This process was designed like a so called ‘U-shape’. Firstly, Ziggo facilitated ‘awareness workshops’ in which the results of the HPO baseline measurement were fed back top-down, from the top management to the agents on the floor.
After these awareness sessions, ‘Call2action workshops’ were designed in order to search for bottom-up solutions. These workshops were organized per team and each team got the assignment to give bottom-up advice to the organization. After all teams completed their Call2action workshop, the HPO programme team inventoried the output of these workshops.
From the combination of the outcomes of the baseline measurement, the outcomes of the Call2action workshops, the assumptions of the HPO theory and the goals of Ziggo, the programme team developed five topic plans which form the basis for the continuation of the HPO programme. These topics were presented at the kick-off meeting in a large scale intervention (at stadium the Euroborg). This meeting was called ‘GoHPO’ and represented the start of the real change process. This meeting was obligatory and all employees of B&C were invited for this meeting.
FIGURE 1: Global schedule for the HPO programme
In consultation with De Waal and several external consultancy agencies, the HPO programme team determined which interventions would be used in order to turn Ziggo into an HPO. The programme split in interventions for team development and in interventions for individual development. For the team development, the programme team constructed so called
‘review/preview sessions’. In these sessions, organized four times per year, teams have to look critically to themselves and formulate HPO goals in order to develop with their team into a HPO direction. These review/preview session’s focuses on the improvement of the cooperation within the teams and between the teams. Now the teams are too much acting like islands. To structure these meetings the sessions were the first couple of times led by a facilitator and they used some specific reflection methods. To assure that there is enough input for the review/preview sessions, each employee got an HPO logbook. The idea is that every employees writes down weekly some HPO and non-HPO moments. This should keep the minds set on HPO and assures the input for the review/preview sessions.
The individual programme can be split up in two parts. Firstly, the High Performance Leadership theme (HPL) in which the team leaders and managers of B&C participate.
Secondly, a High Performance Individual theme (HPI) in which all other individuals of B&C participate. These programmes are developed in order to increase the quality of the employees, to make employees more service-oriented towards the clients and to help them work with the new values introduced by the HPO programme (cooperation, transparency, trust, autonomy, coaching leadership). The participation in both programs is obligatory.
The HPL theme is built up around different interventions, which are called ‘learning impulses’ and which has as goal to develop the leader into a coaching leader. This is important because coaching leadership gives employees more room for development and it will stimulate the exchange of trust between the leaders and employees within B&C. Besides this, the employees experience the leaders within B&C as quite directive, so it was important to work on this theme. The most important HPL interventions are: 180 degrees feedback reflector, reflective conversations called ‘STAR’, a portfolio presentation at the end of the year and individual development plan.
The HPI programme has as goal to develop the individual to an HPI and to increase the quality of the employees. The most important HPI interventions will be: HPI learning impulses, HPI career development programme, individual development plan and local HPI
interventions. The HPI theme is not started yet. According to the schedule, the theme should start in April 2011, but because of the work pressure on both the team leaders and employees, the programme team decided to delay this theme with a couple of months and to start with it in the winter of 2012.
1.5 Research question
Because it is not the intention to research the HPO indicators itself, as this will be done in 2012, another concept will be used to test how the department deals with the change initiative.
As stated in the first lines of this research, this research will focus on investigating the readiness for change within B&C and on testing which factors influence the readiness for change at B&C. This leads to the following research question: Which factors influence the readiness for change within Billing & Collecting and how can the management of Billing &
Collecting improve the readiness for change in order to increase the chance on implementation success of the HPO ideas?
In order to test which factors influence the readiness for change, five factors have been selected for this research. These independent variables are: ‘sense of urgency’, ‘managerial support’, ‘self-efficacy’, ‘employees trust in the change initiative’ and ‘quality of communication’. Readiness for change, the independent variables and the conceptual model of this research are elaborated in the theory section of this research.
The research consists of a survey and interviews. The survey is meant to test the independent variables on relationships with the dependent variable and to measure to what extent the variables are present at B&C. The interviews are meant to offer deeper insights in the variables. Furthermore, the results from the interviews will offer leads, which can be used to offer implications for improvements to the management of B&C.
2. THEORY
In this theory section the concepts of the research will be defined and elaborated extensively, in order to lay the foundations for the empirical research.
2.1 Readiness for change
As already stated in the introduction of the research question, readiness for change is the concept used in this research in order to resolve the management problem. According to Bernerth (2004), readiness for change is found to be a critical factor in successful change initiatives by both researchers and practitioners. The introduction of a change initiative always causes tensions and feelings of suspense among organizational members. These attitudes, which generally generate resistance towards the change initiative, can harm the change process seriously if it is not handled with care. The fact that organizational leaders underestimate the resistance to change and the importance of readiness for change is one of reasons why most of the organizational change initiatives fail. About two thirds of all organizational change projects fails or are terminated early. Although, this information is expected to be acquainted among organizational leaders, they do not act like they are aware of this information. The dynamic environments and the demand of responding faster and faster on changing business environments, lead to the neglect of the patience and care that is required within complicated change projects. Since organizations change faster and more frequently, research in this field has been of increasingly importance. This research leads to an increased understanding about the change process and an increased understanding of the concept readiness for change.
According to Holt, Armenakis, Field and Harris (2007), readiness for change is firstly introduced by Jacobson (1957). Since this introduction the concept of readiness for change has been the foundation for several theoretical models. Readiness for change can be defined as ‘the cognitive state comprising beliefs, attitudes and intentions towards a change initiative’
(Armenakis, Harris & Field, 1999). When readiness for change exists within a department or organization, the organization is able to embrace the change and as a consequence, the adoption of the actual changes can begin. When the readiness for change in an organization increases, as a consequence, the resistance towards the change initiative will reduce. In the ideal situation creating readiness for change should be the first step in the change progress.
During this first step the organizational members should be prepared for the change and
ideally became even supporters of the change. If this is the case, step two, the adoption of the actual change can begin.
Because the change initiative is primarily in this case is a cultural change initiative, a quite intangible and delicate type of change, it is very important that the employees embrace the change and that they are fully committed to it. Therefore, readiness for change is an excellent concept to serve as a dependent variable in this research. The concepts elaborated in this section are factors of which literature assumes that they will have a positive relationship with readiness for change.
2.2 Sense of urgency
According to many researchers, it is very important to create a sense of urgency at the start of a change initiative (Kautt, 2009; Kotter, 1995; Rogers, Shannon & Gent, 2003; Bacon, 2003).
Kotter (1995) emphasizes that creating a sense of urgency is the first step to turn a change initiative into a success. According to Bacon (2003), just creating awareness is not enough to get people ready to change. People will not change until they feel a compelling need to change. The ‘felt need’ of people must be urgent enough to get people into a mood for change.
Furthermore, people need an urgent occasion, for example a radical event to move them to a state in which they can change. Bacon (2003) states that in absence of traumatic events people may lack enough urgency to act. Furthermore, in order to create a sense of urgency, people must realize what they can lose in case they decide not to change. This is in line with what Kotter (1995) and Kautt (2009) state. Furthermore, Kotter (1995) emphasizes that bad business results are both a blessing and a curse. Positive is that losing money will catch people’s attention and that it will be easier to convince people of the need for change. The negative side of bad business results is that bad business results gives less manoeuvring room.
According to Kautt (2009) business success can kill the sense of urgency, because of an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality.
According to Kotter (2008), there are two factors that influence the sense of urgency negatively: these are ‘complacency’ and ‘false urgency’. According to the dictionary (American Heritage Dictionary, 2006), complacency can be defined as: “A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble or controversy”. Complacency is most of the time product of success or perceived success and the consequence of the fact that people are mostly content with maintaining the
status quo and the fact that people find it difficult to think and act outside their comfort zone (Kotter, 2008). Moreover, he states that true urgency has to focus on critical issues and that it is driven by deep determination to win and not by the anxiety to loose. The second component
‘false urgency’ is very different from complacency. While complacency embraces the status quo and has a kind of sleeping quality, false urgency can be filled with new activities and is filled with energy. False urgency is driven by two components, anger and anxiety. Anger and anxiety can easily create activity; however, this is not a productive kind of activity. Those activities often lead to destructive powers, such as battles which are leading the company to nowhere. So, the main difference between a real sense of urgency and false urgency is the fact that false urgency is driven by anger and anxiety and that a real sense of urgency is based on a positive approach.
In their article, Armenakis et al. (1999) are emphasizing on ‘discrepancy’, one of the five message domains of a successful change message. They state that discrepancy refers to information regarding the need for change as reflected in the discrepancy between the current and the ideal state of the organization. According to a definition of Katz and Kahn (1978)
“discrepancy addresses the sentiment regarding whether change is needed and is typically demonstrated by clarifying how an organization’s current performance differs from some desired end-state”. So, discrepancy can be seen as an equivalent of a sense of urgency.
According to Armenakis and Harris (2002), individuals have to be motivated to change; they must believe that something is wrong and something needs to change in order to create successful change.
So, an increased sense of urgency will give the employees the intrinsic motivation that the change in necessary, as consequence their readiness for change will increase.
Hypothesis 1: A higher sense of urgency will lead to a higher readiness for change at Billing
& Collecting.
2.3 Managerial support
Another important variable which can contribute to the implementation success of the HPO programme at Ziggo, is the role played by the management and the support of the management towards the employees. Managerial support can be defined as follows: “The extent to which organizational members are convinced that the formal and informal leaders
are committed to successful implementation an institutionalization of the change” (Armenakis
& Harris, 1999).
Armenakis and Harris (1999) see ‘principal support’ as one of the five key components of a change message. They state that employees see that during their time at the company many change initiatives fail due to a lack of support. This results in employees who are sceptical and unwilling in actively supporting the change until a clear demonstration of support is shown by the management. With ‘principal support’ Armenakis and Harris (1999) emphasizes that it is important that leaders of an organization are committed to invest time, energy and resources in order to push the change through the process of initialization. This idea is supported by Sirkan, Keenan and Jackson (2005), who investigated ‘the hard side of change management’. According to Sirkan et al. (2005), it is crucial that influential executives give their backing to the change programme. This top-level commitment is vital, without top management commitment it is unlikely that the employees on the work floor will change. In addition, they state, there is never too much of top-level commitment.
Kotter (1995) stresses that it is very important to form a powerful guiding coalition. This is a group of people who form an informal leading group which stimulates and directs the change initiative. He emphasizes that in cases of successful change programmes, the leadership coalition grows over time. When a certain critical mass is not convinced early in the effort, it will become increasingly difficult to complete a change initiative successfully. Kotter (1995) states that a successful implementation of a major change is only possible if the head of the organization is an active supporter of the change initiative. In addition, he has to collect some other leaders around him to support the change and to guide the change through the organization. Furthermore, Kotter (1995) notes that the guiding coalition can include members who are not part of the management, so the guiding coalition tends to operate by definition outside of the normal hierarchy. Companies that fail in creating a guiding coalition, often underestimate the difficulty of the change process. The importance of management and leading figures as driving force of a cultural change and the importance of winning the critical mass is also shown by Bruch and Sattelberger (2008).
Kotter and Schlesinger (2008) emphasize that managers can deal with resistance by being supportive. This can include providing training in new skills, giving employees who need it some time off or listening to employees and providing emotional support.
So, if the management succeeds in stimulating the change initiative and when they take a supportive role towards their employees, employees see that the change initiative is important for the management. This will increase the readiness among the employees towards the change initiative.
Hypothesis 2: A higher managerial support will lead to a higher readiness for change at Billing & Collecting.
2.4 Self-efficacy
Another important factor in creating change and getting the change institutionalized into the company is the extent to which the employees believe that they are able to successfully implement the change. During the implementation of an organizational change the mind-set of the employees is often triggered by a certain sense of urgency. This sense of urgency can produce counterproductive reactions. Instead of realizing that the change initiative is necessary to resolve the gap between the current state and the desired state of the organization, employees can become frustrated about the gap between the current state and the desired state.
In order to minimize the possibility that such a reaction will arise, the change agent has to build the employee’s confidence in their capabilities to deal with the source of the urgency (Armenakis, Harris & Mossholder, 1993). According to Armenakis, Harris and Field (1999),
‘efficacy’ provides information and builds confidence regarding the individual and group’s ability to successfully implement the change. The question that best captures the factor efficacy is: “Can I/we successfully implement the change?” If the individuals do not possess the confidence to embrace a new way of operating, then an organizational change will be difficult or even impossible to implement and institutionalize (Armenakis, Harris & Field, 1999). This statement is supported by the research of Rafferty and Simons (2006), who concluded that self-efficacy has a unique positive relationship with both fine-tuning and corporate transformation changes. So, the company should pay attention to and put effort in motivating the employees and driving up the self-efficacy of the employees and the organization.
Bandura (1982) states that self-perception of efficacy influences the thought patterns, actions and emotional well-being of people. In their daily life people are continually deciding about their course of actions and how long to continue with those actions. Self-efficacy judgements (accurate or faulty) have a strong influence on the choice of activities and the way of
behaving. When people judge themselves capable of managing certain actions, they will undertake those actions. Adversely, if people judge themselves incapable of managing those actions they will try to avoid those actions. This is in line with the research of Beck (1976) and Meichenbaum (1977). Beck (1976) and Meichenbaum (1977) state that employees, who judge themselves as incapable of coping with environmental demands, will tend to see this as a personal shortcoming. This lack of confidence will make the implementation of a change initiative more difficult. Moreover, judgement of self-efficacy will also determine how much effort people are likely to invest and how long they will persist if they face obstacles in their way (Bandura, 1982). So, employees with high self-efficacy will spend more effort to the demands of the situation and are not easily stopped by obstacles. This is caused by the confidence of the employee that he or she is able to overcome these obstacles. If the employees lack the confidence that is required, change managers can respond by formulating realistic objectives and strategies for communicating how organizational members can improve their chance of success (Bernerth, 2004).
Related to self-efficacy is the amount of resources available for the change initiative.
According to Maurer (2005), it is critical that sufficient resources (time, tools and money) are available for the employees. Sufficient time must be available for the employees who are closely involved in the change. Besides this, it is important that employees are able to fully commit to the project and that they will be present at the critical moments. If the company does not take care for enough resources, only small changes can be managed. One cannot expect that employees are able to find time and create budgets and new tools by themselves.
So, the company must take care for these preconditions in order to give the employees the confidence that all the resources are available to complete the proposed changes.
Especially during times of change, the focus of the employees is often more on the doubts than on the ways to be successful (Bernerth, 2004). This is the consequence of the nature of a human being; people feel most comfortable in the ‘status quo’ and change brings uncertainty in this situation. This, in combination with the fact that a lot of change initiatives fail, underlines the importance that employees feel motivated to put maximum effort in the change initiative. Therefore, it is important that the employees have the confidence that they are capable to implement and institutionalize the changes.
So, an increased self-efficacy can give the employee the confidence that they can successfully participate in the change process. As consequence, the employees will experience a more positive attitude towards the change. Therefore, the readiness for change among employees will increase.
Hypothesis 3: Higher self-efficacy will lead to a higher readiness for change at Billing &
Collecting.
2.5 Employee’s trust in the change initiative
The next variable that will be taken in account in this research is the ‘trust that employees have in the change initiative’. According to Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) trust can be defined as: “The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party is based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor”. In other words: when an organization decides to implement a change initiative, the employees expect that this change will offer benefits. This is in line with the social exchange theory, in which Blau (1994) states that trust emerges from the successive exchange of benefits between the involved parties. Several researchers (Reinke, 2003; Condry, 1995;
Mayer & Davis, 1999) have found that trust is a critical success factor in change interventions.
So, if readiness for change is expected then the employees should see the benefits of the programme which justice the trust in the change initiative.
To measure the trust of the employees in the change initiative, two measures of Holt, Armenakis, Field and Harris (2007) are used. These two components are ‘organizational valence’ and ‘personal valence’. Combined, these components cover the benefits that employees experience as added value of the change initiative.
The component organizational valence contains the concern of employees whether the specific change will result in benefits for the organization and whether change initiative is appropriate to resolve the discrepancy. The personal valence component contains the evaluations that the employees will make in which they take a look at the benefits the change will bring them. The employees will ask themselves the question: “What’s in for me?” If the employees see the consequences of the proposed change as potentially harmful they will react more reserved towards the change. If, however, the benefits of change are seen as an opportunity, the employees will embrace the change initiative. The basis for the concern for personal valence lies in the intrinsic desire for fairness and justice.
If the employee’s trust in the change initiative (existing of personal benefits and organizational benefits) increases, the employees will have a stronger motivation to put effort in the change initiative. Therefore, these employees will experience a higher readiness for change. In the remainder of the research, this variable will simply be called ‘trust’.
Hypothesis 4: Higher employee’s trust in the change initiative will lead to a higher readiness for change at Billing & Collecting.
2.6 Quality of communication
Effective communication is one of the key components of successful change initiatives (Lewis, 2000; Kanter, Stein & Jick, 1992). In order to realize effective communication, it is important that the quality of the communication is guaranteed. Despite of the fact that the importance of communication has been acknowledged, it appears that managers find it a difficult topic (Lewis, 2006). One of the reasons why managers find communication a difficult topic is because employees perceive communication about change initiatives often differently than the implementers do. Implementers experience the benefit of having a clear managerial picture of the goals of the change initiative, about the plans of the implementation and they have a sense about how the process is going. This is in contrast with the employees lower in the hierarchy; it is less likely that they have detailed knowledge about the change programme and the formal goals and process (Lewis, 2006). Kotter (1995) states that without credible communication, it will be difficult to capture the hearts and minds of the employees.
In successful change initiatives executives uses all communication channels available and to ensure that they ‘walk the talk’. According to Fairhust (1993), communicating the vision serves as an instrument to create and manage shared reality, inspire action, focus attention and create new social structures. This is supported by Niehoff, Enz and Grover (1990) and Kotter and Schlesinger (2008) who state that communicating a shared vision in combination with executive visibility will contribute in developing organizational change. In this research quality of communication is measured by the concept of Bouckenooghe, Devos and Van den Broeck (2007). This concept exists of several parts, which will be discussed in the remainder of this paragraph.
An important component of the quality of communication is the way in which the employees are approached by the programme team and the management and which instruments the sender use in order to reach the employee. A communication channel can be defined as: “The
means by which messages get from one individual to another” (Rogers, 1995). In the literature, authors made a distinction between interpersonal and mediated channels.
Interpersonal channels involve face-to-face communications, while mediated channels make use of mass media or mass technology (Fidler & Johnson, 1984; Rogers, 1995).
Bouckenooghe et al. (2007) measure this element of quality of communication, by measuring the perception that employees have about how the project leaders communicate about the change. Larkin and Larkin (1994) emphasize that companies should prefer interpersonal communication above mediated communication, because only the communication between supervisor and employees has the power to change the way employees behave. This is caused by the mechanism that if the distance between the sender and the receiver increases, the level of acceptance of the message by the receiver decreases.
Bouckenooghe et al. (2007) state that it is important that the message is clear and that employees have to be informed regularly about the project. This quality of information is part of their ‘quality of communication’ measure. This is in line with Miller, Johnson and Grau (1994), who state that the information that is communicated plays a significant role in the willingness of the employees to participate in the change initiative. According to them, three criteria determine the quality of information. These criteria are: the accurateness of the information, the timeliness of the information and usefulness of the information.
Furthermore, the concept of Bouckenhooghe et al. (2007) emphasize on the importance of communicating the progress of the change process. This is in line with Kotter (1995), who states that it is important to communicate about short-term wins. This means that the management has to create successes in order to keep the employees motivated for the change process. Because large change initiatives often take time, it is important that the management avoids the risk of losing momentum. This problem can be solved by communicating and celebrating short term successes. It is not enough to hope for short term wins, management must consciously create short term wins in order to make the initiative work.
So, if the management and the programme team succeed in producing qualitative communication, then employees are better informed about all aspects of the change initiative and they know better what they can expect from the change initiative and this will lead to a better understanding of the change initiative and therefore to an increased the readiness for change.
Hypothesis 5: A higher quality of communication will lead to a higher readiness for change at Billing & Collecting.
2.7 Conceptual model
The conceptual model presented in Figure 2, arises from the research question and the hypothesis presented in this chapter.
FIGURE 2: Conceptual Model of the Research
This conceptual model will be tested by doing both quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative research will be conducted in order to test the relations between the independent variables and the dependent variable. This quantitative part must prove whether the results of this case study are in line with the hypotheses presented above.
The qualitative part of the research focuses on the deeper explanatory insights about the content of the variables. In the result section each variable will be treated separately. For the qualitative results, the following questions are important for every variable:
- How did Billing & Collecting deal with the variable during the change process?
- What should be done or taken into account in order to increase this variable within Billing
& Collecting?
The specific methodology that is used during the research will be discussed in the next section.
3. METHODOLOGY
The methodology of this research has been split up in two parts. The first part of the research consists of a survey in which the participants were asked to answer 35 statements about the different variables. The second part of the research consists of in-depth interviews in order to reveal explanatory insights about the variables.
3.1 Survey
In order to obtain quantitative data for testing the hypothesis, a survey was held among the employees of B&C.
3.1.1 Survey procedure
The survey is, via an online distribution tool, distributed among all employees of B&C. In Appendix C, an organogram of the department is presented. A total of 133 employees were invited to fill in the questionnaire via e-mail. 18 employees work with ‘thin clients’. Thin clients are computers with limited network access. As a consequence, they were not able to fill in the online questionnaire. For these employees, a paper version was designed and distributed. In order to higher the response, a reminder was sent after five days. It appeared that a couple of teams had a very low response rate. In order to higher the response, the researcher visited the team leaders to explain and emphasize the importance of the survey.
This action affected the response in a positive way, after ten days the response appeared to be much higher in these teams. Eventually 84 employees responded to the survey, this means a response percentage of 63% (for the specific response numbers, see Table D1 in Appendix D).
The response within the sub-departments Billing & Collecting is remarkably better than the response within Billing CR. This can be explained by three main reasons. Firstly, the vacation period just started and within CR more employees were already on vacation. Secondly, the team leader made a mistake in printing the paper version for the thin clients. So the results of these six respondents were lost. Thirdly, the employees of Billing CR experienced enormous work pressure during the release of the survey. This was a result of the combination of the start of the vacation period and the start of marketing actions by Ziggo.
There are no missing values in the results of the survey. The 84 participants exist of one director, one senior secretary, three managers, ten team leaders and 69 agents. The age of the participants varies between 24 and 59, the average age is 35.62. 50 (58.3%) participants are men, 35 (41.7%) women. 67.86% of the participants work full-time at B&C.
3.1.2 Measures
As stated above, the survey exists of 35 items (for the survey, see appendix E). The participants were asked to answer these statements on a 7-points Likert scale, ranging from
‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. These items contribute to one of the six variables of the research. A higher mean score on the items within one variable means a stronger presence of this variable within B&C. To consider a measure as reliable, the Cronbach’s Alpha has to be 0.70 or higher.
Readiness for change. Readiness for change is measured by four items. The items of readiness for change are derived from the ’willingness to change’ measure of Metselaar (1997). In the change management literature, the term willingness to change is used interchangeable with the term readiness for change. The Cronbach’s Alfa of this measure is good, 0.83 (see Table 1). Two example items of this variable are: ‘I intend to make time to implement the change’; ‘I intend to convince colleagues of the benefits the change will bring’.
Sense of urgency. Sense of urgency is measured by five items. The items ‘Urg2’ and ‘Urg5’
are reversely coded. For measuring the variable sense of urgency, the ‘discrepancy’ scale from Holt et al. (2007) is used. Because this scale lacks the time component which is part of the variable sense of urgency, question ‘Urg5’ is added in order to measure this time component. As can be seen in Table 1, the Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.84 is good. Two example items of this variable are: ‘There are a number of rational reasons for this change to be made’; ‘No one has explained why this change must be made’ (reversely coded).
Managerial support. Managerial support is measured by six items. Question ‘Man5’ is reversely coded. For measuring the variable managerial support, items from the ‘manager support scale’ of Holt et al. (2007) are used. Initially the Cronbach’s Alpha of this variable was too low (0.58). However, if question ‘Man5’ would be deleted the Cronbach’s Alpha would rise to 0.71 (see Table 1). So, question ‘Man5’ is deleted in order to obtain a Cronbach’s Alpha that is high enough. Two example items of this variable are: ‘Management has sent a clear signal this organization is going to change’; ‘Every manager has stressed the importance of this change’.
Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is measured by eight items, question ‘Effic7’ is reversely coded.
In order to measure the variable efficacy, items from the self-efficacy scale of Holt et al.
(2007) were used. The items ‘Effic5’ and ‘Effic6’ were added to this scale. These items were added, because these items measure the availability of time and resources within B&C for the change initiative. Ziggo is specifically interested in this issue. As can be seen in Table 1, the Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.70 is sufficient. Two example items of this variable are: ‘I have the skills that are needed to make this change work’; ‘I do not anticipate any problems adjusting to the work I will have when this change is adopted’.
Employee’s trust in the change initiative. employee’s trust in the change initiative is measured by seven items. The items ‘Trust1’, ‘Trust2’ and ‘Trust 3’ are reversely coded. In order to measure the variable trust, items from Holt et al. (2007) were used. The items are a composition of the scales ‘personal valence’ and ‘organizational valence’. As can be seen in Table 1, the Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.84 is good. Two example items of this variable are: ‘I think that the organization will benefit from this change’; ‘This change makes my job easier’.
Quality of communication. Quality of communication is measured by five items. The items of communication are derived from Bouckenooghe et al. (2009). Question ‘Comm3’ is a variant on question ‘Comm2’, because Ziggo uses communication from both the management team and the special HPO Programme team. The Cronbach’s Alfa of this scale is good, 0.86 (see Table 1). Two example items of this variable are: ‘Information provided on the change is clear’; ‘We are sufficiently informed of the progress of change’.
Control variables. The first items of the survey are about the demographic statistics of the respondent. These will be used as control variables during the statistic tests. The control variables used for the statistic tests are: gender, age, full-time/part-time and education.
TABLE 1
Cronbach's Alfa’s of the Variables
Variabele Cronbach’s Alfa
Sense of urgency 0.84
Managerial support 0.71
Self-efficacy 0.70
Trust 0.84
Communication 0.86
Readiness for change 0.83
Validity of the measures. To test the construct validity of the survey, a factor analysis is conducted. In order to test if it is appropriate to do a factor analysis on this data, the KMO and Bartlett’s test is conducted (see Table 2). Table 2 shows a score of 0.81, where a score between 0.5 and 1 is required. Therefore, a factor analysis is appropriate in this research. In the next step a factor analysis with Direct Oblimin rotation is applied (see Table 3).
According to Malhotra (2007) the Oblimin rotation should be used if the factors in the populations are likely to be strongly correlated. See Table 5 for the correlation table. The number of factors is forced on six, the highest loading on each item is bold. Table 3 shows that the variables sense of urgency, quality of communication and readiness for change show high loadings which are grouped within the same components. This means good construct validity for these variables. The loadings on the variable sense of urgency are negative, but this is not a problem because all the items of sense of urgency score negative. The other variables (managerial support, self-efficacy and employee’s trust in the change initiative) show a pattern of high loadings which are spread out over different components. Nevertheless, this initial factor analysis is the most useful one. Some alternatives are investigated, but each of these alternatives shows serious drawbacks. One of the alternatives leads to the exclusion of 14 of the 35 items. In this alternative the Cronbach’s Alpha’s of the variables decreases dramatically below the threshold of 0.70. Furthermore, the deletion of these questions would mean a severe loss of content and information within these variables. Both consequences are not desirable. Another alternative solution is to split up the variable ‘employee’s trust in the change initiative’ and to use the constructs ‘appropriateness’ (a combination of the constructs discrepancy and organizational valence) and ‘personal valence’ (Holt et al., 2007). However, this does not improve the construct validity of the measure. In addition, it is not desirable to combine those constructs, because of the loss of information. Eventually, it can be concluded that the initial factor analysis (showed in Table 3) is the most useful one and best solution in this situation. This is also the reason that the current composition of scales will be maintained.
TABLE 2
KMO and Bartlett’s Test
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .81
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity
Approx. Chi-Square 1832.32
Df 561
*** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05; † < .10
TABLE 3
Direct Oblimin Rotation Pattern Matrix Component
1 2 3 4 5 6
Urg1 .32 .03 .04 .13 .04 -.67
Urg2 -.17 -.24 .37 .18 -.10 -.54
Urg3 .12 -.01 .14 .03 .06 -.80
Urg4 .43 .15 -.16 -.13 -.06 -.58
Urg5 .34 -.09 .14 -.23 -.19 -.39
Man1 .08 .20 .13 .69 -.04 .03
Man2 .17 -.08 .27 .51 .01 -.07
Man3 .38 .05 .36 .27 .10 -.04
Man4 -.12 .12 .06 .14 -.10 -.56
Man6 .54 -.08 .46 .11 .13 .07
Effic1 -.07 .72 .05 .24 .38 -.19
Effic2 .11 .64 -.19 .17 -.21 .04
Effic3 .23 .34 -.06 .49 .07 -.22
Effic4 .72 .09 -.06 .01 .10 -.07
Effic5 -.10 .71 .32 -.37 -.21 .07
Effic6 .20 .13 .12 -.08 -.76 .04
Effic7 -.01 .01 .12 .15 -.63 -.13
Effic8 -.05 .86 -.04 .05 -.05 .04
Trust1 .05 -.07 -.31 .54 -.24 -.33
Trust2 -.11 .05 -.03 .44 -.49 -.16
Trust3 .01 -.08 .10 .12 -.33 -.57
Trust4 .65 -.12 .04 -.07 .00 -.32
Trust5 .45 .11 .00 .06 -.07 -.51
Trust6 .35 .12 .01 -.05 -.28 -.42
Trust7 .57 .06 .24 -.13 -.13 -.11
Comm1 -.07 -.23 .59 .36 -.20 -.05
Comm2 .11 .12 .77 -.12 -.05 -.19
Comm3 .09 -.03 .70 -.05 .11 -.34
Comm4 .06 .14 .61 -.12 -.08 -.31
Comm5 .01 -.02 .77 .10 -.17 .16
Read1 .60 .01 -.07 -.06 -.35 -.14
Read2 .70 -.07 .15 .22 -.07 .04
Read3 .75 -.09 -.02 .24 -.17 .15
Read4 .47 .07 .03 -.04 -.43 -.13
Note: Extraction method: Principal component analysis, rotation method: Oblimin with kaiser normalization, rotation converged in 17 iterations
