When the Show must Go On: Investigating Repeated Organizational Change in Elite Sport

This study responded to recent calls for the investigation of employees' responses to repeated organizational change events. Data were gathered via 20 semi-structured interviews with 10 employees from 2 organizations competing in English football's Barclays Premier League. The results indi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of change management 2016-01, Vol.16 (1), p.38-54
Main Authors: Wagstaff, Christopher R.D., Gilmore, Sarah, Thelwell, Richard C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Commitments
emotion
Employee attitude
Employees
Managerial turnover
Organization development
Organizational behavior
Organizational change
organizational psychology in sport
Professional soccer
responses
sport
Studies
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Summary:This study responded to recent calls for the investigation of employees' responses to repeated organizational change events. Data were gathered via 20 semi-structured interviews with 10 employees from 2 organizations competing in English football's Barclays Premier League. The results indicated that employees responded to recurring organizational change in positive and negative emotional, behavioural, and attitudinal ways. The main positive response themes related to: resilience, learning, performance, challenge appraisals, and autonomy. The main negative response themes related to: trust, cynicism, organizational development, motivation, turnover, engagement, and commitment. The findings illustrate the value of exploring and monitoring employee responses to both single and repeated organizational change. Specifically, the data indicate increasingly deteriorating employee attitudes across change events, but also highlight the important role of cognitive appraisal for responses to each change event. The results are discussed in regard to implications for organizational change research and practice in dynamic contexts such as elite sport.
ISSN:1469-7017
1479-1811
DOI:10.1080/14697017.2015.1062793