This paper aims to study the Armenakis´ theory of readiness, "are they ready?", which consists of five key components affecting the outcome of an organizational change. In this case study, the intention is to investigate if any component is important; alternatively if it is possible to discern a pattern between components, i.e. how they correspond to each other. During the past 30 years have a research group lead by Armenakis has studied organizational change and how resistance to change can be avoided by preparing employees in the introductory phase of change. The main object for Armenakis is the question "what determines whether the employees (change recipients) adopt and support, or reject and resist a change". The theory of readiness, "are they ready?", deals with five key components or five issues that define which questions change recipients want answers to when an organization implements a change. Through this knowledge, leaders – change agents – can design a change message that responds to the issues of change, regarding what the recipient is faced with in an organizational change. This in turn creates a feeling of readiness which makes a change more likely to be successful. In this case study of the company IKEA Örebro, there was a change of routines at the beginning of 2008 and now the management experiences a problem, as the change did not have the desired result. In this paper, through a qualitative study based on interviews with eleven respondents from IKEA Örebro, we examine how come this came to be the case. Relevant literature, previous research and the model institutionalizing change provide a comprehensive understanding of the theoretical reference frame, in which the focus of the theory and the study's problems question is based on readiness and the five key components: discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support and personal valence. The study's purpose is to contribute to increased understanding of what kind of information change recipients want to obtain in a organizational change, and which component or components that is important. In the study we aim to investigate if there is a relationship pattern between the components in the current company of the case study. In the study, we came to the conclusion that the lacks of change message components among respondents was most likely contributing to the unsuccessful outcome of the change. The diversity in the respondents´ answers regarding which components are important, shows that the complex nature of the individual, cannot support the grounds that the individual component is more important than any other. Overall, the result shows that four components emerged as important for the respondents at IKEA Örebro. The respondents´ answers did not point out that if they received one or some of the components, they would at a later stage also see relevance in the latter. That is, a relationship could not be identified or substantiated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-10624 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Andréasson, Martin, Löfving, Camilla |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Örebro universitet, Örebro universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Örebro universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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