2.2 Resistance to Organisational Change and the Causes
Both planned and unplanned organisational change often face resistance from the employees. While the resistance may be detrimental to organisational change, Chen, Sue, Lin and Shieh (2010) notes that it is quintessential to the process of change as it ensures stability of the change and predictability to behaviour. Without the resistance, chaotic randomness would characterise the introduction and implementation of any organisational change. The resistance of the individual employees to the change draw from three major classes of causes: the social, economic, and psychological causes (Wollard 2011). On the overall, organisational resistance results from the fact that individuals within the organisation harbour variant personalities, needs, and perceptions. Habit is among the greatest causes of resistance to organisational change. People often feel comfortable and normal in environments to which they are habituated. Employees resist change as an inherent characteristic of human beings to form a comfort zone and show reluctance in ditching the comfort zone. In some cases, resistance to change is caused by the feel of insecurity among members of the organisation. According to Cummings and Worley (2009), security and safety rank among the highest priorities for people. Therefore, when the employees detect or project that the change will interfere with their safety and security, they will oppose the change despite its necessity. Precisely, employees resist the changes that may compromise their job security. Lack of proper communication is another notable cause of resistance to organisational change (Saxby 2008). Organisations that involve workers in the process of change experience less resistance (Burnes 2004). Lack of clear guidelines and orientation on the change makes the employees feel sceptical of the change and resist it since they are uncertain of its tenets. Resistance to change may also result from the extent of the change. Major changes like reshuffling of staff may experience more resistance than minor changes (Phillips 2013). Employees deem major changes as cumbersome and threatening.
2.3 Employment Relationships
According to Montana and Bruce (2008), employment relationships describe the legal links that exist between the employees and the employers. The connection occurs in situations where one enters into a binding agreement with another person to perform tasks and services for the person at a fee. It is from a healthy employment relationship that reciprocal responsibilities and rights stem. Employment relationship, through its microcosmic components, has always been the driving force behind the ease in accessibility of rights by the workers, and the benefits as spelled in the initial contract agreement (Amagoh 2008). The continual existence of employment relationships is the key determinant of the mode of application of the social security and labour policies and laws on the employees. Besides, it is the focal point for determination of the nature and scope of the rights and obligations of the employers with respect to their employees. Healthy employment relationships are the backbone of the labour industry and individual employment contracts. Most researchers note that the issue of employment relationship is becoming increasingly popular as a result of the issue of dependent workers who are not protected due to factors such as the narrow scope or interpretation of the law, disguised employment relationship, and poor formulation of the laws (Beckhard 2009). Yet other researchers have dedicated their studies to seek recommendations that would help solve such issues. The recommendations cover the determination of the nature of the relationships to avoid ambiguity, the formulation, crafting and implementation of the laws in specific contexts, and the establishment of the necessary mechanisms for offering solution to other challenges that may arise from the employment relationships.
2.4 Workplace Stress and its Causes
An increasing number of studies continue to point to the fact that workplace stress is the greatest cause of stress for many adults. Higher levels of workplace stress resulting from little control and excessive pressure to perform predisposes the workers to hypertension, and other disorders including heart attacks (Dahl 2011; Barling, Kelloway and Frone 2005). However, most of these studies have never been able to rank workplace stress in terms of occupations that are most stressful owing to the fact that stress is an entirely personal phenomenon which vary widely even in similar work environments and conditions. According to Cooper, Dewe and O’Driscoll (2001) intrinsic job factors that cause workplace stress includes long hours of work, time pressure, work overload, lack of variety, difficult or complex works and poor working environments. Undefined duties or unclear roles and boundaries remain a prime cause of workplace stress. When employees are not sure about their duties, they may unknowingly perform extra tasks as a result of uneven task allocation, or they can perform tasks without their area of specialisation. All these contribute to workplace stress in the sense that the former situation leads to work overload and the latter makes the workers view the tasks as more complex and somewhat demanding. On the same note, Barling, Kelloway and Frone (2005) views organisational change as the major cause of workplace stress. Any form of change requires greater efforts for adaptation. Therefore, for instance, employees would need to work more that they usually do in order to keep up with a certain change. The demand and pressure resulting from the extreme levels of sacrifice required from the employees causes stress and other health risks.
2.5 The Relationship between Employees’ Stress, Productivity, and Organisational Change
None of the past studies have examined the relationship between the three elements- workplace stress, productivity, and organisational change- as a package. Most of the existing empirical studies have either accessed the relationship between stress and productivity or organisational change and stress. Correspondingly, Cooper, Dewe and O’Driscoll (2001) observed that high levels of employee stress results in low productivity and vice versa. Stress hinders employees from optimally performing their duties in accordance with the expectation. They take time processing their tasks and are slow in the execution of the tasks. Besides, high levels of stress may induce long terms of absenteeism which decreases productivity and slows down the organisational performance. On another note, Schultz and Schultz (2010) claims that organisational change is a major cause of workplace stress. Employees often establish a special attachment to their organisational structures, modes of work, work groups and personal responsibilities. An interference, in form of change, on any of these is highly likely to disorient an employee in a manner that will lead to a stressful work. The stress decreases employee engagement and involvement during the period of transition. Form these two relationships, one can easily establish the relationship between the three components. To this end, organisational change causes workplace stress which decreases the productivity of the employees and the performance of the organisation. Evidently, the relationship is linear and a change in one component leads to a shift in the next. For instance, introduction and implementation of organisation change leads to high levels of workplace which decreases productivity and vice versa.