Research_on_Risitance

Journal of park and recreation administration volume 21, Number 2 Summer 2003 pp. 22-43 Discovering conditions for staff acceptance of organizational change Ron Welch Ronald E. McCarville The process described in this article in noteworthy because employees, like all people, inevitably resist change. Change raises unwanted questions about their current performance levels, their abilities and their ultimate job security. For this reason, efforts to create organizational change are usually unsuccessful. Structured interviews with staff members discovered that four factors were particularly key in creating acceptance to change; purpose, process, plan and people. Purpose: those who accepted the purpose of the change as both legitimate and desirable were more likely to be accepting of the change effort. Process: When managers and supervisors involved staff members in the planning and implementation of the initiative. This involvement seemed key to gaining acceptance of the initiative. Plan: Staff was being asked to change the nature of their daily job assignments and responsibilities. While this proved daunting for some, others saw new opportunities in the change. People: The final factor helped workers navigate through these very personal misgivings. Several employees relied heavily upon fellow staff members for emotional and professional support as the initiative was implemented. Change initiatives like downsizing may create problems with employee attitudes and behaviors. A study completed by Luthans and Sommer (1990) revealed “that the downsizing experience did affect traditional organizational level attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment”. Corporate culture might gain a company a competitive advantage, but it may also create obstacles for innovation and change. It creates uniformity of purpose and enhances cooperative behavior, but it can also discourage willingness to adapt new strategies and process. As a result it may also lead to long-term failure. Staff will be influenced by uncertainty arising from the organizational change. Such uncertainty can lead to feelings of self-doubt, fear of embarrassment and role confusion. Resistance does not seem to originate from uncaring attitudes, but rather because many proposed changes were viewed as being both unnecessary and unimportant. Studies have shown that uncertainty was also addressed because of the manager’s insistence on worker involvement and more open communication. Staff members commented that they appreciated new meetings in which they could “sit and talk and provide insight to each other and suggestions and comments, and sometimes criticisms”. This more open and cooperative format was constantly mentioned by the participants in a positive light. The comments ranged from the enthusiastic to the pragmatic, but almost all were positive. The change initiative described here offers several insights for those hoping to institute change that in any organization. The first insight is that of the challenge that change represents. In this case, mistrust had been generated through various agency-wide initiatives over the years preceding this study. Many staff doubted the credibility and motives of senior managers and feared that changes being initiated from the top levels of the organization would detract from their work life at that agency. Further, the very nature of the change was troubling for many players. Many believed that changes were inconsistent with the mandate of the organization. The change also created considerable uncertainty in the way roles were assigned and jobs undertaken. These conditions seemed to represent a recipe for rejection of this initiative, yet the initiative succeeded. The second insight arises from the conditions which seemed to lead to the acceptance of this initiative. The key elements of (1) purpose, (2) process, (3) the plan and (4) people all combined to render the change less threatening and more acceptable. The purpose needed to be both compelling and consistent with the agency priorities. In this case, some staff was troubled by the implicit purpose of the initiative but their concerns were overwhelmed by the crisis that they perceived had been imposed upon them. They were being forced to do more with less and change was inevitable. The purpose behind the exercise, however troubling, eventually evolved into one of survival as much as service. All seemed to accept the need for change. All knew they must deal with the financial crisis imposed from above. Air France to cut 1,700 jobs as losses widen[1] At the end of year 2009 Air France-KLM decided to cut 1,700 jobs next year after posting a worse-than-expected quarterly loss. The Franco-Dutch carrier is already decided to cut 3,000 jobs in the year to 31 March 2010. The biggest European airline reported loss of 147 million for the quarter ended in September. Due to the economic crisis passenger revenues went down by more than 17%. Mr Gourgeon said a “very big crisis” in the global market had hurt its cargo business, which is the biggest of all the global passenger airlines. He said this division – where “competition is extremely aggressive, sometimes desperate” – would be restructured with the aim of returning to profit by 2012 Gourgeon said further cost-cutting should help lift operating profits by €500m in the financial year to the end of March 2012. Link between articles As you can read, downsizing is not easy; a lot of difficulties are coming along. One thing to watch carefully is staff. Employees will feel uncertain very quickly and since your employees are “the people who are serving the people” you want to keep them satisfied. Within these 8 weeks the HR-team will come up with an implementation plan about how to successfully merge with JAL. This implementation plan is people oriented; this implies that we have to carefully analyze all three companies to make sure no harm will be done to the organization. When no, or little attention is paid to employee acceptance of organizational change, the merger will fail. ----------------------- [1] http://www.letstravelsxm.com/index.cfm'vID=26835906-01CF-5C39-CA50D3ACB4AF9A5D&form=&CFID=836715&CFTOKEN=66732766