Employees’ conceptions of organizational change in a Finnish hotel
Mäkirinne, Janina (2020)
2020
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120225602
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120225602
Tiivistelmä
Today’s organizations face, at some point in their lifecycle, a change that fundamentally affects the business in one way or another. The reasons behind it are many, such as evolving technology, new trends, or swaying consumer demands. Despite the reasons, when large scale changes happen, strong leadership is the key to success and survival.
This thesis aims to understand employees’ conceptions of an organizational change that was implemented in a Finnish hotel chain. The commissioning hotel is a part of a luxury chain, which was acquired to be a part of a bigger nordic chain in 2019.
The theoretical part first explains the differences between two approaches, change leadership and change management, out of which leadership aspect was chosen to be elaborated. It will also explain organizational change, the leader’s role during change process, change resistance, and theories of the most important change management models.
The empirical research was done by implementing semi-structured interviews. A total of nine employees of the commissioning hotel were interviewed from different departments. The employees working on a subordinate level were only selected, meaning that the managers were ruled out from the interviews. A thematic content analysis was done to get an idea of the phenomenon.
The results of the research suggested that the employees’ conceptions and experiences on the subject varied a lot. Most employees experienced the leadership during transition adequate, but shortage was detected in communication, training, and vision. The change affected the employees’ level of motivation and engagement positively, and their mental wellbeing was not disturbed notably during the process. Change resistance occurred only passively, since it was stated that some were only putting in minimum effort and contribution towards the change initiative.
Suggestions for development were related to the problem areas. The vision needs to be clarified and brought out more often, training needs to be more individualized, and communication style and channels should be reviewed. Although there was space for improvement in leading the change, it was concluded that there is not one sole recipe for successful change leadership, since people are different, and experience things in very different ways.
This thesis aims to understand employees’ conceptions of an organizational change that was implemented in a Finnish hotel chain. The commissioning hotel is a part of a luxury chain, which was acquired to be a part of a bigger nordic chain in 2019.
The theoretical part first explains the differences between two approaches, change leadership and change management, out of which leadership aspect was chosen to be elaborated. It will also explain organizational change, the leader’s role during change process, change resistance, and theories of the most important change management models.
The empirical research was done by implementing semi-structured interviews. A total of nine employees of the commissioning hotel were interviewed from different departments. The employees working on a subordinate level were only selected, meaning that the managers were ruled out from the interviews. A thematic content analysis was done to get an idea of the phenomenon.
The results of the research suggested that the employees’ conceptions and experiences on the subject varied a lot. Most employees experienced the leadership during transition adequate, but shortage was detected in communication, training, and vision. The change affected the employees’ level of motivation and engagement positively, and their mental wellbeing was not disturbed notably during the process. Change resistance occurred only passively, since it was stated that some were only putting in minimum effort and contribution towards the change initiative.
Suggestions for development were related to the problem areas. The vision needs to be clarified and brought out more often, training needs to be more individualized, and communication style and channels should be reviewed. Although there was space for improvement in leading the change, it was concluded that there is not one sole recipe for successful change leadership, since people are different, and experience things in very different ways.