3 RESEARCH METHODS
4.8 Driven by plausibility rather than accuracy
According to Weick (1995), individuals interpret events in the surrounding environ-ment based on their experience. Based on their experience, they attempt to fill and create order to the events. People attempt to simplify events to enable the selection of beliefs and rejections, and executives seldom are seen to produce accuracy. Accuracy is seen secondary for variety of reasons, such as people’s need to distort and filter;
they need to separate signals form noise to avoid getting overwhelmed with the excess data.
This final category of sensemaking was most difficult to identify from the interview data. This was clearly seen only when the interviewees showed their attitudes towards the system. It was seen most when the participants compared the new system to their previous experiences and thus created an opinion of this system.
“It feels like there have been a lot of changes, but when you start think-ing about it reasonably – compared to the old system – there really are not that many changes. It is kind of ‘I feel like’ – phenomenon.” (E1)
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The interviewees also took extractions of their experiences or observations and made their own assumptions based on previous experiences. Here it became apparent that plausibility and focusing on extracted queues are interrelated.
“There have probably been even more challenges that I have seen. – It seems that this new system has been very hard for many. I have experi-enced the change more easily”. (E3)
However, no clear indications of this item were shown related to change process or commitment, which was the main focus of this research. This category was mostly seen in general, as interviewees talked about the change at a general level, instead of giving many detailed descriptions and examples of their experiences.
67 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This section presents the final discussion regarding the study presented in thin thesis.
First, a summary of the study is presented and the findings are compared to the previ-ous theories regarding the topic. Finally, an evaluation of the study is presented and recommendations for further studies as well as managerial implications are discussed.
5.1 Summary of the study
The goal of the research was to examine the sensemaking process related to the com-mitment to change from the perspective of the employees in the middle of the change.
Furthermore, the aim was to examine how the employees make sense of committing to the change. This was done in hope to understand better the path to commitment and for identifying some best practices for committing employees. This was made with an assumption that leaders are able to affect the employees and their commitment in the organizations.
The theoretical framework for this study consisted of commitment to change and sensemaking. Different aspects of this literature review had an important contribution in this research. The implementation of an information system, in this case a new EPR-system, provided a frame within which all the events take place, while commit-ment provided important insights about the phenomena. Finally, sensemaking provid-ed a framework by which to analyze the context of commitment to change.
The study was done with qualitative methodology, more specifically, case study ap-proach. The data collection was done with primary data, as five face-to-face individu-al interviews were conducted. The data was collected during spring 2017. The partici-pants were health care professionals that worked in the same municipality. In this mu-nicipality, the EPR system had been changed only months before the interviews took place.
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5.2 Key findings and the theoretical implication of the findings
The key findings of this research provide a description of the sensemaking process of employees working in the health care sector. More clearly, the focus is on describing how employees make sense of commitment to changes and the relationship between commitment and sensemaking. Furthermore, the study examined commitment to change from the perspective of employees regarding factors affecting the commit-ment.
The findings represented one case of change management. The participants were asked about their experiences of factors affecting to commitment and towards new information systems. The responses varied highly, indicating an individual process towards commitment. The factors included both internal and external issues. Surpris-ingly, individuals were either affected by internal (e.g. personal characteristics, pro-fessional identity) or external factors (e.g. organizational needs) – dividing the em-ployees in externally and internally motivated emem-ployees towards the usage of the system. This also related to the Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) categorization of commitment, which distinguishes the internally motivated employees from the em-ployees who feel external pressure to use the system.
Throughout the interviews, various factors affecting the commitment of the partici-pants also came across indirectly. Factors affecting the commitment positively includ-ed usability relatinclud-ed factors, personal traits of the employees and organizational sup-port. Other themes included communication and external pressure. In comparison, negatively affecting factors included personal traits, usability and nature of the change. Also process related factors and work related factors were mentioned. The results of the study supported the literature in section 2. Participation (Whelan-Berry and Somerville, 2010; Foster, 2010) could be seen related to the educational point of view. However, no further indications about participation were mentioned. This may be since the participants did not feel that they had had much participation in the pro-cess. The participants seemed to feel that the lack of participation was because of the nature of the change. This was a planned change that was forced in the entire organi-zation.
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Procedural justice (Sidle, 2003) could be seen as justification for the change. Partici-pants felt, that justified change is easier to commit to. Furthermore, leadership (Hill et al., 2012; Neves, 2011; Parish et al., 2008) was mentioned through support as well as communications. It became apparent that leaders can affect the employees’ commit-ment via communications. Especially they can affect the employees’ sense of justifi-cation of the change, decrease the anxiety though timely informing, and affect the feelings with positive and realistic views of the change. Parish et al (2008) noted the importance of motivation and independence for commitment. These were also men-tioned in the study.
Surprisingly, technological and usability factors occurred most frequently in the inter-views. This follows the technological and innovational view to change processes that were introduced in the literature. It represents Rogers (2003) ideology, that the attrib-utes of the innovations have important role in determining the adoption rates. This also supports Klein and Knight (2005) who suggested various reasons for innovation implementation failures, such as unreliable, imperfect, more complex and time con-suming technologies, which cause negative feelings amongst the users, especially as they affect the performance when the new system is implemented. They also suggest-ed an important role for role changes that the users might be difficult or uncomforta-ble to adapt to. This also occurred in the study as the participants indirectly talked about changes in their role and identity, as well as changed expectations for their pro-fession.
The aim of this study was also to examine the sensemaking process in a change con-text. The analysis of the interview data was done with Weick’s (1995) sensemaking categorizations. It suggests that sensemaking is grounded in identity construction, retrospective, enactive of sensible environments, social, ongoing, focused on and by extracted cues and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.
The study showed that the participants were indirectly constructing their identity dur-ing their interviews by compardur-ing themselves to other employees, thus describdur-ing themselves indirectly or directly. The change process had also changed their view on themselves and their skills. This supported the findings of Bean and Eisenberg (2006) who noticed, that if person’s own sense of identity was compromised, employee expe-riences a shock, which triggered sensemaking process. Construction of identity was
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related to changed tasks and work allocation, thus affecting the daily work of the par-ticipants. The employees seemed to have distanced themselves from the system and felt that it had no effect on their work identities. This could be related to the findings of Bean and Eisenberg (2006) who noticed that if identity disconfirmation did not take place, but employee felt tension to social structures, sensemaking was directed to es-tablish new meanings for the structures in question. In this case it seemed that mostly negative issues related to one’s identity arose from the interviews. Weick (1995) sug-gested that if negative images threaten the sense of self-enhancement, efficacy and consistency, people may alter the sense they make of these negative images. This may lead to redefinition of organizational identity.
The retrospective nature of sensemaking process was one of the most visible catego-ries in analyzing the interviews. The way the new system was talked about included retrospective features. It was seen as a comparison to previous systems that the partic-ipants had experienced. The particpartic-ipants talked a lot in the past tense reflecting what had already happened in the change process. As Weick (1995) also noted, the past events related to sensemaking can be assessed only after the event has occurred.
The sensemaking process was seen to be enactive of sensible environments. There were various other changes taking place simultaneously that affected the employees’
sensemaking process towards this change. All changes were seen interrelated and the relationships between different events and changes were blurred in the minds of the employees. The other changes affected the way the change in the EPR was been ac-cepted and felt towards by the employees. This supported the view of Bartunek et al.
(2006) and Weick (1995) that people are rather active than passive in relationship to the environment, which also applies to change context.
As was noted, one of the most important factors affecting the commitment to change in this study was found communication. This is also an essential part of sensemaking, since sensemaking is a social process as suggested by Weick (1995). The social nature of the sensemaking process has been highlighted the most. Rissanen and Lammin-takanen (2011) noted that organizational members create the change through interac-tion and discursion and Sidle (2003) suggested that increasing commitment requires communications. In the study, the interaction took place with both colleagues and
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leaders, following Balogun and Johnson’s (2005) view of both vertical and lateral communications.
The ongoing nature of the sensemaking process could be related in the ongoing nature of the change process. As Weick (1995) suggested, there is no clear starting or ending point for sensemaking, thus it is continuous. The ongoing nature also became appar-ent in this study, mostly related to the change process. Thus, it could be suggested, that commitment is also ongoing process. As the change continues, the commitment is evaluated and altered continuously according to the feelings and satisfaction at that time.
Weick (1995) also suggested that sensemaking is focused on extracted cues and driv-en by plausibility rather than accuracy. These two categories were not appardriv-ent in the study related to commitment, which was the focus of this study. The final category existed at a general level when discussing change.
All in all, there are various studies done in this field, but the focus of these studies is on the management level (e.g. van Vuuren and Elving, 2008; Lüscher and Lewis, 2008; Balogun, 2006; Fiss and Zajac, 2006; Rouleau, 2005) or they examine the role of change agents (e.g. Weick, 1995b). There still seems to be lack of concentration on the perspectives of the employees. The findings of this study supported the literature about this topic. The findings followed the literature given in section 2 regarding the commitment aspect. As has been noted, similar studies that utilize Weick’s categori-zation has not been done in similar manner. However, the findings of this study re-garding sensemaking process followed the categorizations of Weick, thus supporting this view on sensemaking. The findings also supported the findings of previous stud-ies on sensemaking. The study also showed a relationship between sensemaking and commitment. Throughout the interviews, it became clear that commitment can be achieved through sensemaking process that results in positive attitude towards the change. In this context of technological change, the most influencing factors for reaching commitment seem to be technological issues and social interactions through communication.
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5.3 Evaluation of the study, future studies and managerial implications
According to Eriksson and Kovalainen (2015), case studies are evaluated by defini-tion of the case and its context and by its significance. There should also be sufficient evidence to the research question and presentation of both supporting and challenging evidence. The study provides important insights for a timely phenomenon. As the Finnish legislation evolves bringing new requirements for information systems, im-plementing a new information system is required.
The aim of the study was to examine the sensemaking process of the employees when committing to a change and the relationship between sensemaking and commitment.
The research was done by utilizing a qualitative single case study methodology and the data was collected through interviews. The amount of interviews conducted was five, which was found suitable for this type of study. Even though there was not a large amount of interviews, the responses in the interviews were found similar already in this amount of data. Thus, it could be argued that adding more interviews would have not added any significant value. The participants were also limited to employees.
For example studying top management would have probably affected the results of the study. Since the findings from different participants were found similar, I believe the findings represent the factors affecting to commitment and sensemaking process in this specific context.
The results of the research contribute to the existing literature by taking a new per-spective on the academic research related to change management and commitment to change. This study expands the research by examining the perspectives of the em-ployees, which has not usually been done. Furthermore, the commitment to change is studied from the perspective of sensemaking. The existing literature has left a gap in identifying reasons behind some factors, such as commitment, affecting to successful change. By describing how employees make sense of the commitment process, also its importance may be explained.
The results of the study have an important contribution to the existing change man-agement literature. The results can help future managers to understand the perspective of the employees better, and assist in implementing similar changes with better
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cess rate in the future. Many researches emphasize the role of management and lead-ership in change and also more emphasis is given on leaders’ role in facilitating the sensemaking of the employees – thus enabling the acceptance of change, as was also suggested by Balogun and Johnson (2005). As technology and legislation are devel-oped further, also information systems need to be changed. Furthermore, this specific study acts as an important reflection to the change that has taken place inside an or-ganization. Thus, in the specific organization, it helps in evaluating the change pro-cess and its sucpro-cess.
There is still a lot to be studied in this field. As has been noted, the perspectives of the employees are still less studied and sensemaking has been rarely included in these types of studies. Thus, there are various ways to extend this study, for example by extending the study to other groups of employees or to make comparisons of different employee groups. Thus, in the future it would be interesting to see whether the per-spectives of the employees and the managers vary in this context – both regarding factors affecting to commitment and the sensemaking process. Furthermore, as the participants in this study included only female, would the results be different when compared to male employees? The study could be expanded to other fields than health care as well. Another interesting perspective to study in the future would be related to the social nature of sensemaking. As was noted in the study, vertical and lateral rela-tionships affect the sensemaking process. Future studies in this field could include examining for example leader’s effect in sensemaking – the ways to intervene with the process, how much it occurs and which methods are the most effective.
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