The history of workplace change

Work for the majority of people has changed significantly over the past years. The workplace has gone through an entirely radical change acknowledging the diversity and the complexity of the effects and variations of the workplace ( Ashford, Lee, & Bobko,2010). The main reason behind workplace change for the most organization has been the thrive to global competition. Managers have been compiled by the external forces such as the innovation in technologies, intensified and the increased international competition and the power enhanced by the outside investors. Employees, managers, and researchers are familiar with the new terms used to describe the change in the workplace such as re-engineering, downsizing, outsourcing, and offshoring (Barnett, & Carroll,2012). Despite how frequent these terms are used, they do not connect to the feeling or the effects of those going through these change go through during this difficult times (Barnett, & Carroll,2012).

The primary intention of this reading is to show what going through society change is like for those employees that survived the transition, points of view. Several psychological questions can be answered. Does the employee attitude towards work remain stable after change implementation or do they move in in line with the organization changes? Did the change in the amplified computerization and lean processes introduced by the company, advance the worker’s consummation and work involvement?

In an organization the literature on the change is extensive, encompassing among another issue; the factors which lead to initiation of change by the managers, the various modes efficacy in change implementation, the employees resistance to change and the effects that these changes have on the employee attitude and performance to the workplace and the job itself (Fedor, Caldwell, & Herold,2006). For a review conducted, it is ore event that the organization is continually engaging in the numerous changes increasingly and that these changes are not often distinct events, but they are somewhat part of a process that is ongoing. Nevertheless, the effects of these continuing and multiple changes result in complex and ambivalent results often. For instance, change can lead to product improvement in both the quality and productivity. However, it can lower the commitment and the morale of the workforce (Fugate, Kinicki, & Prussia,2008). The assessment impact can, however, be incomplete if the organization change was measured shortly after the change implementation.

Our focus on this article is to look into the effects of the workplace change implementation on the people. The report will not examine the fairness of the application of these changes or the effectiveness of these changes. However, the article will acknowledge the organization does change the people who reside in them. The people job attitude is tracked down, the position of the organization, the relationship with the family, the effect of change implementation on the employees’ health (Herold, Fedor,& Caldwell,2007).

The impact of workplace change on employees

It is acceptable that the organization adopt practice and programs to influence the employee’s behaviors through, for instance, an initiative in the organization change. It is assumed in this article that brilliant events such as mass layoffs are more likely to affect the attitude of the employee behavior (Boeker, 2014). However, due to their disruptive nature and dramatic nature, these changes are likely to stir up the emotional effects in the organization resulting to more profound behavioral and more profound attitudinal change among employees. Attention is paid to the impact of the change in employees regarding their commitment, devotion to work in comparison to their other significant spheres such as family and leisure activities. Various authors have pointed out the decline in the trust levels in the company top management, other employee engagement and company goals commitment.

The company under study experienced many troublesome deviations during the period of our study. The organization formed a merger with a rival company, initiated and restructuring and re-engineering process that led to the constant mass layoffs. With the increase in the amount of companies passing such changes so does the increase in the research examining their impact of these changes on the employees (Huy, 2014). Since it is not possible to review this literature in in this article, we can easily say that mergers and massive layoffs and acquisition often seem to produce a negative psychological response in the surviving employees. The people who survive the dismissal often become too unconfident about their jobs and are less likely to become innovative and less steadfast to the organization, with a less trusting mentality to the top management (Judge,Thoresen, Pucik,& Welbourne,2012).

250 people were selected at random both on white collar and blue collar jobs. A letter was emailed to the elucidation the goals and nature of the research, and they were asked if they are willing to take part in a study that evaluated the effects of the workplace on the people. Of the selected sample size, 200 expressed their desire to take part in the study. 180 of the 200 people, remained in the company after change implementation. On second time, 160 of these responded again to the survey: 30 left the company before the third survey round, of the remaining 130,100 returned .80 of the remaining provided data that was usable.

The job boldness pattern shows a clear tendency for all the variables; there is a important change either in second, third or both the second and third round in comparison to the first round. The change direction is uniformly negative. According to responses by the people, less job satisfaction, ambiguity in the roles and increased job security are consistent with the organization described in the midst of much turmoil and change .the second and the third round was dominated by the massive layoffs.

Factors leading to change initiation

Conclusion

The people in our sample survived through the stressful time of the organization change. They were among the people who have witnessed the downsizing of the organization. They were able to develop a survival strategy to adapt to the ever embraced change by the organization and endured the many moves by the top management. It is evident that this changes created insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty among them, therefore producing deterioration in their attitudes towards their job ( Wanberg, & Banas,2015). According to the survey conducted, the layoffs were majorly linked to the adoption of the new process that required a unique set of skills and the organization was not willing to incur the expense of training its current employees opting to hire new workers.

Based on the research carried out on effects of employees on the workplace, we would like to recommend the following on those employees carrying out the impact of the organizational change effects.to begin with, there is considerable importance in evaluating the behavioral measure at different times over the certain extended period (Rafferty, & Griffin, 2010). Suppose we had only collected data in a single survey we would have missed out on rebound in many attitudinal scores. Unfortunately, there are no clear guidelines on the appropriate timing and duration that the study should be collected.

References

Ashford, S. J., Lee, C. L., & Bobko, P. (2010). Content, causes, and consequences of job insecurity: A theory-based measure and substantive test. Academy of Management Journal, 32, 803–829.

Barnett, W. P., & Carroll, G. R. (2012). Modeling internal organizational change. Annual Review of Sociology, 21, 217–236.

Boeker, W. (2014). Strategic change: The influence of managerial characteristics and organizational growth. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 152–170.

Fedor, D. M., Caldwell, S., & Herold, D. M. (2006). The effects of organizational changes on employee commitment: A multilevel investigation. Personnel Psychology, 59, 1–29.

Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Prussia, G. E. (2008). Employee coping with organizational change: An examination of alternative theoretical perspectives and models. Personnel Psychology, 61, 1–36.

Herold, D. M., Fedor, D. B., & Caldwell, S. (2007). Beyond change management: A multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees’ commitment to change. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 942–951

Huy, Q. N. (2014). Emotional capability, emotional intelligence, and radical change. Academy of Management Review, 24, 325–345.(Huy,2014)

Judge, T. A., Thoresen, C. J., Pucik, V., & Welbourne, T. M. (2012). Managerial coping with organizational change. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 107–122.

Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin. M. A. (2010). Perceptions of organizational change: A stress and coping perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1154–1162.

Wanberg, C. R., & Banas, J. T. (2015). Predictors and outcomes of openness to changes in a reorganizing workplace. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 132–142.