Making sense of organisational change failure: An identity lens

Abstract

This study investigates how employees craft narratives of organisational change failure through the lens of their work identity. We analysed change recipients’ retrospective sensemaking accounts of an organisational re-structuring in a university, finding these accounts to be filled with widely varying descriptions of failure – of errors, dysfunction, and loss. We explored how employees’ organisational, professional, and work-group identities were intertwined with, and fundamentally challenged by, their sensemaking about the change and its failure. Our inductive analysis revealed four distinct narrative trajectories – Identity Loss, Identity Revision, Identity Affirmation, and Identity Resilience – each characterised by distinct cognitive, affective, and behavioural patterns. We discuss the unique contributions that this study makes to the literatures on organisational change failure, sensemaking, and identity.

Keywords

Change recipients failure identity identity threat narrative organisational change organisational structure sensemaking

Introduction

With increasing globalisation, competition, and market volatility, today’s organisations must be more proactive and agile than the organisations of the past; they must adapt to changes in their environment quickly, before the onset of any catastrophic effects – such as firm bankruptcy or death (Crosina and Pratt, 2019). Yet, achieving successful organisational change is difficult; it has been deemed ‘undoubtedly one of the most complex and important endeavours in modern organisational life’ (Nag et al., 2007: 844). Thus, organisational change failure – organisational transformation that deviates from desired or expected outcomes (Cannon and Edmondson, 2001) – is all too common. Some have estimated that about 70% of change initiatives fail (Beer and Nohria, 2000).

Researchers have investigated the organisational, structural, cultural, and change process factors that lead to change success or failure, with a view to predict and prevent failure (e.g. Balogun et al., 2015; Oreg et al., 2018). They have also examined how organisations can learn from failure and continue performing and growing after such setbacks (e.g. Shepherd and Cardon, 2009). The majority of the research on change failure is organisation-centric in its perspective, focusing on organisation-level analyses that seek to understand the strategic process of managing change and failure (see Mellahi and Wilkinson, 2010; Oreg et al., 2013). Although informative, these studies have overlooked how change recipients perceive and make sense of organisational change failure, and its implications for themselves and their future work life.

It is important to consider how and why change recipients make sense of change failure for two key reasons. First, organisations need to appreciate and anticipate the likely significant and unpleasant implications of employees perceiving a change as a failure. While organisational change involves considerable ambiguity and uncertainty for employees (Bordia et al., 2004), we expect organisational change failure to be particularly confronting for employees due to its inherent negativity and permanence. If judgements of organisational change failure represent a perceived deviation from the goals of change (as per Cannon and Edmondson, 2001), perceiving failure is likely to be challenging to the specific interpretive frame from which these subjective goals were generated, such as employees’ values (Peticca-Harris, 2019). As such, the effects of organisational change failure on employees may be profound, substantially unsettling their sense of self-at-work, as well as influencing their affect, cognition, and behaviour at work more broadly – all depending on exactly how they perceive the change as a failure, and why (as we discuss later).

Second, broadening the organisation-centric focus of the change failure literature to consider ‘the active roles that change recipients play in organisational change events’ (Oreg et al., 2018: 65), including through their understanding of its failure, may elucidate some of the unanswered questions about why change fails and its consequences for the organisation. Understanding how individuals interpret and experience failure, and how they engage with the change motivationally and behaviourally, may shape the course of the change and its effects on the wider organisation following its implementation – through the micro-level sensemaking processes that ‘produce the macro social order’ (Gephart et al., 1990: 44–45). Such focus is noteworthy because, historically, ‘short shrift has been given to people who implement and live with organizational changes they did not initiate’ (Bartunek et al., 2006: 183). Yet, the assumption that change agents and change recipients share the same understandings about the change may not be accurate; change recipients may have vastly different perceptions of organisational change failure, compared to change agents (Oreg et al., 2011). Employees who view the change as a failure may withdraw from opportunities to participate in the change, and their negative perceptions might spread to their colleagues through a social contagion effect (Rozin and Royzman, 2001). This may exacerbate the failure of the change, or even create change failure where it may not have existed otherwise – all of which may potentially occur alongside change agents who purport the success of the change (i.e. change is multi-vocal (Peticca-Harris, 2019)).

In sum, understanding when and why employees perceive failure in organisational change may have powerful implications. Consequently, our research sets out to explore employees’ subjective interpretations of failure in organisational change and, specifically, how they make sense of this failure through the lens of their identity. By investigating employees’ retrospective narratives about a tumultuous organisational change within a higher education institution, we seek to understand: (a) how employees’ narrative constructions of the change failure are intertwined with their pre-existing work identities; and (b) how they carry forward this narrative into their ongoing work lives.

Our research makes two important contributions to the change failure literature. First, further expanding on the documented differences between how change agents and change recipients interpret organisational change, we contribute to the understanding of how change recipients’ interpretations of failure vary from one another. While it is not often acknowledged, the definition of organisational change failure (Cannon and Edmondson, 2001) inherently allows for the possibility that individuals may vary in what they expect and want from change, and are also likely to hold different perceptions as to whether these expectations are ultimately met – and whether a given change is a failure. In fact, research that examines how employees make sense of other work-related failures such as denied promotions (Vough and Caza, 2017) and organisational failure (Walsh et al., 2019), demonstrates that individuals’ experiences of failure within organisational contexts are subjective. Through our inductive qualitative approach, we explore the inherent subjectivity of organisational change failure; and we adopt a broader conceptualisation of change failure, whereby we explore the complexity of individuals’ perceptions of failure in organisational change, beyond a single, global judgement of ‘failure or not’.

Second, this study unpacks the role of identity in how different change recipients perceive and make sense of organisational change failure – and how this is different from organisational change more generally. We argue that the unique nature of organisational change failure likely invokes a distinct process of sensemaking that is intertwined with individuals’ work identities, or their sense of self at work. Identity is closely related to the concept of sensemaking (Weick, 1995), and both have been investigated together in studies of organisational change (e.g. Van Knippenberg et al., 2002), but rarely in relation to organisational change failure. We explore how the subjectivity of organisational change failure is associated with differences in the salience, centrality, and content of individuals’ multiple work identities. Further, we go beyond the predominant focus on organisational identity in the identity literature, exploring the role of employees’ work-group, professional, and organisational identities (i.e., Dutton and colleagues’ (2010) work-related identities; as per Vough, 2012) in how they make sense of change failure.

We begin by outlining the context of this research and describing how and why it represents a case of organisational change failure. Thereafter, we explore how employees in this study came to differing conclusions about the failure of the same organisational change. We identify and describe four different types of trajectories within employees’ sensemaking narratives – each with unique cognitive (i.e. identity), affective, and behavioural patterns – that characterise employees’ constructions of failure in this organisational change.

Failure of a university re-structure

Research has examined how universities have been re-structured to be effective within an environment characterised by ever-changing market demands (e.g. Gioia and Chittipedi, 1991) – and, at least for public universities in Australia, in the face of ever-decreasing government funding. This research focuses on a case of university re-structuring in which the executives intended to reduce operational costs, increase efficiency, and foster innovation. Using a qualitative case study approach, we analysed the change recipients’ retrospective accounts of this re-structuring, focusing on how employees and low-level managers (both change recipients) in a particular department (‘School X’) perceived and interpreted the organisational change. We conducted the interviews six months after the implementation of the new organisational structure, which involved the amalgamation of multiple departments (including School X) into larger faculty entities, and the introduction of a shared services model (Redman et al., 2007) for the provision of administrative services to new faculties. These changes entailed substantial centralisation of strategic decision making.

As to the success or failure of the change, we first recognise that failure is a subjective phenomenon. Nevertheless, even allowing for variation in individuals’ perspectives, we note that, in this particular case, there was considerable agreement among recipients that the organisational change was a failure in some way, to at least some degree. We found that employees’ retrospective accounts of the change were filled with varying descriptions of failure. For some individuals, the organisational change failure was ‘a tragedy’ from which they were ‘bruised and scarred’; for others, the poorly run change was an inconvenience, something that ‘perhaps should have been done differently’, or that the failed change was understandable, given the ‘complex, fast-moving’ circumstances. These interpretations of failure prompted many of them to question the meaning of their work and their attachment to the organisation: ‘What is the role of research for me now? What proportion of what we do is just a consequence of politics?’ As such, employees held varying perceptions of the failure of the organisational change, which were intertwined with sensemaking about their identity at work. We therefore consider this an appropriate and rich context in which to study recipient sensemaking about organisational change failure.

Theoretical background

Here, we discuss sensemaking and identity, and outline why they are important in the context of organisational change more generally. To understand these concepts in regards to organisational change failure more specifically, based on the existing literature, we then propose two ways in which individuals’ sensemaking about failure and their work identity are intertwined: (1) identity as a lens through which individuals perceive failure in organisational change; and (2) change failure as a context in which identity change or ‘identity work’ is rife.

Sensemaking and identity in organisational change

Sensemaking, defined as the process ‘through which individuals work to understand novel, unexpected, or confusing events’ (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014: 58), captures how individuals and collectives experience and interpret organisational change events. Sensemaking is a necessary part of organisational change because change inherently ‘interrupts well-rehearsed patterns of action’ (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010: 558) and thus ‘generates considerable uncertainty, ambiguity and confusion’ (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014: 76) – all of which individuals must come to terms with. Researchers have considered how, in the face of this uncertainty and complexity, employees try to regain control, predictability, and positive meaning in their work by crafting a clear and coherent narrative of the change, by actively making sense of what the change means – which can lead to the emergence of multiple accounts of the goals, expectations, desires, and outcomes of organisational changes (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2004).

Identity is defined here as ‘the central, distinctive, and continuous characteristics of an entity’, or the answer to the question: ‘Who am I as an individual?’ (Ashforth et al., 2011: 2). In contrast, social identity reflects the answer to the question: ‘Who are we as a collective?’ (Ashforth et al., 2011: 2), and thus social identification captures the ‘perception of oneness with or belongingness to some human aggregate’ (Ashforth and Mael, 1989: 21). Similarly to sensemaking, identity has been heavily implicated in the study of individuals’ experiences of organisational change due to the environmental uncertainty that exists in organisational change (Bordia et al., 2004) and the challenges it presents to the status quo (Battilana and Casciaro, 2012). These experiences trigger identity-related cognitions and experiences (Hogg and Terry, 2000). Consequently, scholars have repeatedly advocated for the use of identity theory in studies of sensemaking and organisational change (e.g. Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010; Pratt et al., 2006).

Identity as a lens for sensemaking about organisational change failure

We propose that identity is an interpretive lens that change recipients may rely on to perceive and make sense of organisational change failure (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2015; Weick, 1995). The experience of high uncertainty and ambiguity, combined with a sense of threat, is likely to make identity a salient frame for employee interpretations of organisational change failure, as it may implicitly motivate identity-driven uncertainty reduction and self-esteem enhancement (Hogg, 2000). In an effort to restore a sense of certainty and positive self-esteem in the context of a turbulent and identity-threatening organisational change, change recipients may construct certainty through their narratives of the change failure. This may include in- and outgroup attributions that position the change agents as self-interested individuals. Such attributions likely protect the status of individuals’ organisational identity; or may elevate the subjective status of their work-group identity relative to other work-groups, to compensate for their group’s loss of resources through the change. Thus, employees may seek to reclaim control, certainty, and/or positivity of a change they cannot objectively control through their subjective retelling of the change narrative – told through the lens of their salient identity.

We expect that recipients’ organisational identity might be closely intertwined with perceptions of failed organisational change. Organisational change may challenge organisational identity, consequently requiring employees to re-establish what it means to be a member of the now-different organisation, and what this organisation represents (e.g. Corley and Gioia, 2004; Sonenshein, 2010). However, such processes of questioning organisational identity may be acute in the case of failure because the change agents are typically high-level managers, and thus are seen to be reflecting the values of the organisation (i.e. they are the prototypical member of the organisational social identity (Hogg and Terry, 2000)). Therefore, perceiving that the change agents’ volitional behaviour contributed to the failure likely poses a substantial threat to employees’ organisational identity, as this violates their understanding of what it means to be a member of this social group. Further, perceiving the cause of the failure to originate from within the organisation may amplify the subjective intensity of the identity threat via proximity. The subjective lack of control felt by employees who perceive the change failure to be in the hands of the organisational executives may further exacerbate their desire to regain control through crafting an identity-informed narrative of the change. Consequently, change failure may be even more threatening to organisational identity, and sensemaking-provoking, than a crisis triggered by an external, uncontrollable event (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010) or by organisational change in general.

We further argue that employees’ organisational, professional, and/or work-group identity may be a salient interpretive lens for their perceptions of change failure, due to the well-established link between identity and organisational processes and structures (Nag et al., 2007). These work identities will be threatened if the change involves the re-structuring of work processes and/or job structures pertaining to that social identity locus – with negative implications. Such ‘negative re-structuring’, which may entail the denigration of groups’ resources (Howard-Grenville et al., 2013), may consequently threaten the meaning, value, and/or enactment of these social identities (Petriglieri, 2011). In other words, employees desire to retain the meaning, value, and ability to enact their salient social identity at work; and when organisational change inhibits this, employees experience threat. Such identity threat is common in organisational change; and identity threat is known to be ‘a powerful prompt for sensemaking’ (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014: 73).

Notably, we extend this theorising by exploring it in the context of organisational change failure. We propose that employees’ salient work identities inform their desires and expectations regarding the change (i.e., Cannon and Edmondson’s [2001] definition of change failure), and thus the subjective failure of the change. In instances of successful organisational change, any threat arising from the re-structuring is eventually mitigated or overshadowed by other positive outcomes – or there may be no threat at all posed by the change. However, perceptions of change failure are intertwined with the permanent or lasting violation of these desires and expectations and the unresolvable identity threat that this entails. These perceptions of extreme and subjectively unresolvable identity threat may prompt employees to view the change negatively and to craft threat-based narratives of the change failure.

We explore the interplay between threat to employees’ work identities and their narratives of change failure. Limited research exists about how professional, work-group, and organisational identities (see Vough, 2012) may be linked with employees’ sensemaking of the organisational change failure. The extent to which employees perceive organisational change as a failure, may relate to the centrality of their work identities to their self-concept (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014). As a result of the different ways in which the failing change threatens employees’ central identity, we expect that they will make subjective interpretations of failure, despite being exposed to the same organisational change (see Vough et al., 2015).

Organisational change failure as a context rife with identity work

We also propose that employees’ perceptions of organisational change failure may precipitate substantial identity re-construction, or a turning point in individuals’ ‘identity work’ (Ibarra, 2003). As Maitlis and Christianson (2014: 73) observed, ‘although trauma and loss researchers have addressed the individual sensemaking that follows such major challenges to self . . . less is known about this process in a work or organizational context’. We argue that the experience of organisational change failure, and the sensemaking that ensues, may lead individuals to consider: ‘What does this failure mean for me and who I am at work?’, thus ‘[calling] into question members’ beliefs about central and distinctive aspects of their identity’ (Howard-Grenville et al., 2013: 126).

While all organisational change typically entails a period of ambiguity and uncertainty, there is still generally a sense of hope about the future outcomes of the change; employees may still retain their expectations that it will succeed. Any such negative experience will be ‘worth it’ when the change succeeds and the uncertainty evaporates. On the contrary, perceiving the change as a failure implies a loss of hope; certainty has been regained through the judgement of the change as a failure, and the relinquishing of any expectations that the change will succeed. An unlikely experience in successful organisational change, this transition from hopeful to hopeless may serve to amplify the negativity of the change failure experience for change recipients, and lead them to search for positive meaning through alternative identities or identity reconstruction. This is consistent with the sensemaking literature, which describes how triggers of sensemaking vary in their subjective intensity, from disruptions in which something feels slightly amiss, ‘in which people accommodate, explain away, or normalise discrepant cues’ to dramatic discrepancies between ‘what one expects and what one experiences’ (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014: 70).

Relatedly, perceiving that a change has failed also implies that it is permanent. Petriglieri’s (2011) model of responses to identity threat describes the way in which identity re-structuring is the most likely coping response in the instance of identity threat that is unable to be ‘fixed’ or re-framed – such as that of perceived organisational change failure. Thus, permanent identity threat likely leads to identity work. This is consistent with Maitlis and Sonenshein’s (2010: 551) ideas about sensemaking during crises, and the existential problems that can arise when individuals’ identities are threatened in such ‘turbulent conditions’.

Methods

This study was part of a broader investigation into how identity affects the re-design of work. We approached this study with an inductive, grounded theory methodology (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). It quickly became apparent that every one of our participants described salient interpretation of the change as involving failure, with rich descriptions of sensemaking, and what seemed to be implicit indicators, of identity. We thus iterated our inductive analysis, pivoting to focus on the role of identity as an interpretive lens through which employees narratively construct and experience organisational change failure.

Our focus is consistent with the narrative-based approach, in which interpretivist assumptions are adopted (e.g. Bindl, 2019) and the focus is on individuals’ subjective recollections of events and experiences in ‘psychological time’ (Ship and Cole, 2015; e.g. Jansen and Shipp, 2019; Slay and Smith, 2011). This is because, in our study, the central research question is not about change over time, but about how individuals create narratives of causality and change subjectively, within their narratives, as they recall events of the past and relate them to the present (Daskalaki and Simosi, 2018). Such ‘storytelling research’ that yields insights into critical moments of sensemaking – that punctuate ongoing processes of change and identity – has produced ‘a rich body of knowledge, unavailable through other methods of analysis’ (Stutts and Barker, 1999: 213; cited in Brown et al., 2008).

We also conceptualised narratives as ‘sponsored texts’ (Harris, 1989), wherein individuals use narratives to: (a) make sense of experiences; (b) position themselves within the phenomena; and (c) assign judgements ‘as to what may be regarded as good or bad, right or wrong, including basic beliefs and values’ (Peticca-Harris, 2019: 594). This emergence of often-conflicting narratives about the same events captured our interest. Hence, our narrative-based approach to data collection and analysis was well suited to our research goals.

Research setting

The senior executives of an Australian university undertook an organisation-wide re-structuring, citing the need to address the poor financial state of the university and remain competitive with other domestic and international universities – which are common objectives in re-structuring efforts (McKinley and Scherer, 2000). Archival documents (e.g. the Change Proposal document) revealed a consistent theme in the change agents’ efforts to frame the process as genuine consultation. Across one year, all employees were invited to attend meetings in which the content of the re-structuring was discussed. A fracture of them participated in workshops to contribute to the re-design of the organisation. The consultation processes were in line with the Australian Fair Work regulations, which require that all employers ‘consult with employees about major workplace changes that are likely to have a significant effect on the employees’ (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2014: 3).

The change involved decisions to: (1) reduce the number of faculties across the university by amalgamating existing faculties into a small number of large faculties; and (2) centralise administrative/business functions into a centralised support unit – that is, a shared services model (Redman et al., 2007). For example, in the school that we studied, the re-structuring halved the number of professional (i.e. administrative) employees supporting the academic staff; and these staff additionally went from being responsible for a single discipline within a school, to being responsible for a faculty comprised of multiple schools. The re-structuring also included a substantial number of redundancies.

To ensure a manageable scope, we chose to interview employees in a specific school (i.e. School X). School X went from being a single-school faculty, to becoming a school within a larger faculty – thus losing both its independence and many of its professional staff to the centralised, faculty-level administrative unit. Multiple written submissions from School X were made as part of the consultation process, and all were consistent in advocating against merging the school with others into a single faculty. The dean and senior faculty spoke out against the change in various forums. The consequent re-structuring thus represented a subjectively sizable change for employees in School X, relative to many other schools – one that many employees resisted.

Data collection

Prior to any data collection, the first author spent time immersing herself deeply in the research context (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Interviews were conducted approximately 18 months after the change consultation process had taken place, and about six months after the new organisational structure had been implemented. At the time of the interviews, the consultation period was not so far in the past that our interviewees would forget important details, but far enough to give them enough time to make sense of the change. As the interviews revealed, the six months following the implementation of the new structure was a tumultuous time in which employees were still adapting to the change, and in which post-hoc modifications were being made to the organisational structure by the change agents. Consequently, the change was still salient in employees’ minds at this time.

We contacted participants from across School X, who vary in their occupations, teams, departments, and employment histories, to capture a breadth of perspectives, and allow us to cross-validate the emergent findings during data analysis (see Pazzaglia et al., 2018). Using the snowballing method, we contacted employees who had left the organisation since the change. We reached theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) after we conducted 50 interviews:¹ 32 with professional² staff members (e.g. finance officers, support staff), and 18 with academic staff members. We required many interviews with professional staff members to achieve saturation due to their diversity of the experiences of the change. Of these 50 interviewees, 25 were employed in School X at the time of the interview, 20 had moved to the faculty-level administrative unit and five had quit.

Throughout the interviews, we probed participants to elicit rich descriptions of their thoughts and experiences related to the organisational change (as per Pazzaglia et al., 2018; for further details please see online Appendix A). Each interview lasted between 40 and 90 minutes in duration, with most lasting around 60 minutes. All interviews, with the participants’ informed consent, were audio-recorded and then transcribed by a professional transcription service.

Data analysis

The analysis entailed moving iteratively between the narrative data and the literature; thus progressively moving from describing the data in the participants’ words, to understanding them in terms of more abstract, theoretical constructs (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The first author engaged in a thematic analysis of the data, organising individuals’ narratives of anything related to the change – ‘thick descriptions’ (Langley, 1999; Van Maanen, 1979) – as well as evidence of their broader interpretive context, creating preliminary ‘in vivo’ codes (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Van Maanen, 1979). This process was iterative, leading to increasing refinement, elaboration, and cross-validation of codes as the analysis progressed. Throughout this process, all co-authors queried the themes emerging from the first author’s analysis, based on their interpretations of the data. The second-order codes and aggregate dimensions were conceived by moving closer to the literatures on employee reactions to change (e.g. Oreg, 2006; Oreg et al., 2011), employee sensemaking about change (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2005), and identity (e.g. Elsbach, 2009).

Next, we moved from description to explanation by exploring the interrelationships between employees’ identities and their sensemaking. We searched for patterns (similarly to Jansen and Shipp, 2019), by comparing the narratives of failure and the nature of identification (as per Slay and Smith, 2011). These analyses revealed four distinct trajectories within employees’ narratives of the change and its failure (Table 1). We initially focused on identifying patterns in employees’ identity-related cognitions. We then realised that these narratives had a distinct emotional undertone (e.g. grief and loss in Figure 1), across each of the identity narrative trajectories (rather than within them). We coded these affective components of employees’ narratives (Figure 2), noting their presence in the four narrative trajectories (Table 2).

Table 1.

The cognitive component of the narrative trajectories.

Trajectory	Cognitive component
	Beginning End of change
	Central and salient identity^a	Identity threat	Perceptions of failure	Identity outcome
1 – Identity Loss	Organisational	High – threat to meaning	Process: Superficial People: Warmth attributions Product: Bureaucratic; inefficient	Identity Loss: Loss of organisational identity
1 – Identity Loss	Work-group	High – threat to value and enactment		Identity Loss: Loss of work-group identity
2 – Identity Revision	Professional	High – threat to value and meaning	Process: Superficial; ineffective People: Competence and situational attributions Product: ‘silly’, illogical	Identity Revision: Change to meaning and value of professional identity
3 – Identity Affirmation	Professional	Low – irrelevant and unaffected	Process: Ruthless; inefficient People: Competence and situational attributions Product: Indifferent	Identity Affirmation: Professional identity affirmed; org. identity further weakened
4 – Identity Resilience	Organisational	Low – identity congruent	Process: ‘Tough’; challenging Product (+): Optimistic	Identity Resilience: Shift in work-group identity, but org. identity maintained

Note: ^aFor all other identities (i.e. organisational, professional, work-group – other than the salient identity mentioned), identification was weak.

Figure 1.

Data structure for the cognitive components of employees’ narratives.

Figure 2.

Data structure for the affective components of employees’ narratives, as they correspond to the cognitive trajectories.

Table 2.

The affective and behavioural components of the narrative trajectories.

Trajectory	Affective component^a	Behavioural component
Trajectory	Beginning End of change	During change Participation	After change Engagement / turnover
1 – Identity Loss	High activation, positive valence (hopeful) → Negative valence (‘loss’, ‘tragedy’)	High	Actual or psychological exit
2 – Identity Revision	Low activation → High activation, negative valence (‘hopeless’, ‘dismal’)	Initially passive, then gradually more involved	Actual organisational exit; stayed within the profession
3 – Identity Affirmation	Consistently low activation	Low – passive	Increased engagement in professional activities
4 – Identity Resilience	High activation, positive valence (optimistic, excited) → Negative valence (‘tough’) → Recovery (i.e. back to positive valence)	High	Remained engaged in organisational activities

The (+) and (–) signs represent the pleasantness dimension, and the distance between the purple thick arrow (i.e. the affective trajectory) and the thin arrow (i.e. the axis) represents the activation dimension. Here, the pleasantness dimension is represented as categorical (i.e. emotions are either + or –). We have done this for simplicity, as well as due to the fact that this study was not designed to measure emotions in a detailed or comprehensive fashion – and so we chose not to represent it in this way and thus overstate our findings.

We also clarified the similarities between our conceptualisation of the cognitive and affective features of the narrative trajectories, and employees’ ‘reactions’ to change (Oreg et al., 2011) as having cognitive, affective, and behavioural facets (Oreg, 2006). Consequently, to complete the tripartite, we re-examined our data, noting employees’ descriptions of their behavioural responses to the organisational change failure (Table 2).

Findings

Aggregate dimensions: Failure across People, Process, and Product; and Identity

The above analysis resulted in four aggregate dimensions: People, Process, Product, and Identity. Extending the conceptualisation of failure as the deviation from goals (Cannon and Edmondson, 2001), we found that individuals expressed expectations about specific aspects of the change that were more subtle than a simple, global diagnosis of ‘failure or success’. Accordingly, we conceptualised these perceptions of failure broadly: shortcomings across the People, Process, and Product aspects of the change. Some informants described failure in the People, who were ‘deceitful’ and ‘misleading’ (Internal Attributions, People); others depicted failure in the Process, deeming it to be superficial, ‘just ticking a box’ (Consultation/Participation, Process); while others portrayed failure in the change Product, describing how things were now ‘falling through the cracks’ and being missed or forgotten (Processes, Product).

The fourth aggregate dimension, Identity, reflects the codes of identity-related experiences and cognitions within the context of the change. The first two second-order codes within this aggregate dimension, identification and identity threat, capture the conceptualisation of identity as an interpretive frame in employees’ sensemaking about change failure. We coded the different levels of identification based on explicit and implicit indicators of the centrality and strength of each identity for the individual. We elicited the explicit indicators by directly asking interviewees (e.g. Would you say that having a career in your field is an important part of who you are? [strength]; Would you say that you define yourself more in terms of your profession, or your employment at [the university]? [centrality]). The implicit indicators of identification were evident within our informants’ narratives of the change (Section 3 of the protocol (see online Appendix A), The Re-design Narrative), coded using an approach similar to that adopted by Elsbach (2009). We conceptualised social identification as informants defending the organisation, their profession, or School X, or using language such as ‘us’ versus ‘they’ to talk about the social units. We applied Petriglieri’s (2011: 644) definition of identity threat: ‘experiences appraised as indicating potential harm to the value, meanings, or enactment of an identity’. Identity re-construction reflects data pertaining to how, at the conclusion of their change narrative, as they made sense of the apparent failure of the change, employees re-evaluated and re-defined their work identity. These data include employees’ explicit descriptions of identity work-type activities or experiences; as well as differences between our interviewees’ recollections of their pre-change identity, and their descriptions of their work identity in the wake of the change and its failure (online Appendix A, Section 4 questions).

Trajectories in narratives of change failure

Our analysis revealed four archetypal narratives of the organisational change failure which varied according to the nature and extent of the identity re-construction (or ‘identity work’ (Ibarra, 2003)) that employees described engaging in following the change, or the identity outcome at the ‘conclusion’ of each narrative. Figure 3 depicts the relative extent of the identity re-construction, the nature of this re-construction (in italics; reflecting Petriglieri’s (2011) model of responses to identity threat), and the nature of the judgements of failure that characterised each of the four narratives. We describe the specific cognitive and affective characteristics of each narrative trajectory, as well as employees’ self-reported behavioural change engagement and behavioural change reactions, exploring the role of identity in each of these elements of employees’ change stories.

Figure 3.

The defining characteristics of each of the four narrative trajectories.

Identity Loss narrative

This narrative trajectory was associated with the most sizable change to identity, wherein employees described the loss of and exit from their previously central work-group or organisational identity (Petriglieri, 2011), in the wake of their perceptions of widespread and significant failure in the change. Individuals whose narratives aligned with this archetypal trajectory typically held a central pre-change organisational identity, and subsequently experienced a seemingly unresolvable threat to the meaning of this identity as a result of the change. Their descriptions of failure across the People, Process, and Product aspects of the change were implicitly rooted in an incompatibility between the meanings they had previously attached to their organisational identity and that which they derived from these elements of the change failure. As such, they reflected on how this new organisational identity aligned with their professional identity. They ultimately behaviourally or cognitively exited from their organisational or work-group identities, describing it as a ‘tragedy’ and a ‘loss’ with an associated process of ‘grieving’ (e.g. ‘I hope the new chancellor or somebody starts asking questions, because it’s a tragedy. . . . Because people love this place. It’s a tragedy.’).

For example, Emma, a professional employee, began her narrative of the change by recalling a sense of excitement for the opportunity to improve the organisation, and described actively participating in a number of consultation activities. However, her narrative evolved into a realisation that the change Process was ‘all spin’, because the People ‘already knew exactly what they wanted to do’; ‘So any ‘consultation’ even when they did call it that wasn’t real.’ These attributions of self-interest and a lack of warmth in the People (Fiske et al., 2002) were also reflected in her interpretations of the change Product: ‘Centralisation. It’s all about “Hey let’s control everything ’cause”, I hate to say this, “You can’t trust those academics. You can’t trust them, so you need to put controls in place the whole time.”’ For Emma, this represented a fundamental change in the meaning she had attached to the university as an organisation that valued its employees and their input – ‘the old [university] I knew cared about people; the new [university], you are a number’. Thus, through the lens of her organisational identity, she saw irreconcilable failure across People, Process, and Product, and consequently psychologically detached from this identity: ‘I don’t want to know what else is going on [in the university]. Don’t want to know.’

Andrea, a professional staff member, identified strongly with School X, and struggled to find that identity so substantially challenged by the organisational re-structuring. Like others in this group whose work-group identity was lost, it was not the meaning of the School X identity that Andrea felt was threatened. Instead, the change Product represented the loss of School X’s independence, and thus constituted a threat to the value of the School X identity as being known for ‘doing things a bit differently’ and, ‘if somebody comes up with an idea’, being able to ‘throw some money at it and run with it’. Additionally, the associated loss of tangible resources (Howard-Grenville et al., 2013) represented a threat to the ability of the members of School X to enact the School X identity – ‘it’s going to affect student numbers, it’s going to affect everything’. Similar to Emma, Andrea’s interpretations of the Product were intertwined with low-warmth and malicious attributions (Fiske et al., 2002) about the People; she described how School X was the ‘prime target’ of the re-structuring. Andrea’s narrative of the failure of the change, and the permanence of its negative implications for School X, was associated with a complete exit from her School X identity, which she described with a sense of inevitability:

Things have to fall down for the university executive to realise that people are struggling, unfortunately. Which I find quite difficult to see and to watch, but for the five years that I was [in my role], I felt that School X was my responsibility. It was, but in the new structure I can’t feel like that because it would be awful just to watch. I’ve got to let it go. . . I don’t feel any connection to the School X anymore. So I just come to work, do my seven-and-a-half hours, then I go home.

These feelings of inevitability and loss coloured the affective and behavioural aspects of the Identity Loss narrative trajectory. Employees described the beginning of the change with a sense of positivity; they felt as though they had the ability and opportunity to contribute to its course, and thus were ‘optimistic’ and ‘hopeful’ about the potential for the change to positively impact the organisation. Perhaps consequently, they described engaging actively in the consultation process. However, also characteristic of this narrative trajectory was a marked decline in this affective and behavioural positivity. Identity Loss employees, in their narratives, described a ‘growing realisation’ about the ‘true’ intentions of the People aspect of the change. They lamented how ‘naive’ they were in the early stages of the change – corresponding to their cognitive attributions about the People as being malicious and self-interested. For example:

I thought ‘Oh yeah. Go onto one of these work stream groups. It’s really important. We value some input.’ But I went to those meetings and realised that it was just ticking a box. ‘Ah yes, we’ve had work streams. Tick.’ We’ve had work stream meetings, but the reports we put together were worth nothing.

As such, over the course of the change, while the affective tone of these narratives remained highly activated, and the descriptions of behavioural responses equally active, both took a turn in the negative direction without any sign of improvement or recovery. For example:

What happened was just this growing realisation was that the decisions were already being made. You know what I mean? That’s what was happening. We kept fighting. We want to be heard. We want to be involved. And then you would think you’re about to be involved and then what’d happen, you’d go ‘This is not worth it.’

Employees in this trajectory ultimately behaviourally or psychologically exited from their organisational or work-group identities, describing it as a ‘tragedy’ and a ‘loss’ with an associated process of ‘grieving’ (e.g. ‘I hope the new chancellor or somebody starts asking questions, because it’s a tragedy. . . . Because people love this place. It’s a tragedy.’).

Identity Revision narrative

Individuals in this group narrated the change through the lens of threat to the value and meaning of their professional identity, which was likely a salient interpretive lens in light of their descriptions of strong pre-change professional identification. Employees perceived change as challenging to their professional identity, and reported engaging in efforts to revise the meaning of this identity (Petriglieri, 2011) – but, importantly, had not undertaken a complete identity exit. When asked at the beginning of the interview what he enjoyed about his professional work, Benjamin, a senior academic, described ‘the research element of new discoveries; doing something useful that might change how people work’. Consequently, Benjamin’s perception of failure in the change Process, a ‘bad imitation of consultation’, and the resulting Product, a ‘silly’ and illogical faculty structure, challenged the importance and meaning he had attached to his professional identity and expertise: ‘I just cannot sense anywhere in this where trying to understand what people want from work, how this has any relevance to anything that happened. And that’s weird.’ These perceptions of failure prompted him to re-consider and revise the meaning of his professional identity:

At this point in time, I’m just questioning that. What is the role of research? What do we contribute to if it’s just a . . . We just reflect with a kind of outcome of a bunch of competing policies and policy settings that contradict each other in the big scheme of things. And that’s kind of not very motivating. I’d like to believe that there’s something more to it than that. But it’s been so highly political that . . . It’s affecting me in that way.

Thus, the Product represented a challenge to the fundamental meaning of his professional identity, thereby colouring his perceptions of failure in the change Product.

Beyond experiencing the change failure as an affront to his professional identity as an academic, Benjamin was revising and re-structuring this identity – he was ‘tempted to study more economic theory and institutional theory’. His narrative captures failure in the Process and Product aspects of the change. Yet, Benjamin’s perceptions of the People aspect of the change retained some level of positivity and hope. Benjamin made situational attributions about the change agents’ decision making, describing the change as a ‘complex, fast-moving situation’ that ‘would require a degree of knowledge and insight and power that is hard to . . . It’s hard to have . . . Everyone’s just scrambling around doing what they can.’ We cannot say whether these more sympathetic attributions (and the lessened perceptions of failure that they represented) prevented a more sizable identity re-structuring outcome in the presence of high identity threat, or whether the less-substantial identity re-structuring allowed for more sympathetic attributions. Taking the perspective of identity work scholars (Caza et al., 2018), rather than attempting to determine causal order, we argue that these phenomena interacted throughout the course of the change, as part of an ongoing process of identity revision.

The sense of disbelief and subsequent identity revision attempts coloured the emotional and behavioural elements of the narratives in this group of employees. They reported some awareness about the change and thus expressed scepticism about the implementation of these changes. Benjamin, for example, described reading meeting minutes in which the new faculty structure was proposed, thinking that it seemed ‘silly’, but then ‘thinking it seemed a bit unlikely that it would come to pass at that point’. However, once he realised that it would, in fact, come to pass, Benjamin’s narrative became negative, as he transitioned from recalling feeling ‘weird’ about how the change had unfolded, to describing feelings of ‘powerlessness’, and feeling ‘dismal’ and ‘hopeless’ when reflecting on what the change experience meant for the value and meaning of his professional identity. Behaviourally, Benjamin described how he became involved in the consultation during the organisational change after realising its potential significance, but that he ended up leaving the organisation. Benjamin remained within his profession by moving to a new university.

Identity Affirmation narrative

Employees in this group described engaging in minor identity revision as a result of the way in which their interpretations of the change and its failure was congruent with the motivation underlying their existing self-concept. Their interpretations of the change affirmed the existing centrality of their professional identity, and their desire to continue to distance themselves from the organisational identity (i.e. affirming, and perhaps accelerating, a change in identity importance, Petriglieri, 2011). Employees in this trajectory recalled having a strong professional identity and a weak organisational identity prior to the organisational re-structuring – a pattern that has been observed previously in studies of academics (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). For example, Chris, a junior academic, reflected:

. . . most of the time I think of myself as almost like a freelancer who works here. But then there’s like occasional times where I’m representing [the university] . . . that I feel like I’m an employee. But 90% of the time I feel just like I’m a freelancer who’s currently working at [the university] ’cause I know when I leave, eventually, all my publications come with me.

Instead of identity threat-related judgements about the failure of the Process and Product aspects of the change, Chris described being unconcerned as the change unfolded, and how he remembered that he ‘couldn’t really see the point’ of the heated discussions that others were having about the change. In addition to concurring with the Process failure, Identity Affirmation employees made judgements of constituent failure – and the causes of the Product and Process failure – towards the People. Specifically, they made two types of failure-related attributions (Fiske et al., 2002) about the change agents: (1) internal, competence attributions – ‘my suspicion is they don’t really appreciate the uniqueness of School X’ – and (2) situational attributions – ‘they would have received a lot of input that they just had to ignore’. Ultimately, Identity Affirmation employees’ sensemaking about the nature of the change failure held no challenging implications for their understanding of their identity. Their experience of the organisational change affirmed their pre-existing distance from their organisational identity, and reinforced the subjective importance and meaning of their professional identity. As Chris explained:

So like has my identity, professional identity changed? Not really. I guess it is changing just because I’m new to this, so I’m just sort of adapting. So, it is evolving a little bit. I cannot say that it is too much due to the university. Apart from maybe, I am getting more and more a sense of independence and being almost kind of autonomous within this larger structure. That’s probably been forced in by the [organisational change] rather than go the other way.

The sense of neutrality coloured the affective and behavioural aspects of these narratives. Specifically, their cognitions were characterised by a state of consistently neutral, low-arousal, which was also mirrored in their descriptions of a general lack of behavioural engagement during the change (i.e. emotional and behavioural passivity). Specifically, Richard, a senior academic, explicitly espoused a lack of interest in learning more about the planned changes and repeatedly indicated that he did not worry or think about them often. He described feeling relatively calm and indifferent throughout and after the change Process. These individuals’ descriptions of their post-change behaviour showed slightly more activity. However, it involved no significant deviation from their pre-change behavioural trajectory; they increased the intensity of their engagement in their professional work, and continued to eschew their organisational identity (‘I just shifted to worrying about. . . I knew what class I was going to teach. What papers I had to write. I just focused on that.’).

Identity Resilience narrative

This narrative corresponds with the least revision of individuals’ central work identity, and was a rarer narrative in the data. Although employees described grappling with experiences of loss of their non-central identities, their central – organisational – identity ultimately remained intact. They portrayed strong pre-change identification with the organisation, describing it as their central identity. For example, Laura, a professional employee described always thinking of herself as a ‘[University X] employee before anything else’. Having had experience in a centralised services model before, Laura’s narrative had no undertones of identity threat, and she was largely positive about the change Product (i.e. no judgements of Product failure); she described being puzzled by how worried her colleagues were about the implementation of the change Product (‘like they were forecasting. . . the end of the world’). Despite no indication of any significant experience of identity threat, Laura did perceive a degree of failure in the change Process – in the lack of clear communication given about what employees should expect from the new structure, and the lack of attention that had been given to setting up organisational ‘processes’. These perceptions likely stem from her secondary identity as a leader, and associated cognitions surrounding what ‘good leaders’ should do. As a result of the change, Laura was relocated to a new school, which she described as the ‘loss of my family’. Yet, following some ‘struggles’, Laura’s ‘new family is accepting me more. . . they are getting used to me. They’re starting to trust me.’ Ultimately, despite these struggles and experience of loss, Laura’s organisational identity remained intact, and she reflected on the change as ‘tough’, but an ultimate success: ‘What I’m hearing is that [the university] is now the standout model for change. . . I’m quite proud of our braveness, the fact that we did just get in there and do it.’ In sum, Laura showed resilience in that she did not experience substantial change-related identity threat, and was able to reclaim her central pre-change organisational identity.

Reflecting a pattern of post-traumatic growth (Maitlis, 2012), the Identity Resilience narrative captured how employees described an experience of loss of one their non-central identities. Their narratives of the change ended with a positive affective tone, wherein they remained engaged in the post-change organisation. The decline in this tone occurred alongside the challenges common to most organisational change, of being in an uncertainty- and conflict-filled organisational context, which included feelings of sadness and loss (e.g. ‘The hardness of [the new faculty] is the loss of four faculties, and the grief associated with that and creating a new faculty.’). Aligning with Petriglieri’s (2011) model of responses to identity threat, the affective tone became more positive towards the end of the change, when the negative environment dissipated. Employees concluded their narratives with optimism, describing feelings of pride (e.g. ‘I’m quite proud of our braveness, the fact that we did just get in there and do it’). They expressed excitement for the future (e.g. ‘and that’s what was the excitement for me. . . the changing structure, and the building of something that’s new and exciting and challenging’) and feelings of joy (e.g. ‘now I’m starting to see the benefits, so it’s getting quite joyful again’). Their positive feelings allowed them to discuss the projects they were involved in to continue to develop their organisation in the wake of the change.

Discussion

Our study contributes to the literature on organisational change failure by highlighting its subjective and multifaceted nature, and the role of identity in employees’ interpretations of change failure. Although our interviewees experienced the same organisation change, they perceived, and made sense of, its failure differently. We found that, within the particularly uncertain and immensely challenging context of change failure, employees’ work-related identities were an especially salient lens through which they came to understand and retrospectively interpret failure across the People, Process, and Product of the change.

Our study revealed how employees’ reactions to the change product may be implicitly or explicitly moulded by the threat to the meaning, value, or enactment (Petriglieri, 2011) of their central work identity, which is associated with the re-allocation of resources (Howard-Grenville et al., 2013) to identity-related social groups during organisational re-structuring. As such, employees’ narratives and attributions of change failure varied based depending on the centrality of their organisational, occupational, or work-group identity. For individuals whose organisational identity generated expectations of participation, feeling as though they had little influence over the consultation generated identity threat that led to interpretations of the change as a ‘bad imitation of consultation’ – a failure. Our findings regarding how employees’ experience of product and process threat related to their negative attributions of the change people’s intentions – and perceptions of failure on their behalf – shed light on the role of classic attribution processes (Fiske et al., 2002) under the conditions of threat and uncertainty that colour sensemaking of organisational change failure. These findings also mirror studies about how employees are less likely to construct growth-based denied promotion stories if they use external reasons to explain their failed promotions (Vough and Caza, 2017).

Our research also contributes to scholarship on organisational change failure and identity by illuminating change failure as a context rife with identity re-structuring. While identity scholars have begun to pay attention to the identity revisions that may occur as a consequence of identity threat (i.e. Petriglieri, 2011), this endeavour has been mostly theoretical. Our narrative analysis builds on Petriglieri’s (2011) theoretical model by empirically exploring the specific identity re-structuring outcomes that may emerge in the event of change that involves organisational re-structuring and perceived failure. The Identity Loss narrative, in which employees psychologically and/or behaviourally exited from their previously central work identity, translates findings of identity loss in studies of work role transitions (e.g. Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly, 2014) and job loss (Shepherd and Williams, 2018) to the specific context of identity threat during organisational change failure. We showed that organisational re-structuring may encourage change recipients to conceive of the ‘new’ organisation as incongruent with their self-definitions, thus leading to dis-identification and identity exit. It further validates scholars’ assertions that trauma, sense-making, identity (Maitlis, 2009), crises, and organisational change (Maitlis and Sonenshein, 2010) are inherently intertwined. The Identity Revision narrative, in which professional identity threat led employees to revise the meaning of their professional identity, represents the uniting of Petriglieri’s (2011) ‘meaning change’ identity re-structuring outcome and the concept of identity work (Caza et al., 2018). These findings also complement Petriglieri’s (2011) model by describing two identity re-structuring narratives that unfolded in the absence of identity threat, Identity Affirmation and Identity Resilience, which align with similar phenomena that have been observed in the identity literature (Elsbach, 2009), and in the literature on post-traumatic growth (Maitlis, 2009), respectively. These narratives show the potential variety and positivity in individual responses to organisational change failure.

Finally, the current study also bridges the qualitative literature on employee sensemaking during organisational change (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2005) with the largely quantitative literature on employees’ resistance and general reactions to change (Oreg et al., 2011), through the application of Oreg’s (2006) conceptualisation of these reactions as containing cognitive, affective, and behavioural components. Scholars highlighted the complexity of employee reactions to change (Oreg and Berson, 2011), concluding that ‘researchers may have been misinterpreting employees’ reactions to change, neglecting the possibility that some may simultaneously hold strong, yet conflicting, views about the change’ (Oreg and Sverdlik, 2011: 337). We examined employees’ identity-related cognitions, emotions, and behaviours within their sensemaking about organisational change failure and demonstrated how individuals can hold ambivalent views about change.

Consequently, we make a much-needed (Howard-Grenville et al., 2013) contribution to the identity literature: an insight into the emotional aspects of identity and identification processes. Our research confirms identity scholars’ ideas about the inherent interconnectedness between emotion and identity construction – including the particularly salient emotions of grief and tragedy tied to identity loss or exit (Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly, 2014; Howard-Grenville et al., 2013), which may be amplified further by the loss of hope and optimism previously held in the early stages of a change failure (i.e., the Identity Loss trajectory that we observed). Further, we advance the richness of the identity literature by exploring multiple work identities – organisational, occupational, and work-group. Our findings elucidate the interplay between identity threat strength and the presence of alternative identities in leading to identity-importance change or identity exit, and the emotional reactions accompanying this identity re-structuring (fitting with Petriglieri’s (2011) model). Our findings highlighted the interplay between emotion and identity in the context of employees’ multiple work identities and their narratives of organisational change failure.

Limitations and future research directions

In discussing the limitations of our study, we offer future research directions. First, we interviewed our participants once, and thus did not capture how their identities changed over real time (Ship and Cole, 2015). Due to the stress and negativity associated with organisational changes studied here, our participants were reluctant to be interviewed multiple times. Further, examining identities’ change over time was not a focus of our study. Yet, we encourage future research to utilise a longitudinal design to answer these questions. Will individuals try to alleviate their identity loss by building a new one, similar to trauma growth, wherein people are able to find new positive meaning after a tragedy (Maitlis, 2009)? Do the organisational and personal factors that contribute to constructive coping with identity loss after job loss (Shepherd and Williams, 2018) also apply to identity loss after failed organisational change? What is the timeframe of these changes?

Second, future research could examine the extent to which our four narrative archetypes emerge in the context of other organisational changes. For example, a study of the implementation of new technology that automated some aspects of work was found to have unintended consequences for professional identities, wherein employees’ expertise and personal contacts were no longer needed and, consequently, employees felt a sense of loss (Eriksson-Zetterquist et al., 2009). Future research could examine how new technologies may affect multiple work-related identities. Studying non-university organisations that have different numbers, types, and intra-organisation distributions of professions would provide insights into the effects of elements such as the pre-change organisational structure, professional values and norms, inter-professional interactions, and the salience of professional boundaries on the identity narratives.

Third, we employed a qualitative methodology. A quantitative approach could serve to explain some of the patterns of pre-change identification across the narratives; such as why the Identity Revision only entailed revision to professional identity, and why the Identity Loss only entailed the loss of individuals’ work-group or organisational identity. It is possible that the same organisational re-structuring elicited subjective perceptions of identity threat across these different work identities – and this degree of threat could be more precisely explored with a quantitative approach. Furthermore, quantification would serve as a bridge between the current qualitative study and the predominantly quantitative literature on employee reactions to organisational change (Oreg et al., 2011), allowing them to be more seamlessly integrated (as per the call made by Bouckenooghe, 2010). Future quantitative studies could compare the identity narratives in different groups, to further unpack the effect of elements in the work-group context.

Finally, we interviewed both academic and professional employees, who may have different identities, and thus may perceive organisational change failure differently (Cordiner et al., 2018; Simpson and Fitzgerald, 2014). Some of our participants held management responsibilities, which may have formed a part of their professional identity. Future research could explore whether academic and professional identities employ different identity narratives when making sense of organisational change failure, and the role of managerial or leadership identities or identity content in shaping these narratives.

Implications for practice

Our study suggests that change agents could benefit from anticipating how both the Process and Product of organisational re-structuring can threaten employees’ work-related identities. Our findings indicated that a misalignment between employees’ experience of the change process, and the expectations they had developed of this experience – guided by their professional or organisational identity – may elicit perceptions of Process failure. As such, we suggest that change agents should endeavour to set transparent expectations about the change process prior to its unfolding. This includes being clear about when and how employee input will be taken into consideration and, equally as importantly, when it will not. Identity threat that is associated with the proposed change Product could be mitigated by: (1) adjusting the proposed re-structuring to lessen this threat (e.g. lessening the loss of resources to the threatened group); or by (2) ensuring that the aspect of the identity that is threatened (e.g. autonomy) is nurtured (e.g. through the provision of autonomy in other areas).

Supplemental Material

906211_supp_mat – Supplemental material for Making sense of organisational change failure: An identity lens

Supplemental material, 906211_supp_mat for Making sense of organisational change failure: An identity lens by Georgia J. Hay, Sharon K. Parker and Aleksandra Luksyte in Human Relations

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this research was supported by funding from an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (FL160100033) and an Australian Research Council DECRA grant (DE170100182).

ORCID iD

Georgia J. Hay

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Georgia J. Hay is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia; and an associate at the Curtin University Future of Work Institute, within the Centre for Transformative Work Design, Australia. Her research interests span the topics of work design, occupational context, social identity, change management, and entrepreneurial decision making. Georgia’s research has been published in Small Group Research and Applied Ergonomics. [Email: Georgia.Hay@research.uwa.edu.au / on Twitter]

Sharon Parker is an ARC Laureate Fellow, Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University; a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Science; and an Associate Editor for Academy of Management Annals. She has published more than 80 articles in leading journals on topics such as work design, proactive behaviour, and job performance; in journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and the Annual Review of Psychology. [Email: s.parker@curtin.edu.au]

Aleksandra Luksyte is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia Business School. She received her PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from University of Houston, Texas, USA. Her research focuses on two primary domains: (1) overqualification or underemployment; and (2) demographic and cultural diversity at the workplace. Alex’s research has been published in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organisational Behaviour, and Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. [Email: Alex.Luksyte@uwa.edu.au]

References

Ashforth

Mael

(1989) Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of Management Review 14(1): 20–39.

Ashforth

Rogers

Corley

(2011) Identity in organizations: Exploring cross-level dynamics. Organization Science 22(5): 1144–1156.

Balogun

Johnson

(2004) Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal 47(4): 523–549.

Balogun

Johnson

(2005) From intended strategies to unintended outcomes: The impact of change recipient sensemaking. Organization Studies 26(11): 1573–1601.

Balogun

Bartunek

(2015) Senior managers’ sensemaking and responses to strategic change. Organization Science 26(4): 960–979.

Bartunek

Rousseau

Rudolph

, et al. (2006) On the receiving end: Sensemaking, emotion, and assessments of an organizational change initiated by others. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 42(2): 182–206.

Battilana

Casciaro

(2012) Change agents, networks, and institutions: A contingency theory of organizational change. Academy of Management Journal 55(2): 381–398.

Beer

Nohria

(2000) Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review 78(May–June): 133–141.

Bindl

(2019) Work-related proactivity through the lens of narrative: Investigating emotional journeys in the process of making things happen. Human Relations 72(4): 615–645.

10.

Bordia

Hobman

Jones

, et al. (2004) Uncertainty during organizational change: Types, consequences, and management strategies. Journal of Business and Psychology 18(4): 507–532.

11.

Bouckenooghe

(2010) Positioning change recipients’ attitudes toward change in the organizational change literature. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 46(4): 500–531.

12.

Cannon

Edmondson

(2001) Confronting failure: Antecedents and consequences of shared beliefs about failure in organizational work groups. Journal of Organizational Behavior 22(2): 161–177.

13.

Caza

Vough

Puranik

(2018) Identity work in organizations and occupations: Definitions, theories, and pathways forward. Journal of Organizational Behavior 39(7): 889–910.

14.

Conroy

O’Leary-Kelly

(2014) Letting go and moving on: Work-related identity loss and recovery. Academy of Management Review 39(1): 67–87.

15.

Cordiner

Thomas

Green

(2018) Do labels matter when implementing change? Implications of labelling an academic as a champion − results from a case study. Studies in Higher Education 43(3): 484–499.

16.

Corley

Gioia

(2004) Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off. Administrative Science Quarterly 49(2): 173–208.

17.

Crosina

Pratt

(2019) Toward a model of organizational mourning: The case of former Lehman Brothers bankers. Academy of Management Journal 62(1): 66–98.

18.

Daskalaki

Simosi

(2018) Unemployment as a liminoid phenomenon: Identity trajectories in times of crisis. Human Relations 71(9): 1153–1178.

19.

Dutton

Roberts

Bednar

(2010) Pathways for positive identity construction at work: Four types of positive identity and the building of social resources. Academy of Management Review 35(2): 265–293.

20.

Elsbach

(2009) Identity affirmation through signature style: A study of toy car designers. Human Relations 62(7): 1041–1072.

21.

Eriksson-Zetterquist

Lindberg

Styhre

(2009) When the good times are over: Professionals encountering new technology. Human Relations 62(8): 1145–1170.

22.

Fair Work Ombudsman (2014) Best practice guide: Consultation and cooperation in the workplace. Canberra: Australian Government.

23.

Fiske

Cuddy

Glick

, et al. (2002) A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82(6): 878–902.

24.

Gephart

Steier

Lawrence

(1990) Cultural rationalities in crisis sensemaking: A study of a public inquiry into a major industrial accident. Industrial Crisis Quarterly 4(1): 27–48.

25.

Gioia

Chittipeddi

(1991) Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strategic Management Journal 12(6): 433–448.

26.

Glaser

Strauss

(1967) Ch. 5: The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. In: The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

27.

Harris

(1989) How does writing restructure thought? Language & Communication 9(2–3): 99–106.

28.

Hogg

(2000) Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Review of Social Psychology 11(1): 223–255.

29.

Hogg

Terry

(2000) Social identity and self-categorization processes in organizational contexts. Academy of Management Review 25(1): 121–140.

30.

Howard-Grenville

Metzger

Meyer

(2013) Rekindling the flame: Processes of identity resurrection. Academy of Management Journal 56(1): 113–136.

31.

Ibarra

(2003) Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

32.

Jansen

Shipp

(2019) Fitting as a temporal sensemaking process: Shifting trajectories and stable themes. Human Relations 72(7): 1154–1186.

33.

Langley

(1999) Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review 24(4): 691–710.

34.

Lincoln

Guba

(1985) Naturalistic Inquiry (vol. 75). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

35.

McKinley

Scherer

(2000) Some unanticipated consequences of organizational restructuring. Academy of Management Review 25(4): 735–752.

36.

Maitlis

(2009) Who am I now? Sensemaking and identity in posttraumatic growth. In: Morgan Roberts

Dutton

(eds) Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation. New York: Psychology Press, 47–76.

37.

Maitlis

(2012) Posttraumatic growth: A missed opportunity for positive organizational scholarship. In: Spreitzer

Cameron

(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 909–923.

38.

Maitlis

Christianson

(2014) Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward. The Academy of Management Annals 8(1): 57–125.

39.

Maitlis

Sonenshein

(2010) Sensemaking in crisis and change: Inspiration and insights from Weick (1988). Journal of Management Studies 47(3): 551–580.

40.

Mellahi

Wilkinson

(2010) Managing and coping with organizational failure: Introduction to the Special Issue. Group and Organization Management 35(5): 531–541.

41.

Nag

Corley

Gioia

(2007) The intersection of organizational identity, knowledge, and practice: Attempting strategic change via knowledge grafting. Academy of Management Journal 50(4): 821–847.

42.

Oreg

(2006) Personality, context, and resistance to organizational change. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 15(1): 73–101.

43.

Oreg

Berson

(2011) Leadership and employees’ reactions to change: The role of leaders’ personal attributed and transformational leadership style. Personnel Psychology 64(3): 627–659.

44.

Oreg

Sverdlik

(2011) Ambivalence toward imposed change: The conflict between dispositional resistance to change and the orientation toward the change agent. Journal of Applied Psychology 96(2): 337–349.

45.

Oreg

Bartunek

Lee

, et al. (2018) An affect-based model of recipients’ responses to organizational change events. Academy of Management Review 43(1): 65–86.

46.

Oreg

Michel

(eds) (2013) The Psychology of Organizational Change: Viewing Change from the Employee’s Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

47.

Oreg

Vakola

Armenakis

(2011) Change recipients’ reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 47(4): 461–524.

48.

Pazzaglia

Farrell

Sonpar

, et al. (2018) Keeping up with the Joneses: Industry rivalry, commitment to frames and sensemaking failures. Human Relations 71(3): 427–455.

49.

Peticca-Harris

(2019) Managing compassionately? Managerial narratives about grief and compassion. Human Relations 72(3): 588–612.

50.

Petriglieri

(2011) Under threat: Responses to and the consequences of threats to individuals’ identities. Academy of Management Review 36(4): 641–662.

51.

Pratt

Rockmann

Kaufmann

(2006) Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. Academy of Management Journal 49(2): 235–262.

52.

Redman

Snape

Wass

, et al. (2007) Evaluating the human resource shared services model: Evidence from the NHS. International Journal of Human Resource Management 18(8): 1486–1506.

53.

Rozin

Royzman

(2001) Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review 5(4): 296–320.

54.

Sandberg

Tsoukas

(2015) Making sense of the sensemaking perspective: Its constituents, limitations, and opportunities for further development. Journal of Organizational Behavior 36(S1): S6–S32.

55.

Shepherd

Cardon

(2009) Negative emotional reactions to project failure and the self-compassion to learn from the experience. Journal of Management Studies 46(6): 923–949.

56.

Shepherd

Williams

(2018) Hitting rock bottom after job loss: Bouncing back to create a new positive work identity. Academy of Management Review 43(1): 28–49.

57.

Shipp

Cole

(2015) Time in individual-level organizational studies: What is it, how is it used, and why isn’t it exploited more often? Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behaviour 2(1): 237–260.

58.

Simpson

Fitzgerald

(2014) Professional knowledge workers: Tensions and binaries. In: Advancing Knowledge in Higher Education: Universities in Turbulent Times. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 26–43.

59.

Slay

Smith

(2011) Professional identity construction: Using narrative to understand the negotiation of professional and stigmatized cultural identities. Human Relations 64(1): 85–107.

60.

Sonenshein

(2010) We’re changing – or are we? Untangling the role of progressive, regressive, and stability narratives during strategic change implementation. Academy of Management Journal 53(3): 477–512.

61.

Strauss

Corbin

(1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

62.

Stutts

Barker

(1999) The use of narrative paradigm theory in assessing audience value conflict in image advertising. Management Communication Quarterly 13(2): 209–244.

63.

Van Knippenberg

Monden

, et al. (2002) Organizational identification after a merger: A social identity perspective. British Journal of Social Psychology 41(2): 233–252.

64.

Van Maanen

(1979) The fact of fiction in organizational ethnography. Administrative Science Quarterly 24(4): 539–550.

65.

Vough

(2012) Not all identifications are created equal: Exploring employee accounts for workgroup, organizational, and professional identification. Organization Science 23(3): 778–800.

66.

Vough

Caza

(2017) Where do I go from here? Sensemaking and the construction of growth-based stories in the wake of denied promotions. Academy of Management Review 42(1): 103–128.

67.

Vough

Bataille

Noh

, et al. (2015) Going off script: How managers make sense of the ending of their careers. Journal of Management Studies 52(3): 414–440.

68.

Walsh

Pazzaglia

Ergene

(2019) Loyal after the end: Understanding organizational identification in the wake of failure. Human Relations 72(2): 163–187.

69.

Weick

(1995) Sensemaking in Organizations (vol. 3). London: SAGE.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.34 MB