Ambiguity and ambivalence

Julian Randall · Stephen Procter

46 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Organizational Change Management

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Organizational Change and Leadership Management and Organizational Studies Organizational Management and Change

Abstract

Purpose Imposed change at work can present individuals with ambiguous events about which they experience ambivalence in their interpretation of meaning. This paper seeks to examine the dimensions of ambivalence as defined by Piderit among a group of managers in the public sector. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a group of 20 Band 11 senior managers responsible for collecting tax and between them covering the UK in a business restructured into a large business group. The authors adopted a qualitative approach involving semi‐structured interviews seeking to uncover individual accounts of imposed change, allowing subjects to reflect on their experience of change and its meaning to them. Findings The findings suggested that long‐service civil servants and private sector managers draw on their previous experience to interpret the changes they experience, giving rise to different perceived ambiguity between rhetoric and reality. Each group either comes to terms with ambiguity by interpreting the meaning of change to fit in with their expectancies of change, or, in one case, do not reconcile the change which then becomes a point of resistance. Practical implications The case highlights the need for change agents to understand the full complexity of employee attitudes. Not only can a variety of attitudes be identified, but each set of responses can be understood in variety of ways. Originality/value The devil in the detail of imposed change offers both researchers and managers of change a significant source of information about likely individual and group responses to imposed change at work. Piderit's framework offers three dimensions of ambivalence which clarify different individual responses to imposed change.

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References

1998Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory 1986Organizational Culture and Leadership 1922Mourning and Melancholia 1936A DYNAMIC THEORY OF PERSONALITY 1980Surprise and Sense Making: What Newcomers Experience in Entering Unfamiliar Organizational Settings 2000Rethinking Resistance and Recognizing Ambivalence: A Multidimensional View of Attitudes Toward an Organizational Change 2001Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research 1982The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences.

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2015Organizations Don’t Resist Change, People Do: Modeling Individual Reactions to Organizational Change Through Loss and Terror Management 2017Productive Resistance within the Korean Public Sector: Exploring Organisational Culture

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