Times Of Organizational Change Research Articles

Guiding Through Turbulent Times: Coaching During Merger and Acquisition

ABSTRACT Mergers and acquisitions put organizations through significant disruptions, often taking a toll on employee well-being. This qualitative study aims to analyze how coaching supports employees in coping with the impact of mergers. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees and managers. Using realist evaluation, four context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOCs) were developed, providing evidence for the following working mechanisms: (1) Increased self-awareness and assertiveness led to greater self-efficacy, empowering participants to advocate for themselves. (2) Breaking down big things into manageable steps helped participants cope with overwhelming issues. (3) Leaders’ support and guidance played a crucial role in helping employees navigate change. And (4) managing a high workload led to increased self-efficacy and well-being at work. These CMOCs demonstrate the diverse working mechanisms of coaching interventions implemented in a disruptive context. The study's insights into these mechanisms offer valuable guidance for designing future interventions to support employees during organizational changes, such as mergers and acquisitions. By tailoring interventions to address employees’ individual challenges and needs, organizations can enhance the effectiveness of these initiatives and promote employee well-being during times of transition. MAD statement This study aims to Make A Difference (MAD) by revealing how coaching works in the context of mergers and acquisitions; more specifically, it identifies the working mechanisms contributing to the intervention's success. By its detailed identification of the interplay of context, mechanism and outcome, it highlights the multifaceted impacts of coaching, ranging from enhanced self-efficacy to coping strategies. It adds to the theoretical discussion on the effectiveness of workplace interventions by not only analyzing what works but also how they work under specific circumstances. As such, it can inform employers on how to support employees during times of organizational change.

How Can We Improve Team Innovativeness in Times of Organizational Change?

How Can We Improve Team Innovativeness in Times of Organizational Change?

Psychological Empowerment and Change Self-Efficacy As Mediators Between Change Leadership and Affective Commitment to Change

The world is changing, and the changes are affecting organizations to adapt to the changing as well. However, not all the change initiative programs will succeed due to employees’ lack of commitment to change. The study aims to identify the role of psychological empowerment and change self-efficacy as mediators between change leadership and affective commitment to change. This study surveyed four NGOs with 113 respondents. Data was collected using four types of questionnaires: affective commitment to change, change leadership, change self-efficacy, organizational change, and psychological empowerment. Results showed that change leadership had affected affective commitment to change directly through self-efficacy as a mediator. In the meantime, psychological empowerment could not mediate change leadership and affective commitment to change, as psychological empowerment did not significantly influence affective commitment to change, which can be said that change self-efficacy is more significant than psychological empowerment in terms of affective commitment to change. Results were beneficial for organizations and management to prepare the change initiative effectively in times of organizational change. In this regard, preparing a leader to become an effective change leader is needed to develop an affective commitment to the change of the employees.

From professional support to academic pathway – negotiating professional identity in a time of organisational change (case study of two middle managers at a UK university language centre)

In the past five years some UK Universities have introduced the Academic Education Pathway contracts (AEP), incorporating the elements of leadership, teaching and scholarship for recognition and promotion of professional services staff with teaching responsibilities. While colleagues have been encouraged to apply for the new contracts at the departmental level, the University policy guidelines have been conflicting and ambiguous. Many newly AEP transferred departmental middle managers have reported stress related to the application process, uncertainty about career progression, increased workload, and professional identity regulation largely due to the element of research added to the new role. The novelty of the AEP contract and the anecdotal evidence of the burden placed upon the individuals experiencing role incongruity has identified the gap in the knowledge of professional identity construction of UK University middle managers at a time of contractual organisational change. This study will investigate the previously unresearched area of University Language Centre managers with teaching responsibilities. Despite similarities in experiencing organisational change, the participants of the study make different identity claims aligning or resisting the dominant societal and organisational discourses, such as the discourse of New Managerialism, thus highlighting the nuanced and culturally specific approach to professional identity negotiation. The study is framed by the concepts of Educational Leadership, Middle Management and Organisational Change. While the findings may not be generalized beyond the context of this study, the implications can be significant for UK Higher Education policy makers.

Daily Job Crafting and Adaptive Performance During Organizational Change: The Moderating Role of Managers’ Influence Tactics

Is job crafting relevant for adaptive performance in the absence of managers’ effective influence tactics and the presence of ineffective tactics? Based on job demands-resources and conservation of resources theories, we examined whether employee daily job crafting behaviors (i.e., resources seeking, challenges seeking, demands reducing) interact with overall managers’ influence tactics during times of organizational change in explaining change outcomes. Twenty-nine hotel employees completed a questionnaire to evaluate their managers’ influence tactics, and then a diary for five consecutive workdays to assess daily job crafting behaviors and daily adaptive performance during a large-scale change. Multilevel analyses revealed that daily seeking resources related positively to adaptive performance particularly when specific managers’ influence tactics were low. These findings imply that employees compensate for the absence of managers’ influence tactics by seeking resources in order to facilitate their own adaptation to organizational changes.

The Effect of The Body Shop Indonesia’s Culture Towards Employee Performance: Mediated by Organizational Change

The change in customer purchasing behaviors has rapidly driven businesses to undergo digital transformation and rushing to utilize e-commerce platforms. The Body Shop Indonesia, previously accustomed to offline retailing of beauty products, is one of the companies that has adopted the digital transformation since 2021. In response to the current developing competition in the beauty industry, it is critical for The Body Shop Indonesia to be able to maintain their performance to sustain in the market. Unfortunately, despite the implementation of the digital transformation, the outcomes have not been as expected. The Body Shop Indonesia is still far from being at the top of the competition. Therefore, this research is aimed to assess the significant effect of The Body Shop Indonesia’s organizational culture on employee performance during this time of organizational change. This research is conducted using a quantitative approach by distributing questionnaires to 174 The Body Shop Indonesia employees, that will be further analyzed using PLS-SEM. The result shows that The Body Shop Indonesia’s performance has a significant positive effect on their employee’s performance. This study also found that the current organizational change mediates the relationship between culture and performance. The finding of this research is intended to provide companies insight regarding organizational culture and how it can increase employee performance during the implementation of change, to obtain a competitive edge.

Making Change Happen: How HRM Professionals Deal with Tensions in Times of Organizational Change

This paper is an ethnographic study of HRM professionals who were engaged in organizational-change projects that conflicted with each other. I explore tensions that arose for HRM professionals when they were required to simultaneously attend to multiple projects—both short-term change projects and long-term strategic-change projects. Applying a practice-theory lens, this paper helps us better understand how HRM professionals make change happen. This paper looks at change management from the view of HRM professionals to investigate the resourcing practices they use to work through short-term–long-term-tensions that arise under conditions of resource scarcity. The first contribution is extending our knowledge of the HRM profession by identifying resourcing practices to deal with tensions during change-management projects. In investigating these conflicts, I identify three resourcing strategies that HRM professionals use to navigate and work through these tensions - situational reframing, organizational preframing and institutional deframing. The second contribution is adding to the HRM-as-practice literature by helping to bridge HRM practices with HRM practitioners (in this paper: professionals) and HRM praxis. By highlighting the everyday practices that HRM professionals engage in, I add to a better understanding of the intersecting elements and the situated social activities enabling HRM praxis. In doing so, I add to a more practice-oriented approach of HRM research with an increased focus on actors and their agency.

Sustainability in Industry 4.0 Business Practice: Insights From a Multinational Technology Company

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) needs new business practices, which focus on its positive impacts and sustainability. This article presents original empirical research from a multinational engineering company operating in South Africa and the challenges that area managers experience in this organization. It explores the meaning and meaning-making in times of organizational change and transformation within the South African business context. The authors present findings which present the 4IR and sustainability issues in the company and themes which are identified, such as speed, effectivity, and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). However, findings also indicate that emotions and the human touch are key in technologising work environments. The study further denotes that sustainable business practice requires the constant development of skills and knowledge of employees, as well as the systemic integration of the ecological environment and the care for the eco-system.

Mindfulness practice improves managers’ job demands-resources, psychological detachment, work-nonwork boundary control, and work-life balance – a randomized controlled trial

PurposeContemporary workplaces undergo frequent reorganizations in order to stay competitive in a working life characterized by globalization, digitalization, economic uncertainty, and ever-increased complexity. Managers are in the frontline of these challenges, leading themselves, organizations and their employees in high stress environments. This raises questions on how to support managers’ work-life sustainability, which is crucial for organizational sustainability. Mindfulness has been related to enhanced capacities to cope with challenges that are associated with organizational change. The authors evaluated short- and long-term effects of an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention in a company setting, which was going through reorganization.Design/methodology/approachForty managers (42.5% males), mean age 54.53 (SD 5.13), were randomized to the mindfulness intervention or a non-active wait-list control. Self-report data were provided on individual sustainability factors in a work context: job demands and resources, psychological detachment, i.e. possibilities for letting go of work-related thoughts during leisure, control over work-nonwork boundaries, work-life balance, and mindfulness at baseline, postintervention, and at 6-month follow-up.FindingsLinear mixed models (LMMs) analysis (all ps < 0.005 to 0.05) showed that the intervention group had a larger decrease in job demands and a smaller decrease in job resources, a larger increase in psychological detachment, work-nonwork boundary control, work-life balance, and mindfulness from baseline to postintervention when compared with the reference group. These initial effects were sustained at 6-month follow-up.Originality/valueThe study provides evidence that mindfulness practice can enhance managers’ long-term capacity to cope with challenging working conditions, and increase their work-life sustainability in times of organizational change and disruption.

‘Making a small difference in a time of seismic change’

This article describes and reflects upon the experiences of offering psychological input to help support staff during a time of organisational change in response to the pandemic.

Making change happen: How HRM professionals experience and deal with tensions in times of organizational change

Die ethnographische Studie zeigt Spannungen und Konflikte, denen HRM Verantwortliche während organisationaler Veränderungsprozesse ausgesetzt sind. Diese ergeben sich daraus, dass sich HRM Verantwortliche gleichzeitig mehreren Projekten, sowohl jener kurz- als auch langfristiger und strategischer Art, widmen. Die Studie zeigt, wie HRM Verantwortliche unter diesen Bedingungen Veränderungen ermöglichen und erläutert ‚resourcing‘ Praktiken, die bei Ressourcenknappheit zur Anwendung kommen. In konfliktbehafteten Situationen wenden HRM Verantwortliche drei ‚resourcing‘ Praktiken an, um mit den Spannungen umzugehen - ‚situational reframing‘, ‚organizational preframing‘ und ‚institutional deframing‘. Mit dem Beitrag wird eine Brücke zwischen HRM Praktiken, der HRM Verantwortlichen und der HRM Praxis geschlagen und erweitert damit unser Wissen über HRM in der Praxis.

The systems psychodynamic experiences of professionals appointed in acting capacities

Orientation: During times of organisational change and restructuring, employees are often placed in acting capacities. The unconscious experiences and systemic impact thereof have not been researched in South Africa or globally. Research purpose: The research aim was to report on the systems psychodynamic lived experiences of professional employees functioning in acting capacities for an extended period of time. Motivation for the study: Consciously, the appointment of acting staff serves the restructuring agenda by testing change endeavours. Unconsciously, they may become representatives of change and containers of systemic anxiety. Research design, approach and method: A qualitative and descriptive research approach was undertaken using five participants as collective case study. Data were gathered through interviews and hermeneutically analysed. Main findings: The manifesting themes were conflict, anxiety, task, role, boundary, authorisation and identity. Further interrogation of the data revealed the interrelated aspects of becoming containers of systemic toxicity, employment and psychological contracts being violated, being placed on hold, seduced, bullied and traumatised. Practical/managerial implications: A dysfunctional organisation experiencing anxiety about restructuring, manifesting as incompetence, emotion turmoil and systemic toxicity, (unconsciously) projected its anxiety into professionals in acting capacities, who became the containers of the toxicity. The symptoms (anxiety) as well as the cause (restructuring) need to be studied and addressed. Contribution/value add: This research illustrated how professionals in acting capacities were unconsciously used to perform the emotional labour related to change and became the unconscious containers of larger systemic dynamics, specifically about the anxiety of change and restructuring.

Changing Perceptions of Younger Leaders: The Role of the Observer and Organizational Change

As a result of demographic change and greater age diversity, it is likely that younger individuals will rise quicker to higher leadership positions, where they have to lead relatively older followers. However, existing work suggests that younger leaders may be negatively evaluated due to not matching leader prototypes, for instance in terms of lowered perceived effectiveness. We focus on this negative leadership perception bias against younger leaders. Drawing on contextual prototype activation, we suggest that specific contexts increase or decrease the leadership perception bias. On the one hand, we propose that the negative bias increases with an observer’s older age due to more negative stereotypes against younger individuals. On the other hand, organizational change (as compared with stability) might decrease the negative perception toward younger leaders due to positive stereotypes against younger individuals. Two experimental studies (N = 327 and 644, respectively) confirm that younger leaders are perceived as less prototypical and less effective compared to middle-aged and older leaders. This negative effect is attenuated in times of organizational change and strengthened for older (as compared with younger) observers. These findings point to the importance of contextual factors in the leadership perception process of younger individuals.

Ethical leadership in times of change: the role of change commitment and change information for employees’ dysfunctional resistance

PurposeIn the present study, the authors draw on social exchange theory to argue that ethical leaders offer positive exchanges in times of change and thereby encourage employees’ change commitment, which subsequently reduces their dysfunctional resistance. Drawing on uncertainty management theory, the authors further hypothesize that employees’ perception of change information (i.e. a change-specific context) not only moderates the negative relationship between employees’ change commitment and dysfunctional resistance but also the indirect relationship between ethical leadership and dysfunctional resistance via change commitment.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a two-source cross-sectional survey involving 144 matched pairs of employees and coworkers from a range of organizations.FindingsEmployees’ change commitment mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and their dysfunctional resistance. Furthermore, employees’ perception of change information not only moderates the relationship between change commitment and dysfunctional resistance but, more importantly, also the indirect effect between ethical leadership and dysfunctional resistance via change commitment. More specifically, the effect of change commitment on employees’ dysfunctional resistance as well as the indirect effect of ethical leadership on employees’ dysfunctional resistance through change commitment are stronger when there is little change information.Research limitations/implicationsEthical leadership is able to reduce employees’ dysfunctional resistance, particularly when employees have limited information regarding the change.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates how change commitment acts as a mediator and change information serves as a moderator in the ethical leadership–dysfunctional resistance relationship in the time of organizational change.

Employee championing behavior in the context of organizational change: a proposed framework for the business organizations in Bangladesh

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for ensuring employee championing behavior (ECB) during organizational change for business organizations in Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachOn the basis of previous literature, this paper proposed a framework for ensuring ECB during organizational change.FindingsThis paper proposed transformational leadership (TL), which enhances the championing behavior of the employee. In addition, valence, work engagement and trust in leadership act as potential mediators between TL and championing behavior. This paper also proposed organizational alignment (OA) as a potential moderator that influences ECB in the context of organizational change.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper highlights numerous influential factors that enhance ECB. This proposed conceptual framework will be validated by the empirical evidence in future research.Practical implicationsThis paper provides new insights for business leaders to understand the importance of ECB during organizational change. Moreover, this research underlined the effectiveness of valence, work engagement and trust in leadership and OA to nurture ECB in the time of organizational change, which helps managers of the business organizations to make efficient strategies to tackle organizational change.Originality/valueThis paper adopted Kurt Lewin’s change management theory and integrated with different factors associated with organizational change (TL, valence, work engagement, trust in leadership and OA) to propose a model to understand the mechanism of enhancing ECB in the context of change in Bangladesh’s business organizations.

The Evolution of Digital Transformations: A Literature Review

Enterprise applications are complex architectures that assist leaders of organizations to make tactical and strategic business decisions. Many of the studies in the literature review investigated the history of ERP systems, the future of enterprise applications, implementation success, ERP implementations in small and medium environments, and managerial approaches during times of organizational change. The purpose of this literature review was to analyze and synthesize previous studies as they pertain to enterprise applications.

Providing Services During Times of Change: Can Employees Maintain Their Levels of Empowerment, Work Engagement and Service Quality Through a Job Crafting Intervention?

By means of a quasi-experimental study, the effects of a tailor-made job crafting intervention for employees of a Dutch unemployment agency were evaluated. The intervention was designed to prevent a decrease in employee empowerment, work engagement and employee performance (i.e., the provision of services) due to organizational changes. Seventy-four employees received a 1-day training in which they set four job crafting goals for the subsequent weeks. After 6 weeks a reflection session was organized. Repeated measures ANOVA’s showed that the intervention prevented a decrease in employees’ feelings of empowerment. Furthermore, pre-post comparison tests showed that the control group (N = 89) experienced a significant decrease in work engagement, whereas the intervention group did not. Results showed no effect on customer-rated employee service quality. However, 1 year after the intervention, customer ratings of employee service quality were significantly higher for the intervention group compared to the control group. Although further research is needed, our results demonstrate that a job crafting intervention may be a promising tool to combat a decline in employee empowerment and work engagement during times of organizational change.

An analysis of attitudes towards management during culture shifts

Based on the principles of the Social Exchange Theory, the purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate the underlying dimensions of employees’ attitudes towards management factors during a time of organizational change with a focus on culture shift, and (2) to evaluate the relationships of these dimensions with job satisfaction and job recommendation. The data were gathered from 1807 employees of a world-wide hospitality company with 744 hotels. The online survey instrument was utilized. Analyses included factor and multiple regression. Study findings enabled the development of an “attitude towards management” scale during culture shifts. The findings of the research introduce and conceptualize the culture shift term within the hospitality industry context. Results also validate the efficacy of the Social Exchange Theory in predicting and explaining the attitudes of employees during the organizational change process. Additionally, findings suggest key strategies for hotel businesses to successfully manage an organizational change.

Organized to Cooperate: Logics and Professional Collaboration in an Italian Medical Home

Professional collaborations are influenced by Institutional logics and jurisdictional struggles at play in the specific healthcare system, especially in times of organizational change. I investigate professional collaborations pattern in an experimental medical home set up in Italy between 2013 and 2015. For this study, I conducted 36 semi-structured interviews corroborated by direct observations. My results highlight how today’s efficiency-oriented PSFs integrate instances of the former professional logics and other context-specific logics, creating an organizational-specific “mix” that guides interactions at the inter-professional level, helping to define or re- define collaborations inside these peculiar organizational forms.

Health promotion in the workplaces: fostering resilience in times of organizational change.

In 2015, a healthcare reform was undertaken in the province of Quebec (Canada). This amended system resources and structures, resulting in increased work-related stress, retirements, and sick leaves. In this study, we examined associations between stress, psychological distress, and resilience in this context. A subsample of healthcare workers (n = 1008) from the 2014-2015 Eastern Townships population-based survey was used to examine resilience, its distribution among various occupational categories, and whether it moderated associations between stress and psychological distress. Chi-square analyses were used to look for differences between variables. Logistic regressions served to assess the moderating effect of resilience in the associations between stress and psychological distress. Healthcare workers' resilience was high. Employees with higher resilience are more likely to be older, male, educated, and affluent. One third of workers reported their work as quite or extremely stressful, 56.2% rated it as their main source of stress, and 25.7% reported psychological distress. Despite higher stress, administrators had higher resilience and lower psychological distress. Support staff had higher psychological distress and lower resilience. Occupation involving social staff, technicians, and professionals had higher psychological distress despite lower stress. A positive gradient in the distribution of resilience was observed in the healthcare system hierarchy with higher resilience and lower psychological distress among higher positions (despite equal stress). Higher resilience moderates the negative association between stress and psychological distress. These results support workplace health promotion to foster employee health, particularly in the lower spectrum of the healthcare system hierarchy.