Readiness for Change Towards Sustainability : A Study of Swedish Companies: Change Agent and Employee Perspectives

• Main Authors: Hernelind, Elin, Hogréus, Freja
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Internationella Handelshögskolan, Jönköping University, IHH, Företagsekonomi 2020
• Subjects: Change Readiness; Change Agent; Employee; Sustainability; Business; Business Administration; Företagsekonomi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-48730

Background: There is an increasing importance of sustainable development in today’s society as a result of various social, environmental, and economic challenges facing the people and planet. To create the change needed to shift from unsustainable activities, everyone must participate, including business organizations. Here, the concept of change readiness is highly relevant as it helps prepare individuals and organizations to accept and not be resistant to change initiatives.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and explore (1) how change agents create change readiness to prepare employees for organizational change towards sustainability and (2) how these efforts are perceived and experienced by employees.   Method: This thesis uses a qualitative approach with an exploratory nature where two companies (case studies) are included. In total, five organizational members were interviewed to collect empirical data: two change agents and three employees.    Conclusion: The findings display that change agents use two strategies for spreading the change message (persuasive communication and active participation) and unintentionally use the five cognitive components of change readiness (discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support and personal valence) to prepare employees for organizational change towards sustainability. In turn, these efforts are perceived and experienced by employees as enhancing their level of change readiness.