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Adams, Martin (2022) A qualitative exploration of middle managers perceptions of the barriers to organisational readiness to change during a planned transformation. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)]

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Abstract

Abstract

The success of organisational changes is often attributed to an organisation’s level of change readiness. While this concept has grown in popularly, middle managers have been neglected as targets of investigation. This paper argues that middle managers perceptions of the organisation's readiness to change can be highly consequential to change efforts due to their central role within the organisation where they are both change agents as well as change recipients. This qualitative study conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with middle managers from an organisation undergoing a significant transformation to understand the barriers to change readiness. The findings confirm the salience of process and context factors to middle managers perceptions. I argue that the organisational culture may be the most significant barrier to change readiness due to its ability to shape the way things are done, and consequently other change process and context factors. Of significance, middle managers also perceived external factors to be an important barrier to change readiness. Furthermore, change readiness factors seemed to be interdependent suggesting they cannot be easily separated or observed in isolation. I argue that through adopting a sociotechnical systems view of change readiness, organisations will be able to recognise the interdependencies within their change environment and better mitigate the risk of change failure.

Item Type:	Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Depositing User:	Adams, Martin
Date Deposited:	20 Jun 2023 14:48
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2023 14:48
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/68405

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