Change management in higher education: A sequential mixed methods study exploring employees' perception

BACKGROUND

Higher education institutions need to put change management as a pivotal part of their strategy. The challenge is to effectively contextualize existing change management models to the respective work environment. Failing to properly adapt existing models to match the intricacies of the environment could lead to plenty of setbacks. For such a contextualization to take place, gauging employees' engagement and satisfaction becomes of paramount importance. As such, the overall purpose of the current study is to explore the perception of employees of a medical and health sciences university in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in relation to change management and agility, and to showcase how the captured perspectives can be systemically interpreted to inform decision-making in the context of the study.

METHOD

This research study relied on a sequential mixed methods design, which started with an exploration of the perception of Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) leaders. Qualitative data was collected through a focus group session and was inductively analysed (based on constructivist epistemology). The output of the qualitative analysis contributed to the development of the quantitative data collection tool. The quantitative data was analysed by SPSS-version-27.

FINDINGS

The qualitative analysis generated three key themes: Trigger, Execution, and Results, along with a thorough outline of lessons learned and opportunities for improvement. The Cronbach's Alpha reliability score was 92.8%. The percentage of the total average of agreement was 72.3%, and it appeared that 83.2% of the variance can be explained by the instrument (p<0.001).

CONCLUSION

The current study generated a novel conceptual framework that can be leveraged by educational leadership and administration to reinforce their decisions and optimize their agility in terms of managing change. The study also introduces a data collection tool which captures the perception of higher education stakeholders regarding the way their respective institutions handle change. This tool proved to be reliable and valid in the context of the study.

The role of mean item ratings, topic distance, direct leadership, and voice climate in action planning after employee surveys

This study contributes to the literature on employee surveys as a tool for organizational development and, specifically, the post-survey action planning process by examining key variables that affect this process. Using data from one large company in Germany, this study investigates team-level action planning in three consecutive years of 5,875 organizational units [OUs] in 2016, 5,673 OUs in 2017, and 5,707 OUs in 2018. Ratings per item on the employee survey and topic distance, which refers to the extent to which a survey topic can be addressed within the boundaries of the OU, predicted choice of topics for action planning. Furthermore, direct leadership and voice climate did not predict whether OUs conducted action planning. However, consistent with hypotheses, results showed that direct leadership and voice climate were associated with significantly less action planning in comparison to other topics of the employee survey. Direct leaders and OU members that experience shortcomings in direct leadership or voice climate need to improve on these topics. However, at the same time, these deficits could hinder leaders and members in planning actions in general and for these specific topics, as they represent important requirements for conducting effective action planning in the first place. This creates an organizational paradox. Based on the findings, it is recommend that organizations take topic distance into account when designing questionnaires that entail action planning expectations and consider offering additional resources and support to OUs and direct leaders to enable effective action planning.

How COVID-19 pandemic has shaped buyer-supplier relationships in engineering companies with ethical perception considerations: A multi-methodological study

In business-to-business (B2B) operations, prior studies have mainly explored transaction-based relationships with both buyers and suppliers opportunistic behaviors, driven largely by their intent to maximize their own benefits. These studies have also found that dependency on partners increases when supply materials are scarce. However, research is scant on how this relationship changes in the face of exogenous forces such as the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping in mind the ethical perception considerations. This study aims to bridge this gap in the literature by studying how buyers and sellers leverage collaboration and resource-sharing to tide over pandemic-like situations similar to the current COVID-19 pandemic while considering their ethical perceptions. We conduct a multi-methodological study consisting of an industrial survey and an interview-based thematic analysis. In the first phase, we collect primary data using a structured questionnaire and conduct a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) analysis. In the second phase, we conduct a post-hoc test. We find that non-regular suppliers will share strategic resources with buyers during uncertain times (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic) if they have a high ethical perception of the buying firm and share a candid relationship despite being their irregular customers. Our findings propose that B2B firms should maintain healthy relationships with alternative suppliers to build trust and avoid supply crises in times of disruptions.

Character-enabled improvisation and the new normal: A paradox perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified and exacerbated organizational paradoxes felt by individuals largely because of the nostalgia individuals feel for the "old" normal while facing the need to let go in order to create a "new" normal. We position improvisation as a synthesis-type approach to working through the paradoxes of the pandemic. Furthermore, we look at individual differences that underpin the ability to improvise, and identify that it is the strength of character and character-based judgment of the individual that enables the enactment of a focal context, the choice to improvise, and the act of effectively improvising to work through paradoxes. Linking character to improvisation, and, vice versa, improvisation to the development of character, reveals the importance of dimensions such as courage, humility, temperance, transcendence, humanity, and collaboration in the practice of improvisation.

Through the looking glass: Confronting health care management's biggest challenges in the wake of a crisis

BACKGROUND

The challenges brought on by the pandemic triggered a renewed scholarly focus on managing during crises. Now, 3 years on, having covered the initial crisis response, it is important to reevaluate what the crisis has taught us about health care management more generally. In particular, it is useful to consider the persistent challenges that continue to face health care organizations in the wake of a crisis.

PURPOSE

The present article aims to identify the biggest challenges that currently face health care managers in order to formulate a postcrisis research agenda.

METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

We employ an exploratory qualitative study, utilizing in-depth interviews with hospital executives and management to explore the persistent challenges facing managers in practice.

RESULTS

Our qualitative inquiry reveals three key challenges that extend beyond the crisis and are salient for health care managers and organizations in the years to come. Specifically, we identify the centrality of human resource constraints (amidst increasing demand), the necessity of collaboration (amidst competition), and a need to reconsider the approach to leadership (utility of humility).

CONCLUSION

We conclude by drawing upon relevant theories such as paradox theory to formulate a research agenda for health care management scholars that can support the creation of novel solutions and approaches to persistent challenges in practice.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

We identify several implications for organizations and health systems, including the need to eliminate competition and the importance of building human resource management capacities within organizations. In highlighting areas for future research, we provide organizations and managers with useful and actionable insights to address their most persistent challenges in practice.

Leading in the Paradoxical World of Crises: How Leaders Navigate Through Crises

Living and operating in a global world, the risk for a global economic crisis has never been greater. As ongoing events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent war in Ukraine or the sharply increasing inflation have shown, organizations need to be highly resilient to persevere in a crisis-prone world. Even though we know that crises serve as a focal lens on leadership behavior and leaders play a crucial role in these scenarios, little is known as to how leaders handle an existence-threatening organizational crisis. Using an inductive analysis of 32 interviews on crisis leadership, we show that in the case of an acute crisis, leaders apply different paradoxical behaviors to cope effectively with the situation and navigate their organizations through these events. More specifically, our study contributes to existing literature by, first, showing that the distinctiveness of crises results from the fact that leaders are confronted with paradoxes that they can otherwise smoothly separate in terms of time or organization, second, revealing that the leader's paradoxical behaviors as a respond are derived from their mindset to consciously recognize the contradictory demands of the crisis, and third, from their action in terms of a compressed situational leadership. By identifying six pairs of paradoxical behaviors, we demonstrate how leaders effectively deal with the unsolvable contradictions that arise from the crisis, and thus contribute to the organizations' ability to cope with crises.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version of this article (10.1007/s41471-022-00147-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Dealing with Unexpected Crises: Organizational Resilience and Its Discontents

The chapter summarizes key literature, including emerging ideas, that is pertinent to the question of how organizations and their leadership deal with and are resilient through crises - highlighting what works in surviving unexpected crises. The chapter presents an illustration of organizational response; it concludes with an analysis of what is missing from the literature and recommends a path forward to expanding actionable knowledge in this area. Multiple, interdependent factors that foster resilience are identified including (1) being sensitive to possible threats - even seemingly small failures, (2) not relying on simple interpretations of events but rather seeking diversity to create a complete view of the environment, (3) leadership that embraces communication, transparency, and continuous learning, (4) valuing expertise and allowing expert staff to make decisions during a crisis, and (5) a cultural commitment to a resiliency mindset that accepts failures as opportunities to learn and improve. Emerging concepts that may foster resilience but require more research include managing paradox, emotional ambivalence and diversity. Additional areas for fruitful research include: the impact of short-term versus long-term, or successive, crises; external versus internal shocks and the framing of the source of shocks; how crisis affect the pace of innovation and change; the role of diversity in organizational responses to crises; and a set of methodological opportunities to leverage natural experiments or simulations in ways that allow for longitudinal data illuminating the full cycle of crises across organizations from anticipation, to response, to longer-term adaptation to the new normal.

The uneven consequences of rapid organizational change: COVID-19 and healthcare workers

We examine the consequences of rapid organizational change on high and low-status healthcare workers (HCWs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 25 interviews, we found that rapid change can create a sense of social disorder by exacerbating the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, crystallizing the lack of training to deal with crisis, and upending taken-for-granted roles and responsibilities in health infrastructures. Our work contributes to scholarship at the intersection of organizations, professions, and social studies of medicine. First, we show how organizations that must respond with rapidity, such as during a crisis, sets up workers for failure. Second, hastily made decisions can have monumental consequences in the work lives of HCWs, but with differences based on status. All HCWs had trouble with the rearrangement of tasks and roles. Low status HCWs were more likely to feel the strain of the lack of resources and direct contact with COVID-19 patients. High status HCWs were more likely to experience their autonomy undermined - in the organization and content of their work. In these contexts of rapid change, all HCWs experienced social disorder and a sense of inevitable failure, which obscured how organizations have perpetuated inequalities between high and low status workers.

Sailing through the storm: Improvising paradox navigation during a pandemic

Despite rich depictions of paradox navigation strategies, and the recognition that they are fraught with uncertainty, research reveals relatively little about how leaders navigate paradoxical tensions when improvising in the face of highly unpredictable and quickly evolving events. We conducted a narrative study of how French President Macron navigated the tension between the paradoxical poles of “saving lives” and “preserving life as usual” during the pandemic. Our article surfaces three central elements that form a model of improvised paradox navigation in stormy conditions: turning points, fog of uncertainty, and chaotic learning. Our model contributes to paradox theorizing by shedding light on paradox navigation in highly turbulent environments and has implications for management learning and improvisation.

CSR crises from the consumers’ perspective: a multidimensional typology and future research agenda

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multidimensional corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis typology from the consumers’ perspective and to provide an agenda for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

Basic content-related dimensions for characterizing CSR crises from the consumers’ perspective are derived from a review of relevant static crisis typologies. Different types of consumer responses to negative CSR information are derived from various theoretical approaches. Dynamic process models of corporate crises are reviewed to assign various types of consumer responses to different crisis phases. Linking both static and dynamic approaches leads to a comprehensive consumer-oriented typology of CSR crises that is illustrated with examples.

Findings

A CSR crises typology is developed based on three consumer-related dimensions: the extent to which the company is attributed blame by consumers; the amount of perceived damage potential; and the perceived CSR relevance of the crisis situation. The combination of these dimensions results in eight different crisis types. For each of these crisis types, different forms of consumer responses are assigned that prevail in the so-called potential, latent and manifest crisis phase.

Research limitations/implications

Future research could address the empirical review of the crisis typology presented, its refinement by considering various consumer and stakeholder segmentation approaches and the advanced dynamic analysis of CSR crises by including stakeholder characteristics that impact the diffusion of CSR-related negative publicity.

Practical implications

The results of this paper support early crisis detection and effective crisis management by identifying relevant target variables for crisis communication.

Originality/value

The typology developed enables a broad spectrum of CSR crises to be classified, including those that have been neglected in previous systematization approaches, such as CSR-related tensions, general sustainability crises and product-harm crises. Due to its theoretical foundation, this paper also contributes to a clearer demarcation of existing CSR crisis constructs.

Vom Paradox zur Resilienz in der Krise: Ein Modell für erfolgreiches Krisenmanagement

In diesem konzeptuellen Beitrag für die Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. wird erfolgreiches Krisenmanagement als Weg von paradoxen Spannungen in der Krise zur Resilienz der Organisation beschrieben. Widersprüchliche und doch miteinander verbundene Interessen, Bedürfnisse und Anforderungen in der aktuellen COVID-19 Pandemie dienen als Beispiele. Das Modell betont die Rolle eines paradoxen Mindsets, welches Führungskräften, Entscheidern und Betroffenen ermöglicht, paradoxe Spannungen als solche zu erkennen, anzunehmen und die Chancen im „sowohl-als auch“ (im Gegensatz zu „entweder-oder“) zu finden. Das paradoxe Mindset fördert die Auseinandersetzung mit den Spannungen in einem wiederkehrenden Prozess des Sinnfindens und Sinnstiftens. Dieser Prozess stößt im Austausch mit den unterschiedlichen Stakeholdern die Entwicklung gemeinsamer „sowohl-als auch“ Denkmodelle, kreativer Herangehensweisen und schrittweisen Lernens an. Somit stärkt die paradoxe Sichtweise die Fähigkeit von Organisationen konstruktiv mit Herausforderungen umzugehen und diese in Chancen zu verwandeln – es macht sie resilienter. Der Beitrag schließt mit drei zusammenfassenden Empfehlungen für das Krisenmanagement.