Yvonne Duits
Current position:
Accountmanager "businesiness", ABN AMRO
Thesis title:
The contribution of work antecedents for organizational readiness to change: Empirical research at Rabobank Nederland
Description:
Previous studies have studied the concepts of resistance to organizational change, openness toward change, willingness to change, and readiness for change in different contexts (Van Dam et al., 2008; Oreg, 2006; Bovey and Hede, 2001, Wanberg and Banas, 2000, Armenakis et al., 1993, Rafferty and Simons, 2006; Eby et al., 2000; Cunningham et al. 2002, Lau and Woodman, 1995; Piderit, 2000; Judge and Thoresen, 1999). This study focuses on the concept of perceived readiness for change as this concept is less broadly discussed in the literature and perceived readiness for change has a rather more positive view on change within an organization. Readiness for change implies a cognitive behavior that could lead to an act of acceptance and support. It is even argued that by creating a high level of perceived readiness for change that an act of resistance would be minimal (Armenakis et al., 1993).
The previous studies have taken different antecedents to measure the cognitive and behavioral act towards change. The two main antecedents that previous studies have measured are personality and change process related antecedents. Some of these studies included dimensions of work as an antecedent. This study aims to close the gap in developing a conceptual model which includes personality, change process related, and work related antecedents for perceived organizational readiness to change. The included antecedents in the model are all based on previous studies that found support for their relation. The inclusion of work dimensions as antecedents is rather new in the model while the personality and change process related antecedents have proven their influence in many studies. Cunningham et al. (2002) included work related antecedents such as active and passive jobs in their model as antecedent for readiness for organizational change. Thus, the aim of this study is to find evidence for the contribution of work related dimensions besides personality and change processes antecedents. This has led to the following research question:
To what extend do work related dimensions, besides personality and change process factors, contribute to perceived organizational readiness to change?
The study is conducted within a large corporate bank, namely Rabobank Netherlands. This corporate bank is going through a transformation at physical level towards a new office with different work standards and a change in the mind set of the individual. In this study two groups have been surveyed at different times. The first group was surveyed two weeks prior to the transformation to the new office and different work standards. The second group was surveyed at the beginning stage of the transformation. This group is changing in incremental steps by interventions to make them familiar with the larger transformation, namely the new office and different work standards.
The results of the study showed that different antecedents for the two groups are strongly related to perceived organizational readiness to change. The reason behind this could be that the groups are at Master Thesis Y.A.M. Duits Page 5 different stages in the change process. The first group is two weeks prior to the transformation to the new office with new work standards.
This group is closer to and aware of the upcoming transformation than the second group. Within the first group evidence is found for positive relations in personal resilience, trust in managers, and task variety in direct relation to perceived organizational readiness to change. The personal resilience implies that the employees whom perceive high levels of self-esteem and high levels of control over their life belief that the organization is ready to undergo the transformation. The more variety in tasks is found to be relevant because this gives employees the ability to better manage upcoming changes and make them more geared up to participated in the change programs and so they perceive the organization ready to change. The more accurate, timely, explaining, and sufficient the information about the change is found to be negatively associated with perceived organizational readiness to change. One explanation for this finding is that the content of the information affected the perceptions of employees about the change (Oreg, 2006). This finding is not consistent with previous research and this study has been limited to find underlying reasoning. In the second group only work antecedent, employee satisfaction, is positively related to perceived organizational readiness to change. Due to that the second sample is in the beginning stage of the upcoming changes and is only going through incremental changes via interventions less support is found for the other hypotheses.
This study aims to find evidence for the contribution of work antecedents in relation to perceived organizational readiness to change. Many previous studies measured personality and change process antecedents in relation to cognitive behavior in change. Some of these studies argued for other antecedents, for example Oreg (2006) pointed out that empowerment could be an antecedent to change acceptance. This study pioneered new methods in the organizational change literature to measure the contribution of work antecedents and found evidence for their contribution. In both of the two samples taken in this study work antecedents such as, task variety, employee satisfaction, and empowerment, were found to be positively related to perceived readiness to change. This finding does not imply that the personality and change process antecedents are irrelevant as some of them are also shown to be strongly related, namely personal resilience, received information and trust in managers. Based on this study several conclusions can be made. Future research in explaining perceived organizational readiness for change should include all three kinds of antecedents: personality, change process antecedents, work antecedents. The research model is measurement in two sample whom different in change context. The difference in change context made it unable to generalize the research model. Therefore the findings in association in both the sample should only be reflected on the sample group. To conclude the unexpected finding of the negative association between information about the change and perceived organizational readiness for change should be further explored.
For the complete pdf version of this thesis click
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2008 - Yvonne Duits
