emotions on organisational change

MASSEY UNIVERSITYHonesty Declaration

School o f Management (A lbany)

L e c t u r e r ’ s N a m e

Dr Wendelin Küpers

P a p e r N a m e

Advances Research Methods in Business

P a p e r N u m b e r

152.781

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JOY JACKSON 13088772 17-04-2013

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17-04-2013

Jackson JOY - 13088772

EMOTION IN ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

(SEMESTER 01, 2013)

Lecturer: Dr. Wendelin Küpers

Jackson Joy

Student ID: 13088772

152.781 - ADVANCED RESEARCH METHODS

Email: [email protected]

Word count: 1030

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

What categories of injustice are perceived by the managers and employees in the

context of organisational change?

What are the behavioural and emotional reactions or responses to these perceived

injustices of organisational change?

How are the change recipient and the change leader influenced by the perceived

injustices of organisational change?

LITERATURE REVIEW:

‘Not only is change ubiquitous and unpredictable, but almost everyone also assumes

that its velocity will increase exponentially’ (Cameroon, 2006, p. 317). From the

point of view of every manager, an organisation needs to adapt to changes internally

and externally and improve performance by avoiding all threats. The management

tends to presume that the way employees respond on a psychological basis should be

rational, and the emotional reactions are not rational (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996).

Eventually most of them fail to foresee the emotional responses to organisational

change, but in some cases even if they do, they may ignore them. Emotions are

usually rational, and they have cognitive antecedents.

The highlight of this paper is to apprehend the different types of injustice perceived

by the managers and how these affect the emotions of the employees. These types of

injustices were infrequently probed in previous qualitative studies. This paper also

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seeks in finding what would have led to this perception along with the behavioural

and emotional responses to these injustices of organisational change.

Injustice of Organisational change

The sense of injustice- the anger, the bitterness, the fear, the helplessness; these are

the emotions that all people have experienced on the job, some more frequently than

others, and some more intensely than others (Bies & Tripp, 2002, p. 204). Folger and

Skarlicki (2008) emphasis that justice has conducive, comparative and moral

propellers that access the perceptions of organisational change (Keifer, 2005). For

the employees experiencing favourable or unfavourable outcomes, change turns out

to be an emotional event. Keifer (2005) claimed that most emotional responses to

change were cynical and due to injustice. The recipient of the change can be either

the employee experiencing injustice or the manager/leader being sandwiched by the

organisation and staff.

Fifty years of research on Organisational justice with the foundations from Homans

(1961) and Adams (1965) has reinforced the theory into four different categories:

distributive, procedural, interactional and systemic. Distributive justice refers to the

perceived veracity of outcomes after the execution of some managerial decisions

(Adams, 1965; Homans, 1961). These outcomes can be either economic-

psychological (Brockner & Wiensenfeld, 1996) or extrinsic- intrinsic (Lester &

Kickul, 2001). A change in an organisation can conceive both types of outcomes, for

instance an employee can be relocated to a less sophisticated office and may be

treated with lower status. Thus, the result of change stimulates negative emotional

responses when an employee finds himself in a worse experience when compared

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with others. When outcomes are perceived as unfair, employees judge the veracity of

managerial decision process that directed the outcome (Tyler & Lind, 1992). This is

referred to as Procedural Justice. Tyler and Lind (1992) alights that the perception of

veracity of outcomes are appreciated when the participation of employees are also

included in the decision making process, which thereby would develop a positive

emotional response. Pragmatic research has proved how procedural injustice has led

to negative emotions by shaping negative perceptions of change. For instance, a

victim of downsizing was likely to accuse the organisation or the manger for the

unfavourable outcomes. Similarly, the survivors of downsizing who perceived

procedural injustice expressed lower job satisfaction and lower affective commitment

(Kernan & Hanges, 2002). Interactional Justice as the name implies refer to the way

in which the managers or the superiors clearly communicate about the outcomes and

procedures with the employees and respect them (Novelli, Kirkman & Shapiro,

1995). Many employees who turned out to be the survivors of downsizing have

complained that their superiors had provided inadequate information (Brennan &

Skarlicki, 2004). Interactional justice can be classified as interpersonal justice

(respect and dignity by which employees are treated) and informational justice

(precision and timing of the information provided by the superior). Both of them can

blend to each other. For instance in Bryant`s (2006, p. 253) interviewees reported

that when they questioned their manager about the prospective of their job, the

manager either did not know or sometimes became scurrilous. Systemic Justice is a

principal term for the perceived veracity of many outcomes over time, and it is a

feature of the organisational culture (Beugre & Baron, 2001).

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The perception of each form of justice has its own unique consequence and so the

combined effect can be intricate. It was found that the victims of downsizing

pinpointed on distributive justice while the survivors focussed on procedural justice

(Clay-Warner et al., 2005). Barclay et al. (2005) found that interpersonal justice was

related to the perception of behaviour of a specific manager where as procedural

justice was concerned on organisational approaches where the former evoked more

intense emotions. Similarly, interactional justice evoked more negative emotions

when compared with distributive justice. Matheny and Smollan (2005) emphasized

that emotions predominates when the change recipient concentrates on justice in any

form instead of the outcomes. It is understood that the perceptions of a form of

justice can alleviate perceptions of another form of injustice, so a form of injustice

infuriate another (Brockner & Wiensenfeld, 1996). Turnley & Feldman (1999)

stresses that Organisational change often alters the psychological contract and

injustice arouses negative responses mainly when the organisation fails to render the

perceived responsibilities. Psychological contract is the employees’ instinctive

perception of the common agreement amid the management and the employee

(Morrison & Robinson, 1997).

Conclusion:

Gilliland (2008) says that the enforcer of justice and injustice i.e. the manager or

leader also has to deal with a series of negative emotions like guilt, anxiety and

concerns. It is believed that the manager does not often deliberately act unfairly with

the employees, but they too have intellectual and emotional motives. The manager

may not have the discretion to issue the knowledge that the employee wants due to

marketing or business reasons, and as a result even candour managers may be forced

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by organisational authority and get stranded in a moral dilemma. Thus, it is shown

that injustice due to many facets of organisational change does alleviate negative

emotional responses both among the recipient of the change and those managing the

change. If the manager can spend extra time in demonstrating interpersonal justice to

the employees who think the change was not fair, then this approach can reduce

negative reactions.

References

Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed .), Advances in experimental social psychology, (pp. 267-299). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Barclay, L. J., Skarlicki, D. P., & Pugh, S. D. (2005). Exploring the role of emotions in injustice perceptions and retaliation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 629-642.

Beugre, C. D., & Baron, R. A. (2001). Perceptions of systemic justice: The effects of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31(2), 324-339.

Bies, R. J., & Tripp, T. M. (2002). ‘Hot flashes, open wounds’: Injustice and the tyranny of its emotions. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Emerging perspectives on managing organizational justice (pp. 203-221). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Brennan, A., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2004). Personality and Perceived Justice as Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(6), 1306-1328.

Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120(2), 189-208.

Bryant, M. (2006). Talking about change: Understanding employee responses through qualitative research. Management Decision, 44(2), 246-258.

Cameron, K. (2006). Good or Not Bad: Standards and Ethics in Managing Change. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(3), 317-323.

Clay-Warner, J., Hegtvedt, K. A., & Roman, P. (2005). Procedural justice, distributive justice: How experiences with downsizing condition their impact on organizational commitment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 89-102.

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Folger, R., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2008). The evolutionary bases of deontic justice. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, morality, and social responsibility (pp. 29-62). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.

Gilliland, S. (2008). Peeling the justice onion: Ten essential questions. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, Morality, and Social Responsibility, (pp. 291-311). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.

Homans, G. C. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. Taylor & Francis.

Kernan, M. C., & Hanges, P. J. (2002). Survivor reactions to reorganization: Antecedents and consequences of procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 916-927.

Kiefer, T. (2005). Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative emotions in ongoing change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(8), 875-897.

Lester, S. W., & Kickul, J. (2001). Psychological contracts in the 21st century: What employees value most and how well organizations are responding to these expectations. Human Resource Planning, 24(1), 10-21.

Matheny, J. A., & Smollan, R. K. (2005). Taking change to heart: Exploring emotions experienced through change events. Research on Emotion in Organizations, 1, 173-210.

Morrison, E. W., & Robinson, S. L. (1997). When employees feel betrayed: A model of how psychological contract violation develops. Academy of management Review, 226-256.

Novelli, L., Kirkman, B. L., & Shapiro, D. L. (1995). Effective implementation of organizational change: An organizational justice perspective. In C. L. Cooper & D. M. Rousseau (Ed.), Trends in organizational behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 15-36), Chichester, NY: Wiley.

Turnley, W. H., & Feldman, D. C. (1999). The impact of psychological contract violations on exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Human relations, 52(7), 895-922.

Tyler, T. R., & Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. Advances in experimental social psychology, 25, 115-191.

Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective Events Theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18, 1-74.

Annotated Bibliography

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Barclay, L. J., Skarlicki, D. P., & Pugh, S. D. (2005). Exploring the role of emotions

in injustice perceptions and retaliation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4),

629-642.

This article focuses on understanding the emotions within an organisational justice

framework by examining the relationship between the responses to procedural justice

and the responses to interactional justice by considering two emotions: inward-

focussed emotions and outwards-focussed emotions. The author also investigates

whether the negative emotions due to these outcomes lead to the perceived injustice

and how the two related to each other. The article also pin points the reason for

employees to blame the manager or management for the low outcomes was the low

level of procedural or interactional justice.

This source was useful in interpreting that the negative emotions were conceived due

to the perceived injustice of organisational change where previous researches failed

to notice or understand this. In this study, the author is successful in finding out the

outcome favourability collaborates with both the procedural and interactional justice

to predict the participants’ emotions. The sample size for this study was large with

173 participants who experienced being laid off as a part of business strategies such

as cost cutting or restructuring. However, the limitation of this study was that since

the participants for this study were all from the same organisation, these findings

could not be generalised for other organisations.

This article was useful to my literature review on emotional responses to

organisational injustice. It provided me ample evidence for considering emotions

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arising due to the outcomes of procedural and interactional justice. This study helped

me understand that emotions are a key part of organisational life, and there is a

theoretical correlation between (in)justice and emotions. It also provided me with the

method by which one could carry out a qualitative approach to find out how an

outcome of an organisation influences the emotions of an employee.

Beugre, C. D., & Baron, R. A. (2001). Perceptions of systemic justice: The effects of

distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Social

Psychology, 31(2), 324-339.

This study seeks to demonstrate how the employees’ perceptions of the procedural

and interactional justice of organisational change led to perceptions of systemic

justice. It also made it evident that perceptions of distributive justice do not predict

perceptions of systemic justice where this used to be a hypothesis in early research

that perceptions of distributive justice could positively influence perceptions of

systemic justice. The author states that the fairness of an organisation as a whole

could be evaluated by an employee based on his perceptions of the distributive,

procedural and interactional justice. The author also talks about the inducing

perceptions of high level of organisational justice among the employees so as to yield

positive outcomes that will eventually lead to positive emotional responses.

This study was conducted on a sample of 232 employees chosen from different

organisations, and the result showed that the employees’ perceptions of systemic

justice were influenced by the perceptions of procedural and interactions justice only

and not on distributive justice. Unlike other studies, where the samples were taken

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from the same organisation, in this study the samples were from different

organisations. The finding could be generalised for all organisations, and this was a

significant advantage of this study over other past researches and makes this source

reliable for my literature review. The author emphasis that justice issues are

substantial because the manner in which people are considered in organizations

exerts a mass effect on the emotional responses, irrespective of other objective

features of the working environment.

This article was useful in identifying the two types of perceived justice namely

procedural and interactional that positively predicted perceptions of systemic justice.

The study helped me understand that if an organisation is keen to induce a higher

level of perceived systemic justice on its employees, then it would be better to focus

more on the procedural and interactional justice instead of distributive justice. The

implications of the emotional experience caused due to the perceived injustice of

organisational change did relate to the discussion of my literature review.

Brennan, A., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2004). Personality and Perceived Justice as

Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing1. Journal of

Applied Social Psychology, 34(6), 1306-1328.

The purpose of this article was to investigate whether downsizing (leading to layoffs)

due to organisational strategy results in negative emotional on the survivors’ attitude

and behavior as it does to the victims. The author examines what role the personality

and organisational justice had over the survivors’ response to downsizing. They

study was successful in finding that the relationship between the survivors perceived

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interactional justice and the organisational commitment was moderated by the angry

hostility. This study investigates if the personality predicts the survivors’ perceptions

of the veracity of downsizing.

The potential strengths of this study over other studies regarding the same topic is

that, this study includes the use of rating scale and several different organisations

thus minimize the common method variance and increasing the generalizability,

respectively. The study was carried out with a sample of 93 employees from 5

different organisations that had downsized over the previous 2 years. Yet another

strength of this study was the use of facets instead of global personality dimensions.

This made the result of the study more precise and accurate thus making it reliable

for my literature review.

The article was helpful in the compiling of my literature review as the study made

me understand that it is not just the victim employees of the downsizing who are

affected emotionally but at the same time the surviving employees also react

negatively to the same. These findings of this study were nearly related to my

research questions. The author discussed the way in which employees who survive

an organisation change responds and how this can be regulated so that the change

initiative is successful.

Clay-Warner, J., Hegtvedt, K. A., & Roman, P. (2005). Procedural justice,

distributive justice: How experiences with downsizing condition their impact

on organizational commitment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 89-102.

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This main objective of this article is to add on to the previous research demonstrating

that both the distributive justice and procedural justice are key predictors of work

behaviour. The authors define that the distributive justice predicts the commitment of

the organisation among the victim employees of downsizing where as procedural

justice predicts among the unaffected and survivors of downsizing. They also

propose that it is when the employee perceives that he or she is being treated fairly;

they reveal higher satisfaction and positive emotional responses. This study examines

how the employees experience with the organisational change his or her perceptions

about the distributive and procedural justice.

The major limitations of this article include – use of a small number of sample of

downsizing victims (n=87) because of which the ability to seek statistical differences

between distributive and procedural justice coefficients is limited as a larger number

of victim samples are necessary for the same. This study only showcases one type of

employee’s previous experience (downsizing) by which the whole study is carried

out, but it is also understood that other experiences also exert similar results. Even

though the study has such limitations it does become a suitable source for my

literature review as it does tell about the different types of perceived justice and their

effect on organisational commitment.

This article was useful in understanding how the organisations change affected the

employee’s workplace attitude. The article also explains the consequences that the

organisation would have to suffer when the effect of the perceived injustice on the

workers were also considered which includes less productivity, lowered commitment

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to organisation and resistance to change. The key purpose of the study was well

related to my literature review. It was also found in the study that with respect to the

organisational commitment, procedural justice accounts for about 5 times more than

distributive justice.

Gilliland, S. (2008). Peeling the justice onion: Ten essential questions. In S. W.

Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, Morality, and

Social Responsibility, (pp. 291-311). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.

The study seeks to demonstrate the level of justice in an organisation. The Author

talks about the organisational justice theories that influence the work attitude and

behaviour. The article highlights the connection between the employees, the

management and how the emotions of an employee are correlated with the

management decisions. Morality, social exchange relationships and trust are the key

issues that an employee faces with the change organisation. The author illustrates the

different motives underlying justice and how these maximize the valued personal

outcomes. They study shows that all the motives comes from the employees

perception of justice.

This source was useful in identifying the relation between morality and justice,

social responsibility and justice and to identify the social phenomena of justice. This

source assumes that, these relations are pivotal in the understanding of emotions in

an organisations context. The study also shows the qualitative methods by which an

organisation can recover when the employees have experienced injustice. The mode

of study in this source is based on the organisational perspective where other

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researches usually examine the recovery process from the victim’s perspective. The

study also shows how influential and salient is justice is for the employee and how an

employee can be motivated by justice when the managerial decisions are unfair.

This study was of immense use to my literature review as it highlighted on the

negative emotional responses of employees to justice violations in an organisation. It

also helped me to understand that some employees recover more readily than others

from the emotional dilemma. The author also suggests that a motivation by ability

perspective may be used to analyze the individual differences in victim recovery.

Kernan, M. C., & Hanges, P. J. (2002). Survivor reactions to reorganization:

Antecedents and consequences of procedural, interpersonal, and

informational justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 916-927.

The article focuses on the reactions of employees to reorganisation based on his or

her perceptions of the procedural, interpersonal and informational justice. This study

correlates the three types of perceived justice with each other. The authors also

investigated on the antecedents that predict interpersonal justice and informational

fairness. They also found out that the organisational reconfiguration not only affects

the employees removed from the organisation but also affects the surviving

employees as well. They also added that the perceived injustice in organisation plays

a large role on the emotions responses of the employees affected by the organisation

reconfiguration. In this article, the authors investigated the extent to which the

perceived injustice is related to the employee’s emotional reactions.

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The sample size of this study is large with 163 respondents to the initial survey and

194 respondents to the follow up survey. The strength of this study was that the

survey was carried out using a 7-point Likert scale thus minimising the common

method variance and but since all the respondents were from the same company, the

result could not be generalized. The limitations of this study were that there were

other variables (like the nature of job changes resulting from reorganisation) that

influenced the reactions of reorganisation, were not included in this study. These

variables need further investigation on how they influence the reactions, and this

brings the scope for future research.

This article was extremely useful in the compilation of my literature review as the

study focussed on emotions responses to the injustice in an organisation and how the

managers need to minimize the negative emotional reactions as a result of workplace

reorganisation. This study also made me understand that there was a greater

possibility for employees to bear another type of restructuring after experiencing an

initial organisational reconfiguration. The authors emphasised that it is mandatory in

the present era, where organisation changes were more common, to study about the

variables that facilitate positive and negative emotional responses.

Kiefer, T. (2005). Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative emotions

in ongoing change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(8), 875-897

They key purpose of this article was to explore the way how negative emotions are

developed during an organisational change. The author also found out through a

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regressions and path analysis that every ongoing organisational change is affiliated

with negative emotions and these negative emotions were responsible for the

employees’ lack of trust on the management and employees withdrawal from the

organisation, both turning out to have a negative feedback on the organisation. The

study also identified the three antecedents of negative emotions namely the

perceptions of the inadequate working conditions, fairness of organisational

treatment and future of employee in the organisation. This study focuses on the

different ways in which these negative emotions are getting originated during

change.

The study was carried by making employees participate in a questionnaire in two

phases. The first phase included cross-sectional samples on 155 participants which

were used to test all hypotheses and the second was a follow-up sample of 76

participants that tested the impact of the emotions over time. Since the total

respondent samples were big the results were more accurate and thus this article

became a key source to my literature review. This study has some limitations that

include the omission of certain context variables (like history of prior changes,

employee agreement) relating to organisation change. The author also suggests that

this can be an area for the future research.

This article was of great use to my literature review as it clearly pictured what

emotions are getting conceived during a change and how these emotions affect the

employee as well as the employer. The author discussed the limitations of this study

and how further research can be applied to investigate deeper into this research. The

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author insisted on the fact that emotions should not be considered as expressions of

resistance to change but as the consequences of injustice in the organisation.

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emotions on organisational change

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