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Title: Social construction during online conversations about organizational change, Literature Review

Name of author(s): Sandra Cristina dos Santos Costa

Organization affiliation/position(s): Universidade Europeia

Address: Estrada da Correia, nº53. 1500-210 Lisboa.

Email address: sandracosta@europeia.pt

Stream – Organizational Learning

Submission type – Refereed paper

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Introduction

Organizational Change (OC), is extremely important to Human Resources Management

(HRM). Human Resources (HR) behavior can be affected by OC. OC’s implementation

failure, may compromise the company’s future. Despite the wide scope of the literature

on OC and related subjects, most studies, are about Consequent Changes (CC). These

existing studies approach change almost exclusively in a planning perspective.

Inconsequent organizational changes (IOC), have been clearly forgotten in the literature.

IOC don’t have direct impact on the employee’s daily routines, its consequences result

from social constructional processes. In fact research indicates that social construction

about change occurs on conversations, revealing also that online conversations, amplify

the process of social construction relatively to face to face conversations. Good

understanding of processes of social construction may lead to more efficient

communication/creation of IOC, and less traumatic impacts on employees, reducing

resistance to change and consequent failure of OC.

In this context, this literature review is about social construction of OC through online

forum conversations. The aim of this literature review is to demonstrate the importance

of online conversations and social construction about OC. Therefore later it will lead to a

study where the main research question will be: How do online conversations transform

IOC in CC?. This paper structure is the following: First part theoretical base. Second

part discussion third part conclusions

Keywords: Organizational Change, online social construction, online conversation,

sensemaking

Theoretical base

This paper analyzes the following concepts: organizations, organizational change, social

construction, sense making, conversations and online conversations. These concepts are

briefly described now.

Organizations

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Organizations can be considered as socially constructed realities in which the reality we

know is interpreted, constructed, enacted, and maintained through discourse (Berger and

Luckmann, 1966; Holzner, 1972; Searle, 1995; Watzlawick, 1984a; Weick, 1979), and it

can also be understood in terms of networks of relationships and interactions.

Organizations are also understood as interpretive systems and cognitive processes are

central to understanding attitudes, behaviors and organizational decisions. Organizations

are social constructs or tools, products of individual and collective actions. Weick’s

concept of organization is adopted (Weick, 1987).

Organizational change

OCs are incontestable, literature on OC and related subjects is very wide. Authors, like

Smith (1982); Weisbord (1988); Woodman (1989); Barnett & Carroll (1995); (Jeffrey

D. Ford, 1995); (Lima & Bressan, 2003); Van de Ven & Poole (2005), Neiva & Paz

(2007; 2012), Ruona & Choi (2011), (Hutchison 2001), defined and classified the

concept, types, contents and processes of OC. Several dimensions of OC were

identified in the presentation of relevant types of changes, such as continuity or

discontinuity of time, the object, the intensity, the speed, the intentionality of change,

the response time to external environment, the role of those involved in the process,

and also the period in which the change occurs. Burke and Litwin (1992), proposed

a distinction between Transformational Change and Transactional Change, a few years

later, Weick and Quinn (1999) presented the same king of changes under different

names (continuous and episodic), and again few years later Burke (2011), reaffirms

the distinction between Transformational and Transactional Changes. Weick and Quinn

(1999) find out that there are two major types of changes that are analyzed in the

literature: the continuous changes involving small advances over time and are

cumulative and episodic changes as a result of organizational imbalance. According to

Van de Ven and Poole (2005), this differentiation reflects trends in the study of

organizations and visions, as well as different methodological approaches to the study

of organizational change.

However, most of the studies are about CC, changes that have direct impact on everyday

work of employees, approaching the theme most of the times in a planning perspective

and besides the conceptual issue and the evolution of the field. Most of the considered

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concerns were the need to specify what type of change is under discussion, and which

are its object and contents.

Inconsequent Changes (IC), are changes like logo color changes, carpet color change,

wall painting change, changes have no impact at all on employees, daily work however

can influence employee’s attitude on work and have not been quite studied.

Even when organizational change, doesn’t affect directly the employees every day’s

work, it may cause them uncertainty and fear about what’s going to happen after, and in

conversations with others the social construction of meaning about change can be

influenced negatively affecting it’s motivation and consequent behavior. (Jimmieson,

Terry, & Callan, 2004)

The difficulty that organizations have to make changes and that literature faces to

explain them, is often related to the overemphasis on rationality of change management

processes that is considered simplistic and reduced the person to a mere shill (Beer

and Nohria , 2000; Bovey & Hede, 2001; George & Jones, 2001; Holbeche, 2006;

Soumyaja et al, 2011; Townley, 2008).

Many authors, criticized the reductionist and simplistic rational view of organizational

change from the human social context and favored research focused on people, and their

social construction, addressing the importance of the role of the individual feelings,

attitudes, behaviors, emotions as agents, and the role of conversations on social

construction of meaning as facilitators and responsible for the success of change.

(Giddens, 1984, Ford & Backoff, 1988, Poole & DeSantis, 1990, Kotter, 1990, George

and Jones, 2001; Antoni, 2004; Judge et al, 1999;. Wanberg and Banas, 2000; Vakola

and Nikolaou, 2005 Huy, 1999; Chrusciel, 2006; Herkenhoff, 2004).

The use of factors that facilitate or hinder change is necessary to understand what can be

identified by the members of the organization and its relationship with the perception of

the occurrence of CC and IC. Authors like, (e.g) Greenwood & Hinings (1996), Oxtoby,

McGuiness and Morgan (2002), Slack & Hinings (2004), Litaker, Ruhe & Flocke

(2008), Weiner, Amick & Lee (2008), Judge & Douglas (2009), have emphasized the

importance of establishing organizational readiness for change and recommended

various strategies

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for creating it. That’s to prepare this readiness for change that human resource managers

should be aware of human sensemaking about oc during online conversations.

Social construction

Social constructivism emphasizes the active role of conversations in the construction of

reality. People’s ideas about the world are constructions, even if the universe isn’t a

"mental object". During conversations, people can’t ignore the categories of knowledge,

meanings, stories, experiences and sensations. Reality goes from static to a dynamic –

becoming a concept where people are networks, with patterns of interaction, modulating

its own reality as it happens. Social construction happens in a sequence of interactions

and conversations; people concerned with same “problems” in the social context of other

actors, engage about ongoing circumstances from which they extract cues and make

plausible sense retrospectively, while enacting with more or less order into those

ongoing circumstances (Weick et al., 2005). It can also be reinforced by networks that

are not only as groups of individual cognitions in the heads of individuals,

organizations, but also as structures which nurture negotiation, persuasion and

reinforcement between individual interactions (Kildulf and Tsai, 2003)

Social construction of meanings has been considered as one indicative factor of

organizational capacity of change creating a new wide area of research, Prochaska,

Norcross & DiClemente (1994), Cunningham et all (2002) understand the construct

change capacity as –readiness for organizational change - correlating it with readiness,

but looking exclusively to the person, looking for it’s psychologically and behaviorally

condition which can allow or not the process of change. This position is compared to

those presented by Slack and Hinings (2004), Litaker et al. (2008).

Sense-making

Karl Weick, suggests that the term means simply “the making of sense” (weick, 1995).

It is the process of “structuring the unknown” (Waterman, 1990) “enabling us to

comprehend, understand, explain attribute, extrapolate, and predict” (Starbuck &

Miliken, 1988). Is also the activity that enables us to turn the ongoing complexity of the

world into a “situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a

springboard into action” (Weick, Surcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005).

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Sensemaking involves, and requires the articulation of the unknown, because,

sometimes trying to explain the unknown is the only way to know how much you

understand it. (Ancona, 2012) The move to the complex occurs as new information is

collected and new actions are taken. Then as patterns are identified, and new

information is labeled and categorized, the complex becomes simple once again, now

with a higher level of understanding. Sense-making is most often needed when our

understanding of the world becomes unintelligible in some way. This occurs when

the environment is changing rapidly, presenting us with surprises for which we are

unprepared or confronting us with adaptive rather than technical problems to solve

(Heifetz, 2009).

Conversations

The broad view of conversations as “a complex, information-rich mix of auditory,

visual, olfactory, and tactile events” (e.g.. Cappella & Street,1985: 2), as conversations

include not only what is said, but also what is done in correlation with what is said (i.e.,

a gestalt).

(Jeffrey D. Ford, 1995), claims that conversations may include symbols, artifacts,

theatrics, and so forth, that are used in conjunction with what is spoken. This view is not

inconsistent with the understanding of conversations as clusters of interrelated speech

acts.

(Jeffrey D. Ford, 1995) study was an introduction to the conversations of producing

intentional change so the focus was only with the spoken aspects of conversations.

According to Ford and Ford (1995) conversations are written verbal interaction between

two or more people that can range from a single speech acts, e.g. "do it", to an extensive

network of speech acts which constitute arguments (Reike and Sillars, 1984), narratives

(Fisher, 1987), and other forms of discourse (e.g. Boje, 1991; Thachankary, 1992).

Conversations may be monologues or dialogues and may occur in the few seconds it

takes to complete an utterance, or may unfold over an extended period of time lasting

centuries,

e.g. religion.

A single conversation also may include different people over time, for example, when a

board member’s tenure expires during the process of changing corporate policy.

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Jeffrey D. Ford, 1995, proposes that, although participants will engage in many

conversations, there are four different combinations of speech acts that correspond to

four

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different types of interactions in the intentional change process. The specific content,

sequence. tone, and so on, of these inter actions will vary, but the emphasis a change

agent puts on certain speech acts will define the stage of development of the change.

The four conversations are initiative, understanding, performance, and closure.

Online Conversations

However at online forum conversation this face to face communication can’t be viewed,

so it can’t influence OC sensemaking.

Online forum conversations can be the key to the analysis of the dynamics of

organizational change processes. Since the informal conversations not prescribed

relationships within organizations, characterized by ties of affection, belonging, security,

support, social support and bonding and refer to a set of spontaneous interactions in

which the person is understood as an active subject, the relate to others and to take

formal and non-prescribed social roles. (Wellman et al., 1996). J.V. da Cunha, W.J.

Orlikowski (2008) considered “online forums are not necessarily cooperative

spaces for neutral exchange of information and ideas”. It can promote social

construction of meanings.

Online conversations affects the sensemaking (perception) of the change serving the

dissemination and sharing of meanings mechanism, assuming that organizations are

located in unstable environments and need to be adapting to survive.

According to Cunha, João V. (2007), there are 4 types of Face to Face conversations

each one leading to one purpose.

Discussion

In this section it’s discussed the Role of information during organizational change and

Online discussion forums and organizational change Implications for practice

Role of information during organizational change

One of the managerial challenges facing organizations is the effective implementation of

organizational change programs that minimize feelings of uncertainty and associated

threat. As discussed by Milliken, (1987) uncertainty in the work context is a crucial

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need for the provision of information during periods of organizational change.

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Sutton and Kahn (1986) argued that when profound organizational change is imminent,

employees go through a process of sense-making in which they need information to help

them establish a sense of prediction (e.g., the time frame for organizational change) and

understanding (e.g., the need for organizational change) of the situation. Feelings of

workplace uncertainty can be reduced by providing employees with timely and accurate

information concerning the organizational changes, either through formal or informal

communication channels (see also Ash ford, 1988). It is important to note, however, that

providing detailed information about the change event may be difficult or simply not

possible, especially during the early phases of the implementation process. As noted by

DiFonzo, Bordia, and Rosnow (1994), if a particular issue cannot be addressed, then it is

best to explain why it cannot be answered. In a case study analysis of a manufacturing

firm that had developed an effective change communication strategy, DiFonzo and

Bordia (1998) found that letting employees know when the provision of information

was incomplete and providing them with a timeline for when information would

become available helped to minimize the emergence of damaging rumors, as well as

reducing anxiety associated with uncertainty. However, as noted by Sutton and Kahn

(1986), it is still preferable for those responsible for the implementation process to keep

such periods of uncertainty to a minimum.

According to Sutton and Kahn (1986), prediction and understanding are likely to have a

direct relationship with employee adjustment to organizational change, as well as acting

as potential buffers in the stress—strain relationship. In this respect, prediction and

understanding may reduce the negative effects of change-related stressors on employee

adjustment. Indeed, the notions of prediction and understanding have received research

attention as potential buffers of the negative effects of work stress on employee

adjustment. There is some evidence in the broader occupational stress literature

indicating that the negative effects of role stress on employee adjustment are most

apparent for individuals with low levels of prediction and understanding concerning

the work environment (e.g., Jimmieson & Terry, 1993; Tetrick & LaRocco, 1987). In

the context of organizational change there is a growing body of research examining the

main, and to a lesser extent, the moderating effects of a variety of different

information-related constructs on employee adjustment.

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Authors like, Miller and Monge (1985), Brockner, De Witt, Grover, and Reed (1990),

Schweiger and DeNisi (1991), Shaw et al. (1993), studied the impact of information

during change, in different contexts.

Also according to Kotter, 2000 one of the 7 steps needed for change not to fail is

“communicating the vision – Using every vehicle possible to communicate the new

vision and strategies teaching new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition

(Kotter, 2000).

Online discussion forums and organizational change

Online forums used as toll of organizational change, can be a very good help to improve

organizational change acceptance and understanding. It can also help to lead employees

about that change as a good factor. (Cunha, J. V. D., and Orlikowski, 2008)

(Cunha, J. V. D., and Orlikowski, 2008) research has shown that participants invest part

of their identity in views they share online, and if such views get challenged, personal

attacks and ‘‘flame wars” may result (Burnett & Buerkle, 2004; Lee, 2005). In spite (or

perhaps, because) of such social dynamics, online forums have been found to be

effective spaces to build various communities of interest, where groups of individuals

share and develop information online about a specific topic (Gongla & Rizzuto, 2001;

Wasko & Faraj, 2005).

Online forums are also frequently used for coordination. Organization-specific online

forums are commonly used to coordinate activities across organizational and

geographical boundaries because they facilitate the distribution and integration of work

among members who may never meet face to face (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999). The

online forums allow members to mutually adjust their efforts, and to work towards

developing a shared language, a joint history, and over time, possibly common values

and beliefs (Lakhani & Von Hippel, 2003). Further, as online forums provide a

repository of communications exchanged, the historical and ongoing documentation

of members’ interactions, agreements, and procedures serves as a useful collective

memory.

These online forums, however, are not without difficulties, and a number of researchers

have documented complications and conflicts associated with information,

interpretations, and interests that arise as groups try to coordinate their work across time

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and space (Cramton, 2001; Hinds & Bailey, 2003; Mortensen & Hinds, 2001).

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When debates and disputes persist for prolonged periods, the community may be

polarized into different and possibly incompatible accounts of its shared experience

(Smith, 1999), with members becoming increasingly disengaged and alienated over time

(Leizerov, 2000; Mortensen & Hinds, 2001). However, conflict may also serve as an

occasion to take stock of a community’s values and beliefs, generating a renewed

commitment to common goals (Kollock & Smith, 1996). For example, studies of task-

oriented virtual communities (e.g., open source software development) find that

informal leaders, especially those whose expertise or performance have earned them

a central position in the community, can play a crucial role in turning disputes into

productive exchanges by offering a fresh interpretation of the challenges jointly

faced by the members (Koch & Schneider, 2002).

Online forums have also been used to seek and provide emotional support, as when

participants discuss personally challenging problems or disorders with others who share

common circumstances, for example, a chronic disease, an addiction, or mental illness

(Galegher, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1998). Such use of online forums often involves

providing detailed information about the experiences, treatments, and consequences of

the shared difficulty, and, more importantly, also offers relief through the direct

support of others (Turner, Grube, & Meyers, 2001). The possibility of anonymity (or

pseudonymity), which allows participants to openly discuss their experiences online

while avoiding personal disclosure or embarrassment (Bowker & Tuffin, 2002), it’s a

powerful feature. The online nature of the interaction in these forums allows

individuals to choose how to present themselves to others, affording the shaping of

virtual identities that can reduce the threats to face entailed by co-presence, especially

when is hard to give opinion face to face. Research has shown that participating in

these communities may help participants overcome the identity challenges

associated with various physical, social, and psychological hardships (see

Cummings, Sproull, & Kiesler, 2002).

All three of these purposes for using online forums—information sharing, coordination,

and emotional support—may be valuable in both the design and implementation of

change and in the mobilizing of resistance to it. As many of these online forums extend

within and across organizations, it’s also expected that their use in change efforts will

entail a scale that would have been difficult to manage with traditional communication

media.

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A number of studies suggest that online networks can facilitate social change by

increasing the pace and reach of that change, while also enabling additional innovations

and improvisations (Kling, 2000; Morrison, Roberts, & Von Hippel, 2000). People may

engage in online interactions to share their experiences and adaptations with others, and

in this way reduce the overall disruption occasioned by the change that is experienced

by the broader community. Online forums may also provide access to various

forms of assistance that can help users incorporate the changes in their everyday work

practices (Cecez-Kecmanovic, Moodie, Busuttil, & Plesman, 1999). This allows those

involved in implementing the changes to deal with objections and questions early,

gaining the opportunity to know about and address some of the obstacles to change

as they arise (Orlikowski, Yates, Okamura, & Fujimoto, 1995).

The availability and use of online forums may also enable change agents or managers to

communicate directly with the people most affected by the change, rather than relying

on the more formal and sometimes opaque social networks that exist within large

organizations and communities. Studies of online activism suggest that online

communication spaces may be used to craft shared interpretations of a virtual

community’s goals and conditions for action (Leizerov, 2000; Wilson & Peterson,

2002). Once produced, this sense of shared fate can then be used to enlist members’

commitment towards some specific changes.

However, other studies, have shown that online forums may also be used to mobilize

and organize resistance to change (Kahn & Kellner, 2004), for example, facilitating the

online synchronization of large-scale, offline demonstrations against globalization

(Leizerov, 2000; Smith, 2001), a phenomenon that has been referred to as ‘‘smart

mobs” (Rheingold, 2002). Research on the use of online forums to oppose change

has suggested that participants’identities may be enrolled in practices of resistance

(Langman, 2005). Identification with the online community enables the development

of common beliefs, language, interests, and memory (Burnett & Buerkle, 2004; Diani,

2000; Summers-Effler, 2002), lowering the requirement to frequently share explicit

information and engage specific coordination mechanisms to mobilize and organize

the action of participants (Bennett, 2003).

While there have been some studies of the use of online forums to shape social change,

there has been no systematic assessment of their role in framing people’s interpretations

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and experiences of organizational change. As a result, there are no strong indications to

suggest certain outcomes are more likely than others. Given that the research results that

are available point in different directions, it’s expected that attempts to use online

forums to influence meanings, identities, and actions will be used in multiple,

contingent, and emergent ways within organizational change processes.

Implications for practice

Considering the rapid growth, wide use of online communities, it’s important to

establish the connection between conversations and sense-making about change, for

better conduct change communication. If a set of conversation types is created it

will improve the acceptance of OC, minimizing change negative impacts risk.

If the correct speech acts about IC and its consequences are known they can be correctly

used with great benefits for company.

Conclusions

According to (Jimmieson, Terry, & Callan, 2004) “organizational change can be viewed

as a critical life event, which has the potential to evoke stress reactions and other

negative consequences on employees”. As the reviewed literature, indicates

conversations are a strong form of making social construction. Even when it occurs

online opinions and emotions are expressed strongly leading to an amplified

construction of meaning.

Considering also that the process of company readiness for change is connected to the

perception of the person about its own personal conditions to the real process of change.

Silva & Vergara, 2002, defend that organizational change can be more or less traumatic

to persons. From this perspective, organizational change can’t be analyzed only at the

level of strategies, requiring change initiator to think about, the role of individuals and

it’s online conversations in this process as well as the meaning that the changes have for

The motivation of the employee was also found to be significantly correlated to

continuing commitment to proposed change (Daif & Yusof, 2011), it’s extremely

important to accomplish the understanding of social constructing about change as way

of involving the employee.

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Increased communication of change is the first mechanism for the creation of

availability change among individuals, (Kim, 2011) – acting as a tool for conveying

information, create understanding, share experiences and sensemaking. In cases where

the communication process fails, "noise" and rumors accelerate the negative

aspects of change and increase resistance to change. (Becher, 2003; Wanberg and

Banas, 2000; Reichers et al, 1997; Armenakis and Harris, 2002; Bernerth 2004).

To implement organizational change considering the social action in the organization

and the people who participate in it (Weick and Quinn, 1999) requires that members

involved in changing understand, internalize and adopt the intended (organizational)

goals. (Smith, 2001; Wanberg & Banas, 2000). Considering the manager as the

most visible representative of an organization and as such, is the link that bounds

employees to the course of change (Parker, 2012), understanding the online forum

conversations of it’s employees can help him to perform this task.

To understand the process of change in organization is critical that the focus on the

individual engages in the context of change, considering that the way individuals

construct the meaning of change significantly affects the results. (Parish et al, 2008;

Balogun, 2006; Stensaker et al, 2007.).

To better understand the process of sensemaking thru social construction of individuals

and groups inserted in a context of inconsequent and planned organizational change,

feelings and emotions, such as: fear; uncertainty; anxiety; insecurity; psychological

contract breach; procedural justice; perceptions of opportunities and threats, experienced

by those can be examined, and treated on time, of correct treatment is given to online

forum opinions.

Taking into account that existing research of organizational change communication is

considered consider critical to the success of it, that online forums are an excellent way

to exchange ideas and social construction of meaning. In future study’s, conversations

held around changes though distant and inconsequential for employees, during the talks

held became consequential, or they were given a new significance or meaning should be

analyzed.

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Therefore online forums can be a way of constructing change. In the future it’s aimed to

define a set of recommendations on what type and gender of conversations may

originate CC from IC. It’s also hoped to study the networks that perform and

originate CC from IC.

In further studies, it’s aimed to conclude that there is theoretically a strong link between

studies of social construction and the field of study of cognitive processes. The people's

perception of environmental stimuli (organizational change) varies during online

conversations.

And it’s intended to articulate two important phenomena in the field of organizational

studies: the formation and dynamics of informal social networks in work their online

conversations and the construction of meanings and sharing across organizational actors

about the processes of change taking place in the organization. The approach of these

two phenomena is related to the need to understand the role of online conversations

in the sensemaking of organizational changes. In turbulent environments, online

conversations can influence either as a leverage or as a restraining force to change.

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