College 5

Question 1

What is the relationship between organisational change and organisational culture?

Answer 1

When we’re talking about change in an organisation we’re often talking about changing the culture of an organisation.

This is either because there is something undesirable about the culture or the climate that needs to change, or because we want to change the organisation and a change in culture is an unexpected side effect of the change in the organisation.

So these two often go hand in hand.

Question 2

What is the definition of organisational culture?

Answer 2

A set of shared meanings that people in organisations have with respect to how to adapt to the environment and cope with change.

Question 3

What are the dimensions of organisational culture norms?

Answer 3

• Content
• Consensus
• Intensity of feelings

Question 4

What is the content dimension of organisational culture norms?

Answer 4

• What the culture is
• The description

Question 5

What is the consensus dimension of organisational culture norms?

Answer 5

• Refers to the degree to which there is consensus within the group or organisation about those shared norms.
• How widely shared are the norms among the people in the organisation? Does everyone embrace the norms?

Question 6

What is the intensity of feelings dimension of organisational culture norms?

Answer 6

The intensity of feelings that people have that are associated with the culture.

Question 7

To which dimension of organisational culture norms does the following example belong?

Are people willing to sanction others when they violate organisational culture norms, or couldn’t they care less.

Answer 7

Intensity of feelings

Question 8

What is an organisational climate?

Answer 8

Shared perceptions about the organisation and work environment.

Culture is an evolved context, and climate is a situation that employees are in.

Climate is more temporary and subject to change (for better or worse).

Question 9

On what levels does organisational culture operate?

Answer 9

Organisational culture operates at different levels that differ in the degree to which they are visible or invisible to employees and to people from outside. It also differs in terms of how concrete or abstract it can be.

The levels are:

• Artifacts and creations
• Values
• Basic assumptions

Question 10

Artifacts and creations

Answer 10

• They are considered very abstract but very observable.
• These things are very abstract in the way they don’t say anything about culture, but you can derive something about culture from it.
• The things you can derive from artifacts and creations refer to underlying values.

Question 11

Values

Answer 11

• Between specific and abstract and between invisible and observable.
• Values are basically the reasons people give for their behaviour.
• A value can be expressed in artifacts.

Question 12

Basic assumptions

Answer 12

• Specific and hidden.
• They are at the core.
• Basic assumptions that people have about human nature.
• It can be really general.

Question 13

What examples belong to which level of organisational culture?

• People cannot be trusted
• The formality of things in a company
• Caring for the environment

Answer 13

Artifacts and creations: the formality of things in a company.

Values: caring for the environment.

Basic assumptions: people cannot be trusted.

Question 14

True or false organisational climate and culture are the same

Answer 14

False. The term organisational climate is often used interchangeably with culture but they are not the same.

Question 15

True or false: national culture has an impact on organisational culture

Answer 15

False. Several studies have compared national culture with organisational culture and they found that there is very little overlap (1-6%) between the two.

Question 16

What could be one of the reasons for the little overlap between national and organisational culture?

Answer 16

One of the reasons could be that when we look at organisational culture we’re actually looking at very different dimensions than when we look at national culture.

Question 17

True or false: national culture is not important when you’re looking at organisational culture

Answer 17

It’s not that national culture is not important, but an organisational culture is about different aspects.

Question 18

Model by Denison et al. (2004) on organisational culture

Answer 18

Four organisational values appear to be in the foreground of an organisation:

• Adaptability
• Involvement
• Mission
• Consistency

Question 19

How much overlap is there between the organisational values of Denison et al. (2004) and Hofstede’s cultural values?

Answer 19

They are quite different.

Question 20

Adaptability in the model by Denison et al. (2004)

Answer 20

• The ability to transfer the demands of the market into organisational actions.
• E.g., in the domain of retail the market is gradually changing from in store buying to online buying. The companies that shifted quite easily to online buying profited from this, whereas other organisations didn’t and are now struggling.

Question 21

Involvement in the model by Denison et al. (2004)

Answer 21

• Building human capability ownership and responsibility.
• Involving your workforce as part of the decision making process.
• In high involvement organisations, people at all levels feel that they have input in the decisions that are being made.
• Hierarchical organisations have a low level of involvement

Question 22

Mission in the model by Denison et al. (2004)

Answer 22

• Defining the long term direction of the organisation.
• Having a clear goal/mission vs going day by day.

Question 23

Consistency in the model by Denison et al. (2004)

Answer 23

• Being consistent as an organisation.
• Some organisations are constantly evolving/changing.
• Consistent organisations are very consistent and they follow their own path.

Question 24

What is associated with mission + adaptability?

Answer 24

External focus, which is associated with sales growth.

Question 25

What is associated with adaptability + involvement?

Answer 25

Flexibility, which is associated with innovation.

Question 26

What is associated with involvement + consistency?

Answer 26

Internal focus

Question 27

What is associated with consistency + mission?

Answer 27

Stability of an organisation, which is associated with profitability of an organisation.

Question 28

Socialization

Answer 28

The process an organisation uses so new members acquire necessary attitudes, behaviours, knowledge, and skills to become productive organisational members.

Question 29

What kind of process is socialization?

Answer 29

Socialization is both an automatic and informal process. But a part of socialization is also a quite formal process, going through training and onboarding.

Question 30

What are the phases of socialization?

Answer 30

Anticipatory socialization => entry and assimilation => either metamorphosis or disengagement and turnover

Question 31

Anticipatory socialization

Answer 31

Phase 1 of the socialization process..

Socialization that occurs before you join the organisation.

• E.g., being in high school and looking at some studies at University Leiden, you have not yet joined the University but you are already learning things about it)

This happens through the processes of recruitment and selection.

You select a company that fits to your needs, but the company also has a selection process.

If both of you think it’s a good fit you may go to the next round of the selection process.

Question 32

Using social media for recruitment

Answer 32

Organisations don’t just use interviews, they might also use social media. This is because in an interview you will often show your best self and they make the assumption that you show more of your true self in there.

Question 33

Study on using social media for recruitment

Answer 33

There was a study done on the use of information obtained from social media as part of the recruitment process, to see if this predicts how well a new employee fits with the organisation, will perform and ultimately stay with the organisation or leave.

They captured Facebook profiles of graduating college students who were applying for jobs.
They had special trained recruiters who looked at Facebook profiles and who made judgements of participants based on the KSAOs. This gives a general pattern of how qualified you would be.

One year later, participants current employees were contacted and asked to rate participants performance on their new job. They also contacted the participants themselves and asked them to indicate whether they were still working at the job or whether they had already left the job (turnover).

Question 34

What does KSAOs stand for?

Answer 34

KSAOs stands for Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other characteristics.

Question 35

What were the results and conclusion of the study on using social media for recruitment?

Answer 35

The associations tested were ‘recruiter rated suitability’ on ‘performance (after 1 year)’ and ‘turnover (after 1 year)’ and ‘recruiter rated KSAOs’ on ‘performance (after 1 year)’ and ‘turnover (after 1 year)’. The results were that none of the associations were significant.

They concluded that information obtained from social media is a very poor predictor of someone’s qualification of a job and whether someone will stay in a job.

Question 36

What can be a reason for the outcome of the study on using social media for recruitment?

Answer 36

One of the reasons for this outcome is that how we present ourselves on social media is also not a very good reflection of who we truly are. We do represent a different part of ourselves than in a job interview but we are not necessarily presenting our true self on social media.

There is also a great difference in individuals in how much they post on social media. Some people post way more than others on social media, how do you compare these people?

Question 37

What are the challenges in using social media in recruitment?

Answer 37

• Reliability and validity are unknown.
• Social media is often context specific.
• Use of social media information may not be legal.
  o If you post something on social media you don’t think this will be used for job selection.
• Use of social media information may not be ethical.
• Not clear how best to include the information in current selection procedures.
• Social media changes fast, and effective procedures may be outdated by the time they are validated and reliable.

Question 38

Self-selection

Answer 38

Selection is not only recruitment by the organisation, it’s also part self-selection when you are trying to figure out which organisation best suits your needs.

This could be based on your personal interests and values.

There are also recruitment websites where organisations try to show the values that they deem very important in the hopes of attracting people that fit with the company.

Question 39

Recruitment and diversity cues by Walker et al.

Answer 39

Walker et al., looked at diversity cues on recruitment websites and looked at what kind of effect that had on people. They asked black and white American participants to visit particular recruitment websites. These recruitment websites were varied in the sense that they were either very diverse, with a lot of diversity cues or they were not diverse, which in this context meant that they were expressing a mostly white majority view.

They then measured how long participants looked at these recruitment websites and afterwards they had a recall test to check how much information from the websites they could recall.

Question 40

What are the results and conclusion of Walker et al. on recruitment and diversity cues?

Answer 40

Participants spent more time viewing the diverse recruitment site than the non-diverse site, and this effect was stronger for blacks than whites.

Participants had better recall of information presented on the diverse recruitment site than the non-diverse site, and this effect was stronger for blacks than whites.

So, including diversity cues on your website does have the desired effect, in the sense that recruitment websites contribute to anticipatory socialization by conveying cues about the organisational culture.

Question 41

Entry and assimilation

Answer 41

Phase 2 of the socialization process.

You begin to understand the organisational culture and the work expectations from the different employees.

Formal orientation program.

Onboarding starts. This could sometimes even be part of a traineeship where someone works a couple of weeks in every department.

Question 42

Onboarding

Answer 42

The process of welcoming and orienting new members to facilitate their adjustment to the organisation, its culture, and its practices.

Question 43

Bauer’s model of onboarding

Answer 43

If the boarding process is effective you feel like you have more self-efficacy, you have more role clarity, you become socially integrated and you have also obtained sufficient knowledge of the organisational culture.

Selection + self-efficacy + role clarity + social integration + knowledge of culture = successful onboarding

Question 44

What factors have an influence on Bauer’s model of onboarding besides the four main factors?

Answer 44

• Industry
• Organisation size
• Leadership
• Climate
• Culture
• Support tools & processes
• Feedback tools
• Training
• Coaching & support

You don’t need to be able to recall these in the exam but you need to have a general understanding of them.

Question 45

How do employees learn culture?

Answer 45

• Stories: you hear stories of things that have happened.
• Rituals: there could also be rituals, like graduation rituals. This reflects the history.
• Symbols: the symbol can also give knowledge about the history and formality of the organisation.
• Language: the language that is used, formal or informal.

This can be different between departments in an organisation.

Question 46

Metamorphosis

Answer 46

Phase 3 of the socialization process.

New employee transforms to an established contributor.

Completion of the socialization process.

Question 47

What does an organisation do when they want something to change?

Answer 47

When an organisation wants something to change, they specifically hire someone from outside because they want ‘fresh blood’ in the organisation.

They hire people from another organisation that have specific knowledge and expertise. They want to introduce that to have something extra in the organisation.

Question 48

What happens when an organisation bring in a new person to change something in the organisation?

Answer 48

This person comes into the organisation and expresses these new and creative ideas, but the socialization process forces the person to assimilate. So instead of the group adopting the new way of looking at things from the individual, it is the individual who is forced to assimilate.

Question 49

What happens to the job performance when you try to change something in the organisation by bringing in someone new?

Answer 49

One of the outcomes of the whole socialization process is assumed to be better job performance. But in this scenario the group performance will actually go down.

Question 50

What is often a reason for an organisation to want to make a change in their culture or climate?

Answer 50

The organisational culture or climate is not always what we desire it to be and then we’re talking about changing the organisational culture or climate.

Often times there is something happening, a scandal for instance, that triggers people to look at the culture and the realization occurs that what happened is the result of something being wrong with the culture of the organisation. Something needs to change.

Question 51

What is easier to change, an organisational culture or an organisational climate?

Answer 51

Changing an organisational culture is extremely difficult. Changing an organisational climate is slightly easier because the climate is more temporary and flexible.

Question 52

What is necessary for organisational change?

Answer 52

Change must be implemented at all different levels of the organisation.

You can count on this being a long term process.

Employees must be convinced of the necessity for change.

Question 53

What are forces driving organisational change?

Answer 53

• Changed cultural norms
• Economic changes
• Technological changes
• Globalization
• Competitive advantage

An example is how the views on diversity changed which forced companies to look at diversity in their organisation.

Question 54

What types of planned organisational change are there?

Answer 54

It could be either reactive or proactive and incremental or radical.

Reactive + incremental = putting out small fires
Reactive + radical = stop the bleeding
Proactive + incremental = tweaking
Proactive + radical = transformation

Question 55

“Put out small fires” concerning planned organisational change

Answer 55

Reactive + incremental

Solve problems on a day-to-day basis. Quick fixes to short-term concerns.

Question 56

“Stop the bleeding” concerning planned organisational change

Answer 56

Reactive + radical

Crisis management. Industry shakeups, economic turmoil, financial shocks.

Question 57

“Tweaking” concerning planned organisational change

Answer 57

Proactive + incremental

Anticipate and plan. Improve current ways of doing things. Fine tune. Guided evolution.

Question 58

“Transformation” concerning planned organisational change

Answer 58

Proactive + radical

Do things fundamentally differently. Change basic assumptions. Revolution.

Question 59

Proactive change

Answer 59

Change from within

E.g., your company merges with another company.

Question 60

Reactive change

Answer 60

Change because of force outside or the environment.

Question 61

Incremental change

Answer 61

Change in small steps.

Question 62

Radical change

Answer 62

A big change

Question 63

What type of planned organisational change is the following: becoming energy self-sufficient

Answer 63

Proactive + incremental = tweaking

Question 64

What type of planned organisational change is the following: Musk taking over Twitter

Answer 64

Proactive + radical = transformation

Question 65

What type of planned organisational change is the following: changes during pandemic

Answer 65

Reactive + radical = stop the bleeding

Question 66

What type of planned organisational change is the following: universities adapting to increasing numbers of students

Answer 66

Reactive + incremental = put out small fires

Question 67

What are the different ways of responding to change?

Answer 67

Commitment

• You are committed to the change, you embrace the change and do everything to support it.
• This is what most organisations love to see.

Compliance

• You may not necessarily support it but you’re not showing any resistance.

Resistance

• This is by far the most common response to organisational change.

Question 68

Why do people resist change?

Answer 68

Identity reasons.

Personal reasons: habit, security, economics, and fear of the unknown.

Lack of participation and input.

• This is one of the main reasons for resistance.
• What is important is that they feel like they’ve had a part in the process.

Organisational reasons

• Structural inertia
• Group inertia
• Threats to expertise
• Threats to established power relationships

Question 69

Structural inertia

Answer 69

When the plans don’t fit with the organisations/ structure is too rigid to support the change.

Question 70

A study on resistance to a merger

Answer 70

The study looked at a merger, or what was officially called a restructuring of the British army.

They included a measure of what they labeled historical continuity: sense of history of one’s organisation, and the value attached to it.

The merger can be seen as something that threatens the continuity of the organisations culture and the identity.

They conducted 2 studies among Scottish army regiments.

Question 71

Study 1 on resistance to a merger

Answer 71

People with a high perceived historical continuity had a greater sense that the merger represents a break with the past.

The more you feel like the merger represents a break with the past, the more you feel that the merger is not legitimate.

The more you feel like the merger represents a break with the past, the less you expect there to be positive consequences of the merger.

The more strongly you identify with an organisation, the more resistance you show to a merger, even if the merger is presented as something that can give you all sort of benefits.

Question 72

What happens when the merger represents a break from a negative past?

Answer 72

If the merger represents a break from a negative past, you can achieve something more positive through the merger.

Research has shown that people do become more positive about the merger, but they are still fairly negative. They still experience an identity threat as a result of the merger because it changes nothing about the identity. Identity is so important to people that they even prefer to cling onto a negative identity than to see an identity change into something that might become more positive and therefore lose their old identity.

Question 73

Study 2 on resistance to a merger

Answer 73

They replicate the findings from the first study, but they also included a measure of whether participants believe that their own regiment could keep its own name after the merger (yes/no).

If you feel that your organisation is still clearly represented after the merger, for example because the post-merger organisation keeps the name of your own pre-merger organisation, then people feel like their identity is preserved. Whereas when we feel like you have to give up your organisations name, that is much more of a threat to your original identity.

If you are allowed to keep your pre-merger name, there is less resistance. This less resistance is particularly pronounced among people with a higher sense of historical continuity.

Question 74

What is the overall conclusion of the study on resistance to a merger?

Answer 74

It shows that people tend to resist change in an organisation.

Especially if the organisation is important to you, you identify strongly with it and if you feel that everything the organisation stands for is going to change and you’re going to lose that as a result of the organisational change.

Question 75

Lewins 3 step model to change

Answer 75

• Unfreeze: ensures that employees are ready for change
• Change: execute the intended change
• Refreeze: ensures that the change becomes permanent

Question 76

What is the most important step in Lewins 3 step model to change?

Answer 76

Unfreeze is the most important step, even though it is often overlooked.

Employees are often not informed about why they need to go through this change.

You need to forgo an us vs. them mindset.

Question 77

Kotters 8 steps to change

Answer 77

1. Create urgency
2. Form a powerful coalition
3. Create a vision for change
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower action
6. Create quick wins
7. Build on the change
8. Make it stick

Creating the climate for change => engaging and enabling the organisation => implementing and sustaining for change

Question 78

Stress

Answer 78

Change leads to resistance, and resistance leads to stress.

Stress is the difference between the demands (or stressors) placed on people and their ability to cope with the demands and reach their goals.

Question 79

Primary stress appraisals

Answer 79

Evaluation of the significance of an event for one’s well-being (“How stressful is it?”).

Question 80

Secondary stress appraisals

Answer 80

Assessment of one’s capacity to cope with a stressor (“Can I cope?”). This reduces the amount of stress that you feel.

Question 81

What types of stress are there?

Answer 81

Challenge-related stress

Hindrance-related stress

Question 82

Challenge-related stress

Answer 82

Challenge-related stress may be positive. It can be stressful but you know that you can cope.

Question 83

Hindrance-related stress

Answer 83

Hindrance-related stress is often negative:

• Feeling like you’re unable to cope with the stress (negative).
• Results from job experiences that interfere with achieving goals.
• Lessens loyalty, increases turnover (intentions), and negatively affects learning.

Question 84

What are the different types of role stress

Answer 84

• Role conflict
• Role ambiguity
• Role overload
• Work-family conflict

Question 85

Secondary stress appraisals: coping

Answer 85

Coping: Changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage external and/or internal demands that are taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.

Question 86

What are the different types of coping?

Answer 86

Difference between

• Behavioural methods
• Cognitive methods

And

• Problem focused
• Emotion focused

Question 87

Problem-focused + behavioural methods

Answer 87

• Working harder
• Seeking assistance
• Acquiring more resources

Question 88

Problem-focused + cognitive methods

Answer 88

• Planning and organizing
• Focusing on job duties
• Take one step at a time

Question 89

Emotion-focused + behavioural methods

Answer 89

• Engaging in non-work activities
• Seeking support
• Venting anger

Question 90

Emotion-focused + cognitive methods

Answer 90

• Tell yourself you always come through.
• Escape and detachment.
• Convince yourself work doesn’t matter.

Question 91

What is avoidance in terms of coping mechanisms?

Answer 91

Cognitive methods + emotion-focused

Question 92

Study on change and stress

Answer 92

They studied how people cope with stress as the result of a merger.

They had several measurements over time.

• The first measurement was 3 months after the merger, they measured event characteristics, self-efficacy and stress.
• 2 years after the merger they went back to the same people and measured problem-focused coping, identification with merged organisation, avoidance coping and job satisfaction.

Question 93

What were the results of the study on change and stress?

Answer 93

The more stress you have, the more coping is necessary.

More stress leads to more problem-focused coping which is good for job satisfaction as well as identification with the merged organisation.

However, more stress also leads to avoidance coping, which is not good for the identification with the merged organisation.

Event characteristics leads to less stress and more self-efficacy. More self-efficacy leads to more problem-focused coping which leads to more identification with merged organisation and more job satisfaction.