Organizational Change Management within the Workplace - Coursework Example

Abstract To fully understand any system, something about the nature of the complex interactions between the different levels of that system needs to be examined. Two hundred and forty five responses from the staff of a large British university were randomly selected and surveyed on their perceptions of job satisfaction, workload, participant decision management, and attitudes after a large change to the structure of teaching. In addition, information on various possible organizational moderators was obtained. An interaction was found between two levels of that system, workload (psychological) and occupation position (organizational structure), in relation to job satisfaction. This interaction indicated that support staff actually became more satisfied as their workload increased, whereas the converses were true for academic staff. [Name of Writer] [Name of Professor] [Course Title] [Date] Organizational Change Introduction In applying current thinking in the philosophy of science to psychology it has been argued that a full understanding of the causal properties of any system requires an understanding of how the levels in that system are interlinked: identifying causal agency. As such theory is slowly refined and developed through a series of successive steps, For occupational psychology this means developing an understanding of how aspects of any organizational system interact with the psychological processes embodied in that system and in so doing refining theory. Identifying such refinements places the psychologist in a very powerful position with regard to offering both detailed and useful advice. Such an approach has been applied to refining our understanding of the stress process (Ferguson & Cox, 1993) and how cognitive theory of learning may inform and refine the analysis of training effectiveness (Ferguson, Dodds, Craig, Flannigan & Yates, 1994), Continuing this approach, data are presented in this paper with regard to an occupational example: how general associations with job satisfaction are refined by organizational factors. General associations with job satisfaction A number of psychological factors may be identified from the literature which is known to have general associations with job satisfaction, e.g., workload, participant decision management and attitudes to change. These are briefly reviewed below. Workload The general relationship between workload and job satisfaction has been well documented in the literature. This relationship is, in the majority of cases, negative— increased workload is associated with decreased job satisfaction (Sutherland & Cooper, 1998). However, it is also possible that an inverted U relationship may explain this association. Participation in decision making/attitudes to change It is now well established that participation in decision making (PDM) has an important role to play in workers' levels of job satisfaction, In general the link with job satisfaction is a positive one, However, PDM is not effective in all cases. This may be a result of passing control to individuals who are not capable of dealing with the added responsibility it brings (Burger, 1999; Locke & Schweiger, 1999), Change, regardless of how it is managed, may be considered by employees as unnecessary (Shimmin & Blaklar, 2004), As such, negative attitudes to an implemented change itself are going to be associated with reduced levels of job satisfaction. Refinements to the general findings: Organizational structure The psychological variables discussed above are only a part of the organizational system and as such may be moderated by a number of organizational factors, e.g., size of department, occupational position, etc. In terms of moderator effects a number of hypotheses may be suggested. For example, with regard to the job satisfaction—workload association, those in an occupational role with either too little to do or a monotonous working routine may actually welcome an increase in workload. This may be because it reduces boredom by adding to the diversity of the tasks they complete. However, those with an already high workload may see additional work as decreasing their job satisfaction. Occupational role may also affect the relationship between PDM and job satisfaction. Those who are in more senior roles may be used to, and indeed, expect to be allowed to take part in the decision processes. If they are provided with such an opportunity and their input is effective then PDM will be useful. On the other hand, if it is not effective then PDM will not be seen as useful and may be detrimental to job satisfaction. For staff not used to being involved in the decision process the provision of such an opportunity may be detrimental (Burger, 1999), Therefore, organizational position may also alter the PDM—job satisfaction relationship. In addition to these types of moderation effect, organizational factors in themselves will also have direct main effects on job satisfaction. Demographically, a positive relationship has been found between the age of the worker and satisfaction. The sex of the employee does not, however, seem to affect satisfaction directly. Methodology Setting The situation studied was a change in university undergraduate degree teaching practices. Until the beginning of the 2005—06 academic year this university, like the majority of others in the UK, had a three-term year, with individual faculties and departments specifying the subjects and options which constituted a particular degree course. At the beginning of the 2005 academic year the university changed to teaching two semesters and to 'modular' degree courses, where the course content is divided into units of approximately equal duration, factual content and intellectual challenge, with departments conforming their courses to this model. This switch was an attempt to broaden the educational base, and choice, of students and increase access to higher education. The changes involved, in the interim, superimposing two teaching periods on the original three terms, as well as departments redesigning courses and their constituent parts to fit these semesters and university-wide credit ratings which would signify the content and challenge of each module. The modules taught in each semester were to be examined during or at the end of each teaching period, resulting in two diets of examinations each year instead of one longer examination period at the end of the year. Design The study consisted of a large-scale retrospective survey. The survey questionnaire was designed to contain a number of quasi experimental manipulations, e.g., department size (large vs. small departments) and occupational positions (academic vs. support staff). Subjects Subjects were selected from the population of university staff using stratified random sampling (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 2001), Both academic and support staff were randomly sampled from both large and small departments, which in turn were randomly sampled from all faculties in the university. Altogether, 450 questionnaires were distributed to 26 departments within six faculties; 245 questionnaires were returned giving a response rate of 54.4 per cent. Of these, 40 respondents were women and 205 men. Compared to university records this was a representative sample (sample women: men ratio = 1:5 , university records = 1:6, sample academic: support ratio = 2:17, university records = 2:11), The average age for the sample was 43,4 years, with age ranging between 21 and 64 years. The average number of years in the job was 14.6, range 1-38. Materials Personal details and organizational information Based on previous work, as described above, the following biographical/organizational details were examined using the methods defined by Child (2004): age, sex, faculty, department, position (academic vs. secretarial/support staff), length of tenure, and size of department (number of colleagues). Workload! Quality Change Perception of the level of workload and quality of work after the implementation of change were assessed with three questions concerned with the amount of work, time spent at work and quality of work. These were designed to give some indication of change in performance after the implementation of that change, relative to performance before the changes took place. Respondents, therefore, made relative judgments on a seven-point scale, with 4 indicating no change. An example of a question is: 'To what extent has your workload changed as a result of the changes?' Attitude change Individuals' attitudes to the implementation of change were assessed by five questions based on common responses to change as suggested by Buchanan & Huczynski (1995): (1) frustration with job prospects, (2) satisfaction that job is changing for the better, (3) concern at being seen as incapable, (4) anxiety over the future, and (5) security in the job. Again the response scale was a seven point relative scale. An example of a question is: 'Compared with before these changes were introduced, how anxious are you over the future of your job?' Job satisfaction The general job satisfaction measure from Cooper, Sloan & William's (1998) Occupational Stress Indicator was used to assess job satisfaction. Again responses were made on a seven-point Likert-type scales (where 1 = very dissatisfied and 7 = very satisfied). Participation in decision making Six items were designed to assess perceptions of the implementation of change, reflecting the strategies for implementing change, i.e., (a) were changes communicated well in advance, {h) were subjects involved in the design of the changes, (f) were they given support to deal with the changes, (d) were the changes the result of negotiation, (e) did subjects feel they were only given selective information about the changes, (f) did they feel they were forced to accept the changes. Again absolute seven-point Likert-type scales were used (where 1 = strong disagreement and 7 = strong agreement). Examples of questions are: 'I feel that the changes were the result of negotiation and agreement' and 'I feel I was forced to accept these changes'. As validity check on the conceptual nature of this instrument exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to these data, The EFA was conducted on those items which were especially written for this study: i.e., the workload/quality change, attitude change and PDM items. In accordance with the recommendations of Ferguson & Cox (1993) the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett Test of Sphericity (BS) were examined for the data's applicability for EFA, The KMO was 0,73 and the BS 900,62 (p Read More