Mohammad Sadegh Dadmehr; Yaghoob Maharati; Alireza Khorakian; Fariborz Rahimnia
Abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
As the competitive environment has rapidly grown over the past two decades and seriously overshadowed the activities of private enterprises, unsuccessful changes, especially in terms of instability and unsustainability of the achievements, have become a fundamental challenge ...
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1- INTRODUCTION
As the competitive environment has rapidly grown over the past two decades and seriously overshadowed the activities of private enterprises, unsuccessful changes, especially in terms of instability and unsustainability of the achievements, have become a fundamental challenge for such organizations as private banks. The research conducted in this field indicates that planning, directing, and sustaining the organizational change results is very difficult, and pervasive changes affecting the main elements of the organization do not meet the expected goals. Some researchers suggested that organizations have difficulty sustaining continuous improvement in the long term, especially after an initial period of two or three years. As in most cases, employees do not internalize the new changes and behaviors as their norms and mental beliefs and do not use them as a basis for their subsequent behaviors. The results and achievements of changes may become unstable and fade after a short time, and a return to prior behaviors may occur in some cases. Thus, the organization incurs significant financial and opportunity costs that weaken its competitive position. This is true for Iranian private banks as they do not depend financially on the government and are in a fiercely competitive environment. Therefore, the main questions are as follows: what are the strategies to achieve sustainable change, and what are their consequences in Iranian private banks?
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Different theories exist for organizational change, which can be used to support and guide research to find the roots and consequences of sustainable organizational change. Research on organizational change can be categorized into three types: 1) content models emphasizing the content and essence of change, 2) contingency models considering the context and environmental conditions, and 3) process models focusing on the stages of change. A review of different change models indicates that they focus only on the content, process, or implementation of change while not addressing the period after the implementation, including institutionalization and stabilization of change. Therefore, this research was conducted to bridge the existing gap and provide change managers and agents in Iranian private banks with a vision to understand deeply the strategies for sustaining organizational changes and their consequences.
3- METHODOLOGY
The philosophical foundation of the present research performed in private banks was interpretivism with the qualitative approach, and the grounded theory strategy was used. In this research, the systematic approach of Strauss and Corbin was used. The samples were purposefully selected by conducting snowball sampling on managers and experts of the private banks of Iran who have experience working in at least one change program in the past ten years, provided that one year lasted since achieving the results. The organizational change experts and researchers who had significant experiences were interviewed with a semi-structured method. The sampling continued to reach data and theoretical saturation. The collected data were analyzed by open, axial, and selective coding processes using the MAXQDA 20 software. Lincoln and Guba's criteria (credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability) were used to validate the results.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The research findings demonstrated that sustainable change is characterized by two features: stackability of change, including internalization of the change and its adaptation and alignment with the organizational components, and spreadability of change, including the ability to transfer experiences to other employees and apply the organizational change. According to the research findings, the strategies needed to implement sustainable changes in Iranian private banks include 1) empowering employees through training and utilizing work teams, 2) empowering the organization by establishing a knowledge management system and motivational mechanisms, the mobilization of financial resources, the scrutiny, and explanation of the organization's strategic plan, leadership style, effective processes, and agile structure. The consequences of sustainable changes include 1) employees' growth and excellence due to their increased psychological and behavioral maturity, 2) improved efficiency to increase financial resources and reduce organizational costs, and 3) improved effectiveness to satisfy the strategic stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage. The research findings are noteworthy in that sustainable organizational change is considered a way to increase the productivity and prosperity of human resources in the organization.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
This research demonstrated that a change is sustainable and is institutionalized when it is internalized in employees' beliefs and becomes a basis for their subsequent behaviors. This is realized by applying employee and organization empowerment strategies. Therefore, it is suggested that change managers and agents in the country's private banks consider the empowerment of employees seriously by applying influential and continuous training and expanding teamwork by using the strategies identified in this research, and the empowerment of the organization by using a knowledge management system, motivational mechanisms, providing financial resources, checking and explaining the organization's strategic plan, applying an appropriate leadership style, effective processes, and structural agility.
Hossein Abdolahzadeh Rafi; Fariborz Rahim nia; Alireza Khorakian
Abstract
Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
Today, change is an important factor for organizations’ survival, and as the main factor for the success of organizational change, managers and experts must be able to implement change programs. It seems that change management skills including understanding, ...
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Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
Today, change is an important factor for organizations’ survival, and as the main factor for the success of organizational change, managers and experts must be able to implement change programs. It seems that change management skills including understanding, planning, implementing, and stabilizing change can affect attitudes toward change. Thus, employees' attitudes and mental patterns have been always considered as a fundamental factor in the literature on change readiness. As big organizations, municipalities have a large number of managers, employees, and clients and provide a variety of services. Therefore, it is necessary to review and correct their employees’ mental patterns. Accordingly, this study is aimed to recognize and compare the mental patterns of employees of Mashhad Municipality towards readiness for change from the managers' and experts' points of view.
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The concept of the mental model is not something that has recently been discovered but can be attributed to Kenneth Crick (1943). A person’s mental model is a framework of images and attitudes that limits their field of thought and action. Some scientists consider mental models as the cornerstone of knowledge building, including the main cognitive processes of change and learning. According to Levin (1947), change is to move from a steady-state to a new better state, through a pre-made plan or a set of predicted actions and steps. Many researchers have defined various dimensions of readiness for change. In this regard, Weiss (2002) suggests cognitive and emotional components for general judgments or the same attitude. On this basis, the current research considered these two dimensions as fundamental for studying the employees’ mental patterns.
3- METHODOLOGY
The current research is a practical study in terms of purpose; it is a descriptive study in terms of method; and in terms of approach, it is a mixed-methods study of having inductive-deductive reasoning. The strategy of the current study is the Q technique.
4- DISCUSSION & RESULTS
The seven steps of the Q method were performed and reached the following results. The prevailing mental pattern of "capacity building" of managers was interpreted i.e., both the individual and the organization must have the capacity to implement changes. The most important mental model is that the effectiveness of change is a function of cognitive evaluation of organization members from four determinants of executive capacity, including individual capacities, perception of resources, situational factors, and supportive structures.
5- CONCLUSION
Research findings indicated that the mindset of managers and experts is mainly cognitive and composed of 11 dominant mental patterns. By comparing several similar mental patterns between managers and experts, we can talk about the supportive mental model of managers and the mental model of supportive experts, the committed mental model of managers and the mental model of committed experts, the confident mental model of managers, and the confident mental model of experts. There is a common mentality between these two groups of human resources of Mashhad Municipality. Also, the two mental patterns of followers and expert liaisons show the high importance of social relationships and processes in the process of change and the high influence of others’ behavior and decision when facing the change.
Hoda Jannesar ahmadi; Ali Shirazi; Fariborz Rahimnia; Alireza Khorakian
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
The need for change in today's organizations in the one hand and 70% rate of failure in implementing the organizational change programs on the other caused many scholars to search on reasons for success and failure of organizational change. Although it is generally stated that effective ...
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INTRODUCTION
The need for change in today's organizations in the one hand and 70% rate of failure in implementing the organizational change programs on the other caused many scholars to search on reasons for success and failure of organizational change. Although it is generally stated that effective leadership is the key to successful change, many scholars have pointed out the lack of empirical research in this regard. Burke (2008) suggests that the impact of leadership on organizational change is not refined in the literature and there exists little scientific evidence on leadership influence. Similarly, Higgs and Rowland (2005) stated that only a few studies generally described the leader's initiatives in the process of change, and the literature in this field suffers from the lack of empirical research. Ford and Ford (2012) also pointed out the lack of definitive research on the association of leaders’ initiatives with change success. Since many studies have emphasized the role of leadership in organizational change success, the present research is accordingly to identify the leaders’ initiatives in successfully implementing the change programs.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Today's organizations are constantly changing. Although both practitioners and scholars are concerned about the change in organizations (Blackman & Kennedy, 2011), managing the organizational change is not a simple process and few organizations are successful in implementing it. Aarons et al. (2015) suggest that leadership plays an important role in effectively implementing innovation and change. In addition, precise evidence on the role of leaders in the change success is now increasing (Higgs, 2003). In Yukl's (2010) opinion, the most important task of leaders is to achieve organizational success. Hence, the ability to effectively leading the organizational change is considered as one of the desirable skills for managers of current organizations (Szabla et al., 2014). Leaders and managers of organizations should be aware of the environmental trends, crises, and developments in place of their work. They should be flexible and adaptable in creating, predicting, encouraging, and responding positively to change. Without leadership, planned organizational change will never be realized (Dumas and Beinecke, 2018).
Nastaran Gharehbaghi; Fariborz Rahimnia
Abstract
Leaders failure in correct evaluation of feelings and emotions of employees, may act as a barrier in achieving organizational goals. Therefore it is important to pay attention to job and contextual performance arising from positive behaviors such as cooperation and effort of employees. Moreover, employees’ ...
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Leaders failure in correct evaluation of feelings and emotions of employees, may act as a barrier in achieving organizational goals. Therefore it is important to pay attention to job and contextual performance arising from positive behaviors such as cooperation and effort of employees. Moreover, employees’ training is usually focused on recognition teaching, and less on emotional- social aspects. In addition, it is vital for school headmasters to be aware about the impact of transformational leadership's characteristics on behaviors such as cooperation and effort. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of managers' transformational leadership style on contextual performance of their employees through managers' emotional intelligence. In this study, 136 school headmasters and their assistants were used to answer emotional intelligence and contextual performance questionnaires and another statistical population consisted of 234 teachers were selected to answer transformational leadership style questionnaire. After testing hypotheses using PLS software, the path coefficients obtained at the level of 0.05 was determined to confirm the overall model. Consequently the impact of managers' transformational leadership style on their emotional intelligence was positive and significant. Moreover contextual performance was shown to be affected by managers' transformational leadership style and their emotional intelligence. In addition, the indirect impact of transformational leadership style of managers on contextual performance of employees through the emotional intelligence of managers was also significant.
Shamsodin Nazemi; Fariborz Rahiminiya; Ali Mirabi
Abstract
Abstract
Service quality has been an area of interest of both researchers and practitioners in recent years. In light of such interest, two distinctive schools have contributed to service quality and customer satisfaction. The first school focuses on the role of organizations and their staff as the ...
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Abstract
Service quality has been an area of interest of both researchers and practitioners in recent years. In light of such interest, two distinctive schools have contributed to service quality and customer satisfaction. The first school focuses on the role of organizations and their staff as the origin of service quality improvement while the second one incorporates customer’s participation in the process of service provision and delivery as the means of improvement. This study investigates improvement of service quality from standpoint of the second school. For this purpose, a conceptual model was developed on the basis of Rodie & Klein (2000) theory that incorporates mental, physical and emotional dimensions of working area as well as a fourth dimension suggested by authors denoted as “interaction amongst clients”. Research data was collected by means of two distinctive questionnaires that were designed for two populations. The first population consisted of pervious clients of regional customs from which a random sample of 154 was drawn from their records at the customs office. The second population known as service providers consisted of 53 employees of the custom offices operating in the province. Instruments reliability was confirmed by figures of %91.54 and %91.39 of Cronbach alfa respectively. The results of our study showed that clients play an important role in promoting service quality during their presence at customs offices and in interaction with staff. It was further noticed that there is a gap between what customs office expects from clients and the degree of involvement and actual contribution of clients in dealing with customs staff that eventually leads to their own satisfaction.