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COVID-19's impact on Christian cross-cultural workers

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COVID-19's impact on Christian cross-cultural workers

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COVID-19’s Impact on Christian Cross-Cultural Workers

Amanda J. Keen

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

August 2023

© Copyright by Amanda J. Keen 2023
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Amanda J. Keen certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Emmy Min
Susanne Foulk
Robert Filback, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2023

iv
Abstract
This study applied Schein’s assessment of organizational culture in conjunction with Lewin’s
three-step change model to determine the impact of COVID-19 on the career-making decisions
of Christian, cross-cultural workers. The purpose of the study was to use a combination of Lewin
and Schein to glean from participants the changes needed at their organizations for retention.
Using the qualitative research method, 15 cross-cultural workers who lived and worked in China
pre-COVID-19 were interviewed, and then an analysis of their perspectives of COVID-19’s
impact on their personal lives, their organization, and their country of service was completed.
This study’s findings indicate COVID-19 had a significant impact on their organization, and
while the organization continues to move forward, they have been unseen, unheard, and
forgotten. The study begins to build a bridge connecting the needs of Christian, cross-cultural
workers and their organizational leadership by giving recommendations for organizational
change that will fulfill the vision and retain the workers.

v
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my committee, Dr. Robert Filback, Dr. Emmy Min, and Dr. Susanne Foulk
for walking with me through this process and for giving me genuine feedback that it might be
seen through to the end.
To my friends in Cambodia: Jen, Julie, Lisa, Louise, Sana, Sirath, Team Cambodia and
many more. Thank you all for your prayers and your support; I am where I am today because of
your belief in me.
To all of my ministry partners, thank you for journeying with me and partnering with me
in Kingdom work. You have had a significant hand in making all of this come to fruition. I trust
this is the beginning of a new chapter, and I am excited to see where the Lord takes us in our
future work together. For Christ and His Kingdom!
To the Pink Ladies, Bridget, Keri, Kristen, and Leslie, you have walked with me through
the ebb and flow of emotion and uncertainty. You have championed me throughout the years of
work and research, and you have encouraged me and reminded me to believe that God has a plan
and purpose both for me and this work. You are the dream team, and I love you.
To “Mandy’s Men” (There, I said it … never again!) Corey, Craig, Noah, Ryan L., and
Ryan S. You guys allowed me to figure out COVID-19 alongside you and walked with me
through the years of getting this degree. I am so grateful for you as a team. I know it was not
easy, and I am sure there were many times when I was not there for you the way that I should
have been as a leader; I apologize. If I never again have the opportunity to walk alongside you in
ministry, please know that I have been impacted and changed by the Lord placing each of you in
my life.

vi
Jackie, Joan, and Mom, your weekly prayers, your stubborn encouragement, and your
belief that I could do this was the accelerant that continued to ignite the flame to keep me
pressing on. For over a decade, you have been the steady prayer warriors that I could depend on,
and I know that this would not be possible without your support. I love you so much. Thank you!
This would not have been possible without the research participants’ insight,
transparency, and vulnerability. You are my brothers and sisters, my co-laborers in the harvest
field. I want to thank you for being open and honest with me; you are heard. You have
influenced change in my personal leadership style; thank you. I pray that each of you continues
to walk in obedience in what the Lord has for you.
To Nolan and Abigail, my hope is that my perseverance in this work is an example to you
of what you can achieve and accomplish. But more than that, my hope is that my example of
pressing on for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom will influence you to seek hard after Jesus
and God’s Word and that He will become your Savior and your King.
To Daddy and Mom, I often have tears in my eyes when I reflect on the fierce love and
support you show to me. No one believes in me like you two. Thank you for walking with me
through this journey and for rallying others to support me. I love you both more than words can
say. I am so grateful to God for giving you to me as parents.
Finally, to my Savior, to my Lord, to my King. You are the LORD, the God of all flesh;
nothing is too difficult for You (Jeremiah 32:27), and therefore, I can walk in confidence that
everything I do in obedience to Your lordship has an eternal purpose. You are my strength when
I am weak, and my greatest desire in life is to draw nearer to You, for Your nearness in my good
(Psalm 73:28). I pray this work is used for Your glory, finding ways to keep more workers in the
harvest field (Matthew 9:35-28).

vii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................x
Chapter One: Introduction ...............................................................................................................1
Statement of the Problem .....................................................................................................3
Purpose of the Study and Methodology ...............................................................................4
Significance of the Study .....................................................................................................5
Definitions ............................................................................................................................5
Organization of the Dissertation ..........................................................................................7
Chapter Two: Literature Review .....................................................................................................8
Global Impact of COVID-19 ...............................................................................................8
Nonprofit Organizations ....................................................................................................16
Conceptual Framework ......................................................................................................25
Chapter Three: Methodology .........................................................................................................30
Site Selection .....................................................................................................................31
Population and Sample ......................................................................................................32
Data Collection ..................................................................................................................40
Data Analysis .....................................................................................................................40
Trustworthiness Measures .................................................................................................40
Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................................41
Role of the Researcher .......................................................................................................42
Chapter Four: Findings ..................................................................................................................44

viii
Research Question 1: How Has the Impact of COVID-19 Influenced the Decisions of
Christian Cross-Cultural Workers in Maintaining Their Organizational Roles? ...............44
Research Question 2: What Is the Interplay Between Organizational Culture Factors
and the Impacts of COVID-19 on the Decisions of Christian Cross-Cultural Workers
to Stay With Their Organizations? ....................................................................................59
Research Question 3: What Cultural Assumptions Do the Workers of This
Organization Hold That Need to Be Addressed by Organizational Leadership? ..............82
Summary and Conclusion ................................................................................................102
Chapter Five: Recommendations .................................................................................................104
Discussion of Findings .....................................................................................................104
Recommendations for Practice ........................................................................................109
Recommendations for Future Research ...........................................................................115
Limitations, Delimitations, Assumptions ........................................................................116
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................117
References ....................................................................................................................................119
Appendix A: Individual Interview Research Questions ..............................................................130

ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Overview of Lewin’s Three-Step Model .........................................................................27
Table 2: Research Design Matrix ..................................................................................................34
Table 3: Participant Overview .......................................................................................................39
Table A1: Individual Interview Research Questions ...................................................................131

x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Lewin/Schein Model of Change 107

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Chapter One: Introduction
A significant strength of the nonprofit sector workforce, specifically Christian cross-
cultural workers (CCWs), is the workers’ commitment and ability to identify with the mission
and vision of their organization (Kuenzi et al., 2021). In 2017, the global expatriate population
was almost 66.2 million (Finaccord, 2018). The 2020 projected population of CCWs sent by
international, cross-cultural organizations was estimated to be around 359,000, with 37% coming
from western nations (Missio Nexus, 2017). However, the International Bulletin of Mission
Research (Zurlo et al., 2021) said that organizations sent 227,000 North American and European
CCWs abroad in 2021. That number is an 88% decrease in numbers from the start of data
collection 30 years prior (Zurlo et al., 2021).
The statement Jesus made to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are
few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest,” is still true
today (New American Standard Bible, 1960/1995, Matt. 9:35–38). And, due to the outbreak of
COVID-19, it seems the workers are getting fewer. The number of CCWs in China has lessened
since the COVID-19 pandemic was made known to the world in the fall of 2019. With the
pandemic’s disruption throughout the world, there are now questions as to how Christian
nonprofit organizations can retain workers after COVID-19’s impact on their lives.
Other data showed that in 2016, global mobility would increase by 47%, but it estimated
that the attrition rate of cross-cultural workers would average 30% to 50% due to unmet
expectations of their role (Brookfield Global Relocation Services, 2016). In addition to the
COVID-19 pandemic, another significant impact on global employment is the baby boomer
generation’s retirement, with a 3.2 million person increase in retirement between 2019 and 2020
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(Fry, 2020a). Formerly the largest population in the workforce, baby boomers are now surpassed
by the millennial generation.
The same is true at Christian, cross-cultural organizations. In 2018, 19% of worker
attrition was due to retirement (Missio Nexus, 2019). Today, the baby boomer generation of
workers is retiring, leaving the millennials as the largest serving population and the generation
asking for mentorship from those who have gone before them (Missio Nexus, 2019). In a study
by Whiteman (2021) on cross-cultural workers, the workers specifically asked for more support
from their organizations in the following areas: preemptive member care, connections with
mentors and coaches, connecting with counselors, mental health support, and hosting care events
such as retreats. The significant departure from the workforce was called the great attrition, and
the researchers suggested that unless organizations’ leaders begin to listen to their employees
about what is most important to them, the great attrition could get much worse before it gets
better (Dowling & Schaninger, 2021).
Questions remain regarding what these labor force changes mean specifically for the
CCW who has surrendered their life to be one of the laborers in the harvest field (New American
Standard Bible, 1960/1995, Matt 9:38). Crises can lead to transformational change and not just to
suffering. Humanity faced crises such as poverty, environmental disaster, and a struggle for
identity before the COVID-19 pandemic (Bendor-Samuel, 2020). Each of these issues impacts
every nation, which, in turn, affects the mission of CCWs. The fact is that these workers and
their organizations are central to efforts to reduce global poverty, build education systems, and
increase medical and health care (Bendor-Samuel, 2020). However, with the disruption of the
pandemic, has there been an identity crisis among these workers, and if so, what changes do they
want to see in their organizations to sustain them and their work?
3

Statement of the Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the world, the decline in cross-cultural workers
sent abroad, the retirement rate of the baby boomers, and the great attrition (Dowling &
Schaninger, 2021; Smet et al., 2021) have placed a strain on Christian, international, cross-
cultural organizations. The macro problem of focus in this dissertation is the decision Christian,
cross-cultural nonprofit workers face as they consider maintaining their roles in their
organizations due to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on themselves, their organizations, and
their countries of service.
Motivation and determination influence the Christian cross-cultural nonprofit worker’s
commitment to the organization’s mission and vision. Workers are also trying to aid others while
navigating the uncertainty of their own futures (Kuenzi et al., 2021). Edwards et al. (2016)
highlighted that 86% of cultural stress in the expatriate community comes from a lack of
organizational support and relationships. In their 2019 attrition field study, Missio Nexus found
the top three reasons people left their country of service or organization were (a) the completion
of their assignment/retirement, (b) a career change based on education or job satisfaction, or (c)
family issues such as marriage, children’s needs, or other concerns. Three years later, after a
global pandemic has impacted the world, are these still the top three reasons for attrition?
This problem is significant specifically within international Christian nonprofits because
it impacts the ability of the organizations to achieve their mission and vision; without their
workers, the mission and vision lack completion. If the workers are few, who will bring in the
harvest? What do these workers need to continue moving forward in their work?

4

Purpose of the Study and Methodology
Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers are at a decision-making crossroads due to
COVID-19’s impact on their lives, organizations, and countries of service. The first purpose of
this study was to initiate the Lewin three-step change model (Burnes, 2020) using Schein’s three
levels of culture model (Schein & Schein, 2017) to assess the organizational culture of Peak
Results (a pseudonym) as understood by its workers. The second purpose of this study was to
glean from these workers what needs they deemed essential for organizational change and
whether those changes would influence their decision to stay with the organization. The
following research questions helped to fulfill the purpose of the study:
1. How has the impact of COVID-19 influenced the decisions of Christian cross-cultural
workers in maintaining their organizational roles?
2. What is the interplay between organizational culture factors and the impacts of
COVID-19 on the decision of Christian cross-cultural workers to stay with their
organizations?
3. What cultural assumptions do the workers of this organization hold that need to be
addressed by organizational leadership?
4. From the workers’ perspective, what adjustments do Christian cross-cultural
organizations need to make to retain their workers?
Answers to the questions will provide the organization an opportunity for a potential follow-up
study in action research (Bargal, 2012; Burnes, 2020) to initiate the second step of Lewin’s
model, change (Bargal, 2012; Burnes, 2020; Schein, 1999).
To attain answers to the research questions, I invited workers from Peak Results who
lived in China pre-COVID-19 to participate in an anonymous, 1-hour interview session in which
5

they were asked 11 questions to gain insight into their perspective on Peak Results’
organizational culture, how COVID-19 impacted the culture in both their personal and
professional lives, and where changes need to be made to ensure retention of organizational
workers like themselves.
Significance of the Study
The disruption of global pandemics and other evidence of struggle throughout the world
make it more and more difficult to send workers into places like East Asia and the Middle
East/North Africa, and just as challenging to keep them there. I believe this research will give
organizations a look at the frontline workers’ view. I believe it will open the eyes of the
organizations to hear and begin to forge changes that will better equip them to meet their mission
and vision as the generation of workers changes with the times.
It has been difficult to find research on Christian cross-cultural nonprofit organizations
working in places like East Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. I hope this study will incite a
reason to look more into these workers and their organizations from a practical level and seek
new insight for organizational change and development. I believe that Lewin’s theory of change
(Burnes, 2020) is efficient and could increase the ability of the organization studied to mobilize,
train, and send more workers into these nations. Therefore, I hope to see future research done in
the second and third steps of Lewin’s theory, change and refreezing, after this study.
Definitions
The Christian nonprofit organizations of the world tend to use much terminology,
specifically acronyms, that may be similar to but not necessarily known to workers in other
organizations or those outside of the Christian, cross-cultural context. At times, it can almost
sound like a second language. For anonymity, I laid out new terms and acronyms with their
6

definitions for those reading this paper. There are also a few definitions of terms to help identify
the dates of various generations spoken of in the literature review.
Baby boomers: those born between 1946 and 1964.
Christian cross-cultural worker (CCW): a nonprofit worker living and working in a
country from which they do not hold a passport.
Community leader: similar to a team leader, but the teachers are not living and working
together; they are staying connected online.
Country supervisor: gives direction to all Peak Results’ personnel living in a specific
country, facilitates the ongoing development of personnel in the country, and coordinates efforts
to ensure the advancement of Peak Results’ purpose, mission, and vision.
Educators advancement advisor: advocates for excellence in education and professional
development among teachers at Peak Results, gives support and advisement to educators’
consultants and creates accountability in the professional lives of Peak Results’ teachers.
Educators consultant: works with the educators’ advancement advisor to support teachers
and walks with teachers to improve their professional abilities by providing resources to enable
them to teach effectively.
Generation X: those born between 1965 and 1980.
Generation Z: those born between 1997 and 2012.
Member care consultant: shepherds Peak Results’ personnel by nurturing them in their
personal relationship with Christ and as they continue to serve, providing resources for both their
spiritual and emotional health while at the same time promoting the development of healthy
teams.
Millennials: those born between 1981 and 1996.
7

Peak Results: pseudonym for the Christian nonprofit organization used in this study.
Southeast Asia/Mongolia (SEA/M): a region of countries encompassing Southeast Asia
and Mongolia where Peak Results places teachers.
Team leader: the person who gives direction to teachers living and working on the same
campus by facilitating continued development and coordinating efforts to maintain and achieve
organizational goals, purpose, mission, and vision.
Organization of the Dissertation
Five chapters organize this study. The current chapter provides an overhead view of the
problem of practice and the methods used to address the problem in the research. Chapter Two
consists of a review of the current literature surrounding the scope of the study. Chapter Three
gives a detailed description of the needed methodology for the study, including the study’s
purpose, the participants’ description, and the research design in data collection and analysis.
Chapter Four is an assessment and analysis of the research data. Chapter Five gives
recommendations, based on the findings and other literature, for addressing the study
participants’ needs.

8

Chapter Two: Literature Review
This literature review aims to provide an overview of COVID-19’s impact on Christian,
cross-cultural organizations, their workers, and their countries of service, highlighting East Asia
and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) regions. We will then review the purpose and
motivation of nonprofit employees, specifically CCWs, and their reason for serving their
organizations.
Global Impact of COVID-19
The world is aware of COVID-19’s physical impact on humanity and the fact that it is not
over. The number of COVID-19 positive cases continues to rise, as does the number of deaths.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2022), confirmed COVID-19 fatalities
seem to be lessening worldwide, but the numbers change every 24 hours. However, COVID-19
had a psychological and spiritual impact on humanity as well.
Psychological Impact
The mental health of the global population was already a significant world issue before
the coronavirus became a global pandemic. In 2015, the United Nations declared it an actual
disease and made a 15 year commitment to prioritize global mental health development (Votruba
& Thornicroft, 2016). However, COVID-19 psychologically impacted people’s mental health
even more. Pedrosa et al. (2020) analyzed human behavior during COVID-19. They found that
the critical components of the ramifications of mental health fell into three main categories: fear
and uncertainty, stressors, and daily habits. The fear and uncertainty were the outcomes of
extreme restrictions and the imploding number of repercussions from the virus, including deaths.
Fear was explicitly associated with depression, anxiety, perceived infectibility, and more
(Pedrosa et al., 2020). The fear and uncertainty of the pandemic also contributed to several
9

suicides due to the fear of being infected, infecting others, being isolated in quarantine, and
having previous mental health issues. Positive COVID-19 victims had to be quarantined and
were more likely to encounter psychosocial problems such as loneliness, anxiety, PTSD, and
depression (Dubey et al., 2020).
Pedrosa et al. (2020) also determined stressors that increased psychological ramifications
included threatened jobs and full-on unemployment that led to psychological distress regarding
finances. On February 2, 2020, the United States declared a public health emergency because of
the outbreak of coronavirus. Then, on March 13, COVID-19 became a national emergency that
unlocked federal funding finances (The American Journal for Managed Care, 2021). The
economic stressors impacting people’s mental health included stimulus checks not being
dispersed due to a glitch in the system, resulting in over 22 million Americans filing for
unemployment within 4 weeks (Johns Hopkins University, 2020). Ultimately, stressors from
economics became a leading risk of suicidal thoughts and led to a rise in the number of people
seeking mental health services.
Pietromonaco and Overall (2021) studied the effects of COVID-19 on the stability of
relationships. They emphasized the quality of those relationships, contending that the external
stress of COVID-19 could adversely impact relationships. Situational relationship stressors such
as finances, age, and social status, as well as the personality and vulnerabilities of the couple
(e.g., insecurities, depression, etc.), showed that death and uncertainty could impact relationships
because people began looking for security (Pietromonaco & Overall, 2021). In some situations,
the stress of starting over led to increased separation (Pietromonaco & Overall, 2021). Finally,
during COVID-19, daily habits were a component of people’s mental health and well-being
(Pedrosa et al., 2020). Philpot et al. (2021) evaluated social relationships in the United States
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during social distancing. They found an increased need for emotional support and loneliness, as
well as a decrease in feelings of friendship, with an added perception of hostility while distanced
from others (Philpot et al., 2021). In homes, sleep quality was lacking during COVID-19 due to
depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, mostly brought on by people monitoring the news.
Poor mental health affected eating habits and physical activity worldwide (Pedrosa et al., 2020).
The psychological impact was on all of humanity. Still, Dubey et al. (2020) attributed multiple
psychosocial issues to various social strata, including healthcare providers, old age, and the
marginalized community.
Many psychosocial issues needed different interventions based on the social strata. For
example, in marginalized communities, the external influence of culture (Pedrosa et al., 2020)
played a role in the collective society. Addressing the psychosocial issue of depression in a
collectivist culture would mean that providing appropriate accommodation, education on hygiene
and personal space, as well as the impact of living either in isolation or in a group situation at all
times, would play a significant role in people’s mental health (Dubey et al., 2020; Jurblum et al.,
2020). The cultural impact on the community could profoundly influence society’s mental
health. For example, a collectivist culture living together in quarantine or lockdown endured
more significant stress based on personalities and uncertain information, resulting in confusion
and stress (Jurblum et al., 2020).
Spiritual Impact
Humanity is no stranger to trauma and crisis, whether on personal or global levels. We
have seen that COVID-19 had a strong psychological impact on the mental health of the
worldwide population. Still, numerous researchers would say that amid this mental health battle,
there was treatment through religion and spirituality. Roman et al. (2020) conducted a study to
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answer whether spiritual care contributed as a coping strategy for practitioners and families
during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The study focused on healthcare workers in South
Africa and found that spirituality was a vital component of coping mechanisms for stress and
providing perseverance through resilience and recovery disciplines that prevented burnout
(Roman et al., 2020). Before the pandemic, research showed that those who were more spiritual
or religious had better mental health and adapted more quickly to problems (Koenig, 2012). In a
review of research articles on the themes and insights of how health and spirituality connected
during COVID-19, Del Castillo (2020) emphasized the need for spiritual care to begin at home,
especially for those who had pre-existing medical conditions and for the marginalized. From the
theme of the 13 articles reviewed, Del Castillo determined that spiritual health was vital to the
person’s overall health and that spiritual care was intentional and empathy driven. Del Castillo
conceded that although spirituality should start at home, compassion from those outside the
house also helps to meet the spiritual needs of the whole person. Roman et al. (2020) stated,
Spiritual care is based on a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual integrative model that requires a
specific set of skills such as active listening, spiritual assessment skills, and the ability to
refer patients to pastoral care, or other types of intervention services focused on
spirituality. (p. 2)
Providing spiritual care during COVID-19 improved patients’ well-being, as demonstrated by
those using spirituality as their coping strategy to lessen stress, provided recovery and resilience,
and prevented burnout (Roman et al., 2020).
Regional Response to COVID-19
Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied physically around the world. The
inconsistency of the cyclical reactions from governments, including full-blown enforcement of
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lockdowns to a more relaxed environment, has wearied the global population (Cherepanov,
2020; Dubey et al., 2020; Jurblum et al., 2020; Pedrosa et al., 2020; Philpot et al., 2021). The
following review looks at the response to the coronavirus by world leaders and their countries in
East Asia and MENA regions, where Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers have been living
and serving for decades. These two regions are also where Peak Results, the organization
researched in this dissertation, has been placing CCWs for over 40 years.
East Asia
East Asia is full of differing cultures, but some elements tend to be similar among the
nations, including collective social norms, vigilance, and a duty to civil responsibilities with a
low tolerance for deviance from rules expected to be followed by all citizens. Often, the policy
instruments East Asian leaders enforce fare well due to the collective culture of the eastern
nations, a culture that tries not to deviate from the collective good and therefore displays societal
cooperation and compliance (An & Tang, 2020; Chen et al., 2021; Shaw et al., 2020). This
collective and cooperative stereotype was seen throughout East Asia after the WHO declared
COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 (Shaw et al., 2020; WHO, 2022). Some of the
behaviors included citizens voluntarily staying home, an increase in handwashing, hand sanitizer
in every public and private doorway, an increase in face masks, religious communities meeting
online, and volunteering time, money, and other human resources to those in need so that health
care workers could continue to fight the virus (Shaw et al., 2020).
China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. East Asian governments are no
strangers to responding to viruses and have had to use their resources to update their public
health systems. The response to battling respiratory diseases such as severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2015 enabled these
13

nations to make adjustments for future outbreaks (An & Tang, 2020). Their experience supplied
them with in-place policies to fare better in response to COVID-19 than most western countries
(An & Tang, 2020). However, as seen worldwide, the response of governments in each of these
countries depended upon the socioeconomics and the cultural context (Shaw et al., 2020).
The governments in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan showed firm
government control early on and had many commonalities in handling the pandemic. The
national, provincial, and communal governments all worked together, using strategies such as
implementing lockdowns, seeking advice from medical experts, setting strict boundaries where
outbreaks were happening, and ensuring the cleanliness of facilities (Shaw et al., 2020). There
was also a significant dependence on technology, including using data to identify where clusters
of outbreaks were happening so they could prevent the spread and watch the recovery process.
Technology screened and tested people, detected the virus’s transport, and disinfected facilities
(Shaw et al., 2020).
Southeast Asia. To the south of the countries mentioned above lies the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), consisting of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao
PDR, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam (Amul et al., 2022;
ASEAN, 2020). This community of nations has an estimated population of about 66.2 million
and stands as the world’s fifth largest economy. Due to their proximity to China, they were some
of the first countries impacted by COVID-19. Most of these nations are less wealthy than
previously discussed nations, and their healthcare systems reached capacity. They all dealt with
economic consequences, especially those economies that depended heavily on tourism as a
significant source of national income.
14

At the beginning of the pandemic, the ASEAN nations implemented essential measures
similar to each other such as restricting mobility and closing businesses and schools. Border
control measures, including travel bans, mandatory quarantine, mandating masks, and virus
testing, were also in every ASEAN nation (Amul et al., 2022). Although ASEAN is a community
of nations, each responded differently with crucial policies to the pandemic because national
leadership had to determine how and where to spend money and which decisions would benefit
their people the most. Some countries walked through this crisis while the reigning government
was transitioning to a new party (Amul et al., 2022).
Politics were fundamental in how the communication of new temporary policies, or even
newly formed polities, would be given to the citizens of ASEAN. Malaysia made its politically
neutral Health Director the face of communication for the country. The Philippines used a
Facebook page, and the president made weekly public reports. Some in the Philippines perceived
this report as threatening and critical, not putting forward information in the best interest of the
citizens. Singapore created a task force, and the prime minister made multilingual addresses to
the nation. They used social media accounts such as WhatsApp and Telegram to report daily to
those wanting the information. With its history of the swine flu (H1N1), Vietnam started
communicating early in January 2020, even before the WHO declared a global pandemic, and
used every media platform in the country to get information out to citizens by early February
2020. The Vietnamese government also created a campaign to enforce penalties for anyone
publishing misinformation online (Amul et al., 2022).
Vietnam and Singapore, having had previous experience with both SARS and H1N1,
were ready with a response to the pandemic. Vietnam quickly implemented a health emergency
operation, and local hospitals throughout the country were prepared with protocols to address
15

severe cases; strict task forces and control measures prioritized saving lives (Amul et al., 2022).
In Singapore, a government partnership with public clinics responded to primary emergencies.
However, the policies in the city’s outskirts where migrant workers lived in dormitories relaxed;
some lockdowns ultimately raised questions about the health equity, living conditions, and
overall welfare of the migrant workers (Amul et al., 2022; An & Tang, 2020).
The Middle East/North Africa
The Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region is a combination of the world’s wealthiest
and poorest nations. The disproportionate response to the pandemic mirrored the region
(Karamouzian & Madani, 2020). At the beginning of the impact of COVID-19 in the MENA
region, local governments initiated three primary responses (Woertz, 2020).
Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. These countries tended to slowly acknowledge the economic
crisis out of financial concern (Woertz, 2020), albeit not so much out of respect for the health
and welfare of the citizens. Early ease of lockdowns and restrictions in these countries caused
international pushback because the experts did not believe the virus had run its course.
Therefore, lifting the regulations could result in more significant damage. There was even
speculation that in some countries, specifically Turkey, local governments were easing
restrictions to ignite herd immunity among the working class (Chotiner, 2020, as cited in Woertz,
2020).
Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria. The poorer countries in the region could not
respond quickly or thoroughly due to the critical in-country conditions they faced, including
internal insurgencies, civil war, and terror threats (Karamouzian & Madani, 2020; Woertz,
2020). Due to the pre-existing conditions, public health limitations existed when the virus
entered the region. The result was humanitarian aid workers going into these countries and
16

providing training on how to take care of the ill outside of medical centers, as well as training on
how to partake in religious holidays, such as Ramadan, without the greater spread of the virus
(Karamouzian, & Madani, 2020). According to a Tyndale House Foundation (2020) report,
countries lost international support for primary resources even with humanitarian aid, which
caused difficulties in refugee situations where dependence upon financial gifts to supply water,
food, shelter, and medical assistance was necessary. The lack of these resources caused tension
and resentment toward refugees during the pandemic (Tyndale House Foundation, 2020).
Though how the countries have handled the response to the crisis has varied, the most
significant positive for the governments in the MENA region was that the virus assisted some
governments in authoritarian repression by keeping people from vocally and physically
displaying their discontent with the leadership (Woertz, 2020). And the region, for the first time,
faced a common problem “with no religious or political agenda” (Karamouzian & Madani, 2020,
p. 887), but that fact is only positive to an extent because the virus still took the lives of many in
the MENA region.
Neal and Webster (2020) predicted that every country and every political party will have
made mistakes in how they made decisions and politicized COVID-19 during the pandemic
because none of these situations could control the pandemic itself.
Nonprofit Organizations
Anderson (2021) defined nonprofits as “organizations that do not attempt to make money
but provide services they deem important to society” (p. 1). While religious nonprofits could be
defined similarly, a definition for religious nonprofit organizations is more complex (Fulton,
2020). Fulton (2020) would define religious nonprofits as faith-based organizations that were not
denominational congregations (e.g., churches) but were affiliated with a congregation, promoted
17

religious practices and values, and engaged in a core work other than promoting religion. There
is a historical sentiment in the nonprofit sector that many who work for them see their role within
the organization as a “calling,” while other research has found that people lean toward nonprofit
work because they believe in the importance of the work (Carman et al., 2010; Flanigan, 2010;
Walk et al., 2020). However, as a rule, nonprofits fail to evaluate their workers’ performance,
have an overworked staff with multiple roles, and do not standardize recruitment or training
while keeping their staff on low pay (Anderson, 2021). At its peak, COVID-19 enhanced the
struggle for nonprofit organizations worldwide.
COVID-19’s Impact on American-Based and International Nonprofits
Before the pandemic, there were 12.5 million employed nonprofit workers in the United
States alone (Newhouse, 2022). There were also approximately 13.5 million Christian expatriates
and nationals working for religious nonprofit organizations worldwide, although it is difficult to
ascertain an accurate number of these workers (Zurlo et al., 2021). Between March and May
2020, 1.64 million U.S. nonprofit workers lost their jobs (Newhouse, 2022; Salamon &
Newhouse, 2020). Granted, between June and August of 2021, there was a 40.6% recovery of
U.S.-based jobs, and by the end of 2021, there was a 72.1% recovery of nonprofit jobs
(Newhouse, 2022). This recovery does not change the fact that during 2020 nonprofits struggled,
and recovery did not come quickly. Data gathered early in the pandemic gave an overall
perspective that most organizations predicted they would need organizational change by the end
of the pandemic (Tyndale House Foundation, 2020).
In their report on nonprofit disruptions, Deitrick et al. (2020) showed that in San Diego,
California, nonprofits experienced service disruptions, a decline in individual donations, layoffs,
and work hour reductions. They were expecting more layoffs in the future (Deitrick et al., 2020).
18

In Omaha, Nebraska, a survey focused on the financial conditions of both public and nonprofit
organizations’ efforts to cope with the impact of COVID-19. Overall, nonprofit organizations
had the most significant economic shock and had to respond quickly and take steps to freeze
their spending, look for financial assistance, delay routines, and tap into their endowment funds
for the work to continue (Maher et al., 2020). Specifically, among 151 Christian nonprofit
organizations surveyed worldwide, over one-third saw an increase in the cost of running and
maintaining programs (Tyndale House Foundation, 2020). In contrast, international
organizations saw a more significant decrease in support from donors in the United States
(Tyndale House Foundation, 2020).
The fiscal need for nonprofits was real, but there was also a need for guided assistance in
trying to reevaluate structures and strategies while at the same time meeting the emotional and
mental health needs of both staff and clients (Deitrick et al., 2020). Of the 151 organizations
surveyed by Tyndale House Foundation (2020), 90% of Christian workers worked in countries
where government mandates during COVID-19 forced organizations to adjust their daily
operations. Social distancing, closed borders, lockdowns, and government-imposed restrictions
were some of the most challenging impacts on the organizational staff and clients (Tyndale
House Foundation, 2020).
Another significant disruption during the pandemic was a global online work and
education environment. Nonprofit organizations worldwide had to shift all their programs online
(Deitrick et al., 2020; Maher et al., 2020; Tyndale House Foundation, 2020). According to a
CNBC article published on April 29, 2020, an estimated 21 million Americans did not have
internet access (Connley et al., 2020). In a study done in Turkey of local nonprofits using
distance learning during COVID-19, Balkar (2022) found that organizations were made more
19

aware of digital inequalities in their countries. In nations around the globe, the abrupt move to
online programs, especially in education, revealed a lack of internet access and a deficit in the
foundational knowledge of technology (Azhari & Fajri, 2021; Ennam, 2021; Williamson et al.,
2020).
Organizational Change Due to COVID-19
With all of this increasingly fast-paced change, organizational change, too, was imminent
due to the pandemic. Gomes (2009) defined organizational change as resolving a resolute need
within the organization. The leaders’ communication strategy of change would be a determining
factor in the attrition or retention of organizational workers (Li et al., 2021). Employee trust is
vital to organizational change (Men et al., 2020) because employees’ trust in the organization
impacts their openness to and support of changes the leadership makes. The tension comes from
the separate focus on management and the employees. Management is concerned with the
effectiveness of change and making sure they, as an organization, take the appropriate steps to
see success. However, employees are more concerned with the consequences of change and how
it will impact their specific job roles (Gomes, 2009).
The global impact of the pandemic seems to have sped up the inevitable organizational
change among nonprofits. Before 2019, the average annual retirement increase was around 2
million, but there was a 3.2 million person increase in baby boomer retirement between 2019 and
2020 (Fry, 2020a). In their study of 110 nonprofit organizational leaders in Charlotte, North
Carolina, Carman et al. (2010) found that beginning organizational change at that time would
have been beneficial because, in 2022, even without the pandemic, many of those executive
directors would leave the organization. The younger generations of these organizations, in 2010,
were longing for more development and mentorships because they wanted to stay with the
20

organization, or at least in the nonprofit sector (Carman et al., 2010). However, the few
executives who knew of their imminent departure or had a succession plan kept it quiet to avoid
disrupting the organization (Carman et al., 2010).
Due to the rise of millennials in the workforce, nonprofits must make organizational
changes to meet the demands of the largest generational population in the world (Fry, 2020b). In
1970 the median age of the workforce was 21.5 years old, and in 2019 it was over 30 years old,
resulting in half of the world’s population at the working age of 25 to 65 years old (Ritchie &
Roser, 2019). In 2016, Generation X peaked, and by 2028, they will outnumber the baby boomer
generation. Millennials, however, will never be outnumbered by the generations before them
(Fry, 2020b). Nonprofits depend on their paid staff but have found competition in the public
sector even though millennials are attracted to nonprofit work (McGinnis Johnson & Ng, 2016).
In their research in 2016, McGinnis Johnson and Ng found that millennials in management
positions were more likely to be influenced by pay to move sectors if they had an advanced
education. In their 2021 study, Gallup estimated that 48% of all workers were actively looking
for a new job due to discontentment in their current roles (Gandhi & Robison, 2021).
Trends in technology are increasing the rate of change (Gilbert et al., 2017). These
changes will impact shorter periods between generations (Gilbert et al., 2017), forcing
organizations to make changes to train and develop ways to stay connected to the younger
generations. According to Gilbert et al. (2017), millennials and generation Z are familiar with an
age where information is almost immediate and rarely vetted for truth or fact. Organizations will
need to recognize that these younger generations may struggle with self-awareness apart from
their virtual community, be generalists with little knowledge of multiple areas, and struggle with
the “soft skills” of in-person relationships, conflict resolution, and critical thinking (Gilbert et al.,
21

2017). However, they have a strong desire to learn, and “their capacity for innovation is strong,
and their entrepreneurial desires could revolutionize the organization” (Gilbert et al., 2017, p.
406).
Why Nonprofit Employment?
Due to the pandemic, change has come speedily in areas that usually progress slower.
There have been social, political, environmental, and personal changes that affect everyone,
including nonprofit workers, specifically those living and working in a cross-cultural context.
Helping others is a powerful recruitment tool and retainer used by nonprofit organizations to hire
employees (Tschirhart et al., 2008). In general, the nonprofit sector attracts workers who are not
interested in high salaries, but, as studies show, nonprofits now have to offer more competitive
salaries to attain qualified candidates (Kuenzi et al., 2021). However, it is essential to remember
that commitment to a nonprofit sector versus choosing to work in a nonprofit sector is not the
same. In the U.S., one-third of those committed to nonprofit work are volunteers, not employees
of the organization (Kuenzi et al., 2021). Many are financially forced to leave the nonprofit
sector for the for-profit industry but maintain a commitment to the mission and vision of the
nonprofit organization.
Calling
When considering the impact COVID-19 has had on international, Christian, and
nonprofit organizations and the life sacrifices by their workers for their faith and beliefs, the
response of these workers is vital to the completion of the organization’s mission and vision.
Flanigan (2010) found that almost half of those who chose to work for a faith-based nonprofit
did so due to their religious beliefs, and two-thirds specified that their choice to join their
nonprofit organization came from their past professional experience. In a quantitative study of
22

186 global Christian nonprofit workers, 32% said God called them to a role (e.g., use of
professional skills), while 30% said God called them, and they serve out of obedience to their
faith (Van Huis, 2017).
Motivation
Motivational factors to remain at a nonprofit organization vary from person to person.
Specifically, with many international, Christian, nonprofit workers raising their financial support,
they are employed by the organization but are also seen as volunteers. A nonprofit volunteer’s
psychological well-being does not always contribute to the worker’s overall organizational
commitment; however, the volunteer’s engagement in work, especially if it challenges and gives
purpose to him, does (Vecina et al., 2013). Leadership is another motivation for people to stay in
the nonprofit sector. For example, distributed leadership in knowing how to communicate with,
relate to, cast vision for, and seek out creative feedback from employees (Ancona et al., 2009) is
a crucial factor in keeping employees motivated. Vecina et al. (2013) found that decentralization
of organizational leadership was a characteristic of organizational support that could strengthen
organizational commitment.
Christian, Cross-Cultural Nonprofit Workers
Although the pandemic impacted Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers, these
workers are no strangers to trauma. A pre-pandemic study looked at traumatic stress in the lives
of cross-cultural workers, attempting to understand the need to implement care in training needed
to send workers to the field (Irvine et al., 2006). The study found that permanent adverse effects
from traumatic stress among cross-cultural workers were significant among the younger
generation of workers (Irvine et al., 2006). Of the 173 workers surveyed, 80.1% had experienced
23

some traumatic stress, and 35% said that their post-traumatic stress had continued for an average
of 10 years (Irvine et al., 2006).
When COVID-19 demanded a global response, organizations themselves were not fully
prepared to support their workers. Missio Nexus (2020) surveyed 63 Christian, cross-cultural
nonprofit organizations in March 2020. They found that 24% of the organizations already had a
contingency plan for their workers, 51% would move their training online, and 66% were
postponing departure for new workers (Missio Nexus, 2020). Forty-five percent of the
organizations were only just putting together a contingency plan, and 70% had, at the onset of
the pandemic, implemented a response team for management and planning (Missio Nexus,
2020). The pandemic ignited organizations’ intentional focus on contingency for their workers.
A resilience study of Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers found that the 892
participants from multiple passport countries, serving in 148 countries, had a common desire for
continual training (Whiteman & Whiteman, 2022). The desire was for the training to focus on
the whole person throughout their careers, empowering them with sustainable skills and
resources to maintain their work (Whiteman & Whiteman, 2022). But, in an ecological survey of
CCWs’ risk and resiliency, Chen (2016) found that organizations needed to consider the context
in which their workers faced risk. The culture and ethos of both the workers’ own culture and the
culture in which they worked could result in spiritual, psychological, emotional, and even
physical harm (Chen, 2016).
Retention of Nonprofit Workers
Ashkenas (2013) stated that as organizations consider their goals and plans for each year,
including implementing change, an annual plan of action steps for managers would benefit the
retention of leaders when organizational changes occur. Hiring recruits with an understanding
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that each new hire would receive intentional investment and growth in multiple areas, including
job skills, knowledge, networking, leadership, and problem solving, would meet retention needs
(Tschirhart et al., 2008) and commitment to the organization.
Pre-pandemic principles and practices for supporting employees during organizational
change were developing long before COVID-19 was a factor in igniting organizational changes.
The approach to change within the organization and how leaders respond to their employees
were vital to retaining workers (Oreg et al., 2011). The reaction of the workers to the change
would determine the success of the change (Oreg et al., 2011), especially in a season of job
uncertainty and psychological distress brought on by a crisis as big as COVID-19. Tschirhart et
al. (2008) suggested employers must show employees how their competence applies to the
organization’s role in maintaining workers. Recognizing the needs and desires of their
employees to grow, gain new skills, and be challenged could be vital to retention.
Christian, cross-cultural nonprofits have retained workers since COVID-19 through a
member care model that has gone virtual (Davis & Baraka, 2022). COVID-19 started a massive
education among member care in regions with limited health care for Christian workers (Davis &
Baraka, 2022). Organizations’ involvement could significantly impact their workers’ quality of
life (Chen, 2016), and recruits were asking specifically about member care availability before
accepting placement (Davis & Baraka, 2022). The core understanding of why member care helps
to retain workers is that it starts with the workers’ relationship with Christ, then moves to an
account of taking responsibility for the challenges one faces, receives accountability from others,
and finally implements care by those who support the work (Davis & Baraka, 2020; Weibe,
2022).
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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers’
personal lives, work, and service countries. They chose to work in this context based on a calling
and are looking for motivation to stay, but the need for change is imminent within their
organizations. The organizations are not ignorant of the need for change but making the wrong
changes could increase workers’ attrition and decrease the number of laborers who will fulfill the
organization’s mission and vision.
Conceptual Framework
The mindset of an organization needs to be one in which the members can push back and
know there is space to question the values seen (or unseen), giving the organization the same
form of assessment that workers receive for fulfilling their roles (Chen, 2016; Mathis, 2011).
This qualitative study examined the commitment of Christian cross-cultural teachers working for
a nonprofit organization in East Asia and MENA to maintain their role in their organization post-
COVID-19.
In the 1920s, Kurt Lewin, a child psychologist, created field theory, or as he called it,
topological psychology (Burnes, 2020), in which he implemented his three-step change model
(Bargal, 2012; Burnes, 2020). In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the theory was developed more
with the key principle of social groups democratically creating change either in their community
or workplace (Bargal, 2012; Burnes, 2020). Lewin’s theory was a tool to resolve conflict (Lewin,
1951). Lewin believed that allowing groups to consider and make decisions for change could
lead to a positive and sustainable outcome, giving those in the group more motivation to
maintain their commitment to the organization (Burnes, 2020). In this study, Lewin’s first step
would determine whether the participants deemed a need for organizational change as an
essential element for decision making. Lewin focused on the social group to consider and be able
26

to make the decisions for change (Burnes, 2020). In the organization where these participants
worked, there was an emphasis on living and working in teams; therefore, this study sought to
use organizational values, such as team, as an advantage to a positive outcome from the
framework.
The three-step change model has a simple look, but it is complex in that it takes
intentionality and planning to implement for the sake of the group and the organization (Burnes,
2020; Schein, 1999). The three steps were labeled initially by Lewin as unfreezing, moving (as in
locomotion), and freezing (Burnes, 2020). However, through the years, the terms have adapted to
unfreezing, moving (or changing), and refreezing (Burnes, 2020), which is how this study uses
the words. The overview of Lewin’s three-step model, as seen in Table 1, consists of the first
step, unfreezing, where Schein’s (1999) cultural assessment will be introduced into the study
framework and used to define the needs of the teachers. The second step, changing, is intended
to be used in future action research to determine what the organization is ready and willing to
change. The final step is refreezing, which implements the organization’s new behaviors, values,
and beliefs and establishes its place within the culture.

27

Table 1
Overview of Lewin’s Three-Step Model
Step Description
Step 1
Unfreezing: Although this first step creates a current for change to begin, it
is seen as a significant challenge at the beginning of the theory of change
because it consists of research and reeducation of both self and the
culture in which a group lives or works. This step is considered
“reeducation” (Bargal, 2012) or “cognitive redefinition” (Schein, 1999)
and comes with a reexamination of the self and the group (Bargal, 2012).
Step 2
Changing: This step is significant in producing action research (Bargal,
2012; Burnes, 2020; Schein, 1999). The outcome of this step is rarely
simple and often depends upon the tension between those seeking change
and those who might be resisting change.
Step 3
Refreezing: The ultimate goal of this process is to stabilize the behaviors,
values, and beliefs lived out among the new changes. The stabilizations
must be reinforced so that regression does not begin.

To apply Lewin’s first step of change theory, unfreezing (Burnes, 2020; Schein, 2009;
Schein & Schein, 2017), I implemented Schein’s (2009) cultural assessment of an organization.
Due to the nature of Lewin’s model, the process of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing is not a
quick cycle and, therefore, starting with an assessment of organizational culture or the shared
perception of the organization’s culture (Schein, 2011) will mean that we are attempting to
unfreeze first. The future steps of changing and refreezing will come after this dissertation
research.
Using Schein’s three-level model of culture (Schein, 2009), insider knowledge of the
organization is attained for future change (Schein, 1990). The primary purpose of using this
conceptual framework was to determine where and how organizational culture needs to be
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addressed for changes to be made, taught to future workers, and to become a part of the values
and beliefs of the organization (Schein & Schein, 2017).
Schein’s three levels of culture (Schein & Schein, 2017) begin with artifacts, which are
items at the organization that can be physically touched and also includes observed behavior
passed down through time and can often be difficult to decipher. In this research, artifacts consist
of the written and understood organizational vision as well as the organizational structures of
both team and leadership. The second level is considered the espoused beliefs, values, and ideals
that saturate the organizational culture. It is possible that the rationalizations found in these
espoused beliefs may not be congruent with the behavior or the artifacts of the organization and
its workers. Beliefs found in this research include theological beliefs, goals of the organization
and the goals of the teams CCWs work on, and the purpose and mission of the organization and
the means taken to fulfill both. Finally, the third level of culture is the underlying assumptions
that go unspoken, are not always observed, but are ingrained in the culture. These assumptions
could be thoughts, feelings, or beliefs that have never come to the surface until they have been
uncovered in this research.
The core concepts of the study use the organizational culture model to engage the
teachers’ perceived organizational culture pre-COVID-19 and what organizational culture looks
like now due to COVID-19. The assumed hope is that future research will follow up with the last
two stages of Lewin’s organizational change model by reviewing the teachers’ perception of the
organization and establishing changes that could influence the teachers’ decisions to maintain
their roles within the organization.
In conclusion, this study sought to discover a depth of understanding of what the
Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers in East Asia and MENA see as Peak Results’ culture
29

and how that culture impacts their commitment to the work. It also attempts to be an instrument
used to produce change, motivating the workers to continue with the mission and vision of the
organization in their current role and country of service.

30

Chapter Three: Methodology
In this qualitative study, I examined the needs of Christian cross-cultural teachers
working for a nonprofit organization in East Asia and MENA to maintain their role in their
organization post-COVID-19. I used the Lewin/Schein change model (Schein, 1999) to seek an
understanding of organizational culture (Schein & Schein, 2017) from the perspective of those
working in this organization, specifically those who worked in China prior to COVID-19. I used
Schein’s three-stage cultural assessment model (Schein & Schein, 2017) to determine the
teachers’ needs to present to the organization. Schein (2009) stated that organizational culture
matters because it drives the mission, vision, and strategies to reach the mission and vision of the
organization. However, every overarching culture also has subcultures, which can be stronger
than the overall organizational culture (Schein, 2009), meaning that the organizational leadership
may need to make changes to align with these subcultures for the retention of the workers. These
subcultures could be brought forward through the artifacts, beliefs, and assumptions found
through the research. A detailed list of the research questions and where they fall Schein’s three
levels of culture (2017) can be found in the appendix. This study focused on the following
research questions:
1. How has the impact of COVID-19 influenced the decisions of Christian cross-cultural
workers in maintaining their organizational roles?
2. What is the interplay between organizational culture factors and the impacts of
COVID-19 on the decision of Christian cross-cultural workers to stay with their
organizations?
3. What cultural assumptions do the workers of this organization hold that need to be
addressed by organizational leadership?
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4. From the workers’ perspective, what adjustments do Christian cross-cultural
organizations need to make to retain their workers?
Site Selection
Peak Results is a Christian cross-cultural nonprofit working in education for over 40
years. The organization started by sending Christian educators to an influential country in East
Asia. Over the past 40 years, they expanded to five other countries in East and Southeast Asia
and, in the past decade, began sending teachers into MENA. The workers are from North
America, with a few exceptions. Most of the workers are teachers, but many are also supporting
spouses who, although not in the classroom as teachers, are key players in the organization’s
mission and vision due to the organizational value of teamwork and living together in a cross-
cultural context.
On the professional side of the organization, all the teachers are trained and accredited
through a U.S.-based private, not-for-profit university with an esteemed English teacher training
program. Most of the teachers in this organization are native English speakers who teach the
English language using various curricula. Upon arrival in their teaching countries, the teachers
teach in an educational institution for one academic year. The teachers are generally placed in
university classrooms with students at the entry level through studying for a Ph.D. All levels of
the English language are present throughout the institutions. Recently, this has shifted to a more
diverse classroom, including K–12 and schools for refugee children. Teachers may be moved to
a different educational institution, or a different city, at the end of each academic year based on
the school’s needs and agreements with local governments.
On the social side of the organization, every worker, single or family unit, raises financial
support to live and teach, although some also receive a small housing allowance or travel stipend
32

from the school or local government. Aside from teaching professionally, workers at the same
institution live in close vicinity to one another and intentionally find ways to live life in a cross-
cultural environment. They purposely take a learner’s posture of gaining knowledge of the
culture by getting to know their students outside of the classroom, learning to live with their
neighbors, and learning the local language.
Population and Sample
The study participants are workers living in East Asia and MENA. At the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant disruption in Peak Results’ workers’ lives, with
many leaving China in January 2020. During the pandemic’s first 2 years, the teachers either
stayed in China, moved to another country while remaining with the organization, or returned to
North America. At the time of this study, they taught online from a neighboring country, taught
online from North America, lived in China and taught both online and in person, or left the
organization entirely.
Whether forced to leave their teaching country or not, every teacher struggled with the
impact of COVID-19. This impact includes those new to the organization who have never
stepped foot into their teaching country and those who have lived and worked in these countries
for over 20 years. Few teachers are not asking what is next. Therefore, the participation criteria
were as follows:
1. A teacher or supporting spouse who began serving with the organization and lived or
served in China before July 2021.
2. A teacher or supporting spouse who is currently questioning their future role with the
organization due to COVID-19’s disruption of life and work.
33

The criteria excluded those new to the organization after COVID-19 disrupted life but still
allowed those who entered the work during COVID-19 but had yet to enter their teaching
country to share their insight. The criteria also eliminate those leaving for the top reasons
workers leave the field: retirement, education, or family matters such as marriage and children
going to college (Missio Nexus, 2019).
I interviewed 15 individuals. I gathered the participants through an investigative process
of collecting names from organizational team leaders and member care specialists who know
which workers meet the criteria. I emailed an invitation to 120 potential participants. I gave each
a thorough description of the purpose of the study, criteria to determine if they could be a part of
the study, and a promise of anonymity. I had 23 positive responses from those who either met all
of the criteria, met most of the criteria, or met the criteria but responded past the deadline. I also
had nine responses from those expressing their interest and thankfulness for receiving the
invitation but did not believe they met the criteria. Table 2 presents the overall research design.

34

Table 2
Research Design Matrix
Research questions Methodological approach Participants and
settings
Data collection
method
How has the impact of
COVID-19 influenced
the decisions of
Christian cross-
cultural workers in
maintaining their
organizational roles?
Qualitative

A constructivist paradigm
will be used to articulate
the study participants’
understanding of their
organizational culture.
Christian cross-
cultural nonprofit
workers

Individual
interviews over
Zoom
Interviews

What is the interplay
between
organizational culture
factors and the
impacts of COVID-19
on the decisions of
Christian cross-
cultural workers to
stay with their
organization?
Qualitative

A constructivist paradigm
will be used to articulate
the study participants’
understanding of their
organizational culture.
Christian cross-
cultural nonprofit
workers

Individual
interviews over
Zoom
Interviews

What cultural
assumptions do the
workers of this
organization hold that
need to be addressed
by organizational
leadership?
Qualitative

A constructivist paradigm
will be used to articulate
the study participants’
understanding of their
organizational culture.
Christian cross-
cultural nonprofit
workers

Individual
interviews over
Zoom
Interviews

From the workers’
perspective, what
adjustments do
Christian cross-
cultural organizations
need to make to retain
their workers?
Qualitative

A constructivist paradigm
will be used to articulate
the study participants’
understanding of their
organizational culture.
Christian cross-
cultural nonprofit
workers

Individual
interviews over
Zoom

Interviews

35

The Participants
In this study, each participant has a story of their own that includes their views of the
organization in which they work, COVID-19’s impact on their lives, and the journey they have
taken over the past 3 years in determining, for the moment, whether they will stay with or leave
their organization. The interviewees, found on Table 3, all served in China prior to 2021 and
have maintained employment with their company throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Some
are currently living and teaching in China, some have chosen to teach in other countries, some
have moved to work in the organization’s North American office, and others are waiting for the
doors to China to be opened to them, so they maintain their teaching roles online.
Worker 1 has worked for Peak Results for almost 16 years. He is currently on home
assignment in North America but has been in the MENA region for 4 years. Prior to teaching in
MENA as both a teacher and team leader, he lived and served in China as a teacher and in the
North American office as a recruiter for 6 years. He has been in the MENA region since pre-
COVID-19, so his interview responses did not align with the other teachers who work in China
and were not used in the overall data analysis. Worker 1 is a single, Caucasian male.
Worker 2 joined Peak Results as a teacher in 2018. She is currently teaching online from
North America. Prior to COVID-19, she was a team leader, which included being the university
liaison for all of the teachers on her team; ensuring that the organizational vision stayed in front
of the teachers; developing and coordinating team building and team community; and keeping
the team updated with organizational information. She held this role for 2 years and is now
serving as a community leader, a role in which she is staying connected online with other
teachers in North America for encouragement and community in addition to the university
liaison, maintaining relationships between the university and the organizational teachers.
36

However, the teachers at her school are no longer on her team. Worker 2 is a single, Caucasian
female.
Worker 3 has been teaching with the company for almost 9 years. She served in China for
5 years and is currently working from North America as an online teacher and a product and
development manager of online classrooms. Worker 3 is a single, Caucasian female.
Worker 4 served as a teacher in China for 3 years and has been working at Peak Results’
North American headquarters for the past 2.5 years. Since leaving China, she works in human
resources, which was her background prior to teaching. Worker 4 is a single, Caucasian female.
Worker 5 has been with the organization for 6 years. She taught in China for 2 and a half
years before COVID-19 hit and forced her to North America to teach online. She is currently
teaching online from SEA/M) and has been waiting to return to China. Worker 5 is a single,
Chinese American female.
Worker 6 is currently living in China and has been serving with Peak Results for over 25
years. While working on her master’s degree, she served in the organization’s home office for 3
years but has been teaching in Chinese universities the rest of the time. She is currently serving
solely as a teacher, but she has held a team leader position in the past. Worker 6 is a single,
Caucasian female.
Worker 7 officially signed up with the organization in 2018 upon marrying her husband,
who was already affiliated with the company. However, she did not begin teaching with the
organization until 2020, first completing a teaching contract with another company in China. She
currently lives and serves as a teacher in China. She is also co-team leader with her husband;
they have held this role for less than a year. Worker 7 is a married, Japanese American female.
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Worker 8 has been serving with the organization for 9 years. She began as a teacher in
China and served both in person and online for 8 years. She also served as the head of member
care for teachers in China for 8 years. In the 2022–2023 academic year, she moved her focus on
member care onto the MENA region of teachers working for the organization. Worker 8 is a
Caucasian female who is married and has children.
Worker 9 has spent most of her adult life in China. She first served with the
organization’s summer teacher program in 2012 and then joined their 1year program in 2013.
She is now in Year 10 of teaching with the organization. She has served as the educators’
advancement advisor for teachers in China since 2019 and is currently teaching students and
advising educators online in the SEA/M region while waiting to return to China. Worker 9 is a
single, Caucasian female.
Worker 10 moved to China is 2019 and left in the spring of 2020 due to COVID. She
served as a co-laborer alongside her husband, who taught both in person and online. She
homeschooled her children in China and the United States while awaiting a return to China. In
the spring of 2021, she and her husband determined that going back to China was not an option
for their family at the time, but neither was living in the United States. They transitioned to a
country in the SEA/M region. Worker 10 is a Caucasian female who is married and has
children).
Worker 11 has been living and teaching in China for 21 years. She is not currently
teaching at a Chinese university but is homeschooling her children while her husband teaches
full-time. However, in the past, she has served as a team leader, an educator’s consultant, and the
educators advancement advisor for China. She and her family are currently living and working in
China. Worker 11 is a Caucasian female who is married and has children.
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Worker 12 originally signed up to join the organization in 2016, but while awaiting his
placement, he married, pushing back his departure by 3 years. He and his wife moved to China in
2019 and served in person for two academic semesters. In 2020, they returned to the United
States, awaiting a return to China while teaching online. However, their return did not look
possible, so, in the 2022 academic year, they pivoted to the SEA/M region. Worker 12 is a
Caucasian male and is married.
Worker 13 has recently completed his 10th year of teaching with Peak Results. He is a
full-time teacher living in China and is currently in his fourth year as a team leader. In addition
to serving as a full-time teacher during the academic year, Worker 13 has taught with the
organization’s summer programs in China and other countries. Worker 13 is a single, Caucasian
male.
Worker 14 signed on with Peak Results as a teacher in 2009. She currently serves as a
full-time teacher living in China. Prior to COVID-19, she oversaw a summer teaching program
and served as an educator’s consultant. At the end of this academic year, she will take on the
Educators Advancement Advisor role from Worker 9. Worker 14 is a single, African American
female.
Worker 15 and his wife have been teaching in China for 17 years. Since COVID-19, he
has been serving as the country supervisor. Before joining Peak Results as a full-time teacher, he
served in the organization’s summer teaching programs. He currently teaches online, and he and
his family are waiting for a door to open to return to China. Worker 15 is a Chinese American
male who is married and has children.

Table 3
Participant Overview
Participant
pseudonym
Gender Ethnicity Years served Marital status Current position Current
region
Worker 1 Male Caucasian 16 Single Teacher/Leader North America
Worker 2 Female Caucasian 5 Single Teacher/Leader North America
Worker 3 Female Caucasian 9 Single Teacher/Leader North America
Worker 4 Female Caucasian 6 Single Leader North America
Worker 5 Female Chinese American 6 Single Teacher SEA/M
Worker 6 Female Caucasian 25 Single Teacher China
Worker 7 Female Japanese American 3 Married Teacher/Leader China
Worker 8 Female Caucasian 9 Married* Leader MENA
Worker 9 Female Caucasian 10 Single Teacher/Leader SEA/M
Worker 10 Female Caucasian 4 Married* Spouse SEA/M
Worker 11 Female Caucasian 21 Married* Teacher/Spouse China
Worker 12 Male Caucasian 7 Married Teacher SEA/M
Worker 13 Male Caucasian 10 Single Teacher/Leader China
Worker 14 Female African American 14 Single Teacher/Leader China
Worker 15 Male Chinese American 17 Married* Teacher/Leader SEA/M

*Indicates married with children.

39
40

Data Collection
I used qualitative research methods to explore the understanding and meaning these
Christian cross-cultural nonprofit workers attribute to the changes they desire to see at the
organization as a means to influence their decision to stay (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Only
one method of data collection was used in this study. Information was inductively gathered
through one-on-one interviews with the workers (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Interviews
The individual interviews were conducted to determine, from the workers’ perspectives,
the organizational culture and what organizational influences keep them in service as well as
what will keep them serving for at least one more academic year. The interviews were used to
collect information to achieve data saturation (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) so that no other
information could be attained from the study participants. The interviews were conducted on
Zoom using Patton’s standardized open-ended interview protocol (Johnson & Christensen,
2015). The interviews were recorded and transcribed for data collection, and I also took
handwritten notes.
Data Analysis
Data analysis began at the onset of the data collection. I took extensive notes during the
interviews and wrote analytic memos after each, reflecting on thoughts, observations (both what
is seen and unseen), questions or concerns, and any possible conclusions that could be attributed
to the conceptual framework or research questions. After interviews were completed, I used
qualitative coding in an attempt to lessen bias (McAlister et al., 2017). The appendix gives an
overview of the questions used in the individual interviews.
Trustworthiness Measures
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To maintain validity in the research, I spoke with the participants about the themes in the
results to determine the accuracy of the findings (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). As Creswell and
Creswell (2018) suggested, I also used descriptive terminology to convey the research findings.
The hope in this measure is to give the stakeholders a deeper understanding of what the findings
are trying to convey from the participants’ perspective. I also had a peer debrief the work and ask
questions for accuracy (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). This person is outside of the organization
but is a supporter of CCWs. She asked questions to clarify understanding and ensure the
accuracy of the interviews. Finally, there is a transparent description of my personal bias because
the same organization employs me as well as the study participants, and I am very closely
acquainted with the personal and professional lives of workers at Peak Results (Creswell &
Creswell, 2018).
To ensure the reliability of the research, every research interview was recorded and
transcribed. Reliability was assessed by the committee examining the work as well as the
participants, and in conjunction with the validation, a thorough and transparent description of my
position and bias (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Ethical Considerations
A study that does not consider ethical codes to protect the participants needs to be
reconsidered (Glesne, 2011). Per Merriam and Tisdell (2016), although federal authorities and
the institutional review board (IRB) provide guidelines for ethics, the researcher’s personal
values also significantly impact the ethical practices performed in the study. In this study, my
values align with the guidelines and requirements of the IRB, and the following actions were
taken to uphold an ethical code of conduct (Glesne, 2011; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
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• Code 1: All study participants were given thorough information as to the purpose of
this study before accepting the invitation to participate.
• Code 2: All study participants could withdraw from the study at any time for any
reason.
• Code 3: I took every precaution to eliminate unnecessary risk for the study
participants, including the possibility of anonymity being compromised.
• Code 4: A pseudonym has been issued for the organization, and only the names of
geographical regions were used. This pseudonym is for the protection of the
organization and the participants.
• Code 5: I sought informed consent to use each study participant’s information.
• Code 6: A promise of confidentiality was given to all participants.
• Code 7: If an ethical issue arises in the research process, I sought advice from the
dissertation committee chair before proceeding to the organization’s head of human
resources.
Role of the Researcher
The participants were not difficult to find, but hesitation in accepting the study invitation
was possible. There is a limitation to the participants’ psychological safety due to my role as the
researcher (Schein, 1999, 2009) because, at the time of the study, I was the regional director for
five countries in East Asia. Although still a member of the organization, I stepped away from the
role of regional director in March 2023. Although they may not all know me personally, the
majority of those invited into the study would know my name or my role, and I needed to
establish trust with them, emphasizing that everything they said would remain anonymous for
this research. Their names were not connected to the data or shared with anyone.
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This study’s foundational philosophy came from a constructivist paradigm where I, as the
researcher, sought the participants’ understanding of the reality they face in terms of the
organizational culture (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I am aware of my
own interpretation of this culture (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) because I have worked for the
same organization and lived in the same region as the participants. Therefore, my role in this
study was to posture my mind (and my heart) to become a learner, be aware of my biases and
seek to understand their perspectives by probing and asking for clarity and interpretation without
assuming I already understood because I identified with them in some areas. Due to similar
work-life experiences, it was also important, , that I formulated questions that were intentionally
ontological, the form and nature of the reality in which they live and work; epistemological, the
relationship between what each of them know and what I know; and axiological, how to best
determine the reality of their understanding (Aliyu et al., 2015; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

44

Chapter Four: Findings
The research questions for this study were designed to gain a better understanding of the
workers’ views on the impact of COVID-19 on themselves, their organization, and their country
of service. They were also designed to gain insight from the workers’ perspective on what
organizational changes need to be made to retain workers. The findings below show reasons
workers joined Peak Results, patterns of the impact of COVID-19 on these workers, and how
COVID-19 has impacted changes in the organization. The findings then distinguish, from the
workers themselves, whether the impacts of COVID -19and the organization’s response to
COVID-19 affected their decisions to maintain their roles in the organization.
Research Question 1: How Has the Impact of COVID-19 Influenced the Decisions of
Christian Cross-Cultural Workers in Maintaining Their Organizational Roles?
The intention of the first research question was to gain an understanding of how COVID-
19 itself impacted these CCWs’ lives and roles. Taking Schein’s definition of artifacts (Schein,
& Schein, 2017), the visible structures of the organization, I determined to look into the life these
workers led while working at the organization and how COVID-19 disrupted those artifacts. To
answer this first question, I looked at the organizational vision, the role of the workers, and how
COVID-19 affected both the vision and the roles.
Artifacts: Organizational Vision
At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, Peak Results’ original vision focused on
raising up disciples among the educated to build more disciple-making communities that would
make a Christ-centered impact on campuses, in cities, and throughout the nations where the
disciples lived, studied, and worked. In fulfilling the vision, CCWs for Peak Results saw the
vision being fulfilled through relationships built within the classroom, on the campuses, and in
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the communities in which they lived. The findings first reveal how the CCWs believed COVID-
19 impacted the organizational vision, a major artifact in the overall structure of Peak Results.
The shifts in vision have occurred in the organization’s desire to be a relationship building
organization as well as the vision for being team centered.
The CCWs believe COVID-19 forced the organization to question the vision by asking
themselves “if they are holding too tightly to certain things.” Peak Results’ CCWs said that the
overall organizational vision did not change due to COVID-19, but instead, it was “adjusted,”
“adapted,” was “reaffirmed,” and had been “implemented” differently to “make us think outside
the box into all the different areas and ask, ‘How can we do this differently?’ or ‘If we cannot do
this specific thing, what are we going to do instead?’”
Some said that COVID-19 “broadened the organizational vision” and made the
organization consider how they taught and interacted with their communities. Worker 2 thought
the impact of COVID-19 was making organizational leadership rethink how they needed to be
creative to continue to move forward and fulfill the mission and vision of the organization.
Worker 2 also believed that part of this creativity in fulfilling the vision was “recognizing that
we can do the kind of work we do, which is loving people and equipping them with good skills
for life, as well as loving them the way Jesus tells us to love people.” Worker 8 expanded on this
belief by saying, “Initially, in early 2020, just switching everything to virtual, whether it was
teaching or training. I think the one thing that did not change was the excellence that was
maintained. But we had a lot of really quick changes.”
When it comes specifically to the vision in China, CCWs who served there felt the impact
on the vision was affected a bit differently than with the whole of the organization. Worker 15, a
leader among CCWs in China, said,
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I think because we have not been able to operate the way we have in our previous 40
years doing work in China, it completely changed everything. We could not have people
in the country, and that changed the vision for how we interact and how we develop
relationships and work with our university partners. We have really had to adjust. I think
it is the same for those who are currently in the country. There are added restrictions on
people; they do not have class in person, and they are still teaching online. COVID did
affect our vision for what we are doing and how we are interacting with people.
The workers serving in China have felt an impact in the implementation of the vision since the
majority of them have been away from the country since February 2020. The impact on
relationships that teachers use to fulfill the vision has been the most difficult for these workers.
Worker 13 said that he has seen the way people implement the vision shift significantly:
People have reaffirmed the importance of connections; reaffirming the relationships
between teachers and students digitally has been a very important way to connect. Some
people don’t know if or when they can return to their campus in person, so continuing
those relationships through technology has been vital for teachers and teams.
Other teachers have felt that reconnecting through relationships digitally has happened, but it is
difficult, and COVID-19 has made them rework their vision. “I don’t think the vision has
changed. We still want to be a witness to our students, but I think how we can be that witness has
changed,” said Worker 5, who also feels that as a teacher, she must question how to reach
students online and what is appropriate since most of their communication is done over WeChat,
China’s main instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app. She said,
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China is very much a relationship-based culture, and some of us have never met any of
our students, so how do we do this? How do we help our vision come to fruition or still
make it work while not being there in person?
Worker 3 felt the vision in China significantly changed because in-person activities with students
on and off campus were not carried out, and it “inhibited our ability to actually build any kind of
meaningful relationship.” She said, however, “When I was teaching online, it was with the
promise of relationships in the future that I felt like I was working toward and trying to keep the
vision in mind with that.” Worker 11 is currently living in China and recently had an experience
when she and her family were traveling, and students knew her husband, their teacher, but he did
not know them:
He was in the classroom for maybe 2 weeks, so he did not recognize these students. He
usually knows his students, but he barely saw them the whole semester. It was sweet that
they recognized him, were brave enough to come up and talk to him and gave him grace
for not recognizing them at first.
One other way in which workers have seen vision change in China is “inter-
organizationally” in the way that communities are created. Worker 7 said, “Our city team models
do not exist here anymore. The way team structure used to be, or even the way pre-field training
happens; all of that has changed.” Currently, the teachers in the organization who serve in China
are divided in three different nations, so the vision of working together as a team with students at
the same school has shifted. Structures that were built in China to maintain the vision pre-
COVID-19 have shifted. According to Worker 9, “These last couple of years have been in some
ways such a chaotic destabilization of every structure that we created in China.” However, when
it comes to vision, Worker 9 believes,
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It has been good to question things, and it has been good to dismantle things and come to
a much firmer understanding of the fact that God loves the Chinese people so much more
than any of us could. But He still invites us in, and I think that is a vision that is so much
more solid than anything I had before COVID.
Worker 8 would affirm Worker 9’s thoughts by saying, “Our organization is really good at
thinking about what is working now and what we see working long-term in places that are harder
to get into to teach.” She added that she believes the success of shifting onto a virtual platform
for this season enticed the organization to consider how to continue working online and teaching
with excellence online in more challenging places.
Artifacts: Roles of CCWs
The Peak Results’ CCWs did not see a major shift in vision due to the impact of COVID-
19, but they did indeed feel an impact on their roles within the organization and in their work as
teachers. The impacts of the roles included being forced to teach in an online classroom, the
parting of in-person relationship building, and the major shift in on-the-ground leadership roles.
Online Teachers
One of the biggest impacts on these CCWs was the fact that they had to move from in-
person teaching to teaching in an online classroom, impacting each of them. The discouragement
in teaching became real among many of the teachers. For instance, Worker 5 lost her passion for
teaching:
I feel like I have kind of lost my passion for teaching. It does not help that I am not live
teaching, and even though I can do office hours or English corners, it is not the same as
being in the classroom or teaching live because I do not have that real time interaction.
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As the passion and joy for teaching began to lessen, there was a theme among these CCWs in
questioning their roles as teachers. For Worker 6, there was a feeling of being less effective as a
teacher and having less fulfillment as a teacher when teaching online versus in person:
I was beginning to question if I should be teaching anymore because I just really felt at a
loss. It was the first time I have really had any negativity about teaching or negativity
about being in China. These 20 plus years it has been such a positive experience for me,
so it was a shock to my system to all of a sudden have negative thoughts about being here
and about teaching. It was a huge thing for me to walk through, and I hope I do not have
to walk through it again this term.
Worker 5 agreed:
I feel like a fake teacher sometimes because I am recording videos, then uploading them
online, and I cannot tell if my students understand what I am teaching or even if they are
completing the activities. … I don’t know what the class looks like or what their
relationship is like … what do I do? How do I make this fun? I am only making
recordings, and I am bored. If I am bored, are they bored? I try to make it more exciting,
but I have lost my excitement to teach. I had much more excitement when I was in the
country. It is hard because it is a lot of computer time and a lot of unknowns. Do they
understand? Am I talking too fast? Am I talking too slow? Is this too hard, or is this too
easy?
Relationship Builders
For other teachers, the role of building relationships inside of the classroom moved
outside of the classroom, making being online difficult. Some felt that communicating only in
online messaging with both students and colleagues was no longer safe. Others felt that
50

connecting with students and colleagues and just building relationships, in general, was
completely reframed. Whether it was teaching from the United States at 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in
the morning, “the way we connected with the school, the way we kind of pioneered a new
campus, all of that was completely changed and made a lot more difficult because of COVID,”
said Worker 7. She also said,
The professional teaching aspect has been made really difficult by COVID. It has
changed the way we do relationships. Because of COVID, our campus was closed for
quite a while, and people who didn’t have a student access card could not come onto
campus, but a lot of our lives, relationally, is in the city with non-student, Chinese people.
And so, we actually had to face this big dilemma of “Do we stay on campus, or do we
plunge into the city and move off campus? What relationships do we pursue?” And that
was a really big challenge.
Worker 14 agreed and said that creativity was necessary to build relationships with students:
Not being able to be in person was huge, and we had to get creative with ways to connect
with our students, but it was not the same as having a meal with a student or inviting
them into your home. There were also a lot of adjustments with the kinds of relationships
that we could build with our students because of the time difference since, due to
COVID, all of their classes moved online. The students were also experiencing burnout
in wanting to engage with their teacher online when they did not have to be in the online
classroom.
On-the-Ground Leadership
Alongside teacher roles, leadership roles, including country leadership, team leadership,
member care, and educator consultants, were impacted by COVID-19. Some of these leaders,
51

including Worker 15, were new to their roles at the onset of the pandemic, and even without the
pandemic, they had “different plans and visions of what this role would look like and what it
would look like to lead inside the country, leading people who are physically in the same country
with me.” However, for Worker 15, as well as others, “I do not have anything to compare it to. I
thought it was going to be one way, but this is all that I know because it is COVID time, and that
is when I started in this role.”
Some team leaders were placed in their positions during COVID-19 and “have never
team led in person.” According to Worker 2,
I’ve rarely, if ever, lived in the same place as any of the people I work with at the
moment. I think it has impacted how I connect with people and what I think about. How
do you connect with people online and be a part of their community when they have a
physically local community as well?
Other leaders were also challenged with how to “foster a team environment when all of my
teammates are in different time zones.” Worker 13 continues to question, “How do I build
community when the only thing seemingly holding us together is our job at a school? We are not
living on the same campus or even in the same sphere of life as we had been before.”
For those TLs currently living in China who are also new to the role, there is a feeling
that it is their job to “deliver relevant information, keep people safe, and keep people healthy.”
Helping workers who are currently living in the country, going through the local changes that
China has implemented and feeling that the organization has allowed “gaps in the orientation,
with no in-country training” adjustment, especially for new teachers to China, has been difficult
for the TLs. “Carrying the weight of all of that and dealing with teachers who have a
tremendously difficult first year has been very difficult,” for TL, Worker 7.
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Within the organization, member care leaders take their role of training up member care
consultants very seriously, and the impact of COVID-19 in shifting the role of member care
training as well as member care consulting with teachers from in-person to online was quite
difficult for the leaders. These member care leaders would host member care consultants twice a
year for training and encouragement, but when things shifted to online, the dynamic of the time
spent together shifted. Worker 8 tears up when talking about the shift in the dynamics,
Those were such important times for us to build community and build solid practices of
caring for people. We continue to train, but instead of twice a year in-person meeting, we
meet every 2 weeks for 40 minutes with the thought in mind that “distance breeds
distrust.” So, in an effort to take away that distrust, we meet every couple of weeks.
She said that, in these bi-weekly meetings, they sought themes that member care consultants saw
with the personnel, they would try to use the time to support one another, and they would add a
training component to each meeting. In the end, Worker 8 felt,
because our team in China was so skilled and had been long-term people, it was a good
collaboration of ideas that worked; they did a really nice job of training each other and
coming alongside each other.
However, member care leaders did feel that for a season, some of the member care consultants
felt it was just another online meeting, and it was hard to maintain a member care focus when
they were not meeting in person. The leaders believe that has now passed, and in the end,
Worker 8 said COVID-19 has led to a realization of “the importance of loving everyone equally
and supporting everyone equally, even when we disagree on how things are being handled, or
opinions on how to stay safe. … We realized that we had to navigate those waters very carefully
as leaders.”
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The teacher working as the educators’ advancement advisor also felt a significant shift
due to the fact that in the 2019–2020 academic year, there was a large team of educator
consultants working together to develop teachers across the country. However, at the beginning
of 2020, when all of the teachers were at an education conference and were informed that they
could not return to China and would have to continue their teaching online, the role of the
educator consultants shifted immediately. Worker 9 remembered,
By about 4 days into our conference, we had heard that the majority of our schools were
going to start online, and we needed to make it work, but I think we had only one teacher
who had ever taught anything online out of about 300 teachers. I remember standing in
front of everybody wondering what we do.
Determining how to address the challenges the teachers faced, including getting access to their
curriculum and textbooks that were all still in China, only published in China, outdated, and not
digitally formatted, was a massive undertaking for Worker 9. “Having to figure out how to
address those challenges was much more than had been described in my job description,” she
recalled. Therefore, the first semester of teaching online, moving teachers to various locations
around the globe and getting them set up as virtual teachers was important, but the quality of
teaching during that semester took a backseat because “everything was in flux,” and that meant
that any teaching was good teaching until the leaders could figure out how to get the teachers
what they needed to do their jobs with excellence.
There was much transition in the educators’ advancement advisor’s role, and by the
spring of 2021, there were only a few educator consultants left. However, the transition was not
just among these consultants; all levels of leadership were transitioning, and for Worker 9, those
working closely with the teachers felt the change:
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For a while, it was like every semester, someone on the level above me was changing,
and so my job changed. It was a lot of transition and a lot of not quite being sure what I
was supposed to be doing for about 3 years.
Impact of COVID-19
The shift in the organizational vision and the roles of the teachers and leaders has indeed
impacted the CCWs and what they would consider the artifacts of the organization. Thirteen of
the CCWs will remain with the organization for the 2023–2024 academic year, and one planned
to leave at the end of the 2022–2023 academic year. There is a continual discerning of whether to
stay with the organization after their next year of teaching. Some of the CCWs said there were
things during COVID-19 that solidified their faithfulness to the organization and that the overall
heart of the organization gave assurance that they were where they were supposed to be, doing
what they were supposed to be doing. For CCWs, such as Worker 5, who are currently waiting to
return to China,
It is helpful to be around other teachers that are in the same position as I am. My current
teammates have also been pre-recording their classes during the whole of the pandemic.
They know how I feel, but they are still pushing through, still loving their students, and
still wanting to go back into country. For me, that is so encouraging because if they have
such a good attitude about it, then I can, too, even though it is hard.
For others, the decision was not about the organization but regarding China itself. Worker
6 came to a crossroads where she determined she would “go back in any way I can, or I am done
with China.” After more than 20 years of living and serving in China, she felt she could not
continue teaching online without an option of returning if the school was not willing to bring
55

people back into the country. But then there was a shift in the opportunities; a school, in
partnership with the organization, began working to help Worker 6 re-enter:
I had to make the transition to a completely new school and a new location. But, from
where I was, I was not willing to keep going the same path I was currently on. So, if they
were willing to do the work to get me back, then I was willing to try for one last hurrah.
For many, there was a spiritual element in their service both to God and to China that influenced
their decision to stay with the organization, contrary to the impact COVID-19 has had on their
lives. Worker 15, who has spent 17 years serving in China, began questioning whether the doors
shut by China meant it was time he and his family moved on:
It made us look in that open-handedness to the Father and say, “Okay, God, what are You
showing us? Is China still the place for us to serve? Are You guiding us out of there
because the doors are closed, or are You continuing to put this on our hearts to move
forward?”
Worker 9’s decision process looked a bit different. After spending almost 2 and a half years in
her parents’ basement, teaching, leading, and being separated from her team and colleagues, she
determined to wait to make a decision about leaving until she was back in community with the
other CCWs:
If you have ever been in that space where you are cleaning an old apartment and halfway
through, you feel so absolutely covered in grime that you just want to give up and cast
everything off and burn it all down, but then you get to the end, and you take a shower,
and you look around, and you think, “Wait a second, this place is clean!” It felt like that.
Worker 9 was grateful that she had made the decision to set aside decision making until she
returned to living in community with her teammates. “I had come to a point where I was solid on
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the fact that my identity in who God created me to be has nothing to do with China. Now I can
go back.”
Even with all of the positives of making decisions to stay with the organization, there are
those who are currently at a crossroads. When a family is involved, the decision to stay or go is
not an individual decision. There are regular questions for Worker 11 of whether to continue:
Perhaps it is burnout for me, or getting close to burnout, that I feel done. I feel done with
this. I am not sure if we are too stale for where the organization is going. Are we trying to
fit into something that we are no longer supposed to fit into? I wonder if I were single if I
would still be here, but that is too impossible to answer.
Worker 11 views the needs of her children and her husband as difficult as well, but feels that
what her husband is going through is not quite the same as her: “I think if it were just my
decision, we would be gone; not because I am unhappy with the organization, I am just tired of
the current life.” Still, for other families, the crossroads is more due to the work in China and
questioning their own loyalty to their Chinese colleagues, their students, and the organization
when relationships in China said they could get them back into the country, but their
commitment to the organization forced them to decline the invitation until the company found a
way for them to enter. After staying faithful to the organization and finally re-entering the
country, Worker 7 feels,
Right now, the big question is, do we keep pursuing this campus where we did not choose
to be placed, in a difficult city, with a difficult team? Do we keep pushing forward
because this is what our organization says, or do we go where people want us and where
we feel at home? These questions are not necessarily caused by COVID, but I do believe
COVID exacerbates them.
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Some workers moved into different roles and countries of service within the organization,
and their decision to stay is in conjunction with the fact they could continue with stability
without having to continue the waiting process. Worker 3 explained,
I was not in a great place, mentally and emotionally, because of how chaotic life had been
the last year and a half. I had to make a decision knowing what I knew. I had originally
decided not to return to China and to end service. And then, I was offered my new role,
and it was the easiest “yes” I have ever made. I love our organization, and I love what we
do, and the fact that I could do what we do, and I could continue working with them with
some consistency and stability was really helpful.
For Worker 12, it was a combination of students and vision that fueled his decision to stay with
the organization, but he struggled with the decision to transition to a different role and country.
We were committed to our students. We were still committed to wanting to care for them,
to love them well, and there were relationships in China that made it difficult to make the
transition to our new country. But I think, because of the organization’s vision and focus,
where the work is takes secondary seat to what the work is. I can mourn not being in
China and make the switch to a new country.
Worker 10 also made the transition to a new country but will be leaving the organization
at the end of the 2022–2023 academic year. The emotional well-being and mental health of her
family has played a major role in the decision to depart. The impact of COVID-19 on her life has
built distrust in the organization, which spurs anxiety and panic attacks upon receiving
communication from within the organization. As she was one of those who were previously in
China, then in North America, she has difficult memories of waiting between moves and believes
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“there are a lot of things we need to step away from to be able to move forward in a healthy
way.” She said,
To have to step away fully feels like a breakup, but to be able to move on from the impact
of COVID, I have felt a complete need for a break, a hard stop in work, in role, in
location, in everything … to be able to move forward towards healing. COVID has
impacted our life in a way that it feels like everything around us constantly reminds me of
how COVID has impacted us. From the sense we were supposed to be in China, and now
we are here. Why did we get here? Because of COVID. It is a daily reminder of the
impact of COVID.
Summary
In summary, the first research question took Schein’s definition of artifacts (Schein &
Schein, 2017) as the visible structures of an organization to determine, from the CCWs
perspective, the impact of COVID-19 on the organizational vision as well as the roles of
organizational workers in China. In the response to this first question, CCWs seem to believe
COVID-19 expanded and adjusted the organizational vision for the better. However, the impact
on roles was more intense, as the workers moved from in-person to online classrooms, and had to
adjust their relationships with students, teams, and leadership. Finally, the overall impact of
COVID-19 on these CCWs created a continuing discernment for the CCWs to reflect on whether
to stay or leave the organization.

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Research Question 2: What Is the Interplay Between Organizational Culture Factors and
the Impacts of COVID-19 on the Decisions of Christian Cross-Cultural Workers to Stay
With Their Organizations?
Schein and Schein (2017) defined organizational culture as “learned patterns of beliefs,
values, assumptions, and behavioral norms that manifest themselves at different levels of
observability” (p. 2). This definition was used in an attempt to answer the second research
question. Therefore, in interviewing the CCWs who live in China and work with Peak Results,
one key element was to comprehend their observations of the organizational culture and how the
impacts of COVID-19 determined their decision to stay with the organization as a whole, not just
in China.
Organizational Culture
The Right Organization
When determining whether to join Peak Results, there emerged patterns of recognized
continued education and professional development, relationships with those who had gone before
them, an organizational value of living and working in community, and an observation of
organizational training with excellence.
Continued Education and Professional Development
Peak Results is an organization that focuses on hiring workers who are educators. Some
of the workers come into the organization with an education or teaching background, while
others are trained to teach upon hiring. The organization partners with multiple universities to
offer continuing education and encourages their workers to further their education in any area
they choose. An emphasis on continued education and professional development has been a part
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of the organization for many years. This emphasis was a key reason for many CCWs to join.
Worker 2 said,
I love their emphasis on the way in which they work with communities. They are about
empowering people with education to reach their goals, and their goal is to see those
people impact people from their own country when one teacher helps one person who is
looking for knowledge, and those people go on to be movers and shakers. I liked the idea
that it was a felt need from the countries where we work, that we were not peddling
something they were not interested in. Instead, we provide quality education, we train our
teachers, we continue development, and we love what we do. Those are the things that
most attracted me.
Worker 7 was attracted by the credentials of the workers: “Everyone who comes into this
organization has credentials, and that was very different from where I previously served. It felt
like there was more opportunity for real longevity in a career in this country.”
Like Worker 7, Worker 14 had a previous organization that she compared with Peak
Results:
My other organization had similar training to this one, but this organization has ongoing
training and opportunities for a master’s degree and even other certificates post-master’s
degree. They have partnerships with schools for a PhD. That was a draw for me, knowing
that I would have the opportunity to have further education and professional growth in
teaching English.
Member Care
In Whiteman’s (2021) study on the desires of cross-cultural workers regarding support
from their organizations, more member care was a leading request. When determining whether
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Peak Results was the right organization for these CCWs, member care was most definitely a
major driver. Worker 3 believed in the commitment of Peak Results to its people:
I felt that, both professionally and spiritually, the organization was committed to people.
It was easy to commit to them because I felt like it was reciprocal. Even the candidate
counselors who work with you at the beginning of the employment process were
awesome and helpful and consistent in calling and caring for me. It was easy to decide.
Worker 6 appreciates the consistency of member care within Peak Results.
The organization having consistent member care people is very important. It is really nice
to have some consistency, especially with a member care person, so there is some history,
and you do not have to fill them in with 25 years [of background].
Worker 7 saw member care at other organizations and was drawn to Peak Results as well:
Member care was a really big incentive. I had not been a part of an organization who
prioritized member care in the specific ways that this organization does. I have seen a lot
of different member care processes throughout my life and was very impressed with this
organization’s approach to member care.
Worker 13 found member care in all areas of the organization:
A key part for me was care. All of the people that I talked to, whether it was candidate
counselors or people who were helping us buy plane tickets or people who were helping
us learn how to connect with financial partners, they all cared about their job because
they knew that it mattered not only for us and our students, but for a bigger purpose. The
way they cared and loved, as well as the academic preparation and excellence piece;
those were how I knew I wanted to jump in with these people. I wanted to do something
that mattered.
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Relationships
Relationships with people who have worked for or had connections with the organization
have also been a major influence in CCWs joining Peak Results. Worker 4 had strong
relationships with Peak Results’ alumni:
When I knew it was time to look at going abroad this [organization] was the first one I
thought of because I trusted the individuals who I knew who had longevity with the
company. I looked at a couple of other organizations, and none of them held even
remotely a match to what I was looking for.
A mentor relationship for Worker 5 influenced her decision, and the legacies left by others have
influenced her commitment to stay:
It really helped that my mentor at the time encouraged me by telling me, in my first year,
the organization would place me on team and set me up for success. I was told the
organization would be with me every step of the way from when I first decided to commit
until I got into the country. It was my first time ever moving to another country and living
away from home, so I needed support, and I really liked that we were not sent alone but
were sent into teams. And even though team was hard, I think it was really helpful to
have been on a team with people who had been there previously; there were legacies.
Worker 15 found relationships during summer short-term experiences but also in relationships
with current workers:
Seventeen years ago, we knew that China was where we wanted to be and felt like God
was calling us here, so we started looking at multiple organizations. There were a couple
of things that helped us land with this organization. One was previous experience with
them, but also knowing well a teacher and leader in the organization was significant. We
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knew him, had heard his stories, and talked with him, and just felt good about the
organization. It helped to know somebody. We knew his quality, and if he put his stamp
of approval on the organization and he had been there a few years, that was a factor to
consider.
Team
One of the core values of Peak Results is working in community on teams, living and
working together to fulfill their overall vision. For Workers 6 and 14, community and team were
also a main reason to join this organization. However, for Worker 6, it took a little more
convincing:
I interviewed with a wide variety of different organizations, and one distinctive of the
organization that I am with is that it is team focused. That was the convincing factor for
me as a single. At first, I felt like our organization was a little bit more of a Cadillac
version of a sending organization, and I did not need all those bells and whistles.
However, when I heard about some of the other organizations when it came to team, it
made me reconsider. I decided to stick with this organization, and I have not regretted it.
Team is not always hunky-dory; there are sometimes challenges, but that sharpens us,
and we can grow, even though I do not always like to grow.
Recognizing that being independent was not her desire, Worker 14 said,
Knowing that I would have the opportunity to further my education and professional
growth in teaching English in addition to the opportunity to serve with a team. I knew I
did not want to come as an independent teacher, but I wanted to work in community and
have professional development support and be able to get a master’s degree.
Training
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As seen previously, continuing education and professional development contributed to
joining Peak Results. However, continued internal training and the quality with which that
training is conducted also made a major impact on the decision to join the organization. Worker
2 felt she needed the training due to a lack of experience:
I really loved that there was professional development and training. I appreciated that I
could step into a field where I could work and learn, knowing I had a lot of theoretical
knowledge but not a lot of applicable knowledge when I came out of college.
A taste of training during the organization’s summer programs impacted Worker 3.
[While in college] I did some teaching programs in the summer with the organization,
and I loved how they trained us. Even for a summer program, I felt the training was very
comprehensive, and they provided me with so many good resources; I felt like they took
care of us and cast a vision for what team could be like and what real cultural
understanding could look like. And even though you cannot do much in 5 weeks, I felt
like the organization was able to give a good vision for what it would be like long-term.
After the summer was over, all I wanted to do was come back.
Worker 13 identifies with Worker 3’s summer program training influence:
I ended up doing a summer program, and then the next year, I did it again. Seeing the
vision of what these people do in the summer, the way that they equipped the short-term
teachers to teach well, the energy and the effort that the leadership put into training
people who were only there for 4 or 5 weeks was really purposeful. Knowing they did
this much for summer programs, I thought, “I’m sure these people want to be excellent
teachers, and they want to equip their teachers to teach well.” That spoke for itself
educationally and academically.
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The impact of training and teaching with excellence both short and long term impacted Worker
15’s decision to join Peak Results:
I spent a summer teaching with the organization, and I was impressed with how they
trained. Logistically and systematically; how we had things organized and done; there
was quality about it. It was not just a hodgepodge thing for summer teachers, but there
was a focus on, specifically, training to teach in universities. And I appreciated that focus
on teaching. It was not a cover, but it was an emphasis that you are actually here to teach
and do this well. I really resonated with the idea that whatever we do needs to be done
with excellence. Because [emphasis added] we are believers, we should be held to a
higher standard, not the opposite. We should not cheapen our work, and I felt the
organization did a really good job at making sure that did not happen.
Reasons to Depart
There were thoughts on whether COVID-19 could actually impact the determination of a
CCW to leave Peak Results. In these results, we see that familial issues (both immediate and
extended) and finances were significant reasons they would depart the organization. Other issues,
such as changes in organizational values of vision and focus, leadership decisions and
communication, doctrine and theology, member care, and team would be a reason to consider
departing from the organization. Finally, there was the thought of transitioning to a new country
of service or the possibility of China closing its doors once again.
Family and Health
One of the top reasons for people leaving the field is family (Missio Nexus, 2019), and
although the CCWs who participated in this research have not had to leave due to family issues,
the majority brought up family as the reason they would depart from the organization and the
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work in front of them. The issues that were addressed in the data collection were both significant
to the needs of their immediate families as well as their extended families, especially aging
parents. For example, Worker 8 has extended family and an adult child living in the United
States while she and her husband were abroad, “If something tragic happened to family at home
we would need to leave for a time.” The same was true for Worker 14 and Worker 15. Both have
aging parents, and “their health is the primary reason” they would depart. Worker 15 reflects,
Even recently, my parents are talking about moving to an assisted living home, and I’m
thinking, “Oh my gosh! Is this time?” I knew it would probably be one of the biggest
things to pull us off, having to be home with my parents. Seventeen years ago, we never
thought we were going to be here this long, and when your parents are healthy, you do
not really think about these things. I do not know what it looks like, and it weighs heavy
on me; it is always in the back of my mind, ‘What happens if my parents get sick and we
need to get back?’
There are also the needs of immediate families, especially with growing children, who are a
major influence on a decision to depart the organization, even if only for a season. Worker 11
has children in high school who were born and raised in East Asia. The oldest will be heading to
college in 2 years, and “his ideal world is that we are in America for a senior year of high school
and his freshman year of college.” However, with her family’s commitment to the university in
which they live and work in China, it would cause tension:
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be there for the spring semester of his senior year and the
fall semester of his freshman year of college? But to the school, that stinks. Our
university would be like, “Are you kidding me?” It would cause problems with visas, so
we cannot just do something like that. We have to be considerate.
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But Worker 11’s woes with her children do not just stop there. She has another child who has
always had a sibling around, and when they return to China after leaving the oldest at school,
they bring him back “quite possibly into no social life:”
We are not expecting any foreign families [coming into their city or onto their campus]
for potential friends for him, people to socialize with. And Chinese kids, well, that is not
going to happen because, above the age of 11 or 12, it is pretty hard to have friends
around. So, I do not know if I want to bring my child into that; set him up for loneliness. I
do not know what to do; that is a big deal for me.
In addition to family matters and concerns, one’s health is another reason these CCWs
foresee a potential departure. Worker 10 reveals that her mental and emotional health, as well as
that of her family, are why she is leaving. “There is a lot to work toward for healing. I think it is
difficult to try and continue in something when I know we are not in a healthy spot.” Worker 12
expects a major factor for leaving the organization and the work to be a medical reason. And
Worker 8 agreed that an unknown health concern might force their exit:
Recently someone asked, “How long are you going to be here?” We are here. We have no
intention of leaving, but we know that, especially in the last 3 years, we have to hold
things loosely, and so, even in that commitment, we say, “Lord, we trust You, and we
trust that You are going to bring us to where we need to be.”
Finances
Pedrosa et al. (2020) and Pietromonaco and Overall (2021) noted that finances were a
key stressor during COVID-19. Peak Results’ CCWs also found this to be true, making finances
another possibility for departure. The majority of CCWs working with nonprofit organizations
are required to raise their own funding to live and work abroad. Worker 13 feels he has been
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taken care of financially but knows, “for some people, finances are an issue.” For example, for
Worker 5, finances are an added stress and a reason not to continue in the work:
I would say support raising has been really hard, especially since I have not been in-
country. I am thankful that most supporters are understanding, and they have continued to
give, but thinking about the costs of living overseas and then thinking about plane tickets
and visas. … It is a lot of money. I think for me asking people to support me is something
I still struggle with. It’s hard.
Worker 5 joined Peak Results directly after college and lived in China for 2 years prior to
moving back to the Unites States due to the pandemic. She has been teaching online from her
home country for the majority of her 6 years as a teacher. However, other CCWs have had more
professional experience prior to working with this nonprofit organization, and finances are still a
major impact for their departure. Worker 4 had years of work experience and longevity prior to
working with Peak Results, “I could definitely be making a lot more money elsewhere.”
Although finances would be a major reason to leave, she stayed because she is “committed to
living with a little bit less and making choices so I can survive on less money because I am
passionate about what we do.” For Worker 14, however, finances are a possible reason for
departure as she “prepares for life after this.” She has certain things in place but would like to be
a “bit more established in America.” While she could return to her parents’ home, it is not her
desire to be a burden on her parents due to the choices she has made as a CCW:
I think it is just that time of my life, in my mid-forties, and trying to figure out how to be
there for my family. And then also, as a single woman, trying to put things in place so
that I can take care of myself and be helpful. Thankfully, my parents do not actually need
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anything from me except for me to be around, but I would still like to be able to be
supportive.
Organizational Vision and Focus
Vision and focus on the vision are important to the CCWs as they work toward fulfilling
what they signed up to be a part of. Worker 12 would consider leaving the organization if there
were a “massive shift in doctrine” or he felt something “was not doctrinally sound.” In addition,
if Worker 3 felt like the vision had “shifted and is carrying out something different than what I
originally signed up for,” or as Worker 13 expresses, “a really big change in direction that was
too sudden or too radical,” were guiding the organization, these workers would consider the
shifts vital enough for departure. Specifically, Worker 6 would consider departure from the
organization if she were unable to build relationships and go deeper with her students:
You can do things online, but it is just not the same as having lunch together and then
going deeper into what is happening. Chatting online with everything monitored zapped
the joy. [Conversations with students are] such a big motivator and encouragement to me
when you have the option to be in people’s lives and share. If I can’t do that, I feel like
this feels empty.
For Worker 7, the vision of the organization is important, but she feels the organizational
vision can be a tension with the personal vision of the workers, “They need people to help make
the vision function, but we are also individual people with our own vision, and so, maybe feeling
that this was out of balance, would be a reason to leave.” Worker 7 feels that the vision of the
organization and her personal vision are currently in balance but admits that it “was a concern” at
the beginning of the pandemic. Worker 15 would take time to consider looking for a new
organization if the “alignment” of his passions and the purpose, mission, and vision of the
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organization were off: “If there was a huge shift from our work with education and universities, a
huge identity shift, that would affect my decision to stay.” He added that the location of the work
also plays a role in his decision to stay with the organization: “The fact that we remain fixed in a
certain geography of the world, this 10/40 window, and in focusing on the unreached and the
unengaged is what keeps me aligned with the purpose, mission, and vision.”
Leadership Decisions and Communication
The leadership decisions in an organization and “how they choose to represent those,”
according to Worker 2, are very important to CCWs in Peak Results. In fact, it is important to
Worker 3 that “consistent miscommunication” would affect her decision to stay with the
organization. She said,
But I think it would have to be over a pretty long-term period of time. As long as the
organization stays consistent and innovative within the vision stated, then it is pretty easy
to continue to say I can deal with the hurdles we have to jump.
For Worker 7, however, it was not just the communication of leadership, but being unable to
make her own decisions as a person and the fact that decisions are made from a distance, could
cause her to leave the organization.
When we were tossing around the idea of moving off campus because of COVID, we had
to go through this big ring of asking for permission from people who were not even in
this country. Although the ladder of authority is something that makes me feel
comfortable, it was difficult for me because I felt like people did not understand what we
were going through here, living here full-time. Still, having to go through these
authorities who we had not talked to in a really long time, who could not understand how
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we were dealing with being here, and still needing their approval. … If that type of thing
got to be too much over too long a period of time, I think that would be a struggle for us.
Member Care
Member care was brought up as a reason for joining the organization, but for Worker 8, if
the organization “veered from the importance of member care” and if “we lost a voice for
member care,” it would be the number one reason she would leave. Worker 7 stated that she had
spent most of her life watching member care in other organizations and, upon joining Peak
Results, was sincerely impressed with the way member care was played out in the organization.
However, after living and working in China during the pandemic, she feels that a possible reason
for departure would be “consistently seeing people being sent into a situation with no safeguards
in place.” From Worker 7’s perspective, member care is essential in this time of crisis and at this
point:
The people we have been able to talk to, friends who are longtime teachers, who have
recently come back, feel it is kind of like we get encouraged and taken care of prior to
departure, when we are still in our passport country, and then we get dropped in China
and it is kind of like, “Okay, fly!” And I think that has been really unhealthy for a lot of
people.
She does not want to come across as though she is being critical of the way things have happened
because she is well aware and understands that “it has been a lot of flying blind for everybody.”
However, if these things are brought to awareness but not addressed over a long period of time,
in the heart of member care, it would be a concern for her.

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Team
The value of team looks different for these CCWs, but the lack of a team that meets their
needs has been stated to be a significant reason for departure for some. Worker 4 has a very good
and healthy working situation in the organization’s headquarters since transitioning there from
China. In fact, she enjoys it so much that she would feel working for a different leader would be
a challenge, and if her current leadership were to depart, she may not be far behind: “It would not
be like, ‘If he goes, I go,’ but I would definitely have to reevaluate things because he has given
me so much agency and freedom to thrive in my role.” From a different perspective of team,
Worker 5, who is still teaching online and working in a cross-cultural context, also said that a
new team could be a main reason for her departure from the organization:
I have been on some pretty rough teams, and I feel like if I am on another hard team
situation again, I would be really tired, really exhausted and feeling like, “Okay, I think I
need to either talk to leadership again about team,” or just be like, “Maybe this is it. This
is the final straw.”
Worker 10, who decided to leave the organization at the end of the academic year, revealed that
team has also played a significant role in her decision. She needs to find time, space, and
capacity to pour into people who can actually connect with her in the same stage of life, not only
with young people half her age:
For example, something that I have been experiencing here as a family on a team with
younger singles is that I am looking for a relationship and connection with other moms,
women who are my age, and I don’t feel like I have the time or the capacity to seek those
relationships out in other avenues. I feel like my team is the only people that I have time
for. When we first came to China, we needed the team, we needed the hand-holding, we
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needed connections. But I think as we have grown and as we have become more
comfortable, I now need other things outside of the organization than what my team can
provide. That has been one of the things where it started out as something that we really
needed and wanted, but now it does not feel like there is a lot of room to be able to let go.
We have other things where it’s like, “Okay, well, this is supposed to be my people,” and
they are, to an extent. However, on some levels, there is not a lot of connection because I
am twice their age, and I am with kids all day long.
Worker 10 clarified that her needs for team as well as other of the organization’s core values
have changed:
Fundamentally, our family’s needs are different than what the organization provides now.
When we first started, our need for the core things of the organization are no longer what
we need. This causes us to think maybe it is not a good fit anymore. Our needs have
changed; at the beginning, we needed it all, but it does not feel like we need the
organization as we become more comfortable here.
Transition, Continuing Education and Closing Doors
The pandemic made an impact on placement and transition for many of the CCWs living
in China working with Peak Results. The impact has affected each of the CCWs differently, but
they have also created a sincere response to the probable departure from the organization. For
Worker 10, the transition made a deeper impact on her than she expected:
I think a main factor for me was the expectation that we could pick up our life in China
and move it to a different location and that it would be exactly the same. I knew that the
reality of it being exactly the same was pretty low, but I did not think I understood how
different it would feel; that it would be an easy thing to just shift and not have other
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things causing difficulty when we had been called to one place specifically. It was not as
easy of a shift as I thought it would be.
For those still in China and waiting to return to China, the thought of doors closing once
again to both the classroom and the country is a major deterrent to remaining with the
organization in the future. Worker 6 does not want to teach online again, and if she is forced to
go back online long-term, it will affect her decision to stay. “I just do not want to do that for the
rest of my life. It feels so much less effective, and like half of the work is not really happening
the way it used to.” The thought of not being able to return to China and teaching online from
outside of the country due to closed doors is a factor for Worker 5 to consider departing:
Just not knowing what could happen. I mean, they say we can get into the country,
hopefully, by fall. But what if suddenly something changes, and then the border closes?
And it is like, “Oh my gosh! We are doing this again. We are going to be online again,
aren’t we?” I do not want to do that.
Still, for others, they want to continue teaching, whether online or in person, but a continuing
education and professional development opportunity would take them away. Worker 2 would
take a year off to get a master’s degree if the opportunity arose but would most likely return to
the organization. Worker 9 is currently exploring more professional training; however, she is
unsure of whether expanding her professional skills would actually take her away from the
organization:
I do not know if it will be something that would be worth taking time away to pursue in
person or if there is an online version that would meet my needs and feel worth it. I think
there is that desire to connect with the broader community of English teaching. I feel like,
at times, it is possible to get very insular and do things our way and train from within, and
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there are totally good things about that, too, and it is important. But I feel the need for
more external perspectives in my own teaching.
Spiritual
As seen in the literature review, “calling” has a significant impact on the decision of
workers to join nonprofit organizations (Flanigan, 2010; Van Huis, 2017). And with CCWs,
there is a significant dependence on their calling, and, as Worker 2 said, they would need to feel
“strongly from the Lord that it was time to be done, or there was something else I needed to be
doing.” Worker 13 added that he would stay with the organization until he hears from the Lord
that it is time to go, and therefore, even with the difficulties brought on by COVID-19:
Sometimes you have got to dig your heels in and say, “These are the people and the
resources that I am surrounded with. How can we improve the situation with an
organization or a place?” But, in many ways, whatever step is next, I feel like I want to
be led towards something by the Father and not just go my own direction or try to get
away from something.
Worker 15 believes that, when it is time to leave the organization, God will clearly show him:
I honestly do not know what that looks like, but I feel like we have said for the past 17
years, “God clearly called us overseas to China into this work.” We are confident in that
and knew at the time this is where he was shifting us. When the time comes to go back,
He will make it clear.
Interplay Between COVID-19 and Organizational Culture
Some research participants stated that COVID-19 was not a factor in their decision to
stay with the organization; in fact, for some, including Worker 8, they were “not going to let a
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virus change our calling.” Others, such as Worker 3, said that the organization itself did not have
a role to play in the decision:
My decision to come back was not anything because of the organization. It was more sort
of the circumstances of what was going on and how I felt and what I needed and what I
felt like my capacity for more ambiguity was.
Worker 4 agreed with Worker 3 and added, “To be asked to work full-time with people who
understood what it meant to be displaced in that semester was kind of what I clung to in the
moment.” The values of organizational culture were shown in making an impact on their
decisions. Even if they do not see the impact of COVID-19 on themselves and the impact it made
in their decision to stay or go, organizational culture and the organization’s response to COVID-
19 have played a role in the decision of these CCWs. At first, for Worker 5, the organization’s
positive response actually frustrated her. There were moments when she felt, “Leadership is
really too optimistic about this right now.” She was frustrated by the fact that leadership
continued to say, “We are going back,” but they still were not back, and there was fear because,
at her current life stage, “I don’t know what else there is. I have only done this work, and to think
about not going back seems really strange.” However, Worker 5 did not have any strong desire to
do anything else, and nothing was keeping her in North America, so she determined that it was
not time to end her contract. In the moment, she was frustrated with the hope and positivity being
shared by the organization, but now, as she awaits entry into China, she feels the organizational
leaders had a right to be hopeful and sees herself as too pessimistic.
Worker 13, who is currently living in China, said that he did not see other organizations
handle well the problems that COVID-19 threw their way, and in a mess like the pandemic,
challenge comes, and the response “really shows the foundation of the organization as well as
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their leadership.” When it came down to it, he believes the organization began to question,
“What do they value? How do they live and work? And when the rubber hits the road, how do
they manage or handle a crisis?” Worker 13 said that there was most likely a range of responses
from other organizations, but
I have been really proud of our organization and how they have led to the best of their
ability. They did not just keep things the same, but each year of the pandemic, in each
season of the pandemic, they adjusted the plan for the different places where we work. In
different areas of the world, there are different focuses and different possibilities or
limitations, depending on the situation. But we were encouraged, from the president of
the organization all the way down to team leaders, in trying to navigate this new way of
life, wherever we were located.
Although he has transitioned to a different country, Worker 12 affirmed Worker 13’s
perspective on the organization’s response to COVID-19. He does not deny that there were times
when the organization made knee-jerk responses and, looking back, have to question why they
made that decision, but “everybody was literally just trying to figure out how to do anything, let
alone everything. I think through that, the organization learned a lot.” However, Worker 12
believes “it comes back to that core commitment of what the organization wants to do through its
vision, purpose, and its mission.” He does not believe that the organization could have done any
better in the moment it was in, and he cannot change the past, so he hopes that both he and the
organization are taking a learner’s posture, learning from the past and moving into the future.
As for the future, Worker 12 believes that COVID-19 has forced the organization to
consider new approaches to facilitating placement and relationships in new countries with new
schools, but it will boil down to one main question, “What are the ways that we can still meet the
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requirements and intent of the organization?” Currently, he does not see any major problems
operationally from COVID-19, but he believes there will be objections in the future to decisions
made by organizational leadership; however, even if he does object to, or wish the organization
would have done things differently, “We are going to press the button, and we are going to grab
our crayons, and we are going to go through it,” with the organization. In addition to Worker
12’s declaration of decisions being difficult to fully accept, Worker 7 said there is a battle in
“honoring organizational decisions from a ground-level perspective.” At times it feels that
decisions have been made throughout the pandemic without taking the individuals on the ground
into account. But, even with these battles, she too is going to continue working through the
challenge because her desire is “to help so that other people do not experience the same
difficulties.” A positive outcome Worker 7 sees that has been born out of COVID-19 is the
“innovative approach the organization has taken:”
There are a lot of new things being born out of tribulation, and that is such an
encouraging thing to see. As someone on the bottom rungs of the ladder, just seeing the
creativity and dedication of leadership make me feel very protected.
When one considers the organizational culture of Peak Results, Worker 8 said that the
pandemic actually revealed more of the organization’s core values, member care being one that
was emphasized:
I appreciated how our organization cares for its people and has a history of caring for its
people. I think maintaining that will continue to draw us back to our organization because
we have done it well. There is a desire to grow and improve as an organization and as
individuals. I would say that was shown through COVID, just knowing we needed to
show care for our people in unique ways in that season.
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Another core value that was emphasized was the community aspect of the organizational culture.
COVID-19 took away a lot of what Worker 9 said drew her to the organization. When she was
living and working in China, she had team, but when she was in North America teaching online,
“life on life became a once-a-week 45 minute Zoom meeting.” She was removed from people,
and life began to feel artificial, isolated, and the separation from community actually made her
question whether this was worth it.
As an introvert, Worker 9 did not seek out her team or other people in the organization,
and because she had been living in China for so long, she did not have a network in her parents’
hometown that she could reach out to. This made it simple to “spiral into my own thoughts and
to foster animosity and bitterness towards the situation.” However, when the organization
required all online teachers who work for Chinese universities to live and work in Southeast
Asia, the “reengagement with community was such a vital missing piece” to what she had been
missing, especially team, when “you run into each other in the hallways, and you do things
together that lead to really deep spiritual discussions.” In the end, getting out of her own head
and moving back into a community with other CCWs, “has been chaotic in some ways and
brought to the surface some conflict that is probably healthy.”
For Worker 11, the loss of team in China and the expectation of team returning has been
an ebb and flow of emotions: “Sometimes, I feel like I owe it to the organization to be the
bookmark in our story of being in China. Once we get teachers back in, then we can open the
book and start continuing the story again.” However, if there is another outbreak of COVID-19
in the country, she is unsure of how the school will respond, “The school probably does not
know how they will react,” either. With continued uncertainty, Worker 11 has been trying to stay
positive and has been storing furnishings and housewares in an apartment for future teammates:
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“I have been trying to keep stuff because we have no apartments. When people do eventually go
to other schools, they will have nothing in those apartments; we have not had that case for
decades.” After having a city team of 40 people in the past, she anticipates having only two
teammates return in the next academic year, and the school requires that a new foreign teacher
from Russia have the apartment where teammates’ things are stored:
I have been trying to keep stuff here so that people can have something to walk into. All
of a sudden, I am realizing I cannot keep that. I have been grieving over all this stuff I
have been saving and now have to give away. All of this stuff that Chinese people do not
want. You know, books, clothes, deodorant, toasters, etc. I have been keeping these
things because I know it is going to be good for someone to receive them. I need to give
things away, but I feel like I am some sentinel. I am guarding something, but I am
waiting for something more. I am checking the horizon all the time. When will they come
back?
In addition to the physical items that Worker 11 has been holding on to for new and returning
colleagues, she has also been holding on to the organizational value of relationships with the
local people. The relationships she has in her city have kept her going. The city where she lives
has been “for the past couple of years, the most locked down out of all of the schools where we
have people,” and she cannot imagine a new CCW stepping into the dynamic of teaching, doing
life, and building relationships. “Even with my relationships, it has been so hard to meet up with
them. I feel like I have been trying to hold on for the future people that come in.”
Community and team have also been a factor for Worker 15, a leader for the organization
in China, one who has to consider the question of staying or going for both the organization and
his own family. However, he said that the shakeup of the pandemic on the organization and the
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forced examination of whether to stay or go has “given clarity to what we do.” According to
Worker 15, pre-COVID-19, there were almost 300 people working with the organization in
China. Today, there are around 100. Among those previous 300, there were 50 families with
children living and teaching in China pre-COVID-19. Today, the organization has four families
serving China:
So, we went from around 50 families to four, and people who have been there a long,
long time. I think that made us examine ourselves because when you see other people
leaving because of not being able to get back, and what COVID disrupted, it was like,
“Now is it our turn?” Whenever somebody who has been around a long time leaves, you
question, “Okay, maybe it is our turn now if so-and-so is leaving, and they have been
here around 17 years.” And that is what COVID brought up for a lot of us.
Finally, Worker 10, who has moved to another country to serve with the organization but
decided to leave at the end of the next academic year, there is frustrated that COVID-19 did not
give them a chance to finish: “We wanted to finish, and we wanted to be able to have a fair
chance to do this because we had been working so hard up to that point.” However, for the sake
of her family’s health, they decided to transfer to a new country because they “could not have
continued waiting to go back to China:”
I am very thankful this was the decision we were led to make because continuing to wait
would have been very difficult and would have continued to negatively impact my
emotional and mental health. Being stuck in between and being on call, or not knowing
what was up or down.
When all is said and done, though, Worker 10 really does not want COVID-19 to win:
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I do not think that I wanted to feel like COVID took me down and that we would just step
away in a way … having to leave a country we did not really have any ability to say
goodbye to. It felt so unfinished for me and for our family. The impacts of COVID kind
of pulled the rug out from under us, and it actually pushed us to continue even as far as
making this shift.
Summary
In summary, the second research question took Schein and Schein’s (2017) definition of
organizational culture and focused on the learned patterns of belief that are brought to the
forefront of Schein’s three levels of culture the espoused beliefs and values that, for these CCWs
are encompassed in theological beliefs as well as the goals of reaching the purpose and mission
of the organization. To attain the answer to this question, I considered the beliefs behind why the
CCWs chose to work for Peak Results and what beliefs, ideologies, or rationalizations (Schein,
2017) within their personal lives, the organization itself, or the country in which they serve
would result in their departure from the organization.
Research Question 3: What Cultural Assumptions Do the Workers of This Organization
Hold That Need to Be Addressed by Organizational Leadership?
Assumptions about the organization’s culture that impacted CCWs during the COVID-19
pandemic were brought to the surface when participants were asked how organizational changes
have affected them, their personal response to these changes, their own beliefs and values
regarding COVID-19, as well as the way organizational leadership’s response had impacted their
work. The two cultural assumptions that were highlighted throughout the research were a tension
to the response of the identity of the organization as an online or an in-person focused
organization and an assumption that organizational leadership living and working in North
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America view their experience of dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on their lives as the
same as those who lived and worked in China.
Assumptions of Identity
Online Versus “Boots on the Ground”
The identity issues that the CCWs felt tension with during the pandemic were difficult for
some of the participants. When asked how changes in the organization impacted him positively
or negatively, Worker 2 expressed, “I feel like there is a consistent war being waged on the level
of online interaction as to whether or not it is within our identity as an organization.” He said he
observed multiple people at the organization questioning the identity of the teachers who live and
work in China. Therefore, when he hears some say, “We are not online people,” but instead,
“boots-on-the-ground” people, the terminology becomes negative, and there is a tension of
whether the teachers actually need to be in their countries to do their jobs effectively based on
the identity of the organization. As one who returned to China, he does believe it is sometimes
good to have this tension because it has been “helpful in getting many new teachers and
returning personnel” back to their countries of service. He believes that the statements of
“online” versus “boots on the ground,” as well as the questioning of identity, gives people the
ability to remember “what originally attracted them to working with the organization was that
overseas interacting with people feel or, for the new teachers, their first time overseas with the
organization after being told the vision.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Worker 6 was actually glad to be given the choice to
teach online or move to another country, but as time went on, she realized she did not want to go
to another country to teach online or even teach online in China. She said, “I want to teach in the
country I am going to, so there is a prospect of me being able to share face-to-face. I do not want
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to still be online, even in China.” For Worker 6, the organization worked hard to help her get
back into China, even though it meant she would have to move to a new team, a new city, and
receive a new teaching assignment. However, her frustrations came from the fact that even
though she might get back into China, the policies and rules inside the country made her feel as
though she was in-person because “I just was not ready for more online stuff. It’s like, okay, I
am having online team meetings, I am having online conferences, I am having online teaching
and correcting every single day. And oh, my life was too online!”
For Worker 9, taking away the driver of meeting one-on-one with students, loving
students in person, and forcing workers to teach in less than ideal situations forces people to
leave the organization:
When everything they love was taken away, I think it opened the door for them to try
something new. And I have seen that in teammates. I have seen that in friends. It is
always scary when people you love leave. It is heartbreaking. But, to see them walk into
something that aligns with who He [God] made them to be, it is beautiful.
With tension happening among the workers, there was an understanding shown through from
leadership recognizing that being online was “a stressful time for everyone,” and therefore, they
were encouraged, according to Worker 14,
to not try and do all the things you would normally do in a classroom setting but give
yourself grace and give your students grace. Do not be as rigid with some of the things
that you put in place in your class. Try and be more understanding, compassionate, with
students if they are late or if the technology is not working.
The question of going online versus being “boots on the ground” was about relationship
building and what teachers were going to do to connect with students on an online platform.
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Worker 14 believes if some teachers are getting a positive response to connecting with students
online, they should share with other people so that more teachers will be inspired to do the same
thing. Meeting the needs of students is a desire for these teachers, and “COVID had a disrupting
effect on everyone,” said Worker 9, but there are some resources floating around on how to help
students deal with the trauma they have faced during COVID-19. She said that she thinks,
as people step back in person and start to have more one-on-one conversations, talking to
students more regularly, knowing how to be effective ambassadors in the aftermath is
going to be a big thing, and I do not know if we are equipped for it broadly. I am sure
there are people who are ready to jump into it, but I think broadly, we could use some
work.
The China leaders were consistent in giving out reminders to teachers regarding the shift to being
in an online classroom. According to Worker 14, they acknowledged the difficult time it was for
all of the teachers to make shifts in their personal lives as well as their professional lives and
moving from in-person to online teaching was as big of an adjustment for the students as it was
for the teachers:
It is hard with technology to really know how the students are feeling. We have 30 or 40
students on a screen, so just the reminders and the encouragement to consider what is
going on with them, as well as to give yourself some freedom to rest a bit on things you
would normally do in the classroom setting, was needed.
Although the leadership giving encouragement and resources, and training for teaching online
was helpful, Worker 14 laughingly said, “Even though we did not know what we were doing, by
the end, I felt more…I feel [emphasis added] more equipped to teach online, but I do not want to
do that anymore.”
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Living and working within a team or community context is a large part of the identity of
Peak Results’ organizational makeup. Therefore, when COVID-19 forced these workers out of
their countries of service as teachers, it also forced them out of their communal living situations.
Worker 14 believes that the organization recognized the difficulty of people living and working
from their passport countries, and so they “tried to adjust to what people needed” by sending
people to live in Southeast Asia in a team community while teaching online in China, but even
then, for other teachers such as Worker 5,
The online life not sustainable. Teaching, being online, having team online while also
living in the States or even living in SEA/M is almost having a double life. I do not know
how to balance both.
One thing that Worker 14 also saw from the organization was examples of encouraging people to
live in the same state or country to build community there.
For example, there was a group of people who lived in New York together, and so they
developed that community and, of course, they had to adjust team leaders and educator
advisors, and they had to flex with who was doing what because of where the people
were and who they were with; the opportunities in front of them also changed. Giving
people space to do things with different communities in New York in addition to being
together as a New York team was good, but they were also with their other team in
China. So, they had to adjust to the needs of those people.
But there were also full teams that came from China to North America who chose to move to the
same location and live and work together. For example, Worker 14’s team moved to a state in
the mid-western United States. They lived in different homes but were in the same city and had
similar life rhythms together:
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It was just us, so we were all teaching at our campus and connecting with the same group
of students, but also living in a place that was only familiar to one of our teammates. I
think it was still a really good experience for a few months.
In the end, country supervisor, Worker 15, believes that the tension of being online and
determining what the organizational identity truly is has given the organization the opportunities
to “adapt and look at things differently and move forward.” He said that COVID-19 forced the
organization to make changes quickly, and it has “made us realize that we have to be able to
adapt quickly, and we have to be able to adapt carefully.”
“We want to be wise about it, but we also need to be flexible. Because we have learned
that China could just close the door at any moment. It just happens, and you have to be ready,”
but he said that the hard part of these abrupt changes is that people are not ready when change
happens. Worker 15 stated,
They are set in their ways, and they do not see the need to change or instead say, “Hey,
well, it will be back to normal again later,” and they want to go back to those things
because it is such a big disruption. They are still focused on the pre-COVID times and are
waiting to get back to it, so they do not realize that the times have completely changed;
we are never going to go back to that.
Worker 15 also feels the workers in a cross-cultural context, of which he is one, are not ready
when change comes because they are not thinking about it:
Whereas leaders, we are always thinking about change, and we are looking at the bigger
picture. Our people see it as a pretty big thing, but we have been sitting on it for months.
They think we just made the decision yesterday; it is hard for people to see that.
Community: Online Versus In-Person
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Prior to spreading all over the world to teach online, the CCWs in China lived and worked
in teams close together, living in the same buildings and doing life with one another as well as
students. Leaders would meet regularly with team members to talk, and even when there were no
required team meetings, the CCWs would do life together, eat together, play games, shop, meet
students, etc. There was a lot of interaction between leadership and the CCWs as well as with
one another; it was an assumed identity of the organization. However, once things went online,
some of the CCWs, including Worker 10, no longer felt they were part of a community.
I remember one time we had a Zoom call with a number of China teachers and our China
leaders so they could gauge where everyone was when they talked and heard from some
of us. And it was very much like, “We want to hear from you; we have picked out
different people in different life stages.” I remember my husband and I both feeling like,
“Wow! This is what we wanted. This is what we needed.” We want to be able to share
how we are doing or how everything has impacted us, other than our team leader just
sharing for us, because how we really feel could easily get lost. If our team leader did not
tell one of his leaders, then our words did not go up, and it just stopped. I remember
having this call, and we were talked at the whole time. They never stopped to let us share
what we were experiencing. So, that in turn, made me feel like we were only allowed to
have feelings that were positive, and if we were not doing okay, they did not really want
to hear about it because they did not want that to spread to other people. We felt very
isolated in that. I remember thinking, “Wow! We just hung up from this phone call where
we felt we were going to be heard, but I do not think anyone said anything.” We were
talked at the entire time, not scolded, but given information and then the time was up.
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The reality for Worker 10 was that she was not doing very well at the time of the phone call, and
her family was really struggling; however, she did not feel her legitimate feelings of struggle
were something she could share in the online meetings being hosted. Worker 9 felt that the
organizational change of adding more communication and meetings online was a negative
impulse in the midst of the crisis. In the thick of adding online communication resources,
conversely, we took away all of the mechanisms for feedback and reflection. I think I felt
the need for a formal, “Here is how you are improving. Here is where we need to change
things,” but I was not getting that. I felt a lot of the times like that kind of played into the
question, “What am I doing here? Is this actually what is needed?” I felt like I really
needed some feedback.
People were beginning to depart the organization, and the challenges of not being able to be in
person with people to say goodbye as they left were difficult for some of the workers. With his
heart breaking a little bit every time more in his community left, Worker 13 said, “Every
semester got longer, and it put more pressure on people to consider: What am I doing here? Why
am I doing this? Are there better options for me? Is He [God] asking me to do something else?”
For him, being together creates a sense of understanding and commiseration and provides the
ability to celebrate together and overcome challenges together. This can be done digitally, but it
is definitely different when done in person.
Many of the CCWs who went back to North America were not living in community
during the pandemic and, similar to Worker 5, were living “in places that we did not want to be.”
She felt like, as CCWs, they were not encouraged to “lean into a lot of lamenting how COVID
really hit us hard and how it really hurt some of our mental health.” Worker 5 said that she would
have liked to have been in community as she had been in China:
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[to] talk a little bit more about how sad we were feeling; press into those sad feelings
more. And I know we do not want to bring down the mood or anything, but those were
some real feelings; those were some real things that were happening during the time of
COVID. It was not always just, “I’m so happy, or I’m still grateful.” We are, but there
was still a lot of frustration and sadness which were not addressed.
Then there are those like Worker 11, who did not go back to North America but stayed in China
and had to live in a world where everyone was talking about things online she did not
understand, things she knew were good for the CCWs but had to be completely left out. And at
times when she was struggling with being alone, the CCWs in North America or Southeast Asia
were gathering together in person. Her response was “to just kind of pretend like that was not
happening.” It was painful, and although she was happy for those people to meet together, she
did not want to think about it. She lost her community and then was placed in a situation where
community was only online, although she was watching people be together in person, and she
was online because she was in China.
Assumptions of Leadership
The assumptions regarding leadership and the changes made during COVID-19 had both
positive and negative impacts on the CCWs working for Peak Results. There are two sides to
every story. There are many times when Worker 4, formerly a teacher in China, now working in
North America, wants to say, “If you only knew the other side, I think your experience departing
would be different.” She wishes there was more trust in the leadership of the organization. She
said,
Good decisions are being made in light of the big picture, not just the nuance situation. I
wish more people would understand how complex it is. I’m not privy to all the
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information, but I’m privy enough to trust the decisions that are being made with the
bigger picture in mind.
Positive Impacts
For Worker 10, the struggle has been that “no one really knew what to do when COVID-
19 hit; no one had been through a pandemic before.” Her response was to try and take the
information given to her and sit with it for a little while to understand the changes being made,
how it would affect her family and her, and just let it simmer before she moved forward. In light
of the struggles that Worker 10 had, Worker 4 said, “One of the things that the organization does
well is they understand how fluid things are even if that is frustrating and we cannot make
concrete plans because it could all change.” She said that the CCWs must trust that leadership is
tracking the changes and information the best they can. “It is not like information is being
withheld. Sometimes you just don’t know; I had to learn that the hard way living in China. The
lessons I learned the hard way are serving me well now,” and trusting the leadership is doing the
best they can in the moment is vital. Worker 4 moved from China into a role in the North
American office and continues speaking about the organizational leadership:
Through it all, I think the leadership has stayed consistent for the most part. There is a
stability there that they have all been through the fire together. In the season of COVID,
when we all had to work from home, I actually was one of the few who got to come to
the office, and I saw the leadership here every day praying together. Now that I have a
little bit more of a front-row seat, I see the unity within that group; they are willing to go
through the hard stuff together and figure it out along the way. I wish more people had
that knowledge of, “These people are for you,” and “They feel passionately to stick it out
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through some really challenging seasons.” They are not perfect, and they will be first to
admit that, but I have a lot of respect for what they do and the way that they do it.
For those living in China, there is a slow-growing belief that they are not forgotten, and
since the Chinese government has been allowing teachers to return, there is beginning to be an
online community of CCWs inside the country, albeit far away from one another, who can
connect. For Worker 11 and her family, who have been in a city without a team for almost 3
years, finally having a team online in the same time zone and in the same country who
understands what they are going through is a huge positive:
It has helped a lot this academic year that we have in-country community team times
weekly. When three units of us got COVID, basically all within 2 weeks of each other,
we could just kind of laugh about how weird life was all of a sudden and be shocked
alongside each other, online or in our chat group. That helped. I think if we were still
trying to do team where some are in China and some in other countries, having COVID
would have felt lonely. We were going through this tumultuous thing, and although team
members outside of China would have been nice, they were not in the same
befuddlement. What just happened, what is happening now, and what is going to happen
in the future was nice to experience with fellow China workers on a weekly level. The
organization did that for us. With the leadership’s blessing, we were able to connect as a
team in China and have that support together.
The changes within the structure were a positive, as was the provision of resources, workshops
and training sessions for the teachers. For Worker 7, the changes made at the organization have
even had a positive effect on her emotions:
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It has shown leadership’s dedication to us and to the places that we serve. When no one
knows what direction is up, but you feel like your leaders are continually trying to find
it…as an ‘on-the-ground’ person, that makes me feel safe. So, I am reassured of the
vision and the passion of our organization. That is a positive.
The positive response has had a bit of an ebb and flow throughout the seasons of COVID-
19, however. Worker 13 said that at the beginning of 2020, everyone was trying to figure out
what was going on while things were getting worse in China, and the world was watching,
unsure of what was happening. However, when the new semester started, no one knew what to
do or how to teach, so the way that leadership communicated on a weekly basis was really
helpful. Then, as things spread, and the rest of the world started having issues and outbreaks of
COVID-19 were global, it was no longer just about China, and the leadership had to
communicate differently with every country they worked in:
As things changed and outbreaks ebbed and flowed in various regions, including North
America, every semester seemed a little bit different. Sometimes the leadership was able
to host a conference where we could gather, and at different points in the past few years,
there have been conferences in person where people who were able could come and
gather. There have been digital conferences where people could connect to celebrate as
we begin teaching our semesters virtually. Leadership has tried to not only encourage and
keep people focused and purposeful as we begin, but also, they have tried to equip us
with different resources and online options for how we virtually engage our students well.
As the whole of the organization went through everything at the same time, it felt to
Worker 14 that the leadership “knew they had to adjust and help meet the emotional needs” of
the workers. She felt the conferences, both in person and digital, were “meaningful to help
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people stay connected to people they, we, felt were family who were all of a sudden scattered.”
Keeping people connected and engaged was a significant difference once the organization was
scattered, and Worker 14 thought leadership did “a really good job in the moment of adjusting to
what was going on into how people were feeling.” One example of that was the 2020 account of
George Floyd’s death:
In 2020, when George Floyd was killed, I know that a lot of people had lots of opinions
and feelings about it. But the issues of race relations in our company has been kind of a
background topic. I think it came a bit more to the forefront at that point, and our
company tried to have more conversation and build into, maybe initially, some of the
trainings, and tried to share from the top their perspective on race relations and the
Church, and our view of just people. So, I think that was something positive that started,
not finished. If [George Floyd’s death] had not happened I am not sure if that
conversation would have been brought to the forefront as much as it was, and that is true
for a lot of organizations. Well, there are definitely some companies, like my former
company, who have not paid as much attention. But I am glad that our leadership have
been open to that dialogue more.
Worker 14 said how much she appreciated the flexibility of the organization’s leadership and the
fact they saw we could not keep doing things the same way, “We have to know what our people
need and try to meet those needs. I think I have benefited from those needs.” In agreement with
Worker 14, Worker 15 said that COVID-19 showed the organization what they could not control.
“You could not plan for this; nobody had this in their plans.” From a China leadership
perspective, Worker 15 said that over the past 3 years, they had tried time and again to anticipate
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and guess what might happen next, and if they did address it and make changes according to the
moment, 2 weeks later, it needed to change again:
As I look at leadership and I look at the things we are trying to address, even as an
organization, not just in China, we are doing what we can to address the things at hand
we know. I feel like we have done a good job because those are the things that we
recognize and see. What frustrates people are the things that you do not anticipate, things
you do not even know are going to happen. It is hard to be like, “Oh, we did not address
anything.” Well, we did. It just changed. And so, there is nothing out there that I feel like
is unresolved, nor is there any major thing that we did not address.
Negative Impacts
Even with all of the positives, there has been a negative impact as well. The negative
impact on the CCWs leans toward an assumption that organizational leadership believes they
know and understand what the CCWs have been through. There has begun to be a lack of trust in
the leadership due to the way things have been communicated during the pandemic. For
example, Worker 10 feels disconnected from the organizational leaders because she does not
know them, and they do not know her. Some of this distrust comes from the lack of travel and
connection between the leaders and those who were working in their countries of service. She
recognizes this was not something that could be changed during COVID-19, but it still impacted
her, and she does not remember having this lack of trust pre-COVID-19. Worker 10 said,
I think it was directly related to us not getting from leadership what we needed in the
time of waiting and in the time in between, where we needed someone to say, “Hey, right
now you are not where you are supposed to be, but there are people around you, and in
your geographical location, and you need to dive in there [where you are]. You do not
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need to worry about team scattered all over the place; you need to be with the people
right in front of you.” And so, we felt like everywhere we moved, we could not dive into
the people there because we had team meetings we had to do [online]. It felt like our life
was very organization-centered when we were with other people face-to-face. The
leadership should have been encouraging us to plug into a fellowship. They should have
been encouraging us to get into a small group. Someone should have said, “Hey, you are
probably going to be here for a while. You should find a place to stay.” We were looking
for that, and we did not get it. And so, I think those changes made me start feeling more
negatively affected by the chain of information coming down [from leadership].
Worker 10 said that at the in-person gatherings, those who had been displaced, who had made
complete shifts to new countries, never heard organizational leadership say, “I do not understand
what you have gone through. I do not understand what you are experiencing, but I know that it
would be really difficult if I put myself in your shoes.” Instead, she feels that it was implied that
her faith was lacking if she was not “upbeat and peppy” during the season of difficulty:
To be honest, it was very difficult for me when people in leadership who lived full-time
in North America would say things like, “We are in this together,” and “We are all going
through this” because it felt like it lessened things. I wanted to be like, “Well, no, you’re
not, actually. You are staying in your own home. It is inconvenient for you because you
cannot go to the office.” But, in that particular situation, if I look back from when we had
to leave China to the time we moved to a new country, I never felt like I was understood
by leadership. When we were thinking about stepping away, it felt like I did not have the
faith that I needed to press on.
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Although Worker 10 has been in another country, she said, too, that the “pressing on part” was
being pounded into the people, and there was no space to actually struggle. There have been no
times for sitting in and reflecting on the difficult season that the CCWs in China went through.
For example, when the organization gathered together in early 2023, Worker 10 would have
appreciated something simple:
There are people in this room who walked out of their house 3 years ago and never went
back. And here we all are together again. I do not want a pat on my back or anyone
telling me that I have done a good job, but at least let us sit for a second in the fact that
this has been a 3-year process. Our whole lives have been changed because of this.
People who work in the office and live in North America, their life has changed, too, but
it is not fair to say that it is the same kind of change as those who were in China. It is not
the same kind of difficulty. For me personally, I’m learning to not need that kind of
validation because that is a part of the underlying feeling where I need someone to
validate that. But I think leaders saying, “Hey, it is really hard, and we are all family, and
we are all going through this together” was really difficult to hear over the 18 months we
were in North America. It is not the same. It is not the same.
For CCWs like Worker 11, who still have a heart to teach and serve in China, the
organizational changes gave them a perspective that the leadership’s focus on China has
changed:
I have gotten a sense over the past 2 years that leadership is seeing a shrinking in China
and a swelling in MENA, and at moments I have translated that as “It is time to kind of
give up on China’ a little bit. And I get it, if that is in their thoughts. I do not really know
if that is what they are thinking. I understand why, but it makes me feel more like a
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shriveled relic. I cannot help but think all the time about the holy grail in the Indiana
Jones movie. You have the shriveled old guard who is barely able to stand up. That is
how I visualize myself, like I am guarding something, and if you get a gentle breeze, I am
going to fall over. So, I am glad that leadership is always seeing where we need to go and
what needs to happen. I am glad that we make changes, but it breaks my heart at the same
time. … You know, I did say a “broken heart,” but I also said “relief.” It is good that we
are not just trying to make the same thing work when it is obviously not working.
Sometimes I feel sick to my stomach, and I think it is just that I do not know what this is
going to turn into, and I feel disconnected, very disconnected. I feel left behind.
For Worker 5, the positivity of the leadership during COVID-19 was actually keeping everyone
from focusing on how much COVID-19 really affected them: “I felt like we could have leaned
into a little bit more how it had been really hard.” Even though she has seen good come out of
the changes made, for example, how they can now teach online and can still stay connected to
their students on Zoom, there is still a grief being borne by many who signed up to go to China
but are not there: “Those that have been in China cannot go back. My apartment is still there, and
I cannot pack it up. I have to have other people go and pack up the home that I lived in for 2
years.” In the end, Worker 5 said that she feels that much of the grief has not been addressed:
So, I felt like we did not really lean into a lot of lamenting how COVID really hit us hard
and how it really hurt some of our mental health. A lot of us were not living in
community at that time. We were living with our family or just in places that we did not
want to be. And that was really hard. I think some places, especially where I was in
California, had just extremely strict lockdowns during COVID, and that was really hard. I
felt like we could have talked a little bit more about how sad we were feeling; press into
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those sad feelings more. And I knew we did not want to bring down the mood or
anything, but those were some real feelings. Those were some real things that were
happening during the time of COVID. It was not always just like, “I am so happy, or I am
still grateful,” which we were, but there was still a lot of frustrations and sadness that just
really were not addressed.
Worker 9 agreed with Worker 5 and added that there were waves within the “wait with purpose”
season. There was a campaign for everyone to just “ride this thing out,” but she was frustrated
with the leadership because “it felt like they were trying to create answers when we did not really
know the questions yet. And so, we were jumping and making major life decisions.” Worker 6
did not feel that leadership understood the extent of how extreme and hard things were for people
in China, including the complete lockdowns:
I mean everybody’s mind in Western countries of lockdown is just kind of like… you
know, no one [in Western countries] comes in and puts tape or alarms on your door so
that if you open it, you are in trouble. It is just like there is no concept of what that is like
and what that does to you. … Just not being able to leave.
However, she believes that more compassion has been shared since some of the teachers who are
currently in China could go gather with workers in other countries and share with one another the
difficulties they all had. Worker 6 stated,
In Chinese we say, ‘Xinkule!’ [辛苦了] It is the word that I think of, and it means “you
have eaten bitterness,” and I think that it is true; I cannot deny it. I mean, I feel like a
wimp in some ways to say that, but I have been in China for 25 years, and I have never
before experienced what I have experienced in these last few months, just as far as
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isolation. It feels like a hardship. I have always found joy in my country of service, but
[recently] it has not been fun.
In China with Worker 6 is Worker 7, who said a negative impact was the divided attention the
changes within the organization had brought on.
There is a lot of attention going toward the new and the pioneering. I do not want to say
that we were neglected, but maybe sometimes forgotten. And I think that has been really
tough because decisions for the new that keeps momentum going forward have to
happen, but then I also feel like there have not been decisions made sometimes that are in
favor of the ones who have been left behind. It feels like we are over here in our own
little area. It has been tough to convince myself sometimes that we are seen here. That
takes intention, on my husband’s and my part, convincing ourselves that we are not
forgotten.
Worker 8, who is currently living in another country, believes that China is the scariest
place to work right now, which was not true for her 3 years ago. Because of COVID-19, China is
now a whole new place, and she fears that organizational leadership does not fully grasp that
fact.
I think some people do. I think we do not know what we are sending people into, and I
have some hesitancy. Not that we do not send them, but how do we prepare them to go
back to this country they think they know, and they really don’t know? China was
changing at a rapid rate anyway, and then you throw COVID in there, and we have not
been there for 3 years [except for the few that have been], and it has just changed a lot.
Worker 7 was in quarantine with her husband for 5 weeks, teaching online from a small room,
working full-time and does not remember being checked on once by anyone in leadership. Prior
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to returning to China, she was told, “Do the best you can. Be prepared!” When considering
where they are and the perspective of organizational leadership,
It feels like teaching keeps bouncing around, our curriculum and our schedules are all
over the place, and we move offline and then online and then offline again. And because
there is nothing leadership can do, all they are able to offer us is, “Try to be prepared for
instability. Keep your team alive and do the best you can.” And that is really tough to
hear. Our teammates do not understand why more cannot be done. [My husband and I]
understand, and we trust our leaders, and we know that there is nothing else they can do.
All they can give us is, “Do the best you can,” and it sucks. But we know that it is all they
can give, and they are probably equally as frustrated by it.
Worker 8 wants to support other CCWs in unique ways wherever they are in the world and
whether they are teaching online. She feels one of her roles as an influencer within the
organization is to be an example of “being grateful that there are people behind the scenes that
are thinking through some of the aspects of how to do the work that I do not understand.” She
will continue to be a cheerleader for the leadership even when she does not agree with them:
For example, I felt like going to Southeast Asia with a large chunk of our CCWs was not
a fantastic idea. I definitely thought sending new teachers there 2 years ago, with no
leadership, was a bad idea, and my voice was not heard. That was a little hard, and my
response to that was frustration in that season. But my desire is to care for our people,
and that is everyone’s job in the organization, but that is my number one role in the
organization. I would hope that I had a bigger voice than I did. And so, it was a little bit
disappointing that leaders did not hear me. Was going to Southeast Asia a completely
wrong decision? No. Some really good things have come of that. It has also been really
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hard, and it has also been a hot mess. I just wish I would have had a little more voice in
that.
Summary and Conclusion
Worker 13 has seen leadership doing a good job in the midst of restructuring within the
organization:
Our organization, before this past year, were allowing people to live in their passport
country or try to find another place to settle and teach online. But then, this past year, a
giant group of teachers and their families moved to Southeast Asia, which was wonderful
for their community. To be able to live in community with people to see other students
from similar cultural background as our students here in China, but at the same time, that
changed the leadership structure for those of us who were not in Southeast Asia. In some
ways, I feel like I have more support because there are less layers for me to communicate
with, but in other ways, it seems that I have less support because I do not have that same
group of people I had the previous few years as my leadership.
Worker 15 feels as though leadership has responded well to recognizing that change needs to
happen because the leaders of the organization did not want to come out of the pandemic the
same as they were before the pandemic:
This shake-up should make us better, and it should improve who we are. Systems should
be better, more robust, nimbler than they were pre-COVID. I appreciate that because you
do not want organizational leadership who ignores it and is like, “Oh, we are just going to
wait this out like a storm, and then we can go back to normal.” I do not feel that way
from any of our leaders. The old model is done; we cannot continue that. I hear that a lot,
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and I feel like that helps me feel confident, making changes and decisions that do not go
back to the old way.

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Chapter Five: Recommendations
In Chapter Five, I discuss the findings with a reflection on how the research relates to the
problem of practice stated in Chapter One, and I reflect on how the findings play a key role in the
need for Peak Results to make changes to retain their workers due to the impact of COVID-19 on
the workers’ personal lives, the organization itself, and their country of service. I also reflect on
how the results align with the literature review and Lewin’s theory of change. Next,
recommendations that arose as themes from within the research and how these recommendations
could benefit the overall organization are addressed. Finally, I discuss options for future research
and study for continuing change to meet the mission and vision of Peak Results while retaining
workers in the future of unforeseen global devastation.
Discussion of Findings
The overall purpose of this research was to look at the decisions CCWs at the nonprofit
organization Peak Results face as they consider maintaining their roles within the organization
due to the impact of COVID-19 on themselves, the organization, and their country of service. In
this discussion, I review the impacts of COVID-19 in three specific areas: the personal lives of
Peak Results’ CCWs, the organization Peak Results, and the People’s Republic of China, where
the participants in this study worked pre-COVID-19. I then look at both Lewin and Schein and
the recommendation that an organization should have a mindset of giving space to members for
pushback and assessment (Chen, 2016; Mathis, 2011).
Impact on Personal Lives
The participants’ personal lives were not immune to the psychological and spiritual
impacts of COVID-19 on the rest of the world. In fact, they lived in China pre-COVID-19 and
were in transition since COVID-19 began; some still are. These workers said that the
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psychological and spiritual impacts of COVID-19 are ongoing. For many, after being forced to
leave a life of living communally with a team, they needed more emotional support due to an
increase in loneliness and friendships being distanced wherever they were placed: in North
America, Southeast Asia, MENA, or in China. There was, at times, increased hostility among
these workers due to being distanced from others (Philpot et al., 2021). However, as Roman et al.
(2020) found, the spiritual life of these CCWs played a key role in their resilience. Also, the
findings in the research align with the findings of Whiteman and Whiteman (2022) in the desire
for more training of these workers to focus on the whole person and be empowered with
resources and skills to maintain their work in the midst of trauma and crisis.
Impact on Peak Results
During COVID-19, international nonprofit organizations saw a need to reevaluate their
structures and strategies while trying to meet the mental health needs of their workers (Deitrick
et al., 2020) and a determined need to adjust daily operations in their countries of service
(Tyndale House Foundation, 2020). According to the participants, one of the most significant
disruptions they faced was moving from in-person classroom teaching to online teaching
(Deitrick et al., 2020; Maher et al., 2020; Tyndale House Foundation, 2020). There were also
disruptions due to distorted communication and tension with whether CCWs could actually trust
the leadership in the midst of the pandemic and how it would impact their job roles (Gomes,
2009; Li et al., 2021; Men et al., 2020). One participant determined to end service with Peak
Results at the end of the 2022–2023 academic year. The other 14, however, have considered
reasons to leave the organization if changes that benefit both their role and overall vision for the
work they feel called to are not addressed or not communicated well in the long term. Some of
the changes for retaining the workers included training, communication, leadership,
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accountability, and, most emphatically, member care (Davis & Baraka, 2022; Chen, 2016; Oreg
et al., 2011; Tschirhart et al., 2008; Weibe, 2022).
Impact on China
China, according to prior research, was more prepared to respond to a pandemic such as
COVID-19 (An & Tang, 2020). However, the quarantine, lockdowns, and strict boundaries
government officials put in place (Shaw et al., 2020) had a major impact on the CCWs and the
communities in which they lived. The forced isolation and the cultural compliance with staying
inside (An & Tang, 2020; Chen et al., 2021; Shaw et al., 2020) challenged relationships that
were once face-to-face to go online, making it more difficult for both classroom and societal
relationships. These factors played a key role in the desire for leadership to address the CCWs’
needs because there was a sense that the organization was moving ahead while they were feeling
left behind and unheard.
Lewin and Schein Framework
Kurt Lewin believed that all human systems have a quasi-stationary equilibrium (Bargal,
2012; Burnes, 2020; Schein & Schein, 2017) and that there are constantly forces at work for the
purpose of change, forces at work to keep things as they are, and forces at work to find a
sustained balance (Schein & Schein, 2017). Schein (1999) stated that Lewin believed these
forces were profoundly psychological and were imminent to produce change when the nature of
what had been held for a long time was about to provide information that disrupted what one, or
the group, had valued or cared for.
To intentionally move these steps forward, in the 1940s, Lewin created action research
(Bargalo, 2012; Burnes, 2020), which consisted of (a) a problem solving process, (b) an
interpersonal process, (c) small groups as the principal vehicle of movement; and (d) a reliance
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on evidence-based understanding for decision making (Bargal, 2012). Figure 2 is a
representation of the model framework used in this study. Schein’s model (Schein & Schein,
2017) was used in conjunction with Lewin’s first step of change, unfreezing (Burnes, 2020;
Schein & Schein, 2017). I adapted Figure 2 from Burnes’ (2020) adaptation of Lewin’s change
model by adding Schein’s levels of organizational culture into Lewin’s first step of change. The
purpose of this adaptation is to show the process as intentional, planned out, and cyclical.

Figure 1
Lewin/Schein Model of Change

Note. Adapted from “The origins of Lewin’s three-step model of change,” by B. Burnes, 2020,
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 56(1), pp. 32–59.
(https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886319892685). Copyright 2019 by The Author(s).

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One goal of this research was to look at how the organizational culture was impacted by
COVID-19 based on the CCWs perspective of the artifacts, beliefs, and assumptions. The
research found the CCWs express their views on the artifacts of the organization. These artifacts
include the organizational vision and the structures of the organization. Also noted were the
beliefs they attribute to the foundation of the organization. These beliefs consist of the theology,
the goals, the purpose, and the overall mission of the organization. Finally, also examined were
the assumptions these CCWs have made about the organizational culture which are those values
and beliefs that are often unconscious and taken for granted, but have a determining factor to the
perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of the workers.
Therefore, in the unfreezing stage of the Lewin/Schein model of change (Figure 2) you
will find Schein’s pyramid of organizational culture encompassing artifacts, beliefs, and
assumptions used as a means to identify how the Peak Results CCWs see their organizational
culture. For example, in the findings there was a tension for the CCWs with the impact of
COVID-19 on the organizational culture, specifically on the assumption that they have not been
heard during COVID-19. Findings such as this should lead to the second stage of the
Lewin/Schein model of change (Figure 2) which would include action research in an attempt to
actually change the assumption that they have not been heard. As seen in the recommendations
below this would include building small groups to determine what being heard within the
organization should, or could, entail.
Final Thoughts
My initial assumptions of what this research would produce were actually wrong. I
expected a more negative response from the participants. However, even the one participant who
has chosen to leave the organization after this academic year still said, “It’s not the organization.
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It’s me.” That being said, the personal lives of all of the research participants have been impacted
emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, and professionally. In alignment with the research
done by Whiteman and Whiteman (2022), these CCWs are ready to be heard and need leaders to
recognize they need their whole person connected with, not just parts of the person. They are
longing for accountability, both those within leadership and those who are not yet in leadership.
Recommendations for Practice
While examining the participants’ views on the artifacts, beliefs, and assumptions of Peak
Results throughout this research, I have seen forces at work in the lives, organization, and
country of service of the CCWs which reveals a determined need for change if Peak Results
wants to retain the teachers who are currently committed to their organization. From the
workers’ perspective, what adjustments do Christian, cross-cultural organizations need to make
to retain their workers? This was the fourth research question the study sought to answer. The
recommendations below are the themes that have come out of the research and would be
affirmed by the interviewees. This qualitative research fulfilled the first stage of the adapted
model of change found in Figure 2, identifying the artifacts, beliefs, and assumptions of the
organization to begin the unfreezing process (Burnes, 2020; Schein & Schein, 2017) at Peak
Results. Therefore, the recommendations below look at the second stage of the model, changing,
where the action research takes place (Bargal, 2012; Burnes, 2020). Each recommendation
presents a clearly stated change and provides evidence found in the research that CCWs would
recommend this change to improve retention within the organization.
I listed the recommendations in order of importance as found in the research. The
recommendations are as follows:
1. Initiate a plan for workers to recognize they are being heard.
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2. Redesign the pre-COVID-19 and current structures of teams and team leadership.
3. Communicate clearly the identity of the organization and maintain strong
communication for who the organization was, is, and hopes to be.
Recommendations 2 and 3 both tie back to Recommendation 1. The last two recommendations
cannot be achieved until the first recommendation is put into place. Men et al (2020), says that
employee trust in the organization is vital to the successful outcome of organizational change.
Therefore, the organization making changes based on the recommendations found in this
research could actually build retention for the workers in China to continue moving forward with
the organization, especially if these recommendations are implemented with an energy and
excitement that enables and impacts the CCWs to trust and support the changes made (Men et al,
2020).
Recommendation 1: Initiate a Plan for Workers to Recognize They Are Being Heard
A main theme throughout the study was found to be an assumption of not being heard
and being left behind as the organization moved forward. The mental health of the CCWs was
brought up multiple times. Workers long for encouragement to hold on through uncertainty and
to be motivated to stop and consider how what they do each day impacts the organization's
purpose, mission, and vision. This encouragement needs to come from every leadership level to
sustain the workers.
Unfortunately, even those currently in leadership roles have felt unheard during COVID-
19. There is an assumption that even if someone spoke, a decision would be made without
considering the ideas, opinions, or experiences of those in the field. There is also a belief among
the CCWs that inviting member care into more conversations and finding space for people who
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are quieter to actually be heard might make a difference. During COVID-19, it was easy for
workers to support each other, but it was difficult to help one another heal.
As seen throughout the research, the CCWs were walking through a time where they felt
their grief was not addressed, their mental health was wavering, and the organization was leaving
them behind as it tried to stay optimistic and move forward in the midst of the tragedy. Dowling
and Schaninger (2021), in their research determine that the great attrition will get worse unless
organizations start listening to their people. The recommendation is for the organization to
initiate a plan where workers can be heard, can acknowledge they have been heard, and can feel
as though they are a part of the organization as a whole.
Recommendation 2: Redesign the Pre-COVID-19 and Current Structures of Teams and
Leadership on Teams
The overall desire of the CCWs who participated in this study was to support leadership
in the midst of ongoing change. While they did not fault the organization or hold it completely
responsible for the disruption of their core value of team, they believed leadership in North
America did not fully grasp the need among the CCWs for a redesign of structures in leadership
and team in China. The recommendation for the redesign encompasses the three areas of team
diversity, team leaders, and team focus.
Team Diversity
There is a desire for more diverse teams. First, teams that are diverse in terms of marital
status and gender. For example, a team of eight single females is a little too much estrogen for
the CCWs, especially if they have had a taste of being on a team with couples and families.
Therefore, teams with couples, singles, and families where children can have examples of other
adults living out their beliefs, as well as singles observing biblical marriages and couples
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learning from families is the preferred team structure among CCWs. Alongside this form of
diversity is also a desire for teams with more ethnic diversity to move the organization’s vision
forward. While workers who are persons of color might say they have felt supported, loved,
valued, and appreciated, having more people of color could play a significant role in retaining
workers. According to CCWs, recruiting and supporting more people who are ethnically diverse
helps others come, live, and thrive for the long term. Teams’ diversity also impacts relationships
among the local people, as they see the Body of Christ reflected in the diversity of people of
different backgrounds.
Team Leaders
The leadership structures and roles within teams are also an area that many of the CCWs
feel need to be addressed by Peak Results. Workers recognize that China, post-COVID-19, will
be significantly different, and that means the organization must also make changes, starting with
team leadership (Gomes, 2009). There is a desire for leadership to be spread out, giving more
people small leadership roles so those in leadership do not have as much on their plates. There is
also a great desire for more accountability and encouragement of leaders on the ground,
especially team leaders. Intimate, intentional connection with someone as an accountability to
leadership, someone who can be accessed so leaders know they are seen and heard, will keep
them on the ground. If leaders continue to feel unseen or are asked to make decisions without
knowing there are systems and people in place to support them, they will begin to question
whether to stay with the organization.
Team Focus
There is a great desire among CCWs for teams and people to be empowered to be
creative and engage the communities in which they live, even within a hierarchical, workforce-
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driven society such as China. These CCWs are familiar with where they work and live and
should be empowered to try new things for the sake of fulfilling the vision of the organization as
well as for the retention of CCWs within the organization. There is a belief that space does not
exist for ideas to grow or to be implemented without having to receive permission from the
whole country. Chen (2016) says that organizations need to consider the culture and context in
which the workers work in addition to the need to move forward and fulfill the vision. Therefore,
the workers would like to have freedom to come up with and execute new ideas because they
have the trust of the organization in their understanding of the culture and communities in which
they live.
The participants in this study value team but also fear that organizational leadership does
not quite recognize the needs they have regarding team and team leadership. Therefore, the
recommendation is to look again at teams; listen to those who are living and working in a team
context, as well as those who are not; and consider new ways to support team and team leaders
for the retention of CCWs.
Recommendation 3: Communicate Clearly the Identity of the Organization and Maintain
Strong Communication for What the Organization Was, Is, and Hopes to Be
COVID-19 forced Peak Results’ teachers to leave their in-person classrooms and team-
based communities to move to an online system. For the first time, these CCWs questioned their
identity as teachers, team members, and cross-culture workers. They were forced to follow the
rest of the world in going online, and since then, have struggled with recognizing and
maintaining a strong understanding of their identity as CCWs with Peak Results throughout the
process. Most of the workers declared they are unyielding in their identity as Christians;
therefore, if the doctrine, theology, vision, and focus of the organization were to change, there
114

would be no question about leaving. They also stated they are secure in the identity of Peak
Results as a solid, biblically based organization focused on engaging in education among the
“unreached and unengaged.” However, as seen in the research findings, there is a question of
whether Peak Results is an online-focused organization or a “boots-on-the-ground” organization,
both in the classroom and in community. Due to the tension of identity, CCWs are questioning
the organization’s sustainability because they simply do not know who the organization is since
COVID-19 has forced changes.
Pre-COVID-19, when workers on the field met together or with organizational leaders,
there was space to dialogue, push back, pull, and drag. There was a dynamic excitement the
workers walked away with when they went back to their cities, schools, and teams. A major
impact of COVID-19 has been in these meetings, which have shifted online. They are seen as
leader-centered and leader-directed; information is given, and everyone is expected to take the
information and just make it happen. Prior to COVID-19, the CCWs felt heard. If online is going
to continue, there will need to be adjustments made because the workers no longer feel heard.
CCWs would agree adjustments are being made by the organization in response to the
situations around the globe, and as the situation continues, questions will arise, such as, “Why?
What’s the purpose? Why are you continuing this job from afar?” At the beginning of COVID-
19, the organization sent communication to the CCWs on what was happening, but
communication has lessened, and more communication to the CCWs about the direction and
reasons behind the decisions would be helpful. Letting people know who the organization is by
saying, “We are still committed to teaching well and building relationships” and reaffirming that
situations continue to change, but the foundation of who the organization is remains the same, is
vital to the retention of workers.
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From the research findings, it is recommended the organization find ways to clearly
communicate with their workers any changes within the identity of the organization regarding
the practicality of the work in which they engage. This communication can come in the new
training and preparation for those about to depart North America, but it must also be
communicated with the CCWs already actively on the ground, and as the world changes and
decisions are made at the organization, the workers feel a need to know the why behind these
decisions so they can continue to identify with the organization.
Final Thoughts
The recommendations above are specifically for the Peak Results organization but would
hopefully be useful to any nonprofit organization that sends workers to China and has allowed
the focus on moving forward in other parts of the organization to lessen the attention on the work
in China. My recommendations are made based on the needs of the organization, not necessarily
to rejuvenate the work in China, but to be ready for need connecting to their workers in other
parts of the world once they have to face another global challenge, which is inevitable, even with
different leadership. These recommendations are there to put in place cyclical responses and
reviews so there is continuing change to fulfill the purpose, mission, and visions of every
nonprofit organization.
Recommendations for Future Research
In the Lewin/Schein model of change adapted from Burnes (2020) found in Figure 2, the
first step of unfreezing is addressed in this study’s qualitative research. The second step,
changing, is started in the recommendations above and can be further advanced through action
research at the organization. I suggest the following recommendations for future research:
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1. Take the three recommendations above, build internal small groups among those who
are on the ground and allow them to discuss and come up with a plan for advancing
the recommendations, thereby initiating the third step of the Lewin/Schein model of
change, refreezing.
2. This research was done solely with workers who were in China pre-COVID-19. I
would recommend expanding this research outside of the workers in China and doing
research on the CCWs in the Middle East/North Africa and Southeast Asia/Mongolia
regions as well. The workers in China have a very specific take based on the nature of
their COVID-19 experience. It would be beneficial to the organization to determine if
the changes needed to retain these workers from China is indeed the same for other
regions of the world, or if there are differing needs for other regions.
3. The Lewin/Schein model of change is not a three-steps-and-done process. In reality,
each step is actually cyclical and will need to be repeated and adjusted for continued
research and verification. I recommend further quantitative and qualitative research at
the organization to determine where continued unfreezing, changing, and refreezing
need to happen. In the end, this will benefit the organization’s ultimate purpose,
mission, and vision.
Limitations, Delimitations, Assumptions
Limitations and delimitations are appropriate to address in every study. Limitations are
outside of the control of both the researcher and the study participants. In qualitative studies,
noted limitations can influence the response and articulation of the study participants. In this
study, one limitation was that I was recently in a leadership position at the same organization as
the study participants, which may have filtered the participants’ responses. There is also the
117

limitation of hosting the interviews online during late evening and early morning hours due to
time differences between various regions of the world. Participants may not have been as
articulate if the time of day of the interview was difficult for them, or I may not have been as
alert if the time of day was not ideal for me. This is why every participant was sent a transcript
for final approval.
A delimitation of this study is that I only sought information from participants who
worked for one organization. I asserted delimitation by using specific criteria to choose study
participants. Although the findings in this study may be helpful to other organizations in research
design, the results may not contribute to the exact needs of those organizations or their workers.
One of the assumptions I had for this study was that there would be evidence of needed
organizational change, and the study participants would articulate that change. I also assumed the
designs of this study would continue after the dissertation, and I need to recognize that even if it
does not continue, it is still a worthy observation of the workers’ needs.
Conclusion
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (New American Standard Bible,
1960/1995, Matt. 9:35–38). There is a desire within the nonprofit, Christian, cross-cultural
context to see more workers sent into what is deemed “the harvest field” (New American
Standard Bible, 1960/1995, Matt. 9:35–38). But there is also a great need to retain the workers
impacted by COVID-19 in a significant way, both personally and professionally. This study
examined COVID-19’s effect on these workers’ lives and what changes the organization needs
to consider in retaining them due to this substantial impact. This research project has also
personally challenged me as a leader in what it means to listen to those who are a part of the
118

daily grind, because it looks different than my grind as a leader. Listening to these workers talk
has impacted my leadership significantly.
Prior to COVID-19 disrupting CCWs’ work, the number of new workers being sent
abroad was down 88% in just 30 years (Zurlo et al., 2021). And with 86% of cultural stress in the
cross-cultural workers’ community coming from a lack of organizational support (Edwards et al.,
2016), there is a serious need for organizations to listen to what CCWs on the ground have to say
regarding the impact COVID-19 made on their personal lives, the organizations they worked for,
and the countries in which they live and serve. Christian, nonprofit organizations long for their
purpose, mission, and vision to be fulfilled. To do so, they must listen to their workers.

119

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130

Appendix A: Individual Interview Research Questions
This study addressed the following research questions:
1. How has the impact of COVID-19 influenced the decisions of Christian cross-cultural
workers in maintaining their organizational roles?
2. What is the interplay between organizational culture factors and the impacts of
COVID-19 on the decisions of Christian cross-cultural workers to stay with their
organizations?
3. What cultural assumptions do the workers of this organization hold that need to be
addressed by organizational leadership?
4. From the workers’ perspective, what adjustments do Christian cross-cultural
organizations need to make to retain their workers?

131

Table A1
Individual Interview Research Questions
Interview questions RQ addressed Org culture (Schein)
How has COVID-19 impacted your
organization’s vision?
RQ1 Artifacts and beliefs
How has COVID-19 impacted your
work or role within the organization?
RQ1 Assumptions
How has the impact of COVID-19
within your country of service
influenced your decision to continue
working with your organization?
RQ1 Beliefs and assumptions
What factors of your organization led
you to believe your organization was
the right employer for you? Why did
you choose this org?
RQ2 Artifacts, beliefs, and
assumptions
How have the impacts of COVID-19
influenced your decision to continue
working with your organization?
RQ2 Beliefs and assumptions
What would be the main factors that
would influence your departure from
your organization?
RQ2 Assumptions
How have organizational changes since
COVID-19 positively or negatively
affected you?
RQ3 Artifacts/beliefs
What has been your response to these
organizational changes since COVID-
19?
RQ3 Beliefs/assumptions
Are there values or beliefs that you hold
—either about COVID-19 itself or
about its impacts – that you feel have
not been addressed by your
organization sufficiently?
RQ3 Artifacts/beliefs
Since COVID-19 has impacted your
work, how has organizational
leadership responded?
RQ3 Assumptions
What adjustment(s) could your
organization make that would
influence your decision to stay or
leave?
RQ4 Assumptions

Abstract (if available)

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Creator Keen, Amanda J. (author)

Core Title COVID-19's impact on Christian cross-cultural workers

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 07/31/2023

Defense Date 06/20/2023

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag COVID-19,cross-cultural,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational change,organizational culture,retention

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