Change is inevitable due to organisations operating in a constantly changing environment marked by change and discontinuation. A major challenge for organisations is to obtain buy-in from employees. People generally resist change due to their past experiences of change which are often disjointed, posted with job losses, longer working hours, higher and cumulative stress levels, unethical practices and corporate failures. Perceptions of fairness, trust, and the magnitude to which the change has been conveyed, have been noted as some of the reasons why people resist organisational change. Essentially, people resist change when they think it will cause them to lose something of value to them. It is therefore important for organisations to have well-planned change programmes that make provision for creating buy-in. The purpose of this study was to investigate strategies that organisations can use to foster buy-in. For successful change, it is imperative that change agents find ways to empower employees in the process. Communication, and especially the articulation of the vision, plays a crucial role in creating buy-in. Leadership, the working environment, rewards and recognition interdependently contribute to fostering buy-in behaviours. The empirical study was conducted at the Port Elizabeth plant of Kraftfoods, a confectionery company. In 2010, Kraftfoods acquired Cadbury. This acquisition implied new management, production and process structures and procedures, as well as a restructuring of the employee complement in 2011. The empirical study was both qualitative and quantitative. Interviews were conducted with employees from the shop floor, as well as representatives from the trade union, a representative from human resources and a project manager responsible for transformation, to obtain more organisation-specific information about the transformation and the strategies which were used to create buy-in. For the empirical study, a survey with a questionnaire as the basic data collection tool was used. The survey was administered to 101 employees. The results revealed that the way the vision of the change is articulated and the empowerment of employees are main determinants of buy-in behaviour. It was therefore recommended that management should spend an equal amount of time selling the change as they spend planning the change program. Also management need to allow for more involvement in the design and even implimentation of the change program by change recipients.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9314 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Tsotsi, Siyabulela |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MBA |
| Format | xii,145 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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