International Issues In Management and Employee Relations - Essay Example

Running Head: INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT International Issues In Management & Employee Relations [Name Of Student] [Name Of Institution] INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT & EMPLOYEE RELATIONS INTRODUCTION The acceptance of and support for organizational changes on the part of organizational members is generally viewed as critical for the success of planned organizational changes. In this paper I will discuss ‘ Globalization is, on balance, resistible. But globalization is also on balance, highly desirable.’ Moreover I will look into the issues of employee relations that are linked to globalization. DISCUSSION Assuming that the findings in the change literature are reasonably valid and that we have reasonable confidence in the shared wisdom and prescriptions of change practitioners, we may offer two explanations as to why, despite the many articles and books written on the subject, the outcomes of change efforts are so often disappointing. One explanation is that people are just not applying what they already know about change management. That is, managers are just not creating or communicating a change vision, involving others, celebrating small wins, or being attentive to matters of procedural justice. Although this is certainly plausible for some or even many change efforts, it seems unlikely that it can explain most or all of the disappointments experienced by organizations that are aware of these prescriptions and have access to staffs and consultants who are well versed in aspects of organizational development. A second explanation is that the focus on change management practices and processes has obscured other important factors that ultimately shape people's reactions to change. Recently, researchers have turned to such issues, helping the field move beyond the well-documented impact of change processes. For example, researchers have found that the perceptions of the outcomes of change (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Novelli, Kirkman, & Shapiro, 1995), the extensiveness of the change (Wolf, Herold, & Fedor, 2004), and the impact of the change at both a job and a work-unit level (Fedor, Wolf, & Herold, 2006) all affect change reactions. Other investigations of nonchange factors have focused on demonstrating the impact of individual differences on change reactions (e.g., Wolf et al., 2004; Judge et al., 1999), although such explorations are still tentative in terms of which individual differences and personality variables are the most potent predictors of change reactions. Another largely neglected yet potentially important extrachange factor that may affect change reactions consists of the context within which a change occurs. Exploring the role of context, while still accounting for previous research findings on the role of different change aspects as well as individual differences, requires that we examine cross-level linkages that may explain the connection among aspects of the change, the change context, and characteristics of the change targets as they might shape change responses. The purpose of the research reported in this article is to explore such linkages by simultaneously investigating the relationship between context and individual differences, on the one hand, and employees' commitment to a change, on the other, using a meso (e.g., House, Rousseau, & Thomas-Hunt, 1995) or cross-level approach to link the micro and macro variables. In their call for more cross-level research, House et al. (1995) specifically mentioned change as an organizational phenomenon likely to benefit from the joint exploration of micro and macro concepts and the explication of the mechanisms by which these levels might be linked. In particular, this research examines the degree to which a change-specific individual difference (change self-efficacy) and the setting within which the change occurs (extent of other changes going on at the same time) may be related to individuals' commitment to the change, beyond the salient aspects of the change itself that researchers typically study when trying to understand change reactions (aspects of the change content and process). CHANGE AND COMMITMENT Organizational commitment has received a great deal of research attention, having been found to be related to important organizational outcomes, such as job performance, citizenship, absenteeism, and turnover (e.g., Becker, Billings, Eveleth, & Gilbert, 1996; Maertz, Mosley, & Alford, 2002; Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979). Although organizational commitment was originally conceptualized as an employee's attachment to or congruence with the values of the organization, researchers have also documented commitment to other entities, such as organizational subunits, supervisors, or specific activities (e.g., change programs; Becker, 1992; Becker et al., 1996; Brockner, Tyler, & Cooper-Schneider, 1992; Ford, Weissbein, & Plamondon, 2003; Gregersen, 1992; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). In the examination of reactions to organizational change initiatives, change commitment reflects not only positive attitudes toward the change but also alignment with the change, intentions to support it, and a willingness to work on behalf of its successful implementation. This notion of a positive, proactive behavioral intent toward the change makes commitment different from other attitudinal constructs that capture either the absence of negative attitudes, such as resistance to the change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Piderit, 2000), or positive dispositions toward a change, such as readiness for change or openness to change. Furthermore, commitment to a change has been found to be conceptually and empirically distinct from organizational commitment and to be a better predictor of support for change. CHANGE SELF-EFFICACY The research on attitudinal reactions to change has used concepts such as uncertainty (Ashford, 1988), loss of control (Ashford, Lee, & Bobko, 1989), fear of failure (Nadler, 1982), and disruptions in sense making (McKinley & Scherer, 2000) as explanations for the negative relationship generally found between organizational change and attitudes. Furthermore, changing circumstances may represent adaptation demands on the individual that are taxing or that exceed the individual's coping resources. Change process factors (e.g., procedural fairness) are often studied as means for mitigating such effects. Because uncertainty, fear of failure, sense making, and loss of control are largely in the eyes of the beholder and individuals vary in their coping resources to respond to changing demands placed on them, one would expect individual differences to be related to individuals' perceptions of and reactions to change. That is, individual differences ought to be related to people's perceptions of the uncertainty, potential for failure, or loss of control associated with a given change situation as well as how potentially threatening they find such states to be. Recently, researchers have begun to investigate such effects and have found motivational states to influence employees' adaptation to change (Wolf et al, 2004) and personality dimensions (i.e., the Big Five) to be related to people's strategies for coping with change (Judge et al., 1999). Self-efficacy, defined as a set of beliefs about one's ability to meet a given set of situational demands, has been studied extensively in organizational contexts and found to predict outcomes such as performance and job attitudes (Saks, 1995). Reviewing the research on self-efficacy and reactions to stressful situations, Cooper, Dewe, and O'Driscoll (2001) concluded that a case can be made “that beliefs about the self and one's abilities may function as effective buffers against the adverse effects of stressful job conditions” (p. 131). If one views the uncertainty, fear of failure, loss of control, and adaptation demands associated with change as potentially stressful job conditions, high self-efficacy should buffer individuals from their adverse effects. That is, more efficacious people should find a given change to be less stressful, onerous, or threatening than less efficacious people. THE ROLE OF CHANGE CONTEXT Most research on organizational change examines the content of a specific change (e.g, a layoff, merger, or reorganization) and/or aspects of the change implementation process, such as procedural justice (e.g., Brockner et al., 1994). What has not been adequately explored is the role played by the larger organizational context in which a given change is embedded and how it may affect change responses. For example, the degree to which a particular change taxes individuals' adaptation resources may well be a function of the extent to which such resources are already being consumed in adapting to other, ongoing environmental events. In their review of 10 years of change research, Armenakis and Bedian (1999) divided the research into three themes: change content, change process, and change context. Yet all but one of the articles they reviewed in the context category examined external contexts, such as industry and environmental factors, rather than internal contextual variables. The one study to consider intraorganizational context was a meta-analysis (Damanpour, 1991) that linked organizational variables to firms' innovativeness, a special case of organizational change. Thus, very little work has been done to investigate the influence of the internal change environment on individual change participants' responses to specific change initiatives. In the organization theory and strategy literature, researchers have long argued that organizational actions need to be understood in terms of the organizational environment or context of the firm; such contexts often have been described in terms of their dynamicism, volatility, or turbulence (e.g., Dess & Beard, 1984; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). Others (e.g., Cameron, Kim, & Whetten, 1987) have taken the turbulence concept used to describe external environments and applied it to single, discontinuous changes. Still others have described change environments internal to the organization as workplace chaos (Gleick, 1987) or have noted that “the number of variables changing at the same time, the magnitude of environmental change, and the frequent resistance of human systems create a whole confluence of processes that are extremely difficult to predict” (Burke & Litwin, 1992, p. 523). If we apply this characterization of external environments to the internal environment surrounding specific changes, the investigation of change turbulence provides an intraorganizational, change-specific contextual variable that may help explain individuals' attitudes toward a particular change. In this context, turbulence does not refer to the organization's external environment, nor is it used to describe a particular change (e.g., Cameron et al., 1987). Rather, it is used to reflect the preponderance of changes going on in the organization at the same time as the focal change—changes that represent additional distractions and adaptation demands and thus form an important part of the context for individuals' reactions to the focal change. The selection of turbulence as a change context variable that may influence individual commitment to a change is based on two considerations. First, although it is not specifically addressed in the research literature (but is widely recognized in practice and in the popular press), a condition of multiple and overlapping changes better reflects the realities of organizational life—namely, that a given change often exists in a setting characterized by many other changes and distractions and that this environment of multiple changes seems to frustrate individuals. Second, because change places adaptation demands on individuals who presumably possess finite resources, multiple changes imply an increase in such demands (beyond those associated with the target change), creating cumulative effects that need to be considered (Cooper et al., 2001; Holmes & Rahe, 1967). Furthermore, if change self-efficacy is associated with perceptions of the threat and uncertainty represented by a given change, then it also ought to be related to the perception of the cumulative threat and uncertainty represented by a constellation of changes. That is, to the degree that those who feel that they can generally handle change perceive less uncertainty or loss of control and experience less threat or fear of failure as a result of a given change, they should also be better able to deal with the pressures created by multiple changes. Conversely, those who find even a single change to be problematic should experience increased discomfort and express reduced levels of support for a given change that is embedded in a context of multiple changes. Therefore, if change self-efficacy is viewed as a coping resource for a change situation, resulting in greater commitment or willingness to support that change, then change turbulence should moderate this relationship. That is, when a change is embedded in an environment characterized by simultaneous or overlapping changes, individuals' change self-efficacy should be more instrumental in their response to that change than when they have to focus only on the targeted change. Hypothesis 2: Change turbulence will moderate the change self-efficacy–commitment relationship. In particular, change commitment will be more positively related to change self-efficacy under high- than under low-turbulence conditions. GOING BEYOND CHANGE PROCESS AND CONTENT As noted earlier, most of the organizational change literature has focused on the role of change implementation processes (e.g., procedural fairness; Brockner et al., 1994; Wolf et al., 2004) as shaping employees' attitudes and behaviors toward change. Procedural fairness has been one of the most widely researched change process variables, and a considerable literature exists concerning the impact of fairness on change attitudes (e.g., Brockner, 2002); thus, one could expect it to be related to change commitment. The impact of any one change on the target person, in terms of increased workload or adaptation demands, is often ignored in studies of change Yet there is evidence that the direct and personal consequence of the change for affected individuals is important (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Wolf et al., 2004;). Recent studies that have explored aspects of the change itself, rather than the process used to implement it found the magnitude of change at both the job and the work-unit levels to be a potentially important correlate of change commitment. That is, individuals' commitment to a change is a function, in part, of the degree to which the change impacts their own or their work unit's day-to-day routines. Because change context, expressed here as turbulence, has no research history, whereas change process and, to a lesser degree, change content do, the question arises as to whether individuals can actually distinguish between aspects of the specific change and aspects of its environment when reporting or expressing change-related reactions. That is, can the effects hypothesized explain variance in reactions to change beyond that normally associated with the specifics of the change content or process? To address this question, we chose procedural fairness as a control variable for change process, whereas we chose the impact of the change on the individual and his or her work unit as control variables for change content. Thus, we controlled for the effects of two important aspects of organizational changes previously shown to be associated with change-related attitudes—the magnitude of the change and the fairness with which it is implemented—before testing our hypotheses concerning the effects of the extrachange variables. This allowed for a more conservative test of our hypotheses. In summary, this study was designed to test whether the hypothesized relationships hold beyond the effects of two important aspects of a focal change—its content and its process. In particular, this research tests the proposition that individuals' commitment to support a change is not just a function of the change itself or how it was managed but rather represents a far more complex calculus that includes aspects of the setting surrounding the change, individual differences, and their interaction. Such a demonstration would expand the research and theorizing about individuals' responses to change by moving the field's theoretical models beyond the limited focus on change-level factors and toward extrachange factors, such as domain-relevant environmental or person-level variables. As House et al. (1995) noted, change is a complex organizational phenomenon that is best understood in terms of its multiple levels and the interactions among these levels. CONCLUSION Organizational transformations, realignments, consolidations, reorganizations, and various technology and systems changes have become the order of the day. The question is not whether organizations will change but rather how fast and who will thrive. Thus, it is not surprising that this topic is of great interest to managers, researchers, teachers, trainers, and change practitioners. Whereas resistance to change is frequently bandied about as an organizational or managerial construct, it is usually thought to be the product of either the person (e.g., “People just naturally resist change”) or the change process (e.g., “Doing such and such will reduce or overcome resistance”). The present research suggests that we need to refine these notions in view of the evidence. We need to develop a greater understanding of the complexities of reactions to a particular change effort. Such reactions are a function not only of what is done and how it is done but also of the context in which it is done and the interaction of individuals' characteristics with that context. 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