Large-scale Organizational Change Research Articles

Police custody in rural Scotland: negotiating boundaries, risk and organisational change

PurposeThis paper explores the challenging nexus of police custody, risk and intra-organisational boundaries in the context of a recently reformed national police service. Police custody is an often-hidden aspect of policing, away from the public gaze and scrutiny. Although there is increasing recognition of the importance of rural policing (e.g. Harkness (2020); Mawby and Yarwood (2011); Ruddell and Jones (2020); Yarwood and Wooff (2016)), there has been little or no focus on rural police custody. This paper seeks to begin to redress this by focussing on the challenges faced by rural police custody in the context of large-scale organisational change.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on data from a study funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (2016–2018), entitled “Measuring Risk and Efficiency in Police Custody in Scotland”. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology to develop an understanding of the varying nature of police custody across Scotland. Two contrasting case study locations were selected, one urban and one rural. 12 semi-structured interviews and 15 hours of observation were carried out. Data was transcribed, coded and analysed and thematic analysis enabled themes to be developed. This paper draws on the data from the rural custody suite.FindingsDrawing on the theoretical framework of Giacomantonio (2014) and more recent considerations of abstract policing Terpstra et al. (2019), this paper offers insights into the ways that police custody in rural Scotland has been organised, against the backdrop of challenging organisational change. I argue that as policing services in Scotland have become increasingly “abstract” from communities, police custody as a national division has witnessed the impact of this more greatly than other parts of local policing. Intra-organisational management around staffing has led to complex management of risk, illustrating some of the challenges of national organisational change on police custody.Originality/valueThis paper focuses on the impact of large scale organisational change on rural police custody and intra-organisational relationships and dynamics. Rural policing is still a largely neglected area of study and rural police custody is even less understood. This paper therefore provides an original contribution by focusing on this under-researched area of policing. It also illustrates complexity around risk, staffing and management of people being held in rural police custody suites. It is therefore of value to policing scholars in other contexts, as well as rural criminology more generally. It has applicability to international contexts where macro level policing reform is occurring.

Going paperless – Qualitative monitoring of staff morale during the transition from paper to electronic health records

BackgroundOrganisational change is an important part of development and growth. Transitioning from paper-based hospital records to electronic health records improves efficiency and patient safety by streamlining data access and reducing the risk of errors, ultimately leading to enhanced patient care and outcomes. In October 2020, a large NHS trust underwent the transition from paper notes to a fully electronic health records system. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to monitor staff morale during this organisational change; to highlight any issues arising that may impact on the smooth transition; to encourage feedback. MethodsA questionnaire was distributed to all members of the maxillofacial outpatients department on a regular basis. The qualitative responses were analysed using NVivo, following a framework analysis model. ResultsThe analysis generated 1319 codes, which were placed into 68 groups. The three main themes were ‘Transformational Advancements in Healthcare Delivery’; ‘Obstacles to Seamless EHR Integration; ‘Navigating the Transition and Evolving Perceptions’. DiscussionRegular monitoring of morale and staff opinion allows for smoother transition in a large-scale organisational change. The results of this project will help future hospitals and trusts undergoing similar transitions.

The pre-stage of inclusion–conditions for the mainstreaming process of parasports within the Swedish Floorball Federation

This article analyses conditions for including parasports in the Swedish Floorball Federation (SFF) as a case in an ongoing large-scale organizational change aimed towards equal opportunities for persons with disabilities (PwD) within the Swedish Sports Confederation. Frame factor theory is used to analyse the SFF’s conditions for this inclusion in a pre-stage of change. Thus, this article aims to facilitate opportunities for equal conditions for sports participation. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews and 55 questionnaire responses from federation and district representatives informed the analysis. Findings revealed enabling conditions, such as a general benignity towards inclusion, but also highlighted limiting conditions such as mainstream representatives lack of knowledge about the process, which can lead to further marginalization of PwD. The conclusion was drawn that defining the meaning of inclusion in a pre-stage, regarding both policy and practice, is a pressing matter for the SFF to succeed in its continued process of including parasports.

Understanding How Charismatic School Leaders Affect a Teacher’s Readiness for Change: The Role of Perspective-Taking

I examined the effect of school leaders’ charisma on a teacher’s readiness for change mediated through the teacher’s perspective-taking—a social cognitive trait of seeing another’s viewpoint. Study participants were 1,195 teachers working in 95 state elementary schools in the Israeli public-school system at the outset of a large-scale organizational change termed “New Horizon”—a top-down reform that includes changes in teachers’ work and professional development, and in principals’ discretion and autonomy. Using multilevel structural equation modeling, results indicated significant positive relationships between charismatic school leaders and a teacher’s readiness for change through the effects of his/her perspective-taking.

Archetypes of Burned-Out Physicians and How To Help Them

Most burnout interventions emphasize large-scale organizational changes to the practice environment, such as technological innovations and practice efficiency to reduce EMR use or optimize the functions of nonphysician care team members. However, these critical organizational efforts to mitigate burnout take significant time to assess, implement, and re-assess to determine effectiveness. Although decades of research show that individual personality traits significantly influence occupational outcomes, the physician burnout literature has focused less on how personality factors influence physician wellbeing. Lessons from Ochsner Health’s new internal physician coaching program — informed by ongoing research into physician personality factors — suggest that four core personality typologies affect burnout in the current healthcare environment.

Between a rock and a hard place: Nurse managers' experiences of large-scale organizational change in the public health service.

BackgroundNurse managers are often at the forefront of implementing organizational changes. Studies suggest that conflicting pressures and stress are high during such times, though little is known of how nurse managers experience the continuing run of change initiatives.AimsTo explore nurse managers' experience of large‐scale organizational changes and its impact on their working lives and conditions.DesignA qualitative phenomenological hermeneutical study utilizing a Ricœur‐inspired method of interpretation.MethodsSemi‐structured interviews were conducted with 12 nurse managers at a public sector university hospital that had recently undergone large‐scale organizational changes. Interviews were conducted in 2021 during the covid‐19 pandemic. The analysis is based on the three‐stage Ricœur‐inspired analysis method by Pedersen and Dreyer.ResultsThree themes emerged outlining the nurse managers experiences of large‐scale organizational change: The need for support structures to be incorporated in the change process, The need for a guiding star, and The challenge of the values embedded in the Nurse Manager mindset. These themes were consistent across both predominantly positive as well as mainly negative experiences.ConclusionThis study reveals the potential that receiving support from management, staff and peers has to positively influence the experiences of nurse managers during large‐scale organizational changes. However, lacking a clear vision for the process negatively influences their ability to support high‐level quality care within their wards, potentially increasing their feelings of stress and conflicting pressure.ImpactParticipants offered important insight into the sparsely explored subject of nurse managers' experiences of organizational change, the complexity they face and the potentially high personal costs. The study highlights the detrimental effects of not providing support to all managers in organizations undergoing change, and the parallels to the covid‐19 pandemic.No Patient or Public Contribution was required for this study due to its aim.

Employee Participation in Change Planning - A Buffer Between Change Impact and Change Attitudes

This study investigates the dynamic development of experiences and attitudes toward a large-scale organizational change at individual and occupational group levels. The research examines whether attitudes to change deteriorate along with employees’ experiences of the personal impact of change. Moreover, the study investigates the moderating role of employee participation in change planning decisions on the relationship perceived impact - attitudes towards the change. Employee panel data (n = 901) were gathered at two-time points, three years apart. We applied a two-wave latent change score model to address change and time-sequential associations between and within constructs and across four occupational groups. The findings show that the increased personal impact of the organizational change is related to worsened attitudes towards the change, with significant variation between occupational groups. Moreover, increased perceived influence on plans and strategies for organizational development moderates the relationship between perceived personal impact and attitude towards organizational change: employees that gain/lose power on organizational change planning develop fewer/more negative attitudes the more they become impacted by the changes.

The Dynamicity of Legitimacy and Sensemaking by Top Management and Consultants During Complex Change

We examine how organizational consultants shape the change process in a large-scale and complex organizational change and establish legitimacy by studying a longitudinal change process in a large automotive company in India. We study legitimacy tactics used by the consultants, the implementation team and change sponsors from the perspective of institutional theory and understand the temporal dynamics of the tactics as used by these actors. We show that the consultants and the implementation team often operate with a single identity during the change process and study the loss and repair of legitimacy during the change process.

Future Orientation and Commitment to Change during Large-Scale Organizational Change in Indonesia

Future Orientation and Commitment to Change during Large-Scale Organizational Change in Indonesia

The impact of an electronic hospital system on therapeutic drug monitoring.

Australian hospitals have undergone a transformation with both a review and expansion of traditional roles of healthcare professionals and the implementation of an ieMR. The implementation of an ieMR brings large scale organizational change within the health system especially for staff with direct patient contact. This is changing the future of healthcare and the roles of healthcare professionals. There is minimal research on the impact of these electronic systems on the people and processes required to realise the improvements in patient care such as therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) and the role of the pharmacist within the TDM process. The literature has discussed the use of computerised programs to assist with the interpretation of results and calculating of doses but the impact of an ieMR on the TDM process has not been discussed. This study undertook a retrospective analysis at an Australian tertiary hospital to investigate the impact of a digital hospital system on TDM within the facility. A 2-year retrospective audit was conducted on TDM at an Australian Tertiary Hospital. The periods were 2016 (a paper-based hospital) and 2018 (ieMR). Patients were identified using the pathology database. Patients were excluded if under the age of 18, in an outpatient setting or the emergency department. Progress notes, medication charts, ieMR and other relevant pathology were reviewed. They were assessed for appropriateness of the timing of collection, compliance to recommended TDM guidelines, and pharmacist documentation. A total of 2926 observations were included in the analysis. There was as similar percentage of appropriately collected samples between the paper-based system (2016) and the digital hospital system (2018) with 59% and 58% respectively. Results of logistic regression analysis models show the effect of year was not significant with regards to TDM for either a sample being appropriate or the dose adjustment being appropriate. Samples for TDM were more likely to be appropriate if the pharmacist had documented advice but less likely with regards to appropriate dose adjustment. This study considered the effect of introducing a hospital wide digital system on TDM processes. Overall, the results indicate no difference between the paper-based system and ieMR for appropriate samples and doses adjustments. To our knowledge, this is the first study of this kind looking at the impact of a digital hospital system on TDM. The introduction of a digital hospital system does not appear to have made improvement on the effective use of TDM. Inappropriate sampling as seen in this study can lead to ineffective clinical management of patients, inefficient use of time, and waste of financial resources. Further work is required to incorporate specific guidance and recommendations within the digital system to optimize TDM.

COVID-19 highlights the need to optimize critical care resource use: The role of a respiratory-led multidisciplinary team.

COVID-19 highlights the need to optimize critical care resource use: The role of a respiratory-led multidisciplinary team.

Learning, development and change in a community-based enterprise in Myanmar

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of large-scale organizational change in a community-based enterprise in Myanmar. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study methodology was selected to understand the phenomenon of change in a community-based enterprise in Myanmar. Data were collected over a four-week period of fieldwork through individual interviews, focus groups, observations and document collection. Data were analyzed via a modified inductive analytic strategy using constant comparative analysis. Findings Findings revealed the processes used in this large-scale organizational change as impacted by the national cultural dimensions of Myanmar and the social learning experienced by the participants. Learning about organization development and change and sharing that learning in the organization by its members who participated in a certificate program in organizational development designed by Payap University (Thailand) and the International Rescue Committee had a major role in the change processes. Myanmar’s high power distance and collectivist culture facilitated social learning by highlighting authority figures as role models and providing high interaction environments conducive to learning. Originality/value This study illuminates the change process in a community-based organization in the emerging economy of Myanmar where no roadmaps for change in these types of organizations exist. The findings of this study are transferrable to community-based organizations in emerging economies with similar national cultural characteristics and call for future case studies to understand the complexities of change in these unique organizations and environments.

Addressing inactivity after stroke: The Collaborative Rehabilitation in Acute Stroke (CREATE) study.

BackgroundStroke patients are often inactive outside of structured therapy sessions – an enduring international challenge despite large scale organizational changes, national guidelines and performance targets. We examined whether experienced-based co-design (EBCD) – an improvement methodology – could address inactivity in stroke units.AimsTo evaluate the feasibility and impact of patients, carers, and staff co-designing and implementing improvements to increase supervised and independent therapeutic patient activity in stroke units and to compare use of full and accelerated EBCD cycles.MethodsMixed-methods case comparison in four stroke units in England.ResultsInterviews were held with 156 patients, staff, and carers in total; ethnographic observations for 364 hours, behavioral mapping of 68 patients, and self-report surveys from 179 patients, pre- and post-implementation of EBCD improvement cycles.Three priority areas emerged: (1) ‘Space’ (environment); (2) ‘Activity opportunities’ and (3) ‘Communication’. More than 40 improvements were co-designed and implemented to address these priorities across participating units. Post-implementation interview and ethnographic observational data confirmed use of new social spaces and increased activity opportunities. However, staff interactions remained largely task-driven with limited focus on enabling patient activity. Behavioral mapping indicated some increases in social, cognitive, and physical activity post-implementation, but was variable across sites. Survey responses rates were low at 12–38% and inconclusive.ConclusionIt was feasible to implement EBCD in stroke units. This resulted in multiple improvements in stroke unit environments and increased activity opportunities but minimal change in recorded activity levels. There was no discernible difference in experience or outcome between full and accelerated EBCD; this methodology could be used across hospital stroke units to assist staff and other stakeholders to co-design and implement improvement plans.

English

Organizational readiness for change is considered a critical precursor to the successful implementation of complex changes. Indeed, some suggest that failure to establish sufficient readiness accounts for one-half of all unsuccessful, large-scale organizational change efforts. The African economy and the world at large are at brink of economic depression as result of devastating effect of COVID-19. However, it is equally important to determine the readiness of countries to absorb the economic shock of the pandemic. Using the model by Battese and Coelli (1995), the translog production frontier was adopted to estimate technical efficiency of the financial sector of the continent. The 24 countries selected in Africa were based on the availability of data to cover our variables of interest for period 2000 to 2018. The findings were that financial sector in the continent have performed above average (72%) over the period of study and hence they are slightly ready to support ailing economy. Also lower middle income countries are relatively going to have more problems with pandemic. However, the probability of the continent not plunging into economic depression with the support of the financial sector is 0.42 which is not encouraging. It is recommended that policies to address interest rate margin, liquidity and market concentration should be managed properly to improve technical efficiency of the financial sectors on the continent.   Key words: Africa, COVID-19, financial sector, technical efficiency, translog production frontier.

Organizational change and everyday health system resilience: Lessons from Cape Town, South Africa.

This paper reports a study from Cape Town, South Africa, that tested an existing framework of everyday health system resilience (EHSR) in examining how a local health system responded to the chronic stress of large-scale organizational change. Over two years (2017–18), through cycles of action-learning involving local managers and researchers, the authorial team tracked the stress experienced, the response strategies implemented and their consequences. The paper considers how a set of micro-governance interventions and mid-level leadership practices supported responses to stress whilst nurturing organizational resilience capacities. Data collection involved observation, in-depth interviews and analysis of meeting minutes and secondary data. Data analysis included iterative synthesis and validation processes. The paper offers five sets of insights that add to the limited empirical health system resilience literature: 1) resilience is a process not an end-state; 2) resilience strategies are deployed in combination rather than linearly, after each other; 3) three sets of organizational resilience capacities work together to support collective problem-solving and action entailed in EHSR; 4) these capacities can be nurtured by mid-level managers’ leadership practices and simple adaptations of routine organizational processes, such as meetings; 5) central level actions must nurture EHSR by enabling the leadership practices and micro-governance processes entailed in everyday decision-making.

Protection as a Human Fundamental Need: Re-Conceiving Signs of Safety for Social Work in the Republic of Ireland

AbstractLarge-scale reform of statutory child protective services in the Republic of Ireland is underway, prompted by adoption of the national strengths-based and safety-organised practice approach, known as ‘Signs of Safety’ (SoS). Despite the radical change it impels, critical commentary from the academy on the conventions of SoS remains conspicuous by its absence. One reading of the ecological systems approach is that to appreciate implications of SoS for children and families at risk, we must surpass a sequestered concern with child protection and welfare alone. To substantiate this, and embed a reconceived Signs of Safety, human scale development theory is critically deployed through an augmented, rather than exclusive focus, on the axis of protection needs within the typology of fundamental human needs. To aid this, critical application of theory is partially reworked and appropriated through a life course perspective, to better account for lifespan positioning. Overall, the sustaining proposition of the paper is that academic interrogation of SoS is both a practical and ethical imperative, and a necessary complement to large-scale organisational change underway.

The Effect of Justice Expectations on OCBs and its Regulation by Professional Identification

In highly uncertain contexts, such as organizations undergoing major change initiatives, employees become especially attentive to procedural fairness. Although research has focused mainly on perceptions of experienced procedural justice, employees also generate expectations about the procedural fairness they will receive in the future, termed anticipatory procedural justice. In this paper, we posit that these expectations can affect employee positive behaviors that are not specifically related to the change itself, namely organizational citizenship behaviors. Further, we hypothesize that employees highly identified with their profession will be less affected by justice expectations, while employees who are less identified will rely on these expectations when deciding to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors. We test our hypotheses using a multi-method approach entailing one experiment with a heterogeneous sample of US workers (n=183), one three-wave panel survey with a sample of US workers from different organizations undergoing wage cuts and layoffs (N=101), and one field survey in a public health government agency facing a large scale organizational change (n=315). In all three studies, anticipatory procedural justice fully mediated the relationship between experienced procedural justice and organizational citizenship behaviors. In Study 3, where the majority of respondents worked in vocational roles (e.g., healthcare specialists and psychology counsellors), professional identification moderated this mediated relationship. Specifically, the organizational citizenship behaviors of employees highly identified with their profession were not affected by anticipatory procedural justice. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Implementation of strategic human resource management practices: a review of the national scientific production and new research paths

PurposeThe strategic human resource management (SHRM) emerged in the middle of the 1980s and is currently seen as a relevant research and practical field in the area of business administration (Kaufman, 2015). Its academic relevance has been receiving international attention due to the importance of the strategic performance of human resource management (HRM) (Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang, 2014). It is possible to define SHRM as a vertical connection between HRM practices and international strategy and horizontally as the congruence among the several human resource practices (Wright & McMahan, 1992).Design/methodology/approachTaking into consideration the emerging research gaps in the area, the necessity to bring to attention the implementation of policies and strategic practices of human resource management became prominent. Our study characterizes the national scenario regarding this specific research theme. For such, we developed a bibliometric review of national journals in the area of business administration with level Qualis B2 [1] or above, described the institutionalization of the research in Brazil and established a sociogram with research relationship networks in the country.FindingsBetween 1997 and 2017, only 19 articles on the implementation of SHRM were published in the 32 journals researched. The characterization of the studies indicates a predominance of qualitative articles, which adopt as methodological approach the case study, and most of them use interviews and content analysis as techniques of data collection and analysis, respectively. The use of such investigation tools is in line with the nature of the phenomenon studied. The scenario indicates that the implementation of SHRM is still a developing theme in Brazil.Research limitations/implicationsThere is a lack of studies that combine the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches and focus on public organizations. Besides, the results indicate the need to diversify the methodological approaches used. Regarding the institutionalization of research in Brazil, it is possible to notice the growth of research groups investigating SHRM, even though their only focus does not rely on implementation. The academic production regarding the theme is regionally located in the state of São Paulo, even though academic production is also to be found in a decentralized way in the country, with rare networks.Practical implicationsThis way, the main contribution of this article is the accomplishment of the first bibliometric review regarding the implementation of SHRM in Brazil, showing the scientific community that the theme still presents a gap to be explored in national studies and showing human resource professionals and the society that the transformational switch of human management to organizational outcomes – despite prolific in the academia – still has not been realized in practice.Social implicationsIn the articles analyzed, the most common finding was that the effective implementation of SHRM and strategic practices of HR, such as the competency management, still deserves attention of the academia through the accomplishment of deeper qualitative studies that exhibit not only interfering factors but also the initiatives that must be adopted by the organization to favor the implementation process.Originality/valueThe interventions occurred in an organization can or cannot stem from an articulated HR strategy. Some policies can be implemented without a previous explicit planning, and other planned strategies may never even be effectively implemented (Truss & Gratton, 1994). As reported by Kaufman (2015), some critical success factors to a large-scale organizational change – which is necessary for the effective adoption of strategic HR models – are the commitment of leaderships and a carefully planned and managed implementation. For such, it is necessary to manage programmed organizational changes properly and to act promptly on the cultural pressure perceived by all levels of the organization (Guest, 1987). Such premises are associated with the SHRM perspective proposed by Wright and Snell (1998), in which the authors claim that the main role of HR is to implement organizational strategies. Lengnick-Hallet al.(2009) present a research agenda that highlights the need to give more emphasis on issues related to the implementation of strategic human resource management, specifically regarding the vertical and horizontal alignment of HR systems.

Pragmatic adaptation of implementation research measures for a novel context and multiple professional roles: a factor analysis study

BackgroundAlthough some advances have been made in recent years, the lack of measures remains a major challenge in the field of implementation research. This results in frequent adaptation of implementation measures for different contexts—including different types of respondents or professional roles—than those for which they were originally developed and validated. The psychometric properties of these adapted measures are often not rigorously evaluated or reported. In this study, we examined the internal consistency, factor structure, and structural invariance of four well-validated measures of inner setting factors across four groups of respondents. The items in these measures were adapted as part of an evaluation of a large-scale organizational change in a rehabilitation hospital, which involved transitioning to a new building and a new model of patient care, facilitated by a significant redesign of patient care and research spaces.MethodsItems were tailored for the context and perspective of different respondent groups and shortened for pragmatism. Confirmatory factor analysis was then used to test study hypotheses related to fit, internal consistency, and invariance across groups.ResultsThe survey was administered to approximately 1208 employees; 785 responded (65% response rate) across the roles of clinician, researcher, leader, support staff, or dual clinician and researcher. For each of the four scales, confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated adequate fit that largely replicated the original measure. However, a few items loaded poorly and were removed from the final models. Internal consistencies of the final scales were acceptable. For scales that were administered to multiple professional roles, factor structures were not statistically different across groups, indicating structural invariance.ConclusionsThe four inner setting measures were robust for use in this new context and across the multiple stakeholder groups surveyed. Shortening these measures did not significantly impair their measurement properties; however, as this study was cross sectional, future studies are required to evaluate the predictive validity and test-retest reliability of these measures. The successful use of adapted measures across contexts, across and between respondent groups, and with fewer items is encouraging, given the current emphasis on designing pragmatic implementation measures.

Using Behavioral Systems Analysis to Improve Large Scale Change Initiatives in Autism Service Organizations.

Large scale organizational change initiatives are certainly difficult endeavors. But when we implement large scale change initiatives without properly assessing the impact the changes will have throughout the organization, we make the changes harder than they need be. Organizations tend to take one of two paths when implementing large scale change initiatives. The first path is to implement the change initiative (e.g., grow your client base, hire more staff, add a new service, begin serving a new market) and then identify and implement any system changes and supports required to support that initiative. The second path begins with identifying and implementing required system changes and supports and then implementing the change initiative. While the second path requires a slower implementation of the change, change initiatives in general will become faster once system variables have been initially mapped out and the organization has gone through the process once or twice. Additionally, rather than creating the appearance of being an adaptive and proactive organization, the second path actually produces an adaptive and proactive organization. Therefore, it is the second path that will be the focus of this paper, and this path relies on behavioral systems analysis.