A Change Management Perspective on Public Sector

中图分类号：F062.6 论文编号：10006LB1408202

博士学位论文

变革管理视角下的公共部门改革 —以伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区公共部门组织为例作者姓名 Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad 学科专业 Management Science & Engineering 指导教师 Zhichao Cheng 培养院系 Economics and Management

A Change Management Perspective on Public Sector Reform: The Case of Public Organizations in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

A Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management

Candidate: Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad Supervisor: Professor Cheng Zhichao

School of Economics and Management Beihang University, Beijing, China

中图分类号：F062.6 论文编号：10006LB1408202

博

士

学

位

论

文

变革管理视角下的公共部门改革 —以伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区公共部门组织为例

作者姓名

Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad

申请学位级别管理学博士

指导教师姓名程志超

职称

教授

学习时间自 2014 年 9 月 17 日

起至 2018 年 6 月 30 日止

论文提交日期 2018 年 4 月 10 日

论文答辩日期 2018 年 5 月 30 日

学位授予单位北京航空航天大学

学位授予日期

年

月

日

关于学位论文的独创性声明本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在指导教师指导下独立进行研究工作所取得的成果，论文中有关资料和数据是实事求是的。尽我所知，除文中已经加以标注和致谢外，本论文不包含其他人已经发表或撰写的研究成果，也不包含本人或他人为获得北京航空航天大学或其它教育机构的学位或学历证书而使用过的材料。与我一同工作的同志对研究所做的任何贡献均已在论文中作出了明确的说明。若有不实之处，本人愿意承担相关法律责任。

学位论文作者签名：

Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad

日期：2018 年 05 月 31 日

学位论文使用授权书本人完全同意北京航空航天大学有权使用本学位论文（包括但不限于其印刷版和电子版），使用方式包括但不限于：保留学位论文，按规定向国家有关部门（机构）送交学位论文，以学术交流为目的赠送和交换学位论文，允许学位论文被查阅、借阅和复印，将学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存学位论文。保密学位论文在解密后的使用授权同上。

学位论文作者签名： Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad

日期： 2018 年 06 月 06

日

指导教师签名：

日期： 2018 年 06

日

月 06

摘

要

组织员工对组织变革的回应一直是学者和从业者关注的问题。现存的文献认为组织雇员对其所在组织（公共部门和私人部门）变革的态度和反应是决定组织变革成功与否的重要性因素。因此，了解和探究组织员工对变革的态度和反应并在可能的情况下采取措施激励员工主动接受变革极为重要。在这篇论文中, 我调查了伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区公共组织变革进程中公共部门雇员对变革反应的影响因素。具体来讲, 我探究了变革内容、变革情景、变革过程、领导力和个人特征对公共部门雇员的“接受变革积极性”的影响。首先, 我借鉴组织变革和公共管理领域的相关研究，对本文的主要概念进行了界定并实证检验了影响公共部门员工变革情感承诺前因变量的模型。其次, 我借鉴员工主动性、公共管理以及更广泛的组织研究建构了员工“接受变革积极性”模型。在第一个研究中,我以五个公共部门的员工为例，通过自填式问卷获取数据，探究了影响雇员变革情感承诺的前因因素。在第二个研究中, 我借助自填式问卷获得了来自另一个样本的数据, 开发并验证了新建构的员工“接受变革积极性”概念。第三个研究以伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区两个公共组织员工的数据检验了员工“接受变革积极性” 的预测变量及其对工作效果的影响。研究结果显示变革过程、变革情景和领导力对员工变革情感承诺的实证性支持，源于西方国家的变革理论在非西方情景下下的伊斯兰文化（伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区）中得到了验证。结果还表明，员工“接受变革积极性”不同于传统学者和从业者用来衡量员工对变革反应的概念。这篇论文的研究结果表明在适宜的变革情景和条件下，组织员工会积极的应对组织变革进而确保变革的成功实施。

关键词：组织变革, 变革承诺, 公共部门, 领导, 积极性, 伊拉克库尔德斯坦地区

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Abstract The role that change recipients play in response to organizational change has been a perennial concern for scholars and practitioners. The extant literature posits that one of the primary determinants of the extent to which organizational change efforts can succeed is how change recipients respond to change efforts both in public as well as private sector organizations. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to understand the circumstances under which change recipients respond positively, and if possible, proactivity to organizational change efforts initiated by others. In this dissertation, I investigate the factors and actors that affect change recipients’ responses to change initiatives implemented in public organizations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. More specifically, I investigate the concurrent role of change content, context, process, leadership and individual attributes in understanding employees’ reactions to change. Firstly, I draw on organizational change as well as public management research to conceptualize and empirically test a model of the antecedents of change recipients’ affective commitment to change. Secondly, I draw on employee proactivity, public management as well as broader organizational research to model the change recipient proactivity framework. In Study 1, I use a cross-sectional survey questionnaire design to investigate the antecedents of employees’ affective commitment to change based on a sample of public servants working in five public sector organizations. In Study 2, I collect data from another sample to develop and validate the emerging concept of change recipient proactivity scale. Study 3 examines the predictors and work-related outcomes of change recipient proactivity based on another sample of employees working in two public organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The findings provide empirical support for the role of the change process, context and leadership in understanding employees’ affective commitment to change and that most of the change theories originated in the Western countries are valid in non-western and Islamic settings like the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Results also indicate that change recipient proactivity is distinct from the more traditional constructs usually used by scholars and practitioners to measure employees’ reactions to change. Rather than merely being passive recipients of change, the findings of this dissertation indicate that, given the right dispositions and contexts, change ii

recipients can engage in proactive and constructive behaviors in response to change initiative to ensure successful implementation of the change. Key words: Organizational change, change commitment, public sector, leadership, proactivity, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

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Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Change Management Perspective On Public Sector Reform ......................................... 3 1.3 Statement Of Research Problem ........................................................................................... 4 1.4 Objectives Of The Study ....................................................................................................... 8 1.5 Research Questions ............................................................................................................... 9 1.6 Theoretical, Methodological And Practical Value Of This Dissertation ............................ 10 1.7 Overview Of The Research Setting ..................................................................................... 12 1.7.1 Higher Education Sector In Kurdistan....................................................................................................15 1.7.2 The Ministry Of Higher Education And Scientific Research And The Change Process ....................16

1.8 Organization Of The Dissertation ....................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: Literature Review .................................................................................................... 19 2.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 19 2.2 The Taxonomy Of Organizational Change Management Variables ................................... 19 2.3. Outcome Variables ............................................................................................................. 20 2.3.1. An Overview Of Employees’ Attitudes Toward And Behavioral Support For Change ....................22

2.4. Antecedents Of Change Recipients’ Attitudes Towards Organizational Change. ............. 29 2.4.1 Change Content ........................................................................................................................................30 2.4.2. Change Context .......................................................................................................................................34 2.4.3. Change Process .......................................................................................................................................37 2.4.5 Leadership: ...............................................................................................................................................42 Can Leaders In Public Organizations Make A Difference During Times Of Change? .............................. 42 2.4.6 Individual Characteristics ........................................................................................................................45

2.5 A Research Agenda For Change Management In Public Sector Organizations ................. 47 Chapter 3: Research Methodology ............................................................................................ 51 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 51 3.2. Review Of Research Philosophies ..................................................................................... 51 3.2.1. Research Philosophy...............................................................................................................................51

3.3 Research Approaches .......................................................................................................... 56 3.3.1 Deduction: Theory Testing......................................................................................................................56 3.3.2 Induction: Theory Building .....................................................................................................................57 3.3.3 Mixed Research Approaches...................................................................................................................58 3.3.4. Research Approach Of The Dissertation ...............................................................................................58

3.4 Research Design .................................................................................................................. 58 3.4.1 Quantitative Research Design .................................................................................................................59

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3.4.2 Qualitative Research Design ...................................................................................................................60 3.4.3 Mixed Methods Design ...........................................................................................................................62

3.5 Research Methods ............................................................................................................... 62 3.5.1 Quantitative Methods ..............................................................................................................................62 3.5.2 Qualitative Methods.................................................................................................................................63 3.5.3 Mixed Methods ........................................................................................................................................63

3.6 Overview And Design Of The Two Empirical Studies ...................................................... 65 3.6.1 Chapter 4: Antecedents Of Employees’ Affective Commitment To Change In Public Sector Organizations .....................................................................................................................................................65 3.6.2 Chapter 5: Predictors And Work-Related Outcomes Of Change Recipient Proactivity In Public Organizations .....................................................................................................................................................67

Chapter 4: Antecedents Of Employees’ Affective Commitment To Change In Public Sector Organizations .............................................................................................................................. 71 4.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 71 4.2 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 72 4.3 Background Of The Work Setting ...................................................................................... 74 4.4 Theoretical Background And Hypotheses Development .................................................... 76 4.4.1 Change Content ........................................................................................................................................77 4.4.2 Change Context ........................................................................................................................................78 4.4.3 Change Process ........................................................................................................................................80 4.4.4 Leadership ................................................................................................................................................81

4.5 Method ................................................................................................................................ 82 4.5.1 Measures ...................................................................................................................................................84

4.6 Results ................................................................................................................................. 85 4.6.1 Descriptive Statistics And Correlations..................................................................................................85 4.6.2 Hypothesis Testing ..................................................................................................................................86

4.7 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 89 4.8 Conclusion........................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 5: Predictors And Work-Related Outcomes Of Change Recipient Proactivity In Public Organizations .................................................................................................................. 95 5.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 95 5.2 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 96 5.3 Theoretical Background And Hypotheses Development................................................... 99 Recipients’ Reactions To Organizational Change ................................................................... 99 5.3.1 A Model Of Change Recipient Proactivity ..........................................................................................100 5.3.2 Individual-Level Factors .......................................................................................................................101 5.3.3 Context-Level Variables........................................................................................................................105 5.3.4 Potential Outcomes Of Change Proactivity .........................................................................................108

5.4 Study 1............................................................................................................................... 109 v

5.4.1 Measures .................................................................................................................................................110

5.4.2 Results ............................................................................................................................ 111 5.4.2.1 Exploratory Factor Analysis ..............................................................................................................111

5.5 Study 2............................................................................................................................... 116 5.5.1 Method ....................................................................................................................................................116 5.5.2 Participants .............................................................................................................................................117 5.5.3 Measures .................................................................................................................................................117

5.6 Analyses ............................................................................................................................ 119 5.6.1 Results ....................................................................................................................................................119

5.7 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 124 5.8 Implications For Research And For Practice .................................................................... 125 5.9 Limitations And Directions For Future Research ............................................................. 127 Chapter 6: General Discussion And Conclusions .................................................................. 129 6.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 129 6.2 Reflecting On The Two Research Questions .................................................................... 129 6.3 Reflection .......................................................................................................................... 136 6.3.1 Theoretical Reflection ..................................................................................................................... 136 6.3.2 Methodological Reflection .............................................................................................................. 138

6.4 Practical Implications ........................................................................................................ 141 References .................................................................................................................................. 143 Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 158 Appendix A: ............................................................................................................................ 158 Appendix B. ............................................................................................................................ 165 Appendix C. ............................................................................................................................ 171 Appendix D. ............................................................................................................................ 175 Research Outcomes Of Phd Study Period .............................................................................. 176 Author Biography ..................................................................................................................... 178 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... 180

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List of Figures

Figure 2. 1 Unfreezing the status quo. .......................................................................................... 39 Figure 2. 2 Theoretical framework: The relationship between antecedents and change recipients’ reactions to change in public organizations .................................................................................. 48 Figure 3. 1 Modelling the relationship between change content, context, process, leadership and employees’ affective commitment to change. .............................................................................. 67 Figure 3. 2 Conceptual model of predictors and outcomes of recipients’ change proactivity...... 69 Figure 5. 1 Conceptual model of predictors and outcomes of recipients’ change proactivity.... 101

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List of Tables Table 3. 1 The matrix of research paradigms, designs, approaches and methods ........................ 64 Table 4. 1 Means, Standard Deviations, Reliabilities and Correlations ....................................... 87 Table 4. 2 Multicollinearity Diagnostics for Independent Variables ............................................ 88 Table 4. 3 Hierarchical regression analyses for variables predicting affective commitment to change ........................................................................................................................................... 89 Table 5. 1 Total Variance Explained .......................................................................................... 112 Table 5. 2 Factor Loadings ......................................................................................................... 113 Table 5. 3 Total Variance Explained .......................................................................................... 113 Table 5. 4 Factor Loadings ......................................................................................................... 114 Table 5. 5 Results of Factor Analysis of the Hypothesized Measurement Model with Change Recipient Proactivity, Affective Commitment to Change, Individual Readiness for Change, and Proactive Personality .................................................................................................................. 115 Table 5. 6 Correlations between change recipient proactivity and outcome variables ............... 116 Table 5. 7 Descriptive statistics for the variables in the study.................................................... 120 Table 5. 8 Correlation Matrix ..................................................................................................... 121 Table 5. 9 Summary of hierarchical multiple regression analyses for variables predicting change proactivity ................................................................................................................................... 123

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x

List of Abbreviations ACC

Affective commitment to change

BC CI

Biased-corrected confidence intervals

CFA

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

CFI

Comparative Fit Index

CRP

Change recipient proactivity

df

Degrees of freedom

EFA

Exploratory Factor Analysis

HE

Higher Education

IMF

International Monetary Fund

KRG

Kurdistan Regional Government

KRI

Kurdistan Region of Iraq

MHESR

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific research

MSREA

Mean Square Root Error Approximation

OCB

Organizational citizenship behavior

PP

Proactive personality

PSM

Prosocial motivation

IRFC

Individual readiness for change

SD

Standard deviation

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BUAA Academic Dissertation for Doctoral Degree

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background In the past few decades, there has been a growing recognition of the need for reform and change in public sector organizations. Since the 1980s, tighter budgets, fluctuating financial markets, central government decisions, safety standards, legislation and information technology and more turbulent environments have increasingly prompted public sector organizations to initiate and execute changes in the governance, structure, design and quality of services delivered to citizens (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Kuipers et al., 2014). The reforms and changes initiated by many governments around the world have transformed the management of public organizations in both developed and developing countries. Since the mid-1980s, the traditional model of public administration, which was dominant for most of the twentieth century, changed to a more flexible, market-based form of public management (Hughes, 2012). By the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, a new model of public sector management had emerged in the developed and many emerging countries. Although the new public sector management model was referred to by a number of different names, including: ‘new public management

-NPM’

(Hood,

1991);

‘post-bureaucratic

paradigm’

(Barzelay,

1992);

‘entrepreneurial government’ (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992); or ‘managerialism’ (Pollitt, 1993); they all principally point to the same phenomenon. That is; ongoing modernization, improving public management, reducing budgets and spendings, privatization, and marketization of public sector organizations. In other words, the reforms and changes that were introduced by many governments around the world through public management reforms have mainly focused on the enhancement of efficiency and effectiveness of public goods and services (García-Morales, JiménezBarrionuevo, & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, 2012), and making public organizations more adaptive and flexible to the changing environment similar to their counterparts in the private sector. Public management reform is defined as deliberate attempts by political as well as senior administrative leaders to change structural, cultural or processes features of “public sector organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to run better” (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011, p. 2). To date, public sector reform has been studied from a number of different, yet related, theoretical standpoints. For instance, Olsen (2009) has examined public sector reform from an institutional perspective which is considered as one of the most popular perspectives on public 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

management reform. Institutional theorists claim that rather than deliberately initiating and implementing reform and change to improve efficiency and effectiveness; reform and change is imposed by the organizations’ external environment (DiMaggio & Powell, 2000; Olsen & March, 1989). Other scholars have examined public sector reform from an instrumental perspective. The instrumental perspective on reform views public organizations as tools for political leaders and senior administrators (T. Christensen, Lægreid, Roness, & Røvik, 2007). This perspective is usually concerned with reforms connected to structural features of public organizations. Additionally, the goals and objectives of the reform and change process are defined and formulated by political leaders in public organizations. The political leaders believe that successful implementation of the reform policy and change programs will “depend on them having political control over what happens to the programmes and initiatives” (T. Christensen et al., 2007, p. 13). Although these different perspectives offer interesting insights about reform and change in the public sector, they all focus on reform and change at the national or sector level. In other words, none of these perspectives offers insights on how change is implemented and managed in single public organizations. A perspective that highlights the challenges facing reforms and organizational change is the change management perspective (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Burke, 2013). While reform policies and programs are often initiated by elected or politically appointed officials and executives, the actual changes in public organizations is executed by middle and first line managers as well as front-line employees. The change management perspective postulates that reform design should, and could be, separated from change implementation; after those responsible for the reform designs the reform, the task of implementing or translating the reform should be turned over to those who are experienced in implementing it in the most effective and efficient way possible (Behn, 1998). In other words, once political and senior administrative leaders promulgate the reform, making the actual change happen is left for employees at the middle and lower level of management. Therefore, change is defined as what actually happens to the structural, cultural or processes of public sector organizations or attitudes and behaviors of employees (T. Christensen et al., 2007). Put it differently, it is the process of translating the reforms promulgated by political and senior administrative leaders into practice by lower-level managers and public servants as recipients of change. Political and senior administrative leaders can try to push public organizations to initiate reforms, but if middle managers and lower level public 2


servants (change recipients)1 are not able to translate these reforms into practice, the chances of failure will be high (Longo & Cristofoli, 2008). Therefore, it is important here to note that not all reforms lead to actual changes in public organizations. In many instances, the reforms designed by policy makers sound promising from the outset; however, since public organizations are reluctant to introduce them, the reforms are not implemented and remain reforms on paper (T. Christensen et al., 2007). Additionally, it is also important to note that reforms are broad in scope and are usually designed by political and senior administrative leaders through a significant political process (Longo & Cristofoli, 2008). On the contrary, change management deals with the internal management and implementation of organizational change or transformations. In this dissertation, my focus is on the internal change management processes of single public sector organizations and not on the reforms on the national or sector level. In other words, the issue that this dissertation investigates is how the changes that are introduced by senior public managers in single public organizations are perceived by change recipients and the circumstances under which change recipients respond positively, and if possible, proactively to these organizational change efforts. The reason for focusing on my attention on change recipients’ responses is because the effectiveness of any reform or change effort depends heavily on the change recipients’ attitudes and change agents’ ability to effectively design, plan, implement the organizational change (Longo & Cristofoli, 2008). In the section that follows, I will delineate in more detail the role of change recipients during times of change.

1.2 The change management perspective on public sector reform The change management perspective posits that change recipients are not automatons, purely implementing reforms promulgated from above by policy makers. Rather, this perspective suggests that change recipients are intelligent, that they understand the problems their organizations are charged with alleviating, that they have useful ideas about how to fix those problems, and that, if given the opportunity, they can swiftly translate those ideas into effective action (Behn, 1998). Under change management paradigm, change recipients are (supposed to be) empowered to and participate in the decision making process.

In this dissertation, I use these terms “public servants, change recipients, employees, individuals, front-line employees, street-level bureaucrats and organizational members” interchangeably. 1

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The change management perspective contends that not much will change without the support of change recipients (Bartunek, Rousseau, Rudolph, & DePalma, 2006; Herold, Fedor, & Caldwell, 2007). In other words, the change management perspective suggests that to have any effects, reform and change initiatives must “ultimately result in changes in the work processes of public organizations and in the attitudes and behavior of employees who work in these organizations” (van der Voet, Kuipers, & Groeneveld, 2016, p. 121). As a result of the reform and change initiatives, organizational members are supposed to act, behave and perform their tasks differently. Organizational changes are supposed to drive employees out of their comfort zones (Kotter, 1995), and employees are expected to abandon familiar behaviors and structures and actually substitute these with new ones which are in line with the mission of the change efforts (Van der Vegt, Smyth, & Vandenberghe, 2000). Such a notion is supported by Schneider, Gunnarson, and Niles-Jolly (1994) claim who argued that “If people do not change, there is no organizational change” (p. 7), and that “change persists over the long term only when individuals alter their on-the-job behaviors in appropriate ways” (M. Choi, 2011, p. 480). Indeed, other scholars state that “it is not possible for organizations to change in meaningful ways unless employees change—people must think differently, they must believe differently, and they must behave differently” (Woodman & Dewett, 2004, p. 32). Therefore, it can be argued that one of the primary determinants of the success and effectiveness of most organizational change efforts, among other factors, is employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward organizational change efforts.

1.3 Statement of Research Problem Although organizational change happens with increasing magnitude and frequency in both public and private organizations (Coram & Burnes, 2001), a review of the literature indicates that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Burnes, 2011; Kotter, 1995). Failure of organizational change efforts might have multiple causes, few are as critical as employees’ attitudes and responses towards change (Bartunek et al., 2006; M. Choi, 2011). In particular, research has posited that many change initiatives fail because change agents often underestimate the influential role that organizational members’ attitudes play in determining change outcomes (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993; J. Van der Voet, B. S. Kuipers, & S. Groeneveld, 2015b).

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If we agree with the view that employees’ attitudes toward change is salient in determining change outcomes, then, what factors and actors affect employees’ attitudes toward change? Since Kurt Lewin’s early work on organizational change in the 1940s, scholars and practitioners have identified five change-related factors which are common in all organizational change efforts and are suggested to affect employees’ attitude towards change. First: Change recipient characteristics; which focuses on the characteristics of and differences among change recipients that predict and help explain their attitudes and behaviors towards change (Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011). Second: Change context; which refers to the existing internal and external conditions that influence organizational effectiveness (Self, Armenakis, & Schraeder, 2007). Third: Change content; which is concerned with the type or substance of the change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Fourth: Change process; which describes the interventions and processes that are involved in the execution of a change initiative and employees’ responses to such efforts (van der Voet, 2014b). Fifth: Leadership; which focuses on the influence of leadership in promoting a particular change effort (Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008). Currently, a significant body of research is available that acknowledges the importance of these factors in predicting and shaping employees’ attitudes and behavior toward organizational change. However, a review of the literature shows that knowledge of organizational change management is limited in several ways: First, despite the relevance of change recipient characteristics, content, process, context, and leadership in organizational change, variables from each of these antecedent categories have been considered separately, having distinct impacts on employees’ attitudes towards change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Oreg et al., 2011). On the individual basis, for instance, leadership factor has been investigated by Herold et al. (2008) and van der Voet (2014b), process factors have been investigated by Rafferty and Restubog (2010) and Van der Voet (2014a), but not much research is available combining all these change factors. Caldwell, Roby‐Williams, Rush, and Ricke‐Kiely (2009) investigated the influence of context, process and individual differences factors on nurses’ readiness for change. Walker, Armenakis, and Bernerth (2007), Devos, Buelens, and Bouckenooghe (2007), Self et al. (2007) have combined content, context and process factors, and Rogiest, Segers, and van Witteloostuijn (2015) have combined process and context. Thus, the literature lacks a broad and systematic portrayal of how the various change antecedents simultaneously affect employees’ attitude towards change. Therefore, such a broad consideration 5


of the topic is necessary “if we are to more fully understand the employees’ attitudes towards organizational change” (Oreg, Bartunek, & Lee, 2014, p. 14). Second, a number of studies have postulated that particular some features of public sector organizations make the organizational change management in public organizations different from the private sector organizations (R. T. By, 2009). However, most empirical research related to organizational change has focused on private sector organizations (Coram & Burnes, 2001; Van der Voet, 2014a), with minimal attention to public sector organizations. For instance, Boyne (2002) argued that public organizations are different from private organizations in that they (public organizations) are more bureaucratic and managers in public organizations have a weaker commitment to their organizations and are less materialistic compared to managers in private organizations. Despite these differences, there is not much research available which looks at change management in public organizations. Third, rather than focusing on a more micro-level and individual perspective on change, research concerning public management reform and organizational change has traditionally focused on change at the national or sector level (i.e., macro-level) (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). Hence, scholarly work focusing on change in public organizations has mainly been dominated by a macro- or systems-oriented focus. For instance, Oreg, Michel, and By (2013) indicated that majority of studies on organizational change has taken on a macro perspective, “focusing on the strategic process of managing organizational change” (p.3). Hence, although ensuring that change recipients have positive attitudes toward and supporting behaviors of change is indispensable for successful implementation and sustainability of organizational change; attention to microprocesses in public sector organizations seems dearth (Kuipers et al., 2014). Fourth, empirical research related to the management of organizational change has been, to a large extent, addressed in Western, non-Islamic countries, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western countries (Yousef, 2000), and has only rarely been representative of eastern countries, or a Middle Eastern country like Kurdistan- the research setting of this dissertation. A number of studies have indicated that organizational change is situational; that is, what works in one country, organization or culture may well produce failure in a different situation (Jacobs, van Witteloostuijn, & Christe-Zeyse, 2013). Despite the differences that might exist among different cultures, a recent review of the literature on change management research in the

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public sector found that the majority of the studies devoted to investigating change management issues have a U.S./Anglo-Saxon origin (Kuipers et al., 2014). Fifth, another shortcoming in the organizational change literature is that change recipients’ attitudes toward change have been represented by different constructs such as resistance to change (Coch & French Jr, 1948), commitment to change (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002), readiness for change (Armenakis et al., 1993), willingness to change (Metselaar, 1997), openness to change (Wanberg & Banas, 2000), and cynicism about organizational change (Reichers, Wanous, & Austin, 1997). Although these constructs have somehow distinct meanings and foci, they are similar to one another in that they all focus on the valence of change recipients’ responses (Oreg & Goldenberg, 2015); or, “an individual’s overall positive or negative evaluative judgment of a specific change initiative” (J. H. Choi, 2013, p. 480). Another similarity among these constructs is that they all reflect employees’ passive reactions toward organizational change and largely ignore the degree of activation (i.e., activity versus passivity) involved in recipients’ responses (Oreg et al., 2014). That is, regardless of whether the attitudinal construct used is resistance, readiness, openness, willingness or commitment, the focus of researchers has been almost exclusively on the valence of recipients’ responses (Oreg, Bartunek, Lee, & Do, 2018). Although studying the valence of recipients’ responses to organizational change is important, in this dissertation I argue that the extant research on organizational change has been limited by an overly narrow conceptualization of recipients’ responses to change events. It is believed that such a narrow conceptualization of recipients’ responses to change events is not sufficient for ensuring successful implementation of change initiatives. Today’s organizations, more than ever before, need employees who are; first: active participants at work rather than passive implementers of orders from above (Crant, 2000), and second: enthusiastic to challenge the current state of their organizations to bring about constructive change. Hence, in this study, I go beyond the existing literature by focusing on a form of recipients’ response to change efforts that have been largely neglected. Following the theoretical work of Oreg et al. (2018) and Oreg et al. (2014), I refer to this type of response as recipients’ change proactivity. Although Oreg et al. (2018) and Oreg et al. (2014) has emphasized on the significant role of change recipient proactivity, to date there is no valid and reliable scale to measure the construct. In most previous studies, employees have been considered as being resistant to or passive recipients of change; and to overcome the likely resistance from employees, change leaders must 7


exercise social influence in favor of “building a powerful coalition” (Kotter, 1995), for failure to win over potential opponents can impede change events (Cyert & March, 1963; Stevenson, Pearce, & Porter, 1985). On the contrary, in this study I argue that employees are not always passive actors in their workplaces and that given the right conditions and personal characteristics, change recipients can engage in proactive behaviors in response to organizations change efforts (Change proactivity is discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 in more detail).

1.4 Objectives of the Study The purpose and need for this dissertation have arisen from the ever-increasing importance of employees’ attitudes and behavioral responses toward organizational change. To date, many studies have been conducted in different types of organizations on organizational change in developed as well as developing countries. However, as mentioned above, there is a lack of comprehensive research about organizational change in public organizations in developing countries in general, and in Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular. Although public organizations in Kurdistan are currently going under major structural changes, there is no research done in this area to date. Thus, examining the attitudes and perceptions of employees toward organizational change and identifying the factors that can influence employees’ responses to organizational change in Kurdistan might well benefit the authorities by making them aware of these issues in their public organizations in this part of the world. Therefore, following the discussion of voids in the organizational change management literature in the public sector and in an attempt to move beyond the existing literature which has fragmented our view of antecedents and possible outcomes of employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward change efforts in public sector organizations, this study aims: 1. To respond to the call by Pettigrew, Woodman, and Cameron (2001) and Kuipers et al. (2014) to bring together and examine the simultaneous effects of individual characteristics, context, content, process and leadership on employees’ attitude toward change. Such a concurrent examination of these potential factors would help us to have a more complete picture of factors affecting employees’ attitude towards change. This is especially true as mentioned above, much is known about distinct antecedents of employees’ attitude towards change, but “we are missing the big picture” (Oreg et al., 2014). By concurrently examining

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the different factors which affect employees’ attitudes towards change, this study adds new understandings to an area of research where empirical work is limited. 2. To account for the specific context of public organizations in a non-western and Islamic context. 3. To develop a valid and reliable measurement scale for change recipient proactivity construct. Because change recipient proactivity is a new construct, there is no scale to measure this variable. Therefore, I will engage in a multistage process to develop and validate a psychometrically sound measurement scale using advanced scale development techniques. Initially, I will conduct an extensive literature review to generate some items for the construct. Later, I will collect data to provide preliminary evidence for the validity of change recipient proactivity. Based on another sample, I will conduct both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to provide further support for the validity of the scale and identify the extent to which this construct is different from other variables such as commitment to change, readiness for change, willingness to change and openness to change. 4. After developing and validating the change recipient proactivity scale, this dissertation aims to empirically examining a series of possible antecedents as well as work-related outcomes of recipients’ proactive responses to organizational changes. By doing so, this dissertation is expected to go beyond the existing literature on change recipients’ responses to change efforts in that it examines an area of research where theoretical research is scant while empirical research, to the best of our knowledge, is absent.

1.5 Research questions To achieve the aim and objectives of this dissertation, the following research questions were explored and answered: What are the factors and actors that affect change recipients’ responses to change in public organizations? This leading, general research question is divided into two more specific answerable questions as follows:

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1. What are the antecedents of employees’ attitudes toward change in non-western, Islamic public organizations? Are western theories of organizational change management valid in non-western settings? 2. Under what circumstances do change recipients step outside the boundaries of passivity and respond positively and proactively to change efforts initiated by others?

Each of these research questions will be investigated separately to ensure that answers are provided for each research question in a clear and concise manner. In Chapter 4, I will present an empirical study to investigate this research question, while in Chapter 5 I will present two complementary empirical studies to answer the second research question and meet the fourth and fifth research objectives mentioned above.

1.6 Theoretical, methodological and practical value of this dissertation Having introduced the dissertation’s topic and its objectives, the next step is to discuss the relevance of studying change management in public sector organizations. I structure this in three parts: theoretical, methodological, and practical value. However, before I discuss this dissertation’s theoretical, methodological and practical values, it is important to mention that in this dissertation I take an interdisciplinary approach; where I draw on different bodies of literature. An interdisciplinary approach is chosen because it meshes well with the interdisciplinary nature of the subject being examined: change recipients’ attitudes and behavioral responses to change efforts in public sector organizations. In writing this dissertation, I used insights from the following bodies of literature: -

1. Organizational change management (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Lewin, 1947b), 2. Leadership and management (Bass & Riggio, 2006; Daft, 2012), 3. Public management (T. Christensen et al., 2007; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011), 4. Employee proactivity (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Clarke, Ellett, Bateman, & Rugutt, 1996), and 5. Public service motivation (Perry & Wise, 1990).

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The dissertation adds to the contemporary management of organizational change research by framing the experiences that change recipients has with the reform they have to implement in a coherent framework. Such an objective is accomplished by using literature reviews, document analyses and quantitative scale development to build a valid and reliable measurement scale for change recipient proactivity. The building and formation of such a framework are theoretically original in the sense that, although prominent organizational change management scholars have emphasized the crucial role of change recipients in times of change, not many have developed and tested a comprehensive framework for analyzing this topic. This is in line with arguments of Oreg et al. (2014) who notes that “…...we have many bits and pieces of knowledge about why change recipients respond to change as they do………we are missing the big picture. A richer understanding of recipients’ responses to change requires consideration of ways in which these categories are interrelated” (p.7). In an attempt to fill this void in the literature, this dissertation brings together and integrates the literature on public and private sector organizations and offers a new framework for understanding employees’ attitudes towards organizational change. Using the building blocks suggested by (Oreg et al., 2011), Kuipers et al. (2014) and Pettigrew et al. (2001), I build a conceptual model which includes relationships between change recipient characteristics, change context, change content, change process, leadership and employees’ attitudes toward change in public sector organizations. These five change categories are often stand-alone subjects in the literature. A number of researchers have combined two to three change categories (Caldwell et al., 2009; Rogiest et al., 2015; Self et al., 2007; Van der Voet et al., 2015b; Walker et al., 2007), but connecting all of the five change categories has remained a new research territory to explore. By doing so, I provide a compilation of the variables used in investigating employees’ responses to organizational change efforts. This will help scholars and practitioners understand what makes the implementation of the change successful. The second important significance of this study lies in its quantitative approach, used primarily in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. In Chapter 5 I will develop and validate a measurement scale for change recipient proactivity using scale development techniques (DeVellis, 2016). By doing so, scholars and practitioners can use the scales instead of developing ad hoc scales, to significantly improve the quality of their research and practice. Third, the dissertation will contribute to the theory of organizational change and employee proactivity through examining the circumstances under which change recipients engage in proactive and agentic behaviors in response to change 11


initiatives by empirically testing a series of possible antecedents as well as work-related outcomes of recipients’ proactive responses to organizational changes. By doing so, this dissertation is anticipated to go beyond the extant literature on change recipients’ responses to change efforts in that it examines an area of research where theoretical research is scant while empirical research, to the best of my knowledge, is absent. After the start of the economic crisis facing Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 2014, the government was forced to take economic recovery measures and begin cutbacks in public expenditure. To date, many public organizations in Kurdistan have been faced with many changes to deal with cutbacks and tightening budgets. In times like these, the importance of organizational change management techniques and how to deal with change recipients’ reactions is heightened. Understanding how change recipients’ attitudes and behaviors influence the implementation of change efforts and what factors affect change recipients to react to change efforts in different ways is critical in achieving the government’s desired outcomes. Therefore, the findings of this dissertation can be used as practical tools by public managers in various public organizations in the Kurdistan Region to manage and increase the successful implementation change initiatives. In Chapter 4 and 5, the contributions of this dissertation to the body of literature are discussed in more detail.

1.7 Overview of the research setting This research was conducted in the Iraqi Kurdistan’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) at the outset of large-scale organizational changes. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is a constitutionally recognized semi-independent region located in the north of Iraq. Kurdistan has its own regional government –known as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Parliament, President, Judicial system and flag. Its government, which is based in the capital Erbil (Hawler), has the right to exercise executive, legislative and judicial powers under the Iraqi constitution. The Iraqi constitution defines the Kurdistan as a federal Region of Iraq. KRG has a parliamentary democracy with a regional assembly consisting of 111 seats. Kurdistan is the only federal region in Iraq which has gained official international recognition. With its four governorates, Kurdistan’s original population is about 5.3 million, which makes up 17-19% of Iraq’s total population. Kurdistan has a young population with an estimated 36% of the population being under the age of 14; 60% being between 15-64 years and the 12


remaining 4% is above 65 years. The Region is comprised of diverse ethnic and religious groups; it includes ethnic Assyrian Christians, Turkmens, Arabs, Armenians, Yezidis, Shabaks and Mandeans next to the Kurdish majority. Unlike the rest of Iraq which uses Arabic as the official language followed by the Kurdish language; the official language in Kurdistan is Kurdish, followed by Arabic. Islam is the dominant religion, which is adhered to by over 95% of its inhabitants. Christianity and Yezidism are adhered to and also Assyrian and Chaldean Christians make up a large minority. Kurdistan was liberated from Saddam Hussein’s atrocities in 1991. Since then, although it has remained part of Iraq, Kurdistan essentially has created a protostate of its own and governs its public institutions, without much interference from the federal government in Baghdad. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Kurdistan has been largely immune to the insecurity and conflict witnessed elsewhere in the rest of Iraq. From 2004 to 2014, the KRG received 17% of Iraq’s total revenue, which was estimated at $13 billion in 2013. This allowed KRG to enjoy an unparalleled economic boom and revitalize its public sector after years of internal wars and international economic sanctions. The ten-year security, economic growth and prosperity allowed the KRG to promote an open-door economic policy and attract foreign investments in both oil and non-oil sectors- Non-oil sectors include, but not limited to: construction, healthcare, education, transportation and information and communications technology (ICT). The KRG, along with national and international companies, invested heavily in all sectors to rebuild the region after decades of war and embargoes by both Saddam Hussein and the international community. From 2003 to mid-2014, Kurdistan achieved remarkable development in the building of infrastructure and consolidating the foundations of governance. All these developments led many to call Kurdistan “the other Iraq”. However, starting from the mid-2014, Kurdistan’s economic growth plunged into three simultaneous crises; in addition to an already existing chronic problem: 1. The first one was driven by disputes over the management of oil wells and revenue with the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG started building its oil pipeline in 2012 and exporting crude oil to international markets independent of Baghdad’s approbation in 2014. The federal government responded with suspending the KRG’s share of oil revenue, leaving the KRG with no major sources of revenue.

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2. Although the KRG exports its crude oil, however, the sharp decline in international oil prices, from US$115 a barrel in June 2014 to US$35 in December 2015, abjectly hit the KRG’s fragile, oil-dependent economy and substantially reduced its revenues from direct oil sales. 3. The KRG’s fiscal position further deteriorated by the security challenges posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) insurgency in August 2014, putting significant pressure on the KRG through increased security spending and the influx of 1.8 million internally displaced refugees escaping from the war. 4. Another chronic problem, which existed before the financial crisis, was the excessive role the KR’s public sector plays in the economy. The public sector dominates the KR’s economy: the public spending to GDP ratio is over 50 percent. The government is the main employer with a share of more than 50 percent in total employment. As of December 2016, 1,378,000 of KRG’s five million population were on the government payroll, leading the KRG to spend over 60% of its annual budget on public employees’ wages and salaries. These four simultaneous crises, coupled with other existing crises, intensified the pressure on the KRG, necessitating a need for reform and change. The status quo was unsustainable, therefore, the KRG responded to the crises in four simultaneous ways: 1. By postponing over 6,000 government-financed investment and construction projects. Since the beginning of the financial crisis, the KRG has suspended the budget provided to thousands of projects which were being implemented by private contractors. This has forced private companies to lay off over 100,000 employees. 2. Letting government employees’ payments fall in arrears. Since the late 2015, the KRG has not been able to pay the salaries of its employees on time and in full. Public servants usually receive 30%-70-% of their monthly salary in 50 days, rather than 30 days as it used to be before the crisis. 3. Borrowing money from both domestic and foreign banks and companies. To deal with the budget deficit, the KRG has, to date, borrowed over $10 billion from various national and foreign banks and oil companies. 4. Lastly, the KRG initiated a reform process and changes in its public organizations in an effort to cut government expenditure, while simultaneously maintaining or even improving public service delivery. After a number of meetings, the KRG’s Council of Ministers 14


decided that each Ministry should revise its organizational structure to reduce administrative and overhead costs. The first Ministry to respond to the call of the Council of Ministers was the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR). In the section that follows. I provide a brief background of the higher education sector in Kurdistan.

1.7.1 Higher education sector in Kurdistan Until 2003 the Higher Education (HE) sector in Kurdistan consisted of three public universities, two technical colleges and three technical institutes with a total student population of just under 50,000. Following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Kurdistan enjoyed an economic boom which led to, among other areas of development, the massification of HE. At present –March 2018-, there are twelve public and three polytechnic universities, along with twelve private universities. Public universities enroll about 115,000 students while the private universities enroll 20,000 students, totaling over 135,000 students. The universities differ, among other things, in age, size and sources of funding. The first public and private universities were established in 1968 and 2004 respectively. While some old universities have over 20,000 enrolled students, some recently established universities, mostly private ones, have a student population of as low as 500. Public universities, which are fully funded by the government, have been regarded as a public good and national affair and provide free education at all levels for free (Since September 2016, the government has decided to charge tuition fees from all Master and PhD applicants other than those employed by public universities). In contrast, private universities which play a marginal role in the HE sector, are founded and funded by private entrepreneurs and organizations and do not receive public funding for operation and maintenance, but operate within the confines of the rules and regulations of the MHESR (A B Ahmad & Shah, 2016). MHESR issues rules and regulations to all universities and has the autonomy to initiate and implement changes in the public universities and request private universities to implement changes to comply with MHESR’s policies. In this dissertation, our focus is on public universities only because the nature and objective of the public universities are different from the private ones.

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1.7.2 The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Change Process In Kurdistan, the MHESR, which was established in 2005, oversees all public and private universities. University presidents are members of what is known as Ministry Council, where the Council meets regularly to discuss matters related to higher education in Kurdistan. After few months of deliberations, the Ministry Council presented its final report with recommendations for restructuring of the MHESR system. A key recommendation was that every public university has to revise its administrative structure to merge similar departments/directorates or dissolve unnecessary ones. All public universities then endorsed the recommendations and began its implementation. Once the universities and its academic and administrative staff were informed about the new regulations, universities’ employees who were affected by the changes expressed numerous responses. It was at this stage of the change process in which I entered the universities. Despite the fierce resistance from those who were severely affected by the changes, public universities reduced the number of their departments from 487 directorates/organizations to 314; eliminating 173 directorates. Managers and employees whose departments/directorates were dissolved were transferred to other departments/directorates. In each university, departments/units with similar functions that could be amalgamated were indeed merged with each other to form a larger one in an attempt to improve efficiency and reduce overhead cost. For instance, in all public universities, Department of Teaching Quality Assurance and Department of Programme Development were merged to form one department: Department of Teaching Quality Assurance and Programme Development. The Manager of Programme Development department became head of the newly formed department and the other former Manager was demoted or transferred to another department. The same procedures were followed with regard to the other departments. Using universities as the organizations to be investigated has some research benefits. First, public universities in Kurdistan are greatly homogeneous in their funding, structure, policies and practices. In each university, there are dozens of administrative departments/directorates/units. For instance, all universities have departments of finance, administration, teaching quality assurance, programme development, career development center, health, media, international relations, accommodations and safety and so forth. The changes that this dissertation investigates mainly involved in merging some of these departments to reduce unnecessary spending, for instance, overhead costs, and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

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1.8 Organization of the dissertation The dissertation consists of six chapters. The current chapter has introduced the research questions and research objectives. The following four empirical chapters all examine one or more research objectives. Chapter one presents the introduction of the thesis. The chapter presents the objectives, significance, research questions of the dissertation. It also provides a brief overview of the Kurdistan Region, the place where the research is conducted. Chapter two outlines the theoretical framework and key concepts. The theoretical framework builds mainly on insights from organizational change literature, individual differences and employee proactivity; but also borrows from the public management literature. Chapter 3 discusses the methodology and methods of the research. The design of the research, as well as the rationale behind the quantitative method approach, is addressed in this chapter. This chapter also provides an overview of the studies presented in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter four presents an empirical study which answers the first research question of this dissertation. This chapter, which is an independent manuscript and thus, can be read independent of the other chapters. Chapter five consists of two complementary studies and answer the second research question. In the first study, data were collected to develop and validate the change recipient proactivity scale. In the second part of Chapter 5, a second study is presented which examines the predictors and work-related outcomes of change recipient proactivity. This chapter, similar to the previous chapter, can be read independent of the other chapters. Chapter six, which is the final chapter of this dissertation, combines the findings of the empirical studies; reflects on the results of the studies, limitations as well as avenues for future research are discussed.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.1 Overview In this chapter, I review different constructs that have been used to measure change recipients’ responses to organizational change. In the section that follows, I discuss the provide a taxonomy that organizes actionable organizational change management variables in a comprehensive and distinguishable set of categories, namely change content, process, context, leadership and individual differences factors. In this section, I examine the role of each of these factors in understanding change recipients’ responses to organizational change efforts. In later sections, I will review the literature on public management research to delineate how certain features of public organizations may impact the implementation of change efforts. The concepts that I discuss are used to develop the conceptual model of the dissertation presented at the end of this Chapter.

2.2 The taxonomy of organizational change management variables Since Kurt Lewin’s early work on organizational change in the 1940s, scholars and practitioners have identified a plethora of factors that are suggested to affect change recipients’ responses to organizational change efforts. In an important step toward the theoretical integration of the literature on organizational change management variables, Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) summarized and reviewed the literature on organizational change and development. Their review provided a framework for classifying organizational change variables on the basis of a wide literature review. Their categorization classifies actionable change management variables in a broad and distinguishable set of groups, namely change content, process, context and criterion or outcomes. In another study, Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, and Welbourne (1999) added individual attributes to the framework of organizational change. In a more recent change management literature review in public organizations, Kuipers et al. (2014) added leadership to the taxonomy. The classification of organizational change management variables allows for the identification of predictors of the psychological processes underlying change recipients’ attitudes toward change (Straatmann, Kohnke, Hattrup, & Mueller, 2016). In the past few years, this taxonomy has received wide consideration from both researchers and managers and found empirical support in various countries, both in public and the private sector (Self et al., 2007; Walker et al., 2007). In the sections that follow, I will delineate each of these categories in detail and demonstrate how they 19

Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework

might help managers (i.e., change agents) in overcoming the challenges of organizational change management.

2.3. Outcome variables One of the research themes that was reviewed by Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) relates to the nature of criterion variables regularly evaluated as outcomes of organizational change initiatives. In the public management arena, it is argued that political leaders and senior administrative leaders public organizations often express change and reform objectives in vague or even opposing terms, making it hard to know when outcomes match the intended objectives (Baggott, 1997). Therefore, before one can assess evidence about outcomes, it is essential to decide on what kind of thing is counted as an outcome (Pollitt, 2000). The term outcome can be applied to many different aspects and may include a variety of concepts (Brunsson, 1989). Additionally, scholars and practitioners often make a distinction between a narrow and an expanded concept of outcomes. A narrow concept of outcomes focuses its attention on desired or intended outcomes, such as effectiveness, quality and efficiency (Askim, Christensen, Fimreite, & Laegreid, 2010). In examining narrow outcomes, outcomes are measured according to whether the given objectives of the reform and change initiatives are translated into decisions and outputs. In contrast, an expanded concept of outcomes concerns itself with dysfunctions, side-effects and political and societal effects, “such as those that come from political-democratic steering” (T. Christensen et al., 2007, p. 146). The approach which is employed to measure outcomes of change initiatives depends on whether the change initiative is planned or emergent. The planned approach to change views organisational change as a process that moves an organization from an undesired, current, fixed state to a future desired state through a series of pre-planned stages (Lewin, 1947b). In this topdown approach to change which significantly depends on the influence of management for its implementation, the goals of change are articulated at the start of the change process (Bamford & Forrester, 2003). Change usually begins with the analysis of the undesirable current status quo and forming a desired future state (T. By, Rune, 2005). Therefore, for planned change methods, outcomes are planned in advance (Burnes, 2004). On the contrary, change outcomes are not promulgated beforehand in the emergent change approach, but arise during the change process since the change itself is emergent (Kuipers et al., 2014). Since the objectives and expected 20


outcomes of the change are not defined in advance, it is more challenging to assess the outcomes of change in the emergent approach to change. How can one measure the failure of success of a change event when the objectives of the change are unknown, or at best, not clearly defined, at the first place (Kuipers et al., 2014)? Traditionally, outcomes of organizational change have been assessed by focusing on factors such as increased efficiency (Coram & Burnes, 2001), effectiveness (Jespersen, Nielsen, & Sognstrup, 2002; Lindquist, 2006), client satisfaction (C.-K. Chen, Yu, & Chang, 2006; J. G. Christensen & Pallensen, 2001), equity and safety (Chustz & Larson, 2006), greater profitability, or “an increase in the overall capacity/flexibility/resilience of the administrative system as a whole” (Pollitt, 2000, p. 186). Some authors have adopted a more objective approach to evaluate change outcomes in terms of changes in outputs. For instance, Chustz and Larson (2006) evaluated change initiative’s outcomes by measuring the number of applicants for a new hospital charity care plan. In recent years, however, rather than assessing outcomes of change efforts based on objective criteria, some scholars have suggested that social phenomenon, that is, organizational change efforts, should be studied in terms of behaviors and attitudes of employees (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; de Boer, Enders, & Westerheijden, 2005). In their 60-years review of quantitative studies on organizational change, Oreg et al. (2011) argue that one of the primary determining factor of the degree to which any organizational change effort can succeed is how change recipients respond to organizational change initiatives. This aspect of research is based on the growing agreement about the vital role that change recipients’ attitudes and behaviors play in determining the organizational change’s potential to succeed (Bartunek et al., 2006). The notion behind this is that, as a result of the reform and change initiatives, individuals are supposed to act, behave and perform their tasks differently and enact new behaviors so that anticipated change aims are achieved. In other words, employees are driven out of their comfort zones (Kotter, 1995), and are expected to abandon acquainted behaviors and structures and actually substitute these with new ones which are in line with the goals of the change effort (Van der Vegt et al., 2000). The reason behind this is because many reform and change programs fail because reform/change initiators fail to take into account employee’s attitudes and behaviors towards the change (Kavanagh & Ashkanasy, 2006).

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In line with recent recommendations to examine outcomes of organizational change by focusing on attitudes and behaviors of change recipients (Herold et al., 2007; Van der Voet et al., 2015b), in this dissertation, I will focus on employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward organizational change which are seen as indicators of successful change implementation (Wright, Christensen, & Isett, 2013). The literature shows a large number of studies that has assessed outcomes of organizational change based on investigating employees’ attitudes and behaviors. For instance, M. Christensen (2005) and Schedler (2003) examined the outcome of changes by stating whether the behavior of the change recipients has truly changed. Weissert and Goggin (2002) investigated change outcomes and effects by analyzing the clients and stakeholders’ experiences. Others have relied on the examination of attitudes of employees to explain the change effects. For instance, Hoque and Kirkpatrick (2008) examined organizational change outcomes regarding its effects on change recipients’ attitudes regarding work pressure, morale and organizational citizenship behaviour. In the following sections, I define attitudes and examine several attitudinal and behavioral constructs that have been used by both scholars and practitioners to assess outcomes of organizational change efforts.

2.3.1. An overview of employees’ attitudes toward and behavioral support for change As alluded to above, successful organizational change is increasingly dependent on producing employees’ positive attitudes toward and behavioral support for projected change efforts. In other words, one of the main determinants of the degree to which any organizational change can succeed, among others, is how change recipients respond to change efforts. The importance of employees’ attitudes toward and reactions to change has a long history of nearly 100 years, dating back to 1920s when Mary P. Follet suggested that managers and change agents should guard against overlooking employee’s possibly valid anxieties about projected change efforts and that: …we shouldn’t put to… workers finished plans in order merely to get their consent. …one of two things is likely to happen, both bad: either we shall get a rubber-stamped consent and thus lose what they might contribute to the problem in question, or else we shall find ourselves with a fight on our hands – an open fight or discontent seething underneath (89) (Reprinted by Graham, 1995, cited in Piderit, 2000, p. 784). 22


Despite this early interest in the role of change recipients’ attitudes in the process of organizational change, it was only in the late 1940s that it caught organizational change scholars and practitioners’ attention. Indeed, in the past 70 years, there have been a burgeoning rise of organizational change studies that demonstrate the meaningfulness of employees’ attitudes and behaviors for understanding change initiatives (Caldwell, Herold, & Fedor, 2004; Judge et al., 1999; Rafferty & Restubog, 2010). If we agree with the premise that employee attitudes are salient in determining change outcomes, then what are attitudes and their components? Attitudes are described as –positive or negative- evaluative judgements or statements of individual, social issues, social groups, events or objects (S. P. Robbins & Judge, 2013). Employees attitudes toward organizational change are important because they often determine what employees do and how they react in response to organizational change efforts. The study of attitudes is central to organizational change and has been one of its first concerns. For much of the last few decades, researchers wondered how much employees’ attitudes affect their subsequent actions. In the literature on organizational change, attitudes have been conceptualized through various constructs, with little consistency in their definitions or the terms used. The literature review shows that sometimes different concepts or terms are used for describing the same phenomenon and at other times the same term is assigned to constructs with varied definitions (Oreg et al., 2011). Despite the disintegration and convoluted manifestations of employees’ attitudes toward change, I identified seven recurring constructs which have been widely used by a substantial number of studies to represent employees’ attitudes toward and behavioral reactions to change; namely: (1) resistance to change, (2) cynicism about organizational change, (3) commitment to change, (4) openness to change, (5) willingness to change, (6) readiness for change, and a more recently developed construct (7) change proactivity. The first six attitudinal constructs are akin to one another in that “they all reflect an individual’s overall positive or negative evaluative judgment of a specific change initiative” (M. Choi, 2011, p. 480). Despite the similarities, however, there exist a number of distinct differences among them in terms of implications and emphases, and hence can offer scholars and practitioners diverse evidence about employees’ assessment of and anxieties about a specific change effort. The seven outcome variables identified above can be classified into three general categories of change recipients’ reactions toward change. The first type, and probably the earliest 23


one, comprises reactions with negative meanings and suggestions about change events, such as resistance to change (Coch & French Jr, 1948) or cynicism about change (Reichers et al., 1997). The second category of outcome variables includes more favorable responses, such as openness to change, willingness to change, readiness to change and commitment to change (Armenakis et al., 1993; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). These two categories of change recipients’ reactions are similar in that they both revolve around the positivity/negativity of change recipients toward change. To date, a large number of antecedents of these variables have been recognized in the literature. The antecedents include: individual, differences, content, context, process and leadership-related factors –These predictors will be discussed in detail in sections 2.4.1 through 2.4.6. The third type of change-related response variable goes above and beyond the presence or absence of positive/negative feelings and attitudes associated with change acceptance/resistance to include proactive and behavioral components—the extent to which employees indeed engage in proactive behaviors and exert effort to ensure the successful implementation of the change (Oreg et al., 2014). Such an outcome variable is known as change recipient proactivity. Compared to the first two categories of change recipients’ reactions, change recipient proactivity can be a better measure of the extent to which employees involve in proactive behaviors, rather than merely be open to change or have the intention/willingness to support change. In the sections that follow, I review the definitions, origins and antecedents of two types of change related constructs which are relevant to this dissertation. In the first type, I review two of the most frequently used constructs which represent change recipient’s positive responses to change; namely, readiness for change and commitment to change. The other construct which I discuss represents a more proactive role of change recipients. That is, I will discuss change recipient proactivity. Since it is not the intention of this dissertation to empirically study employees’ negative attitudes toward change, I will not cover such negative responses. Instead, readers interested in reading about the overly studied negative attitudes such as resistance to change are referred to consult with (Oreg, 2003; Piderit, 2000)

2.3.1.1 Readiness for change Readiness for change was first introduced in a paper presented in a symposium on Preventive and Social Psychiatry by Jacobson (1957). Initially, studies pertaining to individual 24


readiness were mainly published in medical, health and psychology literature and paid attention to harmful health and insane behaviors such as drug abuse and smoking and starting positive ones such as exercising, managing weight, and eating nutritional meals (M. Choi, 2011). Thus, in this circumstance, individual readiness was concerned with whether or not the individual patients believed that a change at the individual level is necessary and whether he or she has the capability for it. Despite the fact that readiness for change concept was coined in the late 1950s, it was not until the early 1990s that researchers developed and validated an inclusive and theoretically sound conceptualization of the construct in the field of organizational science. In a seminal article published in Human Relations journal, Armenakis et al. (1993) defined readiness for change and examined how change agents can impact on change recipients’ readiness for organizational change. According to Armenakis et al. (1993), readiness for change “is reflected in organizational members’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the organization’s capacity to successfully make those changes” (p. 681). Categorized under the cognitive component of attitudes toward change, readiness for change is the cognitive antecedent to organizational members’ behaviors that they either resist or support change initiatives. In recent years, a number of studies have suggested that employee readiness for change is necessary to achieve the intended objectives of organizational change efforts. Creating readiness for change requires active and practical attempts by change agents and managers to influence and enhance the views, attitudes, intentions and eventually the behavior of change recipients Armenakis et al., 1993. To this end, scholars and practitioners have suggested several antecedents that contribute to increasing the level of readiness for change. For instance, changing individual cognition across change recipients has been put at the core of creating readiness for change Armenakis et al., 1993. Additionally, research has shown that participation at work, policies supporting change, trust in peers and top management, and employees’ belief in organizational capability to accommodate change situations are believed to increase employee readiness for change (Eby, Adams, Russell, & Gaby, 2000; R. A. Jones, Jimmieson, & Griffiths, 2005). Additionally, individual-level variables such as locus of control, self-efficacy, job satisfaction and organizational commitment have been reported to increase employee readiness for change (Cunningham et al., 2002; Rafferty & Simons, 2006).

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2.3.1.2 Commitment to change Another commonly used construct to measure the degree to which employees support change is the commitment to change. Commitment to change is often said to be one of the most significant aspects in explaining employees’ behavioral intention to support a certain change effort (M. Choi, 2011; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). Initially, commitment was conceptualized in terms of organisational commitment or “the relative strength of an individual’s linkage to the organisation” (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979, p. 226). In later years, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) proposed a model of commitment to change based on their general theory of workplace commitment. Leading scholars such as Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) defined commitment to change as “a force (mind-set) that binds an individual to a course of action deemed necessary for the successful implementation of a change initiative” (p.475). Indeed, some authors have described employee commitment to change as “the glue that provides the vital bond between people and change goals” (D. Conner, 1992). Additionally, (D. R. Conner & Patterson, 1982) argued that “the most prevalent factor contributing to failed change projects is a lack of commitment by the people” (p. 18). Thus it can be argued that employee commitment to change is central to successful implementation of any change initiative. It is now well-established that employees’ commitment to change is a multidimensional, where it takes three forms: affective commitment, normative commitment and continuous commitment; each characterized by a different mindset, psychological state or force (Meyer, Stanley, & Parfyonova, 2012). First, affective commitment to change is defined as employees’ desire to support the change process being introduced or implemented in the organization. The desire to support, rather than resist, the change process is based on “a belief in its inherent benefits” (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002, p. 475). Second, normative commitment to change refers to change recipients understanding that failure to provide support for the change is related to specific costs both to the employees themselves and the organization. Hence they stay committed to the change due to the high cost of quitting. Additionally, continuance commitment to change refers to employees’ sense of obligation to provide support for the change (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). In other words, change recipients feel bound to support a change effort because they want to (affective commitment), have to (normative commitment), and/or ought to (continuance commitment). Change recipients do not have to be committed to the change initiative from the 26


beginning, commitment to change can occur after required or pressured involvement with the change (McLaughlin, 1990). Thus, if change recipients are required to support change efforts implemented in their organizations, they could become committed during the process of the change implementation. Among the three forms of commitment to change –normative commitment, continuance and affective commitment- identified by Allen and Meyer (1990); affective commitment to change has received greatest attention in the field of organizational change management (Rogiest et al., 2015). Affective commitment to change posits that employee support the change not because of their sense of obligation to support the change (normative affective to change) or their understanding of the costs linked with not providing support for the change effort (continuance affective to change) (Jaros, 2007), but because of the ‘force’ that is fueled by a desire to support the change effort based on a belief in its benefits. In other words, affective commitment to change represents employees’ inherent belief in the values of the change and their “psychological alignment with the change, intentions to support it, and willingness to work on behalf of its successful implementation” (Herold et al., 2007, p. 943). A large number of studies has examined employees change commitment both in the private sector (Herold et al., 2007; Rafferty & Restubog, 2010) and public sector (Rogiest et al., 2015; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). Research has shown that affective commitment to change affects supportive employee behavior during organizational change, lower turnover intentions and higher job satisfaction (J. K. Ford, Weissbein, & Plamondon, 2003; Jaros, 2010; Neves & Caetano, 2009). It is also shown that employees’ affective commitment to change is positively related to successful implementation of change process (Herold et al., 2008; Rogiest et al., 2015). In line with previous research and due to the influential role it plays in bringing about desired change outcomes, one of the empirical studies in this dissertation takes into account employees’ affective commitment to change as the dependent variable in the conceptual model of the study presented in Chapter 4. The reason for this is because affective commitment to change is different from other constructs such as readiness for change or willingness to change in that “it represents a behavioral intention to work toward the success of the change rather than just reflecting a favorable disposition toward it” (Fedor, Caldwell, & Herold, 2006, p. 4). As such, affective commitment to change goes beyond the presence of a positive or negative attitude

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towards change and captures the notion of a positive, behavioral intent towards change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979).

2.3.1.3 Change recipient proactivity As discussed above, the constructs categorized under the first two categories all focus on the valence of change recipients’ responses (Oreg & Goldenberg, 2015; Oreg et al., 2011); or, “an individual’s overall positive or negative evaluative judgment of a specific change initiative” (M. Choi, 2011, p. 480). Another similarity among these constructs is that they all reflect employees’ passive reactions towards organizational change and largely ignore the degree of activation (i.e., activity versus passivity) involved in recipients’ responses (Oreg et al., 2014). That is, regardless of whether the attitudinal construct used is resistance, readiness, openness, willingness or commitment, the focus of researchers has been almost exclusively on the valence of recipients’ responses (Oreg et al., 2018). Although studying the valence of recipients’ responses to organizational change is important, I argue that the extant research on organizational change has been limited by an overly narrow conceptualization of recipients’ responses to change events. I believe that such a narrow conceptualization of recipients’ responses to change events is not sufficient for ensuring successful implementation of change initiatives. Today’s organizations, more than ever before, need employees who are; first: active participants at work rather than passive implementers of orders from above (Crant, 2000), and second: eager to challenge their organizations’ status quo to bring about constructive change. Hence, in this study, I go beyond the existing literature by focusing on a form of recipients’ response to change efforts that have been largely neglected. Following the theoretical work of Oreg et al. (2014) and Oreg et al. (2018), I refer to this type of response as recipients’ change proactivity. Oreg et al. (2014) define recipients’ change proactivity as “actions initiated by change recipients in response to organizational change that are intended to positively influence either their organization, their fit with the organization, or both” (p.7). This definition indicates that, like other forms of employees’ proactive behavior, change proactivity is self- (or recipient) initiated, internally driven, future-focused, and aimed at improving the situation or oneself- (or recipient) (Crant, 2000; E W Morrison, 2011; Oreg et al., 2014). It is inherently an internally driven, changeoriented behavior that involves recipients’ voluntary and constructive efforts to positively and 28


actively effect organizational change concerning how change is planned and implemented within or organizations. Whereas organizational change literature largely overlooks recipients’ proactive responses and behaviors during organizational change, yet, drawing on theories of motivation – especially self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gagné & Deci, 2005), there is an emerging and growing literature on employees’ proactive behavior (Ashford & Black, 1996; Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000; Frese & Fay, 2001; Vough, Bindl, & Parker, 2017). Research posits that employees are not always passive receivers of environmental restraints on their behavior (Crant, 2000), rather they can exhibit proactive behaviors by “taking initiative in improving current circumstances; …... challenging the status quo rather than passively adopting present conditions” (Crant, 2000, p. 436). Similarly, Grant and Ashford (2008) also argue that “employees do not just let life happen to them. Rather, they try to affect, shape, curtail, expand, and temper what happens in their lives” (p.4). Additionally, Grant and Parker (2009) extend this logic to argue that “In uncertain environments, employees are increasingly likely to be—and increasingly needed to be— active participants. They engage in proactive behaviors” (p.342). In change events that almost by definition are uncertain, it may well be that proactive initiatives on the part of change recipients are vital for successful organizational change (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Oreg et al., 2014). Given the recognized value of employees’ proactive behavior, numerous studies have focused on identifying factors that predict this phenomenon as well as its likely outcomes (Frese & Fay, 2001; Parker, Williams, & Turner, 2006). In Chapter 5, I will discuss change recipient proactive in more detail where I also compare it to other constructs such as readiness for change, proactive personality and commitment to change. Further, I will also develop and validate a measurement scale for change recipient proactivity construct. Finally, I will empirically examine its predictors and work-related outcomes in a public sector context.

2.4. Antecedents of change recipients’ attitudes towards organizational change. In the previous section, I delineated the various ways which have been used to measure organizational change outcomes and argued that in this dissertation I focus on employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward organizational change as outcomes of organizational changes. In the sections that follow, I will discuss the antecedent of change recipients’ attitudes and behaviors and explain 29


how each of these factors and actors might affect the ways in which change recipients respond to change efforts. Namely, I will examine the role of change content, leadership, context, individual attributes, process.

2.4.1 Change content The change content is concerned with the “what” question of the change initiative. That is, it is concerned with the type or nature of change as a potential determining factor of change recipient reactions to it (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). This category covers perceptions of the usefulness, necessity, and consequences of the change initiative. A review by Burke (2013) has identified a number of content models that have been applied to organizational change initiatives in the past 50 years. Among the content issues included in these organizational change publications are changes in corporate culture, human resources practices, downsizing, layoffs, new technology, organization structures, total quality management, physical settings and other social issues (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Beer & Nohria, 2000; Burke & Litwin, 1992; Devos et al., 2007; Vollmann, 1996). The nature of these organizational changes can have diverse effects on change recipients’ responses to change efforts. One of the primary distinctions that organizational science scholars and practitioners have made about the type of change is the nature of the change that organizations face (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Generally speaking, within the organizational change management literature, the nature of change is viewed from different standpoints (Higgs & Rowland, 2005). For instance, scholars and practitioners have made distinctions between orders of change (Bartunek & Moch, 1987); Theory E and Theory O (Beer & Nohria, 2000), changes that bring benefit versus harm to the change recipients (Oreg et al., 2014). In the below sections, each of these types of changes is discussed.

2.4.1.1 Orders of change Bartunek and Moch (1987) classified types of change into three orders: first-order changes, second-order changes and third-order changes. First-order changes are incremental, small-scale changes including behavioral modifications considered apposite to overcome stagnation and enhance efficiency “within an organization’s or organization subgroup’s established set of implicit or explicit beliefs about how the organization does or should act” (Bartunek & Moch, 1994, p. 24).

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This type of change takes place gradually through alterations which aims to improve the organization without touching its fundamental values (Devos et al., 2007). These first-order changes are restricted to a sub-system or organizational process that are found in the introduction of new procedures, processes and systems (Kuipers et al., 2014). First-order changes include the introduction of new performance measures (Julnes & Holzer, 2001), e-government (Ciborra, 2005; Heeks, 2005) or new accounting systems (Ridder, Bruns, & Spier, 2005). Such first-order changes do not touch the key organizational functions or processes, and although they may be introduced throughout the entire sector, they usually do not alter the organization or sector as a whole. Second-order change, in contrast, is more radical and revolutionary, which involves short and compact periods of significant disruption (Levy & Merry, 1986); and encompasses the comprehensive alteration of the organization. Since this type of change affects the core values of the organization, it often has a more ambiguous and intimidating nature than do first-order changes and thus, change recipients’ commitment can be a more significant concern than it is with firstorder changes (Devos et al., 2007). Examples of second-order change can include changes in organizational climate, culture, employee behavior and attitudes (Rogiest et al., 2015; Self & Schraeder, 2009). Third-order changes involve the transformation of the organization’s identity. That is, it involves the change in “the form of ownership and the constitutive rules that have historically defined it as an organization” (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005, p. 81). Third-order changes differ from second-order changes in that the former challenges the broader institutional-cultural template at the same time. Third-order change not only includes the transformation of the organization in focus but, it is a cross-organizational, sector-wide change where it influences the broader institutional setting of which the organization is a member: the organization changes its institutional environment as it changes itself (Kuipers et al., 2014). There are several examples of third-order changes in the public sector. For instance, after the devaluation of Lira in Turkey (Lira is Turkish currency), in early 2001 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) supported the Turkish state’s economic rescue programme which entailed both fiscal and structural reforms. Structural reforms included the privatization of utilities, energy liberalization and banking sector restructuring. Similar structural monetary reforms have been implemented in different countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, and Portugal

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(Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005) - in more recently, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The changes that this dissertation investigate fall within the second order changes.

2.4.1.2 Theory E and Theory O In addition to the orders of change, Beer and Nohria (2000) offered an additional significant distinction to categorize types of change and differentiated between theory E, which is based on economic values and theory O, which is based on organizational capabilities. Economic-driven changes are focused on reducing costs by involving “heavy use of economic incentives, drastic layoffs, downsizing and restructuring” (Beer & Nohria, 2000, p. 134). These ‘hard’ approaches to change threaten employees’ job security and can leave a damaging influence on attitudes, selfesteem, and comfort, even when the employees’ own jobs are not endangered (Armstrong‐ Stassen, 2002; Paulsen et al., 2005). Opposite to economic-driven transformations, theory O changes are focused on culture, attitudes, behaviors and “human capability through individual and organizational learning- the process of changing, obtaining feedback, reflecting, and making further changes” (Beer & Nohria, 2000, p. 134). Thus, it can be argued that the “soft” approaches to change do not bring about job losses and are less detrimental and frightening to employees. Based on these distinctions, it can be argued that the changes in which this dissertation examine, are categorized as second-order changes (Bartunek & Moch, 1987), and theory O changes (Beer & Nohria, 2000) -for details of the organizational changes that this dissertation examines, please see the Method sections in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5).

2.4.1.3 Perceived benefit or harm from the change In the same vein, Self, Armenakis, and Schaninger (2001), akin to that of Beer and Nohria (2000), differentiated between changes that harshly influence the lives of change recipients (e.g., the loss of work) from those that have a much smaller impact on them (Devos et al., 2007). In other words, it is contended that a primary determining factor of whether change recipients will resist or accept change efforts is the degree to which the change personally benefits or harms the individual. Extant research has emphasized that perceived outcomes and benefits of change have particularly important influences on change recipients’ reactions to change (Hornung & Rousseau, 32


2007). For example, employees regard downsizing that brings about considerable redundancies and layoffs differently than a change where it requires employees to adopt a new computer program. Employees’ reaction to such changes depends significantly on the extent to which the changes touch the lives of employees. This notion is supported by Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) and Piderit (2000) argument that employees often resist changes that will have a personal impact on them and will threaten their jobs. On several occasions, previous studies have measured change recipients’ reactions to changes that entail negative/positive outcomes, such as greater workload, increased job complexity, loss of job control or downsizing and restructuring. Hornung and Rousseau (2007) found that higher anticipated benefits from change predicted higher change commitment among employees involved in a change effort. Therefore, it can be argued that as the severity of the change impact on employees increases (from no intimidation to job loss to certain intimidation of job loss) (Self et al., 2007), employees perceive the change as less acceptable and exhibit less support for the change. Support for notion can be found from data collected by Clarke et al. (1996) on the resistance/receptivity to change of 799 faculty members and 79 academic heads located in 53 universities in the United States of America. The authors concluded that resistance and openness are change specific; that is, if a change recipient’s self-interest is endangered, a proposed change effort is likely to cause resistance. In other cases, change recipients who experienced greater psychological withdrawal and stress (Ashford, 1988; Axtell et al., 2002; Fried, Tiegs, Naughton, & Ashforth, 1996), had lower levels of change acceptance (Cunningham et al., 2002). In contrast, a number of empirical research studies have suggested that expectation of a positive outcome following the change was related with larger change acceptance and higher commitment and willingness to participate in it (van Dam, 2005). What can be understood from all these studies is that variables reflecting anticipated positive/negative outcomes were correlated with positive/negative recipient reactions to change initiatives. Consequently, contingent on the apparent possible effects, some changes are more acceptable than others are. Hence, change recipients are more likely to resist a proposed change if they believe they would lose something of value as a result of the changes (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999).

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2.4.2. Change context Unlike content issues that have been studied extensively, the context in which a change is implemented has received much less organized consideration (Pettigrew et al., 2001). It is argued that change events cannot be viewed independently from their setting. This entails that the starting point for analyzing and optimizing organizational change is the external and internal context in which the organizational change takes place. Johns (2006) defined context as the “situational opportunities and constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of organizational behavior as well as functional relationships between variables” (p. 386). Contextual factors refer to pre-change forces in the organization’s internal and external environment, such as technological advances; environmental complexity, levels of professionalism; leadership; bureaucratic structure, and history of change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Rafferty & Restubog, 2010; Van der Voet et al., 2015b), that are suggested to influence change recipients’ attitudes and behaviors. This may be true because, for example, they reduce recipient openness or commitment to change (M. Choi, 2011). As it is very challenging for organisations to change external contextual concerns (Walker et al., 2007), in this dissertation, I focus on internal contextual factors that organisations can influence more easily. Contextual factors principally focus on the conditions or circumstances exist in the organization’s inner and outer environments that have been suggested to influence organizational effectiveness (Barnett & Carroll, 1995; Finstad, 1998; Kelly & Amburgey, 1991; Self et al., 2007). The external context refers to the situation in which the organization functions, while the internal context refers to the cultural, structural and political environment inside the organization. Rogiest (2014) argues that change context can impact change recipients’ attitudes in different ways. First, the context motivates or discourages specific behaviors and can be considered as an active factor, creating and supporting processes in the organization. Context has the power to mobilize employees to achieve organizational outcomes (Pettigrew, 1987). Second, Damanpour (1991) reported that the success of organizational change might be highly dependent on the fit or congruency between change content, change context and change process (Change process will be discussed in Section 2.3.4). To date, a large number of studies, both in the public and private sector, have emphasized the significance of investigating the context in which organizational change happens. Recent studies have incorporated both internal as well as external contextual factors. Some of the 34


examined internal contextual factors include trust the in top management and first-line supervisors (Devos et al., 2007), change recipients’ perception of their change history (Rafferty & Restubog, 2010), perceived organizational support and the relationship between change recipients and their direct managers (Self et al., 2007) and organizational culture (Holt, Armenakis, Feild, & Harris, 2007). However, not much research has focused on contextual variables that are specific for organizations in the public sector settings, with some exceptions (Van der Voet, 2014a; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). In the section that follows, I will bring in the specific context of public organizations and discuss how public organizations differ from their counterparts.

2.4.2.1 The specific nature of organizations in the public sector A recent review of the literature by Kuipers et al. (2014) highlighted that most of the literature on management of organizational change is about private-sector commercial firms and mostly in the context of U.S./Anglo-centric organizational literature. There are very few studies about possible differences between the organizational change in the private and public sector. One of that few literature reviews that explicitly dealt with the issue is (Robertson & Seneviratne, 1995), who concluded that there was no difference. On the other hand, Pettigrew et al. (2001) criticized the research on organizational change for being ahistorical, acontextual, and aprocessual in nature, indicating that differences between the public and private sectors may play a role. The dearth of public sector research encouraged Kuipers et al. (2014) to review the literature on managing change in public organizations. The authors reviewed some 150 articles regarding organizational change management in the public sector, published between 2000 and 2010 in top-ranking peer-reviewed journals on general management, change management and public administration. Their literature review revealed that; first, around half of the studies were based on case study design. Second, the majority of the publications have a U.S./Anglo-Saxon origin, which indicates some danger of bias (Kickert, 2013). Third, many articles deal with (New Public Management) NPM-type of changes in public organizations. The prevalence of NPM-type changes in public sector organizations has led scholars and practitioners to state that public organizations’ managers should employ management procedures and behaviours practiced in the private organizations (Hood, 1991). In contrast to this view, Boyne (2002) argued that “Management techniques cannot be exported successfully from one sector to another because of differences in organizational environments, goals, structures and managerial values. These 35


variables represent a set of contingencies that require different approaches to management in public agencies and private firms” (p.118). Finally, the authors concluded that most articles did not address the success of organizational change, maybe because the presence of multiple and conflicting goals in public organizations made it challenging to measure the effects of change (Kickert, 2013). To date, several authors have examined whether public organizations are distinct from private ones in one way or another. Rainey (2014) argued that it is not always possible to obviously distinguish public organizations from and private ones for, in the past few decades, the distinction between the two types of organizations has become increasingly unclear. Further, Bozeman (1987) argued that both public and private organizations have a certain degree of ‘publicness’. The publicness range is based on three dimensions: ownership, funding and political control (Bozeman, 1987). In spite of a significant grey area between private and public organizations, some scholars argue that public organizations are indeed different from private organizations in fundamental ways (Rainey, 2014). What distinguishes public organizations from private ones is their ownership (Rainey, Backoff, & Levine, 1976). While members of political communities collectively own, and political systems control public organizations; entrepreneurs and shareholders own private organizations. Moreover, whereas private organizations are funded by directly by customers’ money, public organizations are primarily funded by taxation (Niskanen, 1971). Likewise, Boyne (2002) critically reviewed theoretical propositions and arguments concerning the distinctions between public and private organizations and, based on his review, identified 13 hypotheses. Based on evidence he found in 34 empirical studies, Boyne concluded that “public organizations are more bureaucratic, and public managers are less materialistic and have weaker organizational commitment than their private sector counterparts” (P.97). It is not the intention of this dissertation to empirically examine the differences between public and private organizations and investigate their effects on employees’ attitudes and behavioral reactions to organizational change. This dissertation examines a specific characteristic that is associated with public organizations. More specifically, in this research, the particular features of the organizational structure are accounted for, along with perceptions of change history which is not a sector-specific variable.

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As stated earlier, some characteristics of public organizations are vastly different from those of the private sector. One of these differences is the structure of public organizations. The study of organizational structure has been the dominant focus in the classic studies on organization theory and organizational behavior (Daft, 2012; Mintzberg, 1979). When studying organizational structure, scholars often focus on the issue of bureaucracy. A bureaucratic organization is defined as an organization in which organizational activities are to a great degree predictable and predetermined (Mintzberg, 1979). One of the manifestations of such organizations is the formalization of organizational behavior. Formalization refers to the degree to which organisational activities are manifested in written documents regarding procedures, job descriptions, regulations and policy manuals (Daft, 2012). These written documents describe activities and behaviors of employees in the organizations. Since a high degree of formalization makes employees less adaptable and face more procedural limitations, it is expected that formalization impedes the process of adaptation and change (Walker et al., 2007). In an environment which is characterized by formal rules and procedures, employees often view organizational change as a challenge and a threat to the existing stable organization. Such a view reduces the perceived value and, in turn, the potential success of change (Rogiest et al., 2015). Another reason for examining the organizational structure of public organizations as one of the variables of the study is that a number of recent studies conducted in Western countries have concluded that the structural features of public organizations may influence the execution of organizational change. For example, Van der Voet (2014a), Isett, Glied, Sparer, and Brown (2013) and Coram and Burnes (2001) argue that the bureaucratic organizational structures that typically characterize public organizations may have an impact on the implementation of organizational change.

2.4.3. Change Process Among the six categories of organizational changes identified by scholars and practitioners, the manner in which organizational change efforts are implemented- that is, the change process- is the most commonly studied type of antecedents to employees’ reactions to change (Oreg et al., 2011). Process factors describe the interventions and processes that are involved in the execution of a change initiative and employees’ responses to such efforts. It has long been believed that the process of organizational change, that is, the process at which the 37


change comes about is a problematic and challenging task. The difficulty of implementing organizational change has resulted in a large number of theory-oriented and practice-oriented literature that are employed by change leaders to implement change (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Kotter, 1995; Lewin, 1947b). The availability of such a significant number of change theories and models reveals that successful execution of change is not contingent on the context or content of change alone, it mostly depends on how the organizational change comes about; that is, the process of change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). From the literature concerning the implementation process of change there appear to be two main approaches to organizational change management: Planned approach and emergent approach to change (Beer & Nohria, 2000; T. By, Rune, 2005). The planned approach to organizational change has been dominant in the theory and practice of organizational change management for the past 70 years; while the emergent approach is relatively a more recent concept that lacks the formal history of the planned approach (Bamford & Forrester, 2003). In the next sections, I will discuss each of these approaches to organizational change in more detail and review the relevant literature.

2.4.3.1. Planned approach to change The planned approach to change views organisational change as a process that moves an organization from a current fixed state to a future desired state through a series of pre-planned stages. The implementation of planned change is top-down; the objectives of change are formulated at the start of the change process. This approach depends significantly on the role of management for the execution of the organizational change (Beer & Nohria, 2000). The planned approach to change was initiated by Lewin’s three-stage model to change in which he theorized change as progressing through successive stages called (1) unfreezing- changing to overcome both individual resistance and pressures of group conformity; (2) moving- change process that transforms the organization from the status quo to a future desired state; and (3) refreezingrecognizing, applying and incorporating values, attitudes and skills with those formerly held and currently desired to stabilize the change interference by making a balance between the driving and restraining forces (Bamford & Forrester, 2003; S. P. Robbins & Judge, 2013). In his seminal work, Lewin regarded the behavior of employees as equilibrium, which is the result of the driving and restraining forces. Driving forces are those that direct employee behavior away from the status quo, while restraining forces impede movement from the prevailing 38


equilibrium (S. P. Robbins & Judge, 2013). Bamford and Forrester (2003) believed that change happens when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces against the change. This will enable the organization to move from the old to the new situation (unfreeze-move-refreeze), as shown in the below Figure 2.1. Lewin’s approach recognized that before any new attitude or behaviour can be adopted successfully, the old one has to be abandoned. Building on Lewin’s early work, many scholars and practitioners have developed similar, yet more detailed approaches to change. Greiner (1967) and Judson (1991) each developed five-phase models, Kotter (1995), Armenakis, Harris, and Feild (1999) and Fernandez and Rainey (2006) have described multi-phase models for managers and change agents to follow during the implementation of change efforts.

Figure 2. 1 Unfreezing the status quo.

Source: (S. P. Robbins & Judge, 2013) About five decades ago, Greiner (1967) examined 18 major change efforts and noted that some commonly used methods to change regularly appear to be unsuccessful. Some of the unsuccessful methods include one-sided actions, such as top-down decrees or directives for structural changes; and narrow efforts at power-sharing through group decision making (Rainey, 2014). 39


Kotter (1995) proposed an-eight steps model for change agents to follow in implementing organizational changes. These stages include (a) establishing a sense of urgency; (b) forming a powerful guiding coalition of individuals who embrace the need for change; (c) creating a vision to accomplish the desired end-result; (d) communicating the vision through numerous communication channels; (e) empowering others to act on the vision by changing structures, systems, policies, and procedures in ways that will facilitate implementation; (f) planning for and creating short-term wins by publicizing success; (g) consolidating improvements and changing other structures, systems, procedures, and policies that aren’t consistent with the vision; and (h) institutionalizing the new approaches by publicizing the connection between the change effort and organizational success. Fernandez and Rainey (2006) reviewed the existing research and dozens of analyses of organizational change, they identified the determinants or conditions of organizational change success in the public sector. The framework of Fernandez and Rainey (2006) is the only one which examines conditions of change success in public sector organizations explicitly. They argued that for a change effort to be successful, public managers need to: (a) Ensure the need for change, (b) provide a plan for implementing change, (c) build internal support for change and overcome resistance, (d) ensure top-management’s support and commitment, (e) build and external support from political overseers and key external stakeholders, (f) provide requires resources to support the change process, (g) institutionalize and embed changes to make them enduring, and (h) pursue comprehensive change that achieves subsystem congruence. According to the authors, each of these eight factors affect the implementation process of the change at different phases and adds to its success “by adding to the effects of the other factors.” The different models reviewed in the previous section all include some form of continuous process. In reflecting upon the recommendations presented for implementing change and understanding its overall impacts on change recipients, it is apparent that the process used to plan and enact an organizational change is as important as the state of existing content and contextual factors. Another point which is highlighted by the models reviewed is that the change process typically occurs in multiple steps that take a significant amount of time to unfold and efforts to avoid steps rarely produce satisfactory outcomes, and that mistakes in any step can slow implementation, as well as negate hard-won progress. These points are valuable for all those involved in understanding and executing change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). 40


A more critical reflection from the preceding models is that change recipients are seen as resistant to or passive recipients of change and should be treated as individuals who must be ‘won over’ by change agents (Kotter, 1995). Over the past 70 years, organizational scholars and practitioners have adopted a leader-centric focus on change; focusing on the role of top management in instituting change (Armenakis & Harris, 2009; Judge et al., 1999), in that all proactive behaviors (i.e., Recognizing the need for change, creating a credible vision and specifying the desired outcome, and then making it happen) have been credited to change agents (i.e., managers) (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Such a notion has underestimated change recipients “as agents in their own right whose responses to and actions regarding change need not flow entirely from change agents’ initiatives and actions” (Oreg et al., 2014, p. 2) -I discuss the proactive role of change recipients in more detail in Chapter 5.

2.4.3.2. Critiques on planned approach to change Since its inception in the late 1940s, planned approach to organizational change has gained a large number of proponents and followers. However, it also has some opponents and critics. Firstly, Garvin (1994) claims that organizational change cannot happen from one stable state to another with the turbulent business and economic environment that exists. Lewin’s (1947) assumption that organizations function in a relatively stable environment may only be appropriate for small-scale change efforts (Burnes, 2004). Burnes (2004) further states that Lewin’s theory overlooks organizational power and politics. Secondly, Schein (1970) criticizes planned approach to organizational change “for its emphasis on isolated change and its inability to incorporate radical change” (Bamford & Forrester, 2003, p. 547). The planned approach assumes that employees at all levels within the organization agree to work in one direction with no disagreement. However, in almost all organizations, there exist differences of opinions on many important organizational matters.

2.4.3.3. Emergent approach to change Compared to the planned approach to change, the emergent approach to organizational change is a relatively newer concept (Bamford & Forrester, 2003). The emergent approach is a bottom-up method to initiate and implement organizational change. Unlike planned change which sees employees as passive recipients of organizational change, employees are key and active

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participants in the emergent approach to change (Russ, 2008). This method to the implementation of change arose as a reaction to the planned approach (T. By, Rune, 2005). Authors like Lance, Dawson, Birkelbach, and Hoffman (2010) and Wilson (1992) challenge the suitability and relevance of planned approach to organizational change in today’s increasingly uncertain economic environment. Unlike proponents of the planned approach to change who believe that change can be implemented in a linear, series of events, proponents of the emergent approach to change contend that change is an ongoing process of alteration to new circumstances and situations (Burnes, 2004). This approach to change emphasizes an “extensive and in-depth understanding of strategy, structure, systems, people, style and culture, and how these can function either as sources of inertia that can block change, or alternatively, as levers to encourage an effective change process” (Burnes, 1996, p. 14). Burnes (1996, p. 13) further argues that “successful change is less dependent on detailed plans and projections than on reaching an understanding of the complexity of the issues concerned and identifying the range of available options. It can, therefore, be suggested that the emergent approach to change is more concerned with change readiness and facilitating for change than to provide specific preplanned steps for each change project and initiative”. The models which are examined in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 fit within the planned approach to change category, as I aim to take into account the complexity of the organizations and to include the broader organizational and individual characteristics that can facilitate or hinder change. As alluded to above, change process can refer to the activities undertaken by managers during the introduction and implementation of the proposed change. Such actions can include participation and involvement of change recipients in the change; quality change communication; top management support, and the perceived justice about the change process (Caldwell et al., 2009). In this dissertation, I study two aspects of the change process as key variables impacting change recipients’ responses to change efforts, namely employee participation and quality change communication, as elaborated on in Chapter 4. 2.4.5 Leadership: Can leaders in public organizations make a difference during times of change? The extant literature in the organizational as well as behavioral sciences has studied the effects of leadership on employee attitudes and behaviors at work (Hutchison, Valentino, & Kirkner, 1998; Ichniowski, Shaw, & Prennushi, 1997). Results of these studies have consistently 42


shown that more open, supportive, participatory styles of leadership and management lead to more positive behaviors and attitudes in general. For instance, Hutchison et al. (1998) reported that leaders with a higher interpersonal, participatory orientation had a positive effect on worker commitment toward organizational goals. A plethora of publications has recently addressed the significance of top management and leadership practices for successful execution of change efforts in public organizations (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Kuipers et al., 2014). The notion that leadership is a vital factor in the management of organizational change processes appears in the literature on change in both public and private organizations. For example, Charlesworth, Cook, and Crozier (2003, p. 1) argued that “leadership is the key which unlocks or blocks change”. In the same vein, Ridder et al. (2005) emphasized on the necessity for participation from top management and that leaders need to be capable and accomplished in the process of organizational transformations (Kavanagh & Ashkanasy, 2006). Most studies of leadership in public sector change has focused on the activities of political leaders or lower-level administrative leaders. It is argued that in the first- and second-order organizational changes (Discussed in section 2.4.1.1), administrative leadership is emphasized (Kuipers et al., 2014). In sectoral, third-order changes, the role of political leaders are more important. For instance, in investigating a major reform in the Norwegian welfare sector, Askim et al. (2010) delineated the necessity of political leadership for initiating and decision-making stage of the reforms, while administrative leaders were able to impact on the change content during the implementation process. Likewise, M. Christensen (2005) emphasized on the critical role of political leadership and consultants in the process of organizational change. In addition to the role of general leadership, the organisational change literature also points to the importance of the leadership style for the successfulness of organizational change. To date, previous studies have mostly focused on transformational leadership as an important antecedent of employees’ responses to change (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). Transformational leadership behaviors of change agents are general and transsituational influences on change recipients’ attitudes and behaviors (Bass & Riggio, 2006). It is argued that transformational leaders can communicate the vision for change and bring employees in unison to achieve the intended goals of the change. Rather than being a change-based approach, transformational leadership is entity-based and characterize employees’ assessment of 43


the objects (J. Choi, 2008; Liu, 2009). Such entity-based evaluations “often serve as heuristic cues and influence people’s interpretation of events involving the entity” (Liu, 2009, p. 4). Since transformational leaders have the respect, admiration, trust and loyalty of their followers, they become motivated to do more than what they are originally asked to do (Bass, 1999). Therefore, transformational leadership is often suggested to be positively related to employees’ positive responses to change. For instance, in one study which examined attitudes of 343 employees in 30 organizations in the United States, Herold et al. (2008) found that transformational leadership was positively and significantly related to affective commitment to change. In another study that investigated change efforts in a Dutch pubic organization, van der Voet (2015) reported a significant, positive, indirect relationship between the direct supervisor’s transformational leadership behaviors and change recipients’ affective commitment to change. While most of the extant literature has accounted for the role transformational leadership on employees’ positive responses to change, a number of recent studies have taken on a different approach in theory development and examined other styles of leadership. The shift in this conceptual method is based on the different theoretical emphases of these types of leadership styles. For instance, Herold et al. (2008) developed and empirically validated a leadership style known as ‘change-leadership’ construct based on practice-oriented recommendations such as Kotter (1995), including particular behaviors of leaders such as creating a vision, employee empowerment, monitoring, and facilitating employee adaptation. Change leadership, defined as change recipients’ evaluation of leader’s behavior towards a specific change effort, is a situation-specific, event-based construct, which is directed at the implementation of a specific change, rather than at other organizational processes (Liu, 2009). Rather than having sustainable, enduring and cross-situational influence, the influence of change leadership is episodic. The relationship between change leadership behaviors and change recipients’ responses to change has been the long-standing tradition in the organizational change literature. The extant literature has suggested that “by engaging in certain strategies and activities change leaders can elicit positive responses and supportive behaviors from employees and these behaviors will then lead to successful change implementation” (Liu, 2009, p. 5). During times of change, change leaders can demonstrate behaviors like creating a change vision for change, communication concerning the change, motivating participation of employees in the change process, being fair, providing change-related support, providing feedback regarding the change 44


and consolidating the success of change (Armenakis et al., 1999; Caldwell et al., 2004; Higgs & Rowland, 2011; Lewin, 1947b). By creating a clear change-related vision and communicating it to employees and engaging them in the decision-making process of the change effort, helping employees to handle the ambiguities and challenges related to the change, change leadership can reduce change-related uncertainty and create both valence and active support for the change among change recipients (Liu, 2009). Although a substantial theoretical work is available which suggests that such activities and strategies of leaders are vital in change implementation, empirical work is scant. Herold et al. (2008) were the first who empirically investigated the role of change leadership on employees’ commitment to change in the United States. Although Herold et al. (2008) hypothesized a positive association between change leadership and change recipients’ affective commitment to change, their empirical data did not support such a relationship. Instead, they found that change leadership moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and change commitment. Another study by van der Voet (2015) in the Netherlands’ public sector found that the impact of change leadership on change recipients’ affective commitment to change was mediated by quality change communication and employees’ participation in the change event. In this dissertation, my concentration is on the administrative leadership of public managers, rather than the political leadership of elected officials. More specifically, the dissertation examines the transformational as well as change leadership behavior of front-line, direct supervisors in stimulating change recipients’ affective commitment to change as well as their proactive responses to change. In Chapter 4, I examine transformational leadership as one of the predictors of affective commitment to change, while in Chapter 5 I examine change leadership as an antecedent of change recipient proactivity. 2.4.6 Individual Characteristics In previous sections, I mainly discussed macro-level factors that affect change recipient’s reactions to change. However, each organization includes a variety of different individuals with different characteristics. These individual characteristics have the potential to affect organizational members’ attitudes and behaviors in general and, during organizational change efforts, these individual differences may influence reactions to change efforts (Walker et al., 2007). Given a similar content, context, process and leadership, factors explaining individual differences in attitudes toward change cannot be overlooked. 45


To date, a myriad of studies on change recipients’ reactions has considered characteristics of the recipients that predict and help explain their reactions to change efforts. The extant literature highlights the fact that individuals are inclined to respond in certain ways when facing change efforts, across different change situations (Oreg et al., 2011). In a departure from organizational development literature, Judge et al. (1999) hypothesized that a number of dispositional traits could influence change recipients' responses to change efforts. These individual traits are pre-change precursors, which constitute circumstances that are independent of an organizational change and exist before the initiation and implementation of the change (Oreg et al., 2011; Straatmann et al., 2016). It is argued that individuals differ in what they notice, and hence differ in what they believe ‘what is and what ought to be’ when interpreting their environment (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988). This argument suggests that change recipients assess change content, context, processes and leadership based on their own standards and schemata (Lau & Woodman, 1995). As such, organizational change will not affect each change recipient evenly Burke and Litwin (1992) and recipients respond to change efforts differently. As explained above, there are dozens of individual traits that have been suggested to influence change recipients’’ responses to organizational change. In this dissertation, we consider three individual-level variables. First, I study recipient’s locus of control and self-efficacy, as these may impact the way employees perceive and recognize their environment and how they respond to events happening around them. Second, since this dissertation is conducted in a public sector context, I will also examine the role of prosocial motivation in understanding how recipients respond to change efforts. To date, several Western as well as Chinese researchers have tested the effects of change recipients’ change-related sense of control and self-efficacy on their reactions to organizational change efforts (Judge et al., 1999; Wanberg & Banas, 2000). Results confirmed that an increased sense of control over the change and self-efficacy are associated with higher levels of openness to change (Wanberg & Banas, 2000), copying with change (Judge et al., 1999), increased commitment to the change (Herold et al., 2007) and increased engagement in the change (Cunningham et al., 2002). As for prosocial motivation factor, there is not sufficient research concerning the relationship between it and recipients’ responses to organizational change. One of these exceptions is van der Voet, Steijn, and Kuipers (2017) who found a positive relationship 46


between prosocial motivation and affective commitment to change in a Dutch public sector context. These individual characteristics are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. These individual characteristics are often not changeable and, therefore, are of limited use for active enhancement of change support during specific change processes. Nevertheless, they help managers to select the types of employees with characteristics which are supportive of change efforts. Change recipients with a high locus of control and self-efficacy are better equipped to deal with the uncertainty linked with organizational change (Judge et al., 1999). In a similar vein, prosocially motivated employees are supposed to react more positively to organizational change efforts (van der Voet et al., 2017) because (1) they have the “desire to expend effort to benefit other people” (Grant, 2008b, p. 49), (2) “consider the needs of others” (Piliavin & Charng, 1990, p. 30) and (3) go above and beyond the call of duty to persevere in performing their tasks effectively based on meaning and purpose (Grant, 2008b).

2.5 A research agenda for change management in public sector organizations In this theoretical chapter, it was claimed that there are a number of factors and actors that predict employees’ reactions to organizational change efforts. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the role of four of these factors concurrently. More specifically, the first research question is: What are the antecedents of employees’ attitudes toward change in non-Western, Islamic public organizations? Are western theories of organizational change valid in non-western settings? Although both of the empirical studies in this dissertation focus on the antecedents of change recipient’s reactions to change efforts, the study presented in Chapter 4 explicitly examines the simultaneous role of change content, context, process and leadership. As stated in the above sections, a plethora of work has examined change recipients’ reactions to organizational change efforts. However, almost all of the available studies have focused on the passive role of change recipients during times of change. In this chapter, it was argued that, given the right dispositions and contexts, change recipients could engage in proactive behaviors in response to change efforts. The second research objective is to investigate how and when change recipients engage in such proactive behaviors. More formally, the second research question is: Under what circumstances do change recipients step outside the boundaries of passivity and respond positively and proactively to change efforts initiated by others? To answer this research question, in Chapter 5 I develop and empirically examine a conceptual model to 47


examine the antecedents and work-related outcomes of change recipient’s proactive behaviors. This framework accounts for both the individual differences and contextual variables that are believed to affect change recipients’ proactive responses during times of change. Figure 2. 2 The relationship between antecedents and change recipients’ responses to change

Individual differences

Change content

Employees’ responses to change

Change Context

Change process

Leadership

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Work-related outcomes of employees’ responses to change


49


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Chapter 3: Research Methodology 3.1 Introduction The preceding chapters of this dissertation covered the ‘what’ of the research: in the first Chapter, the research background, research problem, research objectives and the main research questions were introduced. In Chapter two, I reviewed the relevant literature and concluded with a specific research agenda. This chapter (chapter three) covers the “how” of the research. It explains how I investigate the research problem. In this chapter, the philosophical views, research approaches, research designs, research methods and techniques commonly employed by social science researchers are discussed, followed by the methodology that is used to address the dissertation’s research questions and objectives. In the last section, the research design and methods, case selection and analysis techniques of the two empirical studies are discussed in more detail.

3.2. Review of research philosophies As explained in Chapter one, this dissertation aims to add to the existing literature on organizational change management in public sector organizations. In this section, I examine existing research paradigms in order to fully benefit from these existing insights and choose a research paradigm which helps to answer the research questions. Therefore, I review these research paradigms broadly and then in the fields of organizational change management as well as public management.

3.2.1. Research philosophy One of the early decisions a researcher needs to make, among others, is the selection of the research philosophy. A research philosophy, or what others call research paradigm or methodology (Neuman, 2002), philosophical worldview (Guba, 1990), is related to the creation or advancement of knowledge and the nature of that knowledge (Saunders, 2007). More specifically, it is defined as a “set of interrelated assumptions about the social world which provides a philosophical and conceptual framework for the organized study of that world” (Filstead, 1979, p. 34). That is, the selected paradigm guides the philosophical assumptions about the research and leads to the selection of research design, methods, instruments, materials and participants (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Kayrooz & Trevitt, 2005) argues that it is important for researchers to explicitly mention the 51

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

philosophical paradigms they adopt in their research for it helps to explain why a quantitative, qualitative or a mixed methods approach has been chosen for the study. A research paradigm sets the context for a study, providing ontological, epistemological and methodological grounds. Strien (1978) contends that a functional research paradigm needs to cover at least three elements: “(a) a scientific theory in behavioral science, (b) norms and goals, and (c) a coherent set of interventions that address the research problems within the direction of the set norms and goals”. Over the years, social scientists have identified a number of research paradigms. Three of the most well-known and widely used research paradigms in the social sciences in general and business and public management in particular, among others, are positivist/postpositivist, interpretivist/constructionist and pragmatic. These paradigms differ significantly on the basis of their epistemological, ontological and methodological grounds. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and is concerned with what constitutes acceptable knowledge or the philosophical ways of how we come to know (Bryman, 2012). While ontological considerations relate to the nature of social entities or the view of the nature of social phenomenon or reality (Healy & Perry, 2000). Ontology examines the nature of reality in terms of whether the realities of the social world are perceived from an objective or subjective nature (Burrell & Morgan, 2017). That is, it is the reality that researchers are attempting to explore. Methodology is also concerned with how we come to know, but it is more practical, rather than philosophical, in nature. Methodology includes the role of the researcher, the focus of the research, and the techniques and procedures employed by the researcher to investigate that reality (Healy & Perry, 2000). In the next section, I discuss the positivist/postpositivist, interpretivist/constructionist and pragmatic paradigms and their differences in terms of their epistemological and ontological considerations. These three positions - postpositivist, interpretivist/constructionist and pragmaticmake different philosophical assumptions about acceptable knowledge and how researchers can achieve it. While these positions are fundamentally different, there have been suggestions to accommodate them in research (Creswell, 2013).

3.2.1.1 The postpositivism paradigm The postpositivist assumptions, which are sometimes called doing science research, the scientific method, or empirical research, have been dominant in the traditional forms of social and natural science research. This research paradigm advocates the application of natural science 52


methods to the study of social science (Bryman, 2012). Postpositivism philosophy involves “working with an observable social reality and that the end product of such research can be lawlike generalizations similar to those produced by the physical and natural scientists” (Remenyi & Williams, 1998, p. 32). The postpositivist research paradigm contends that outcomes or effects have antecedents or causes. Therefore, according to this philosophical view, the problems investigated by postpositivist researchers reflect the need to identify and assess the causes or antecedents of possible outcomes (Creswell, 2013). Researchers who view the world from natural sciences perspectives are more likely to adopt postpositivism research paradigm to acquire scientific knowledge. From the natural scientists’ point of view, the only phenomenon that one can observe leads the investigator to produce a credible data (Saunders, 2007). And to produce the credible data, researchers employ research designs and strategies that use existing theory to develop, test, confirm or refute hypotheses. Another significant constituent of the postpositivism philosophy to research is that “the research is undertaken, as far as possible, in a value-free way” (Saunders, 2007, p. 103). What this notion means is that postpositivists view researchers as external to the data collection process in the sense that the researcher cannot do much to alter the substance of the data collected. In other words, postpositivists assume that “the researcher is independent of and neither affects nor is affected by the subject of the research” (Remenyi & Williams, 1998, p. 33). Although postpositivism is one of the eldest and most widely used research paradigms in both natural and social sciences; not all researchers agree with the notion that knowledge can be developed through the adoption of natural scientists’ perspectives, that is postpositivism (Collis & Hussey, 2013; Healy & Perry, 2000). Some researchers are critical of the postpositivism philosophy and argue that the social world is “far too complex to lend itself to theorizing by definite ‘laws’ in the same way as the physical sciences” (Saunders, 2007, p. 106). Opponents of postpositivism epistemology, particularly constructivists (see section 3.2.1.2 below) argue that postpositivist paradigm has only one way of approaching the social world (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011), and that it is not possible to isolate people from the social contexts in which they exist in and that individuals simply cannot be understood without examining their personal perceptions of their behaviour. Healy and Perry (2000) emphasize that researchers cannot be completely objective because they are themselves part of the phenomena they are observing and therefore carry with them their personal interests and values, which become embodied in the research. Additionally, 53


they further argue that postpositivist researchers detach themselves from the world they study, while researchers within interpretive paradigm recognize that they have to contribute in real life to some degree so as to understand and express its developing properties and features. Constructivists also contend that the social reality is too complex; by reducing such complexity to a series of numbers of law-like generalizations, we lose the rich insights into our complex world (Bryman, 2012).

3.2.1.2 The constructivist paradigm To compensate for the flaws in postpositivism epistemology, some methodologists and researchers

advocate

other forms of

philosophical

worldviews

like constructivism.

Constructivism; also known as social constructivism or interpretivism; is an epistemology that views the social world in terms of human interaction and social behavior. Such a philosophical perspective contends that it is essential for the investigator “to understand differences between humans in our role as social actors” (Saunders, 2007, p. 106). Proponents of constructivism argue that individuals seek to understand the world in which they live and work and interpret and give meaning to the social reality according to their own set of meanings (Creswell, 2013). Since individuals give different meanings and interpret social phenomenon differently, constructivism suggests the ontological notion that there are multiple realities (Healy & Perry, 2000). Furthermore, it implies that the researchers develop subjective, rather than objective, meanings of their experiences. Their backgrounds form their understanding and “they position themselves in the research to acknowledge how their interpretation flows from their personal, cultural and historical experiences” (Creswell, 2012, p. 195). Jennings (2001) states that the interpretive paradigm is associated with a qualitative methodology. A qualitative methodology provides the opportunity to view answers and themes in a broader context compared to quantitative methodologies and use background information to understand the underlying issues. In the past few decades, constructivist research has emerged as an important strand in the social sciences in general and organizational studies research in particular since it is used to study complex phenomenon and develop an understanding of social life. A number of scholars consider organizational change management research as interpretive, because it focuses on attitudes and behaviors of employees for gaining a deep understanding of its complexity (Bartunek & Seo, 2002).

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3.2.1.3 The pragmatic paradigm In the field of social science, researchers often employ either postpositivism or constructivism worldviews. However, there are some who argue that researchers should not be constrained with any specific philosophy; they are free to draw from both postpositivism, constructivism and others liberally. Such a paradigm is known as pragmatism. Pragmatism argues that the research question is the most important determinant of the research paradigm adopted by a researcher. It suggests that if a research question does not suggest the adopted research philosophy unequivocally –be it postpositivist or interpretivist philosophy, then pragmatists argue that it is possible to employ both postpositivist and interpretivist philosophies (Saunders, 2007). The reason for employing more than one research philosophy is that, rather than focusing on assumptions and philosophical views, pragmatists are concerned with applications (what works) and answers to questions (Patton, 1990), and emphasize capitalizing on all available techniques and methods to understand and solve the problem (Rossman & Wilson, 1985). Such a philosophy is reflected in the works of researchers who employ mixed methods – both quantitative and qualitative methods within one study.

3.2.1.4 Paradigm of the dissertation Apparently, from the preceding discussions in the above sections, it would appear that the postpositivist approach and the interpretive approach to be in opposition. However, it is acknowledged that both approaches have something to offer to organizational science research. In the case of organization studies and change management, postpositivism, interpretivism and pragmatic paradigm are equally inclusive. Therefore, the appropriate choice of a research paradigm depends, among others, the given research questions, the research context, the tradition of the discipline and the researcher’s interest or willingness to take a risk and challenge traditional beliefs both of the research discipline and the researcher. As discussed above, each research paradigm has its own set of philosophical principles and has its own stance on the acceptable or “correct” way to conduct research (Neuman, 2002). The research philosophy adopted by the researcher defines the direction of the study and affects the research design, research methods, results and data analysis. The adopted research questions in the current work are mainly concerned with “what”, and “how” which leads to multiple explanations. Since the research questions proposed in Chapter One

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tend to examine the effect of some independent variables on dependent variables; that is, hypothesis testing, in such cases a postpositivist approach makes it more favorable to be used. Therefore, to answer the research questions of the current dissertation, I employ a postpositivist philosophy. Such a philosophy is in line with a substantial number of research papers found in the field of change management and organization studies.

3.3 Research approaches One of the most important components of any research project is the use of theory. Theory is defined as “a systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life” (Babbie, 2013, p. 8). Theory in research plays different objectives; it may be made explicit in the research design or not, depending on whether the researcher adopts a deductive or inductive approach to the research project. Easterby-Smith and Thorpe (2002) argue that the choice of the research approach is important in that; first, it allows the investigator to take a more informed decision about the research design; second, it helps the researcher to think about the research strategies and techniques that best work for the research project. Social scientists often employ one of the two main research approaches: deduction and induction.

3.3.1 Deduction: Theory testing 1. The main objective of the deduction approach is to develop specific explanations of hypotheses based on general principles. In this approach, which is more related to what I called postpositivism or scientific research in section 3.2.1, the researcher proposes explanations for the relationships among variables under study (Creswell, 2013). Postpositivism entails the deductive approach to research in that it intends to reduce theory into small and testable discrete set –such as variables- to develop research questions and hypotheses. Researchers who employ postpositivism views believe in searching for the truth and generalize their findings into wider contexts. Findings of postpositivists are often expressed in factual, numerical and statistical terms which help to explain how events occur and how causes effect outcomes. Therefore, this philosophical paradigm is mostly related with quantitative research methodology (Bassey, 1990). Bryman (2012) lists six sequential stages through which deductive research progresses:

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2. Theory: Deductive approach begins with what is already known in a particular field and of theoretical considerations in relation to that field of study. 3. Hypothesis: Following the selection and review of the theory, the researcher deduces testable hypotheses which show the relationship between the variables. This stage also involves operationalizing the concepts/variables to explicitly show how the variables are measured quantitatively. 4. Data collection: This step involves collecting quantitative data to test the hypotheses. In order for the research to be rigor, it is important for the researcher to be independent of what is being observed, as postulated by postpositivists. 5. Findings: It involves the analysis and presenting the findings. 6. Hypotheses confirmed or rejected: Examining whether the hypotheses are confirmed or rejected. 7. Theory revision: In case if the hypotheses are not confirmed, in this stage the researcher indicates whether modifying the theory is necessary in the light of the findings.

3.3.2 Induction: Theory building In the previous section, I mentioned that the deductive approach has its genesis in the natural sciences research. However, many social scientists in the 20th century were suspicious of deductive approach to social sciences. The critical arguments were based on the assumption that it is not possible to make causal links among “variables without an understanding of the way in which humans interpreted their social world” (Saunders, 2007, p. 118). As an alternative to the deductive, theory testing approach, some social scientists advocate the use of inductive or theory building approach. Inductive approach is “the logical model in which general principles are developed from specific observations” (Babbie, 2013, p. 22). Researchers who intend to employ this approach move from a set of particular observations to a more general in an effort to find common patterns in the problem. In other words, as the name illustrates, the purpose of this approach is to formulate or build a theory based on the researchers understanding of the problem and the analysis of the data.

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3.3.3 Mixed research approaches In the preceding sections, it was assumed that there are rigid divisions between the two approaches and that the researcher is constrained with choosing either deductive or inductive approach. However, as is the case with the research paradigms, it is argued that combining deductive and inductive approaches is advantageous (Bryman, 2012).

3.3.4. Research approach of the dissertation In this dissertation, I have employed a deductive approach to answer the research questions. The notion behind adopting a deductive approach is because, as seen in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, I have developed hypotheses and examine the relationships between variables. In such cases, it is best to employ a deductive approach. A review of the literature on organizational change in the public sector by Kuipers et al. (2014) shows that 18% of the 133 articles reviewed had adopted a deductive approach.

3.4 Research design Another important decision the researcher needs to make, in addition to selecting the research paradigm and approach, is to decide on the type of research design needed to answer the research question. Research designs, also known as strategies of inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011), are types of inquiry within quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches that provides detailed direction towards the attainment of research objectives. It is the general plan of how the researcher is about to investigate and answer the research question or achieve the research objectives. It comprises clear aims and objectives, methods and sources of data collection and limitations and ethical considerations (Saunders, 2007). In other words, research designs ensure that the evidence obtained allows the researcher to answer the research question(s) as unequivocally as possible (Creswell, 2013). Different research paradigms require different research designs for the collection and analysis of the empirical evidence and so the choice of research design is important (Creswell, 2012). Therefore, the choice of research design is important. Yin (2013) introduced three settings for choosing a research design. These three main conditions are: 1- The type of research question under investigation; 2- The extent of control that the researcher has over the actual behavioral events; and

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3- The degree of focus on current as different to historical events. In recent decades, with the advancement of statistical techniques and computer programs, the number of designs available for social science researchers has increased significantly. In this dissertation, the survey questionnaire design has been chosen as the most applicable research strategy for investigating the research questions proposed in Chapter One. In the next sections, I will review and discuss some of the most widely used research designs in the field of social sciences in general and organizational change and public sector reform in particular. I will explain why I chose this design for this dissertation and provide details about survey design as a research method in the field of organization studies.

3.4.1 Quantitative research design Traditionally, research designs associated with quantitative research were those that used the positivist or postpositivist research paradigm (Creswell, 2012). Conventional quantitative research designs include true experiments and the less rigorous experiments which are known as quasi-experiments. Experimental designs which are employed in the fields of organization science and public management studies have originated in the field of psychology (Campbell, 1989). Experiments and quasi-experiments are also employed to evaluate the impact of interventions, new policies or government reforms. True experiments are considered as the most rigorous types of research designs which are usually used as a benchmark against which other forms of nonexperimental research is assessed (Bryman, 2012). Research findings which are based on true experiments are robust and trustworthy and tend to be very strong in terms of validity. The first published study on organizational change employed an experimental design where the researchers aimed to explore the notion of overcoming resistance to change (Coch & French Jr, 1948). In addition to experimental designs, a number of nonexperimental quantitative designs exist. One of the most widely used nonexperimental designs is cross-sectional design (it is also called correlational design). Researchers who employ cross-sectional design collect data on more than one case at a single point in time (Bryman, 2012). Unlike experimental designs which establish causal relationships, in this type of research design, researchers do not aim to establish causality; instead, they measure the relationship between variables. Organizational change management studies based on cross-sectional designs are often criticized for providing a snapshot of the change process. To overcome the shortcomings found in 59


cross-sectional studies on organizational change and public sector reform, a number of researchers argue for the adoption of other designs like longitudinal designs (Pettigrew, 1990). It is argued that change is not static, but evolves over time (S. L. Jones & Van de Ven, 2016). Therefore, these authors argue that to see how change evolves overtime, a longitudinal research design is needed. To date, a number of studies have employed longitudinal designs. For instance, Rafferty and Restubog (2010) conducted a longitudinal study where they collected data at three points in time: Time 1 was administered soon after the announcement of the organizational change, Time 2 data was collected seven months after the organizational change announced, and Time 3 data was collected fifteen months after the collection of data Time 2. Studies based on longitudinal designs are stronger, compared to cross-sectional research, in that the former allows the researcher to study the process of change and development overtime (Saunders, 2007). Although longitudinal designs are more rigor than cross-sectional designs, the majority of studies reviewed in Chapter two were found to have employed cross-sectional design. However, there are a number of studies which have employed longitudinal designs (Bommer, Rich, & Rubin, 2005; Cunningham et al., 2002; Jimmieson, Terry, & Callan, 2004; Robinson, Kraatz, & Rousseau, 1994). Although one of the oldest studies on organizational change adopted the experimental design, current research designs are mostly cross-sectional or longitudinal. The use of crosssectional quantitative designs is relatively dominant as it is much easier compared to longitudinal or experimental designs. Currently, a substantial number of studies of organizational change and public sector reform are available which have adopted cross-sectional quantitative design. (For a review of the literature on organizational change and public sector reform please refer to (Groeneveld, Tummers, Bronkhorst, Ashikali, & Van Thiel, 2015; Kuipers et al., 2014). In the current study, the researcher has employed a quantitative cross-sectional design to answer the two research questions.

3.4.2 Qualitative research design In general, when people speak about qualitative research designs, they mean social research in which the investigator depends on forms of data other than numerical/statistical data as found in quantitative research designs. Researchers analyze the qualitative data in their documented form rather than quantifying them or converting them to numbers for analysis (Creswell, 2013). Qualitative researchers objective is to comprehend the meaning of human action and ask open60


ended questions regarding phenomena as they occur in their natural context instead of testing predetermined propositions or hypotheses (Bryman, 2012). Such thinking is associated with the assumptions of constructivism/interpretivism philosophical worldviews and inductive research paradigm. Qualitative research is concerned with obtaining rich data from a relatively small number of subjects which allows the researchers to engage themselves in the details and specifics of the data (Saunders, 2007). That is, the size of the sample is less important than data richness (Patton, 1990). An apposite sample size in qualitative research is a matter of judgment (Sandelowski, 1995); more important than the number of participants in qualitative research is the information that is received from the participants (Patton, 1990). A number qualitative research designs have been employed by organizational study researchers, namely grounded theory, action research, ethnography, case study, archival and narrative research designs. As mentioned above, majority of scholarly research in the field of organizational change and broader fields such as organizational behaviour, human resources management and public sector management employ quantitative designs. However, it is argued that when investigating organizational change issues, a more qualitative approach is needed because managerial and employees’ attitudes toward change processes and outcomes are most valid when captured qualitatively in analyzing the situation since it is challenging to quantify change (Bryman, 2012). Additionally, it is further argued that the advantage of qualitative design in organizational and management studies, compared to quantitative designs, is that “it focuses on local perceptions and experiences of phenomena of interest” (Bartunek, 2012, p. 272). Due to the importance of employing qualitative designs in organizational change management studies, a whole Issue of the prestigious journal of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences was dedicated to the benefits of qualitative designs (See Volume 48, Issue 2, June 2012, pp. 121 -294). Currently, a large number of studies are available which have employed qualitative designs. For instance, Van der Voet, Groeneveld, and Kuipers (2014) and J. van der Voet, B. Kuipers, and S. Groeneveld (2015a) employed qualitative case studies to investigate managing change in public sector organizations. Vough et al. (2017) employed grounded theory design to study the role of social processes in how employees self-initiate change. In a quite unique study, Rosenbaum, More, and Steane (2016) employed a longitudinal qualitative design to understand organizational change from the perspective of change recipients. 61


3.4.3 Mixed methods design Mixed methods design, as the name conveys, involves the integration of both quantitative and qualitative research designs. Researchers employing mixed methods designs often draw on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative designs. Although the field of mixed methods research is relatively new compared to quantitative or qualitative research, in recent years a number of mixed methods designs have been developed in the field of social science. The use of mixed methods design is based on the pragmatism paradigm in which researchers liberally draw from both quantitative and qualitative designs. Compared to quantitative or qualitative designs, mixed methods designs have a number of advantages. One of the most significant advantages of this design over the others is that it allows methodological triangulation (Saunders, 2007). Methodological triangulation is concerned with the use of multiple methods of data collection –interviews, questionnaire, content and document analysis. It is argued that triangulation strengthens reliability as well as the internal validity of the study (Creswell, 2013).

3.5 Research methods In this section, the third primary element of the research process is discussed; that is, research methods. Research methods entail the forms of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data to answer question(s) of the research project. Research methods are often confused with research designs as, on the face of it, these two concepts seem to convey the same meaning (Bryman, 2012). However, there are significant differences between them. As already discussed above, research design is a structure that guides the implementation of the research method and data analysis; while a research method is merely a technique for collecting and analyzing data. Qualitative and quantitative methods are different in the way they are designed and in the way in which research is carried out. The three research methods are defined below:

3.5.1 Quantitative methods From the major research philosophies discussed above, a link can be made between quantitative methods data and the postpositivist paradigm, and between qualitative data and an interpretive paradigm. Quantitative methods are a means for collecting quantitative, numerical data to describe and explain a phenomenon or investigating scientific theories by examining the association among variables (Babbie, 2013). The variables can, and should, be operationalized and measured on questionnaire so that collected data can be analyzed using statistical techniques. 62


According to Myers (1997), quantitative research was designed to study physical and natural science, with the help of: laboratory experiments, surveys, and numerical methods. Researchers outline quantitative research as research that emphasizes on quantification in collection and analysis of data and expresses a view of social reality as an external unbiased reality (Bryman, 2012). Quantitative investigators typically devise a research problem or question from the body of extant literature that is available in terms of variables and existing theories that may need testing or confirmation (Creswell, 2012). To answer the research questions proposed in Chapter One of this dissertation, the current study employs a survey questionnaire to understand change recipients’ attitudes towards various aspects of organizational change management in the public sector.

3.5.2 Qualitative methods Qualitative methods are means for collecting qualitative, nonnumerical data to explore and understand the meaning individuals attribute to a social phenomenon (Creswell, 2013). The difference between qualitative and quantitative research is often expressed in term of using numbers, or closed-ended questions (quantitative hypotheses) rather than using words or openended questions (qualitative interview questions) (Saunders, 2007). Researchers who employ qualitative research methods of data collection obtain rich data from a relatively small number of participants which allows the researchers to engage themselves in the details and specifics of the data (Creswell, 2012). That is, the size of the sample is less important than data richness (Patton, 1990). Additionally, unlike quantitative research which mainly samples randomly, qualitative research often select the participants based on purposive sampling. That is, participants are selected to help an exploratory purpose rather than to be statistically representative of and generalizable to a population (Ritchie, 1987). Purposive sampling methods include theoretical sampling (Hair, Anderson, Babin, & Black, 2010), sampling for maximum variation, and time- or place-based sampling (Ritchie, 1987). Data collected through qualitative methods are usually used to describe or generate theories.

3.5.3 Mixed methods Mixed methods, also known by other terms such as synthesis, integrating, qualitative and quantitative methods, triangulation, mixed methodology and multimethod; are a means for

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collecting both quantitative and qualitative data either simultaneously, that is, at the same time (parallel) or in sequence (sequential) (Saunders, 2007). This research method is relatively new compared to quantitative and qualitative methods. It evolved around the late 1980s and the early 1990 based on work from individuals in diverse fields such as evaluation, education, management, sociology, and health sciences (Creswell, 2012). A literature review by Kuipers et al. (2014) found that 5.3% of the 133 articles reviewed had employed mixed methods. Researchers employing mixed methods use both postpositivism and constructionism paradigms, as shown in Table 3.1. The mixed methods used by these studies included the collection of both quantitative (closed-ended) data in response to research questions or hypotheses and qualitative (open-ended). According to Lee (1991) quantitative researchers who hold some interpretive views are said to favor building techniques into their studies that follow those of qualitative researchers. Such a technique is known as “Triangulation” which is the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study.

Table 3. 1: The matrix of research paradigms, designs, approaches and methods

Research paradigm Postpositivism

Constructivism

Pragmatism

Research approach

Deductive

Inductive

Deductive/Inductive

Research design

Experiment

Grounded theory

Any combination of research

Quasi-experiment

Ethnography

designs

Cross-sectional

Case study

postpositivists

Longitudinal

Longitudinal

constructivists

Quantitative

Qualitative

Mixed methods:

Research methods

employed

by and

1. Convergent 2. Exploratory sequential 3. Explanatory sequential

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3.6 Overview and design of the two empirical studies This dissertation aims to gain insights into the role of employees’ attitudes and behaviors during times of change in public organizations and explain the factors and actors that influence employees’ attitudes and behaviors in response to a specific change effort. As stated earlier, a quantitative research design, survey questionnaire method was selected for this research. This design allows me to test the hypothesized associations among the variables empirically and enables me to generalize the findings of the study. The role of different factors and actors are examined in the two empirical studies. In the next sections, I discuss in more detail the design, research setting, research methods and techniques of the two studies.

3.6.1 Chapter 4: Antecedents of employees’ affective commitment to change in public sector organizations The objective of the study presented in Chapter 4 is to answer the research question proposed in Chapter one: What are the antecedents of employees’ attitudes toward change in non-western, Islamic public organizations? Are western theories of organizational change management valid in non-western settings? This study brings together and examines the simultaneous effects of change content, context, process and leadership on change recipients’ attitudes toward change. By simultaneously examining the effects of these factors, this study aims to help scholars and practitioners to have a more complete picture of factors affecting employees’ attitudes toward change in public organizations. Additionally, as discussed in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, although a number of studies have suggested that the particular characteristics of public sector organizations make the organizational change management in public sector organizations different from the private sector, most studies examining issues related to organizational change have focused mostly on private sector organizations. Hence, the second aim of this study is to take into account the specific context of public organizations explicitly. Thirdly, despite the fact that a number of studies have indicated that change is situational; what works in one country, organization or culture may not produce the same results in a different situation; research related to management of organizational change has mostly been addressed in western countries. Hence, the third objective of this study is to contribute to the growing line of research about organizational change in non-western, Islamic setting.

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The study employs a quantitative, cross-sectional, survey questionnaire design and method. The implementation of change in Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) was selected as the research setting. Akin to the rest of the Ministries of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), MHESR has faced a financial crisis since mid-2014. The Ministry has initiated and implemented a number of change efforts in response to the financial crisis. Data for this study were obtained from five public organizations under the management of the MHESR. Employees were asked to fill out a survey concerning the study’s main concepts. The overall number who responded was 147 people; a valid response rate of 73.5% out of the total population sampled of 200 people. Participants’ anonymity was guaranteed throughout the research process with results reported as aggregated data. This situation was clearly communicated to the participants through the information form before they were asked to sign the consent form. The conceptual model, as shown in Figure 3.1, hypothesized that change content, context, process and leadership predict employees’ affective commitment to change. As such, a software program and data analysis method were needed to test the impact of the independent variables on the dependent variable. I used SPSS 22 software run hierarchical multiple regression to test the hypotheses of the study.

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Figure 3. 1 Modelling the relationship between change content, context, process, leadership and employees’ affective commitment to change.

Change Content Perceived change impact Change Context Formalization

Employees perception of change history Affective commitment to change

Change Process Quality Change communication Employee participation

Leadership Transformational Leadership

3.6.2 Chapter 5: Predictors and work-related outcomes of change recipient proactivity in public organizations Employee proactivity is prevalent in organizations, but the literature on organizational change has not empirically examined the proactive role that change recipients may play in responses to change efforts initiated by others. Drawing from organizational change, employee proactivity and public management literature, this study develops and empirically validates the

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emerging change recipient proactivity scale, followed by examining antecedents and work-related outcomes of concept of change recipient’s proactive responses to organizational change initiatives. In this study, the aim is to answer the following research question:

Under what circumstances do change recipients step outside the boundaries of passivity and respond positively and proactively to change efforts initiated by others? To answer this research question, I conduct two separate, yet complementary studies. In Study 1, I develop and validate a measurement scale for change recipient proactivity construct. I engaged in a multi-stage process to develop a measure of change recipient proactivity. In the first phase, based on the conceptualization of change proactivity and an extensive literature review, I initially generated 21 items. I then assessed which statements best reflected the domain of the construct. Inconsistent assessments were resolved during discussions with a professor and three doctoral students in the field of organizational behavior. In the end, I constructed a list of 14 prototypical activities that I believed were most representative of the construct of change recipient proactivity. Following Hinkin (1998) who suggested that “the new items be scaled using 5-point Likert scales” (p. 110), I placed those 14 items in Likert format anchored from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. In the second phase, the psychometric properties of the scale were tested using a sample of 414 white-collar employees from various organizations. The sample had seven variables with missing values, all less than 1% missing, which I replaced with the median for ordinal scale and mean for continuous scale. To ensure that our measure of change recipient proactivity conceptually and empirically distinct from other constructs pertaining to both recipients’ responses to change initiatives as well as constructs that measure employees’ general proactivity, the third phase of the scale development compared these constructs to determine the discriminant and criterion validity of change recipient proactivity. Such constructs include affective commitment to change, readiness for change and proactive personality. We also exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to provide empirical support to change recipient proactivity. All the analyses were conducted using AMOS 22. In Study 2, I develop and empirically test a conceptual model which incorporates both antecedents of change recipient proactivity -individual differences and contextual variables- as well as its likely work-related outcomes. As the appearance of the conceptual model shows (Figure 68


3.2), a possible relationship exists between the individual and contextual variables and workrelated outcomes. The conceptual model suggests that recipients’ change proactivity may mediate the relationship between the individual and context-related variables and work outcomes. The study employs a quantitative design and method. Data for this study were obtained from two public organizations under the management of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. A total of 220 questionnaires were divided accordingly among the participating organizations. Employees were asked to fill out a survey concerning the study’s main concepts. The response rate of the survey questionnaire was 72%. The sample of this study consists of 158 employees. Multiple regression and mediation analysis using SPSS 22 software were used to test the hypotheses of the conceptual model. Figure 3. 2 Conceptual model of predictors and outcomes of recipients’ change proactivity

Individual differences Locus of control Work-related outcome

Organizational commitment

Self-efficacy

Pro-social motivation

Change recipient proactivity

Extra-role behavior

Contextual variable Turnover intention

Formalization

Change leadership

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Chapter 4: Antecedents of employees’ affective commitment to change in public sector organizations2 4.1 Overview As alluded to in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, this dissertation attempts to answer two research questions. In this Chapter, empirical research is conducted to answer the first research question. That is, this Chapter answers the following research question: What are the antecedents of employees’ attitudes toward change in non-western, Islamic public organizations? Are western theories of organizational change management valid in non-western settings? To do so, this Chapter will start with an introduction, highlighting the void in the literature and discussing the contributions of the study. Section 4.3 provides a laconic background of Kurdistan, its political, economic structure and the relationships between Kurdistan as a federal region and Baghdad as the capital of Iraq. This section also highlights the challenges currently facing Kurdistan Region which led the government to introduce reform and changes in its organizations. In section 4.4, I review the relevant literature on employees’ attitudes toward change, starting from Kurt Lewin’s (1947) work on organization change in the late 1940s. It is in this section where I develop the five hypotheses of the study. Section 4.5 presents the methods adopted to recruit participants and collect the data. It also presents some background information about the organizations where I collected the data. In section 4.6, I present the descriptive, correlation as well as regression results of the data. Regression results reveal that process-related variables and transformational leadership behavior of direct supervisors enhance commitment to change while employee perception of his/her change history (a context-related factor) impedes commitment to change. These findings support the external validity of previous findings in western, non-Islamic settings, and thus, would increase our understanding of organizational change theories in non-western settings. Section 4.7 discusses the findings of the study and

2

An abridged version of this Chapter has been published in the Public Personnel Management journal (Vol. 47(2), pp. 195-216) with Cheng Zhichao. The title of the article is: The role of change content, context, process and leadership in understanding employees’ commitment to change: The case of public organizations in Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

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Chapter 4: Antecedents of employees' affective commitment to change in public sector organizations

synthesizes the findings with other studies conducted in western, non-Muslim countries. The final section concluded this chapter by highlighting the contributions as well as limitations of the study. This section also provides avenues for future research.

4.2 Introduction In the past few decades, public organizations have come under increasing pressure to initiate reforms and changes to cope with central government decisions, tighter budgets, deregulation of marketplaces, and technological advances (Kuipers et al., 2014; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). While organizational change happens with increasing magnitude and frequency in all forms of organizations (Coram & Burnes, 2001), a review of the literature indicates that two-thirds of all change initiatives fail (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 1995). Although failure of organizational change efforts may have multiple causes, few are as critical as employees’ attitudes toward change (Bartunek et al., 2006; M. Choi, 2011). In particular, research has posited that many change initiatives fail because change agents often underestimate the influential role organizational members’ attitudes play in determining change outcomes (Armenakis et al., 1993; Bartunek et al., 2006; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). If we agree with the view that employees’ attitudes toward change are salient in determining change outcomes, then, what factors affect employees’ attitudes toward change? Since Kurt Lewin’s early work on organizational change in the 1940s, scholars and practitioners have identified four change-related factors which are common in all organizational change efforts and are suggested to affect employees’ attitudes toward change. First: Change content; which is concerned with the type or substance of the change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Second: Change context; which refers to the existing internal and external conditions that influence organizational effectiveness (Self et al., 2007). Third: Change process; which describes the interventions and processes that are involved in the implementation of a change initiative and employees’ responses to such efforts (Van der Voet, 2014a). Fourth: Change leadership; which focuses on the role of leadership in promoting a certain change effort (Herold et al., 2008). Currently a significant body of research is available that acknowledges the importance of these factors in predicting employees’ attitudes toward organizational change. However, a review of the literature shows that knowledge of organizational change management is limited in several ways. First, despite the relevance of content, process, context and leadership in organizational change, variables from each of these antecedent categories have been considered separately, 72


having distinct impacts on employees’ attitudes toward change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Oreg et al., 2014). Thus, the literature lacks a broad and systematic portrayal of how the various change antecedents simultaneously affect employees’ attitudes toward change. Therefore, such a broad consideration of the topic is necessary “if we are to more fully understand the employees’ attitudes toward organizational change” (Oreg et al., 2014, p. 14). Second, a number of studies have suggested that the specific characteristics of public sector organizations make the organizational change management in public sector organizations distinct from the private sector (R. T. By, 2009; van der Voet, 2015), but most studies examining issues related to organizational change have focused on private sector organizations (Coram & Burnes, 2001). Third, rather than focusing on a more micro-level and individual perspective on change, public management research concerning organizational change has traditionally focused on change at the sector or national level (i.e., macro-level) (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). Hence, attention to micro-processes in public sector organizations seems almost automatically absent (Kuipers et al., 2014). Fourth, research related to management of organizational change has mostly been addressed in western, non-Islamic countries (Yousef, 2000). A number of studies have indicated that organizational change is situational; that is, what works in one country, organization or culture may well produce failure in a different situation (Jacobs et al., 2013). Despite such potential differences, no empirical research has examined the generalizability of western studies to a non-western, Muslim-majority country like Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Islam is the most influential force in Muslim-majority countries that influences and regulates individual and group behavior (Ali, 1996). Islamic teachings, values and culture, which place great emphasis on group loyalty, and respect for the family may influence employees in the work setting (Ali, Taqi, & Krishnan, 1997). Islamic teachings and values, if correctly identified and understood, may facilitate organizational change and development (Yousef, 2000). Therefore, this sort of work setting may influence both attitudes toward change and the antecedents that are most important in predicting employees’ attitudes toward change. To move beyond existing literature which has fragmented our view of antecedents of employees’ attitudes toward change and gain a comprehensive understanding of organizational change in public sector organizations, this study aims to: First, respond to the call by Pettigrew et al. (2001), Walker et al. (2007) and Kuipers et al. (2014) to bring together and examine the simultaneous effects of content, context, process and leadership on employees’ attitudes toward change. Such a concurrent examination of these potential factors would help us to have a more 73


complete picture of factors affecting employees’ attitudes toward change. Second, account for the specific context of public organizations in Kurdistan Region of Iraq where many changes are announced by political leaders but very few are actually implemented. Third, contribute to the growing line of research about organizational change in a non-western, Islamic setting. Hence, this study is expected to contribute to the generalizability of the existing body of research, which is done mostly in western settings to non-western settings in general and Islamic settings in particular.

4.3 Background of the work setting This study was conducted in Kurdistan; a constitutionally recognized semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq. With a population of nearly five million, the Iraqi constitution defines Kurdistan as a federal entity of Iraq. Its government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has the right to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers according to the Iraqi constitution of 2005. Kurdistan has a parliamentary democracy with a regional national assembly that consists of 111 seats. Kurdistan was liberated from Saddam Hussein’s atrocities in 1991. Since then, although it has remained part of Iraq, Kurdistan essentially has created a protostate of its own and governs its public institutions, without much interference from the federal government in Baghdad. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Kurdistan has been largely immune to the insecurity and conflict witnessed elsewhere in the rest of Iraq. From 2004 to 2014, the KRG received 17% of Iraq’s total revenue, which was estimated at $13 billion annually. This allowed KRG to enjoy an unparalleled economic boom and revitalize its public sector after years of internal wars and international economic sanctions. The ten-year security, economic growth and prosperity witnessed in Kurdistan led many to call it ‘the other Iraq’. However, starting from mid-2014, Kurdistan’s economic growth plunged into three simultaneous crises; in addition to an already existing chronic problem. The first one was driven by disputes over the management of oil wells and revenue with the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG started building its oil pipeline in 2012 and exporting crude oil to international markets independent of Baghdad’s approbation in 2014. The federal government responded with suspending the KRG’s share of oil revenue, leaving the KRG with no major sources of revenue. Secondly, although the KRG exports its crude oil, however, the sharp decline in international oil 74


prices, from US$115 a barrel in June 2014 to US$35 in December 2015, abjectly hit the KRG’s fragile, oil-dependent economy and substantially reduced its revenues from direct oil sales. Thirdly, the KRG’s fiscal position further deteriorated by the security challenges posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) insurgency in August 2014, putting significant pressure on the KRG through increased security spending and the influx of 1.8 million internally displaced refugees escaping from the war. Another chronic problem, which existed prior to the financial crisis, was the excessive role the KR’s public sector plays in the economy. The public sector dominates the KR’s economy: the public spending to GDP ratio is over 50 percent. The government is the main employer with a share of more than 50 percent in total employment. As of December 2016, 1,378,000 of KRG’s five million population were on the government payroll, leading the KRG to spend over 60% of its annual budget on public employees’ wages and salaries. The crises that KRG faced were severe; the government had no choice but to take action. The KRG responded to the crises in four simultaneous ways: First, by postponing over 6,000 government-financed investment and construction projects; second, letting government employees’ payments fall in arrears; third, borrowing money from both domestic and foreign banks and companies; and lastly, by requesting all ministries and public organizations to revise their organizational structure in an attempt to cut back on expenses while simultaneously maintaining public service delivery. The first ministry to respond to the KRG’s call for reform and cutbacks was the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR). In Kurdistan, MHESR, which was established in 2006, supervises all public and private universities; among them, 15 are public universities and 12 private universities. Public universities, which enroll over 115,000 students, are founded and funded by the MHESR; they have a fairly homogeneous organizational structure. On the contrary, private universities, which enroll around 20,000 students, are founded and funded by private entrepreneurs and organizations and do not receive public funding for operation and maintenance, but operate within the confines of the rules and regulations of the MHESR. MHESR issues rules and regulations to all universities and has the autonomy to initiate and implement changes in the public universities and request private universities to implement changes to comply with MHESR’s policies.

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4.4 Theoretical background and hypotheses development Employees’ positive attitudes toward change For some time, scholars have postulated that employees’ positive attitudes toward change are vital for successful organizational change (Bartunek et al., 2006; Herold et al., 2008). To date, researchers have conceptualized and represented employees’ positive attitudes toward change through various constructs. Constructs such as affective commitment to change (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002), readiness to change (Armenakis et al., 1993), willingness to change (Metselaar, 1997), openness to change (Miller, Johnson, & Grau, 1994), and coping with change (Judge et al., 1999), are some examples. In this study, affective commitment to change is used to account for the employees’ positive attitudes toward and support for organizational change. The reason for this is because affective commitment to change is different from other constructs in that “it represents a behavioral intention to work toward success of the change rather than just reflecting a favorable disposition toward it” (Fedor et al., 2006, p. 4). As such, affective commitment to change goes beyond the presence of a positive or negative attitudes toward change and captures the notion of a positive, proactive intent towards change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). Leading scholars such as Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) define affective commitment to change as employees’ desire to support the organizational change based on “a belief in its inherent benefits” (p.475). affective commitment to change contends that employees support the change not because of their sense of obligation to support the change or their understanding of the costs associated with failure to provide support for the change (Jaros, 2007), they feel bound to support the change because they want to. In other words, affective commitment to change represents employees “psychological alignment with the change, intentions to support it, and willingness to work on behalf of its successful implementation” (Herold et al., 2007, p. 943). Research has shown that affective commitment to change affects supportive employee behavior during organizational change, lower turnover intentions and higher job satisfaction (J. K. Ford et al., 2003; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Jaros, 2010; Neves & Caetano, 2009; Rafferty & Restubog, 2010). It is also shown that employees’ affective commitment to change is positively related to successful implementation of change process (Herold et al., 2008; Rogiest et al., 2015).

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4.4.1 Change content The change content is one of the main issues in the public sector reform literature but also receives considerable attention in the change management literature. It is concerned with the “what” question of the change initiative (Burke & Litwin, 1992); and how “what” changes in the organization is perceived by employees. Change content is represented by other terms in the literature such as “personal valence” and “appropriateness” (Armenakis et al., 1999). Personal valence, also is referred to as perceived change impact, is concerned with the implications employees feel the organizational change will have for them personally, with reference to both its expected impact on intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors (Bartunek et al., 2006; Fugate, Prussia, & Kinicki, 2012). In other words, personal valence is concerned with employees’ perceptions of personal benefit or harm, and the appropriateness is concerned with their perceptions of the change’s potential benefit or harm to the organization (Oreg et al., 2014). In this study, I examine the extent to which employees perceived personal harm or found greater demands placed on because of the organizational changes under investigation. Scholars (cf. Self et al., 2007) distinguish between changes that harshly impact the work lives of employees from those that have a much less serious impact on employees. Employees’ reaction to such changes depends greatly on the extent to which the changes touch the lives of employees. For instance, employees regard downsizing that brings about massive redundancies and layoffs differently than a change where it prohibits, for instance, smoking inside offices. It is argued that employees assess “benefits and costs” of supporting –or not supporting- an organizational change (Grant & Ashford, 2008, p. 10). This notion is supported by Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) and Piderit (2000) argument in that employees often resist changes that will have personal impact on them and will threaten their jobs. Recent studies have found that employees’ support for change is partly a function of the extent to which the change impacts employees work routines and work lives in the organization (Fedor et al., 2006). Therefore, when trying to understand the relationship of organizational change and perceived change impact, the assessment of change needs to capture the more proximal impact of the change on the day-to-day routines and work procedures of individuals. This approach finds support in other research, such as that by Lau and Woodman (1995), who concluded that employees are more focused on the impact of change on themselves and their immediate work environment than on the meaning or significance of the larger organizational-level change. Moreover, individuals are thought to

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typically assess the personal impact of a larger change by considering the more immediate aspects of change that have filtered down in the form of adjustments in work processes or other routines of their work unit (Burke & Litwin, 1992). Therefore, it can be argued that as the severity of the change impact on employees increases, employees perceive the change as less acceptable and exhibit less change commitment (Self et al., 2007). Thus, we should expect that: H1: Organizational changes that severely impact the lives of employees will have a negative impact on employees’ affective commitment to change.

4.4.2 Change context In their reviews of change research, Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) and Kuipers et al. (2014) found that what has not been sufficiently explored is the role played by the organizational context in which a given change is embedded. Context refers to characteristics of the organization and its membership that predates the organizational change (Oreg et al., 2014). Context-related factors focus on the conditions or circumstances exist in the organization’s internal and external environments that have been shown to influence organizational change (Barnett & Carroll, 1995; Finstad, 1998). Typically, external contextual factors such as technological or legislative changes, competitive pressure and government regulation are not under the control of organizations, and therefore, organizations must change in response to such demands (Walker et al., 2007). Internal contextual factors can include levels of formalization and centralization (Van der Voet et al., 2015b), managerial attitudes toward change (Damanpour, 1991) and organizations prior change history (Reichers et al., 1997). In this study, we account for two internal contextual factors which are believed to influence employees’ affective commitment to change: 1) formalization of work processes, and 2) employee’s perception of his or her change history in an organization. Traditionally, public sector organizations have been described as being relatively bureaucratic (Rainey, 2014). A bureaucratic organization is defined as an organization in which organizational activities are to a large extent predictable and predetermined (Mintzberg, 1979). One of the manifestations of such organizations is formalization of organizational behavior. Formalization refers to the amount of written documentation in the organization. It is expressed in written documents concerning job descriptions, rules and regulations and work procedures (Harper, 2015). These written documents describe activities and behaviors of employees in the organizations. Since a high degree of formalization makes employees less flexible and face more 78


procedural constraints, it is expected that formalization impedes the process of adaptation and change (Walker et al., 2007). In an environment which is characterized by formal rules and procedures, employees often view organizational change as a challenge and a threat to the existing stable organization. Such a view will reduce the perceived value and success of change, and in turn, decreases commitment to change (Rogiest et al., 2015). Additionally, I identify employees’ perception of his or her individual change history in the organization as an important aspect of the organization’s internal change context that is likely to influence employees’ commitment to change. It is argued that, when studying change, history matters significantly (Pettigrew et al., 2001). Pettigrew et al. further claim that “history is not just events and chronology; it is carried forward in the human consciousness. The past is alive in the present and may be shaping the emerging future” (p. 700). Oldham et al. (1982) further states that, in the midst of organizational change, employees use their immediate past as a referent. That is, how their work lives have changed by a previous change (either for better or worse) will have a significant impact on their commitments to change (Fedor et al., 2006). In response to a history of change efforts that are perceived by employees as unsuccessful or not clearly successful, Wanous, Reichers, and Austin (2000) argue that cynicism about organizational change emerges. Cynicism is defined as “a pessimistic outlook for successful change and blame placed on “those responsible” for lacking the motivation and/or the ability to effect successful change” (p. 135). A study by Reichers et al. (1997) found that change history is correlated with the motivation to continue trying to make new changes. Drawing on Bandura’s (1982) social learning theory, Devos et al. (2007) argued that employees’ past experiences cause them to develop expectations about their capability to do a previously unexperienced job prior to actually making an attempt. Furthermore, a longitudinal study by Rafferty and Restubog (2010) found that individuals in the poor change history condition reported significantly lower support for change than individuals in any other condition. In this study, we argue that if employees experienced past unsuccessful organizational changes, this leads them to be reluctant to embrace new change efforts. On the basis of the aforementioned theories and empirical studies, we hypothesized: H2a. A high degree of formalization will be negatively related to employees’ affective commitment to change.

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H2b: An individual’s perception that he or she has a poor change history in the organization will be negatively associated with employees’ affective commitment to change.

4.4.3 Change process Change process refers to the interventions and processes that are involved in the implementation of a change initiative. It is concerned with the actions and strategies taken by change agents during the implementation of the proposed change (Walker et al., 2007). It has long been believed that the process of organizational change is problematic and a challenging task (Van der Voet et al., 2015b). How organizational change is implemented is considered equally, if not more, important than the content or context of the change itself (Caldwell et al., 2009). In other words, successful implementation of change does not depend on the content or context of change alone, it largely depends on how the organizational change comes about; that is, the process of change (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). The basic model for implementing organizational change was theorized by Lewin (1947a), comprising three phases: unfreezing, moving and refreezing. Other scholars, Galpin (1996), Kotter (1995), and Fernandez and Rainey (2006) (the latter specifically deals with organizational change process in the public sector), have elaborated on and extended Lewin’s basic model and generated a number of strategies that can be employed by managers to manage the process of change. Some of these strategies include, but not limited to, creating a need and vision to change, quality change communication, active employee participation, and providing continuous support and resources. In the current study, we investigate two aspects of change process as key variables impacting commitment to change, namely quality change communication and employee participation. Change creates uncertainty and anxiety among recipients of change, which, in turn, creates resistance to change. To promote cooperation and reduce employee resistance to change, change agents often need to provide quality change communication in the form of accurate, timely and complete information addressing employee concerns (Miller et al., 1994). The information provided to employees reduces uncertainty about the future and allows employees to prepare, which will improve their positive perceptions about the organizational change . DiFonzo and Bordia (1998) reported that environments characterized by high levels of uncertainty, quality change communication can reduce such uncertainty and positively influence employee commitment to change. A number of empirical studies have reported a positive relationship 80


between high-quality change communication and employee support for change (Oreg et al., 2011; Rogiest et al., 2015; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). In addition to quality change communication, offering employees the opportunities for participation in planning for and implementing change is widely suggested to reduce feelings of uncertainty and anxiety about how changes will affect them (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Bordia et al., 2004). For organizational changes to succeed, employees must believe that their views have been heard, respected, and considered (Reichers et al., 1997). Participation of employees is associated with higher levels of support for change. Such a notion is supported by Devos et al. (2007), Van der Voet et al. (2015b) and Rafferty and Restubog (2010). In summary, we argue that high-quality change communication will reduce uncertainty, and employee participation can be considered as antecedents of employee commitment to change. On this basis, we hypothesized the following: H3a: High-quality change communication will be positively related to employees’ affective commitment to change. H3b: Employee participation will be positively related to employees’ affective commitment to change.

4.4.4 Leadership In the context of public sector organizations, scholars differentiate between political leadership and administrative or bureaucratic leadership (Trottier, Van Wart, & Wang, 2008; Wart, 2003). Political leadership is necessary during the initiation of public sector reforms, while administrative leaders are able to influence the process of the change implementation. In this study we focus our attention on the role of administrative leadership in creating employee commitment to change. More specifically, we study the leadership role of direct supervisors in bringing about successful change outcomes. A direct supervisor is defined as “the employee holding a formal managerial position operating at the first hierarchical level above the respondent’s position” (Van der Voet et al., 2015b, p. 5). Due to their close relationships with first-line employees, it is argued that direct supervisors can play a significant role in bringing about successful changes. Of all the leadership theories in organizational research, it is argued that transformational leadership is generally effective in organizational change due to its orientation toward dealing with crises and change (Bass, 1999; Herold et al., 2008; Van der Voet et al., 2015b). The main argument of transformational leadership theory is that “by articulating a vision, fostering the acceptance of 81


group goals, and providing individualized support, effective leaders change the basic values, beliefs, and attitudes of followers so that they are willing to perform beyond the minimum levels specified by the organization” (Podsakoff et al., 1996, p. 260). Transformational leaders inspire employees to exceed their individual interests for the good of the organization as a whole and can have a significant impact on their employees. In addressing the question of whether leadership matters for organizational change, Burke (2013) noted that “what has not been as clear from the literature is the impact of leadership on organization change” (p. 241). Burke further stated that “it seems reasonable to assume, nevertheless, that because there is mounting evidence that leaders affect organizational performance in general, surely they have an impact on organizational change in particular” (p. 241). Support for such claims is found in a number of studies on transformational leadership. In one study, Nemanich and Keller (2007) reported on the significant role that transformational leadership played in shaping a climate that reduced employees’ resistance to the change. Other studies, Herold et al. (2008) and Van der Voet et al. (2015b) for instance, have reported indirect relationships between transformation leadership and employee support for change. In the extant literature, the influential role of leadership on employee support for change has not been challenged (Burke, 2013), but not much empirical evidence exist especially in the context of public organizations (Kuipers et al., 2014). Thus, based on the theoretical and empirical support of the effectiveness of transformational leadership in stimulating positive attitudes toward change, we hypothesized: H4: Transformational leadership role of direct supervisors will be positively related to employees’ affective commitment to change.

4.5 Method As already noted above, the KRG called on all of the government organizations to revise their structure to cut back on expenses while maintaining public service delivery. The first ministry to respond to the KRG’s call was the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR). In Kurdistan, MHESR, which was established in 2006, supervises all public and private universities; among them, 15 are public universities and 12 private universities. Public universities, which enroll over 115,000 students, are founded and funded by the MHESR; they have a fairly homogeneous organizational structure. On the contrary, private universities, which enroll around 82


20,000 students, are founded and funded by private entrepreneurs and organizations and do not receive public funding for operation and maintenance, but operate within the confines of the rules and regulations of the MHESR. MHESR issues rules and regulations to all universities and has the autonomy to initiate and implement changes in the public universities and request private universities to implement changes to comply with MHESR’s policies. In response to the KRG’s call for reform and cutbacks, in early 2016 the MHESR requested all public universities to merge administrative departments with similar functions and objectives. In total, the public universities together reduced the number of their administrative departments/units from 487 to 314; eliminating 173 departments. As a result of the changes, no employee was dismissed because, in Kurdistan, government employees are protected by laws that make it almost impossible for public organizations to dismiss or furlough employees. Managers and employees whose departments were dissolved were transferred to other departments or other buildings. In some cases, the changes involved demoting some managers whose departments were merged with others; in other cases, the changes involved cutting allowances of those who were demoted. Additionally, at the time of conducting the survey –August 2016, some important and stressful changes were still taking place, such as the integration of the different management teams and the need for employees to learn and acquire new procedures. Data for this study were obtained from five public organizations/universities. In each participating organization, a general director served as the contact for this research who helped and arrange data collection. A total of 200 questionnaires were divided accordingly among the participating organizations in August 2016. After two callbacks, a total of 149 questionnaires were collected. After removing two respondents due to too many missing answers and monotonous answering patterns, 147 usable responses (74%) were obtained. This sample is adequate, given that, as stated by VanVoorhis and Morgan (2007, p. 48), for regression equations ‘using six or more predictors, an absolute minimum of 10 participants per predictor variable is appropriate’. The mean age was 36.9 years (SD = 8.8 years). The majority of the respondents were male with 60.5%. In terms of the highest education obtained, the largest group holds a Bachelor’s degree (27.2%), followed by second largest group of people that holds a secondary education (19.7%), vocational education (17%), high school education (14.3%), Master’s degree (9.5%), primary education (6.8%) and PhD (5.4%). As for the job level, 32.7% of the respondents hold managerial

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positions. The respondents had an average overall working experience of 12.6 years (SD = 8.3) and the work experience at the current employer was 8.1 (SD = 5.4 years).

4.5.1 Measures A full list of measures is given in appendix A. Unless stated otherwise, all measures were based on a five point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). To ensure adequate measurement of each variable, previously established scales are used. Questionnaires were administered in the respondents’ native language (Kurdish). In line with Brislin (1980) recommendations, questionnaires were first translated in Kurdish by the publishing authors, followed by the back-translation by an independent researcher. Any differences found between the original and back-translated versions were discussed until agreement was reached concerning the most appropriate translation. Affective commitment to change. This variable was measured using the six-item affective commitment to change scale of Herscovitch and Meyer (2002). A sample item is “I believe in the value of this change”. Perceived change impact. This variable was measured using a three-item scale developed by Caldwell et al. (2004). An example item is “I am experiencing more pressure at work because of this change”. Employee perceptions of change history. An eight-item scale developed by Bordia, Restubog, Jimmieson, and Irmer (2011) was used to measure employees’ perception of their change history in their organization. An example item is, “Past organizational changes have improved organizational performance and effectiveness”. Positively worded items were reverse scored so that a high score on this scale reflects a poor change history. Formalization. Formalization was measured using a seven-item scale developed by Deshpande and Zaltman (1982) and Jaworski and Kohli (1993) and adapted by Van der Voet et al. (2015b). A sample item is “Employees are constantly being checked on for rule violations”. Quality change communication. This variable was measured with seven-items developed by Bordia et al. (2004). A sample item is “The change agents communicated the reasons for the change”.

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Participation. Participation was measured using a three-item scale developed by Lines et al. (2005). A sample item is “I was allowed to participate in the analyses that were performed prior to the change”. Transformational leadership. Transformational leadership was measured with a nine-item scale developed by Podsakoff et al. (1990). A sample item is “my direct supervisor develops a team attitude and spirit among employees”. Control variables. Age and education (ranging from 1: Primary school through 7: Ph.D.) were controlled for on the basis that older and less educated employees tend to be less positive and proactive towards change. Whether the respondent held a supervisory position was also controlled for (1 =yes, 0 = no), given that managers may have greater access to information and more opportunities to participate in the change than do nonmanagerial employees (Wanberg & Banas, 2000). Two other variables were also controlled for. Tenure was examined as a result of the possibility that employees who had worked in the organization longer may have more difficulty in adapting to change and exhibit more proactive change behavior. Furthermore, gender was also assessed for its potential relevance. Gender and supervisory position were included in the regression analyses as nominal variables, education as an ordinal variable, and age and tenure as ratio variables. It should be noted that, although categorical in nature, I followed Georgalis, Samaratunge, Kimberley, and Lu (2015) and rank ordered education into seven categories. Bollen and Barb (1981) argued that, in such conditions, analysis of categorical data as if they were continuous is justified because the collapsed variables’ correlations become considerably closer to the correlation of the continuous variables when at least five or six scale points are available.

4.6 Results 4.6.1 Descriptive statistics and correlations Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alphas and correlations of the variables are presented in Table 4.1. Respondents on average scored 3.44 affective commitment to change scale, 3.56 on quality change communication and 3.38 on transformational leadership scale, all of which were above the midpoint. Participants scored 2.88 on perceived change impact scale, 2.93 on formalization scale, 2.73 on poor organizational change history, 2.71 on participation scale, all of which were below the midpoint.

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As for the correlations, all correlation coefficients were below 0.70 as shown in Table 4.I. Hence, problems associated with multicollinearity are less of a concern (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). The pattern of correlations in Table 4.1 provides initial support for several hypotheses. As it is shown, perceived change impact, formalization, employees’ perception of change history, participation, communication and transformational leadership were all significantly related to affective commitment to change. Among the control variables included in this study (age, gender, organizational tenure, educational level, and supervisory position), none of them was significantly related to affective commitment to change.

4.6.2 Hypothesis testing Five hierarchical multiple regression analysis was undertaken to examine the predictive value of change content, context, process and leadership for affective commitment to change. I conducted some initial analyses to make sure that the underlying assumptions of multiple regression are not violated. Additionally, collinearity diagnostics were inspected for any multicollinearity between independent variables by examining tolerance values and Variance Inflation Factors (VIF) As shown in Table 4.2, the tolerance values for regression were above the acceptable level of 0.10 and the VIF factors did not exceed 10, indicating no multicollinearity (Pallant, 2011). The results of the hierarchical multiple regression are reported in Table 4.3. In the first model, we regressed affective commitment to change on the control variables (R2 of 0.07). In the subsequent models, we added the content variable (perceived change impact) (model 2, increased R2 to 0.10), the context variables (model 3, increased R2 to 0.26), process variables (model 4, R2 increased to 0.50) and transformational leadership variable (model 5, R2 increased to 0.60). These increases were all statistically significant. Thus, the combination of the various types of variables contributes considerably to an explanation of employees’ affective change commitment in public organizations. I will now consider the individual hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 predicted that organizational changes that severely impact the lives of employees will be negatively related to affective commitment to change. As Table 4.3 shows, in the final step of the analysis, perceived change impact is negatively related to affective commitment to change but the effect is not significant. Thus, H1 is not supported (β = -0.13, ns).

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Hypothesis 2a looks at the influence of formalization on affective commitment to change. As expected, the influence is negative but not significant (β = -0.002, ns). Hypothesis 2b proposed that an individual’s perception that he or she has a poor change management history in the organization would be negatively related to affective commitment to change. Our empirical analysis supported this hypothesis (β = -0.12, p < 0.05). Hypothesis 3a proposed that there would be a positive relationship between an individual’s perception that he or she has received quality change communication and commitment to change when the organizational change was announced. This hypothesis was supported (β = 0.39, p < 0.001). The high beta coefficient indicates that quality change communication is especially influential. Hypothesis 3b looks at the positive relationship between employee participation in the change and commitment to change. Here, our data do indeed show a positive relationship between employee participation and change commitment (β = 0.25, p < 0.01).

Table 4. 1: Means, Standard Deviations, Reliabilities and Correlations

M

SD

1

1. ACC

3.44

.67

(.74)

2. PCI

2.88

1.06

.19*

(.92)

3. FORM

2.93

.94

.34**

.65**

(.90)

4. POCH

2.73

.92

-.36**

-.09

-.15

(.87)

5. PART

2.71

1.12

.37**

.47**

.64**

-.09

(.88)

6. QCC

3.56

.90

.61**

.21*

.23**

-.34**

.19*

(.86)

7. TL

3.38

.96

.57**

.25**

.35**

-.24**

.24**

.38**

(.76)

8. Gender

1.4

.49

-.14

-.06

-.05

-.05

-.07

.06

-.03

9. Age

36.9

8.85

-.11

-.01

-.05

.14

-.12

.09

-.11

-.15

10. Tenure 12.6

8.23

-.12

-.05

-.12

.15

-.12

.02

-.06

-.1

.87**

11. SP

.47

-.14

-.01

.05

.07

-.12

.02

.006

.12

-.27**

1.67

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Notes: α-coefficients are presented on the diagonal in the parentheses. *p