Navigating Through Change

Abstract

This thesis is based on the production employees in South Zealand branch of the company SKJOLD who implemented a change due to a decline in turnover. This change led to the production employees facing a 50% reduction in working hours and salary for seven weeks. We have carried out a qualitative case study based on a social constructivist perspective, and our data material consist of seven semi-structured interviews, email correspondence, and observations. To analyze the employees' experiences, we have applied the theory of the psychological contract, organizational trust, organizational justice, and job insecurity. Our analysis has a perspective of change and is divided into three parts: 1) before, 2) during and 3) after the change. All three parts of the analysis showed that vertical, horizontal, interpersonal and institutional (dis)trust as well as procedural, interactional and distributional (in)justice was affected by the change. Furthermore, we have discussed whether it is possible to plan fair changes and assessed the challenges regarding practice. Therefore, we also challenged the premise of an equal treatment and representativeness as a part of a just process and concluded that business considerations probably have to weigh more in most cases. We can view changes as more or less planned (episodic and continuous) but the most important component in the process of change becomes the organization itself. We can thus conclude that organizational changes have a direct impact on the employees' sense of justice and trust in the manager as well as the organization, that distrust and injustice can be experienced as a breach of the psychological contract and affect the employees' job insecurity and thus attachment to the company. We can also conclude that the experience of trust before the implementation of the change can positively affect the change. In addition, our analysis indicates that the perceived level of trust and justice prior to a change influences the change itself.