The Effect of Formal Change Management Communication to Resistance to Change: The Case of a New Faculty
Nyman, Leena (2011)
2011
Kuvaus
Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.
Tiivistelmä
All organizations encounter change at some point. Therefore it is important for managers to know how a change process should be led so that there would be a high chance of succeeding with the implementation of the change. When leading change, the manager should not try to ignore the phenomenon called resistance to change, but to handle it and try to benefit from it instead.
There have been a lot of changes going on in the universities in Finland because of the new Universities Act. The new Universities Act has caused many changes in universities all around Finland. One of these changes at the University of Vaasa is the merging of the Faculty of Public Administration and Faculty of Humanities into one bigger faculty called the Faculty of Philosophy, which was formed on 1st January, 2010.
The aim of this research is to find out what the role of communication is in resistance to change at the University of Vaasa, where the faculty change has taken place. The purpose in addition is to discover if the personnel resisted the change, and if they did, what the reasons were for resisting the change. The idea of the thesis is also to find out if the personnel felt they had been taken into account during the change process by the managers.
The theory part of this thesis aims at introducing change management and it’s phenomena to the reader, so that the empirical part can be easily understood. The theoretical basis of this study includes change as a phenomenon, planned change, changes in the public sector, resistance to change as a phenomenon and how resistance to change can be handled, and also managerial communication and its connection with resistance to change.
The empirical study is a qualitative research and the data was gathered by 15 individual interviews in which the researcher and the person interviewed had discussed three major themes: change, attitudes to the change and managerial communication. The individuals interviewed in this research consisted of personnel working at the department of administrative sciences, the department of humanities, the Language Centre and the department of administration.
In general, the personnel thought the change did not affect their working life that much. The personnel would like to be consulted more in change processes which would also increase their commitment to the change. Almost half of the interviewees described their attitude to the change as positive and about the same amount of people said their attitude is critical or questioning and only a couple felt that their attitude is negative to the change. Most people thought they had got enough information about the change, but still the majority would have liked to get more information, saying there can never be enough communication. The study also revealed that there are things to improve when it comes to communication in English. The formal change management communication was shown to affect the degree of resistance in the organization.
There have been a lot of changes going on in the universities in Finland because of the new Universities Act. The new Universities Act has caused many changes in universities all around Finland. One of these changes at the University of Vaasa is the merging of the Faculty of Public Administration and Faculty of Humanities into one bigger faculty called the Faculty of Philosophy, which was formed on 1st January, 2010.
The aim of this research is to find out what the role of communication is in resistance to change at the University of Vaasa, where the faculty change has taken place. The purpose in addition is to discover if the personnel resisted the change, and if they did, what the reasons were for resisting the change. The idea of the thesis is also to find out if the personnel felt they had been taken into account during the change process by the managers.
The theory part of this thesis aims at introducing change management and it’s phenomena to the reader, so that the empirical part can be easily understood. The theoretical basis of this study includes change as a phenomenon, planned change, changes in the public sector, resistance to change as a phenomenon and how resistance to change can be handled, and also managerial communication and its connection with resistance to change.
The empirical study is a qualitative research and the data was gathered by 15 individual interviews in which the researcher and the person interviewed had discussed three major themes: change, attitudes to the change and managerial communication. The individuals interviewed in this research consisted of personnel working at the department of administrative sciences, the department of humanities, the Language Centre and the department of administration.
In general, the personnel thought the change did not affect their working life that much. The personnel would like to be consulted more in change processes which would also increase their commitment to the change. Almost half of the interviewees described their attitude to the change as positive and about the same amount of people said their attitude is critical or questioning and only a couple felt that their attitude is negative to the change. Most people thought they had got enough information about the change, but still the majority would have liked to get more information, saying there can never be enough communication. The study also revealed that there are things to improve when it comes to communication in English. The formal change management communication was shown to affect the degree of resistance in the organization.