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Manager leadership skills in the context of a new business strategy initiative: an evaluative study

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Manager leadership skills in the context of a new business strategy initiative: an evaluative study

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Content Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE LEADERSHIP SKILLS ALIGNMENT 1

Manager Leadership Skills in the context of a New Business Strategy Initiative: An
Evaluative Study

Javier Samayoa

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2019

Copyright 201 Javier Samayoa
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

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Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………9
Chapter One: Overview of the Study……………………………………………………….10
Introduction of the Problem of Practice………..…………………………………...10
Organizational Context and Mission………………………………………………..11
Organizational Performance Need………………………………………………….12
Related Literature…………………………………………………………………...14
Importance of the Organizational Innovation………………………………………16
Organizational Performance Goal…………………………………………………..17
Description of Stakeholder Groups…………………………………………………20
Stakeholder Groups’ Performance Goals…………………………………………...21
Stakeholder Group for the Study…………………………………………………....22
Purpose of the Project and Questions……………………………………………….22
Methodological Framework………………………………………………………...23
Key Definitions.………………….…………………………………………………23
Organization of the Study……...……………………………………………………25
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature……………………………………………………..26
Organizational Change Initiatives…………………………………………………..26
Definition of Organizational Change Initiatives……………………………26
Failure of Organizational Change Initiatives……………………………….28
Impact of Organizational Change Initiative Failure………………………...29
Organizational Change Alignment………………………………………………….31
Definition of Organizational Alignment……………………………………31
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Building Organizational Alignment………………………………………...32
Organizational Change Initiative Competencies and Leading Practices…………...33
Role of Leadership………………………………………………………….34
Competencies for Success in Organizational Change Initiatives…………...36
Change Leadership………………………………………………………….37
Organizational Learning…………………………………………………….39
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analytic Conceptual Framework………………...41
Managers’ Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences………………...42
Knowledge and Skills……………………………………………………….42
Knowledge Influences………………………………………………………43
Motivation…………………………………………………………………..50
Expectancy Value Theory…………………………………………………..51
Goal Orientation…………………………………………………………….52
Self-efficacy………………………………………………………………...54
Organizational Influences…………………………………………………..56
Cultural Models and Cultural Settings……………………………………...57
Conceptual Framework for the Study: Integrating Knowledge, Motivation
and Organizational Influences……………………………………………....60
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..65
Chapter Three: Methods…………………………………………………………………….67
Participating Stakeholders…………………………………………………………..68
Observation Sampling Criteria and Rationale………………………………69
Observation Sampling (Access) Strategy and Rationale……………………70
Interview Sampling Criterial and Rationale………………………………...70
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Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale………………....71
Data Collection and Instrumentation………………………………………………..72
Observations………………………………………………………………...72
Interviews…………………………………………………………………...75
Documents and Artifacts……………………………………………………77
Credibility and Trustworthiness…………………………………………………….77
Ethics………………………………………………………………………………..79
Limitations and Delimitations ………………………………………………………82
Chapter Four: Findings……………………………………………………………………...84
Participating Stakeholders…………………………………………………………..85
Knowledge Findings………………………………………………………………...87
Motivation Findings………………………………………………………………...105
Organizational Findings…………………………………………………………….114
Findings’ Summary…………………………………………………………………128
Chapter Five: Recommendations…………………………………………………………...130
Introduction and Overview…………………………………………………………130
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences………………………130
Knowledge Recommendations……………………………………………..130
Organizational Recommendations………………………………………….132
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan……………………………………136
Implementation and Evaluation Framework………………………………..136
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations…………………………...137
Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators……………………………………138
Level 3: Behavior…………………………………………………………...139
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Level 2: Learning…………………………………………………………....143
Level 1: Reaction…………………………………………………………....147
Evaluation Tools…………………………………………………………….148
Data Analysis and Reporting………………………………………………..149
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………...157
Summary…………………………………………………………………………….160
References…………………………………………………………………………...161
Appendix A: Interview Protocol…………………………………………………....175
Appendix B: Observation Protocol: Meeting Notes………………………………..178

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List of Tables
Table 1: Organizational Mission, Global Goal and Stakeholder Performance Goals………21
Table 2: Knowledge Influences, and Types………………………………………………...50
Table 3: Motivational Influences…………………………………………………………...56
Table 4: Organizational Influences and Types……………………………………………..60
Table 5: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Getting People Involved……………90
Table 6: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Career Pathing……………………...93
Table 7: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Business and Leadership Training…95
Table 8: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Manager Preparation……………….98
Table 9: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Goal Alignment…………………….100
Table 10: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Advocacy………………………….102
Table 11: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Empathy…………………………...103
Table 12: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Coaching…………………………..105
Table 13: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Organizational Benefits…………...107
Table 14: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Skill Assessment…………………..109
Table 15: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Growth…………………………….111
Table 16: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Efficacy……………………………113
Table 17: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Encouragement……………………116
Table 18: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Employer Desired Skills…………..120
Table 19: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Training…………………………....122
Table 20: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Cultural Identity…………………...125
Table 21: Interview Participant Comments Regarding Manager’s Autonomy……………...127
Table 22: Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations……………………..131
Table 23: Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations…………………....133
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Table 24: Outcomes, Metrics and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes………….139
Table 25: Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation……………...140
Table 26: Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors…………………………………141
Table 27: Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program…………………….146
Table 28: Components to measure Reactions to the Program………………………………147
Table 29: Summary of Quality Service Training Metrics…………………………………..150
Table 30: Example Dashboard Representation of Culture Score…………………………...154

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List of Figures
Figure 1: OCI competencies and effective leadership contribute to change leadership
which, with organizational learning, creates OCI success………………………….33
Figure 2: The structure used to frame the study is based on manager knowledge and
Motivation affecting organizational influences……………………………………..62

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Abstract
Organizational change efforts represent a large problem for companies engaged in small to large-
scale transformations due to employee motivation and commitment being negatively impacted as
a result of a lack of employee alignment. Alignment is a key factor in change initiative failures,
and 70% of change efforts fail due to misalignment (Sikdar & Payyazhi, 2014). Change effort
failure can lead to negative impacts on employee motivation, alignment, and commitment,
creating cynicism and a loss in employee productivity. This study looked at manager leadership
skills in the context of a new business strategy initiative. The manager stakeholder group
operationalize leadership strategic direction, providing guidance and ensuring work meets
organizational goals. The sampling strategy employed was purposeful sampling and obtained
qualitative data from seven participants. The study conducted observation of manager and
leadership meetings, interviews, and analysis of communication and strategy documents. The
evaluation identified knowledge and organizational needs for which recommendations are
presented. No motivational gaps were identified. However, recommendations and solutions for
assets identified are included to reinforce knowledge by leveraging participant and organization
motivation to learn. Based on the findings and literature review, professional development
workshops are recommended to train managers on business and leadership topics, and instruction
for leadership on how to prepare the organization in anticipation of the new strategy to guide
change from the top in supporting managers.

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Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Introduction of the Problem of Practice
Organizational change efforts represent a large problem for companies engaged in small
to large-scale transformations due to employee motivation and commitment being negatively
impacted as a result of a lack of employee alignment. Alignment between the organizational
values of the change and those of the members needing to change are a significant reason for
organizational change failures (Burnes & Jackson, 2011). Organizational change initiatives
(OCI) are designed to improve organizational performance by integrating multiple cultures of
different organizations or business units into one company culture through re-organization
efforts. Re-organizations are a form of organizational restructuring/redesign devised to
implement the organizational change and improve processes and procedures through efficiency
gains, alignment, standardization, and other re-engineering activities. Organizational change
initiatives are defined as individual and organizational level behavioral and process strategies,
values, and techniques designed to change individual behavior and work practices from a current
state of operations and bring it to a new desired state to improve organizational performance
(Creasey, 2017). Evidence indicates that 67-80% of minor and major organizational change
initiatives fail (Perkov, Perkov, & Papić, 2014). While estimation efforts can vary and actual
results might be lower than published, there is consensus among researchers and practitioners
that most organizational change initiatives do not deliver the desired results (Candido & Santos,
2015). Organizational change initiative failure is defined as a new initiative being designed but
not implemented or implemented but with poor or undesired outcomes (Decker, Durand,
Mayfield, McCormack, Skinner, & Purdue, 2012). The rate of change an organization faces
today is greater than any time in history, thus it has become increasingly important for
organizations to know how to manage and handle the change process to remain relevant and be
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sustainable (Mehta, Maheshwari, & Sharma, 2014). The high failure rate of organizational
change initiatives and the increasing budgets dedicated to failing efforts is a systemic problem
that needs attention from organizational leaders (Decker et al., 2012). Yet, despite the significant
failure rate, organizational change initiatives persist and are increasing in complexity and
frequency while failing to adapt to the changing environments required by organizations to
compete in an ever-changing marketplace (Oreg & Berson, 2011). As a result, failure rates
remain widespread, common, and expensive (Decker et al., 2012). OCIs represent a significant
problem for companies as employee alignment is negatively impacted during the transformation,
resulting in employee distrust towards the change. One specific study established that
organizational change efforts represent a large problem for companies because employee
motivation, alignment, and commitment is negatively impacted creating employee cynicism,
which affects 48% of the workforce (Reichers, Wanous, & Austin, 1997). In looking at the
underlying causes for organizational change efforts, evidence suggests that a lack of employee
alignment with organizational strategy accounts for 70% of organizational change initiative
failures across most industries (Sikdar & Payyazhi, 2014).
Organizational Context and Mission
PNW (pseudonym) headquartered in a metropolitan city on the East Coast, was a decade
old digital product development firm with a focus on customized solutions to meet the needs and
expectations of clients that add value to problems when off-the-shelf products are not optimized,
due to a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, PNW created a mobile wayfinding app that
eased navigation and event planning for visitors of a large trade show that spreads over 15 square
blocks and attracts close to 90,000 people during the show, improving guests’ experience and
adding value for the exhibitors. PNW staffed about 80 employees in its headquarters with a
small number of those employees in two other satellite offices. PNW’s CEO believed that
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employees perform better in smaller office environments, and that multiple locations can tap the
local talent pool better than one large office/location. The culture is typical of a high-tech
Silicon Valley firm with unlimited vacation policy; Starbucks, soda, beer, and snack machines;
open office workspaces; tech talks and product launch programs; and extra benefits such as paid
massages and haircuts, among others. PNW’s demographic was made up of mostly white, male
software engineers in their 30’s.
PNW’s purpose was to maximize the potential of its employees, improving client value
by providing a rewarding experience in smarter technology implementations through innovative
technology offerings. PNW’s mission was to continuously improve the methods it uses to
develop products, build proprietary tools that add value, seize new markets to improve growth
and stability, and adapt more quickly than competitors while attracting and motivating talent.
PNW’s vision was to offer a differentiated end-to-end client experience, be respected as a
thought leader by peers in the industry, contribute to the community, and enrich the lives of its
employees. PNW was systematic about its growth through business decisions that focused on
earnings, efficiency, and scalable solutions.
Organizational Performance Need
PNW’s new business strategy relies on expanding its business model and product
offerings from only one-off custom solutions to a more standardized consulting model. The new
business strategy enables the firm to be more stable and maintain a constant revenue stream
through long-term engagements instead of just relying on one-off projects. The organization is
trying to diversify its service offerings and continue its steady growth targets by reaching a wider
client base with more long-term engagements than they had. The addition of long-term
consulting engagements is a significant change for PNW because it historically operated in a
short-term, innovative and customized solution environment. Because PNW innovated solutions
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that off-the-shelf products could not do effectively or efficiently, the firm attracted clients
looking for solutions to complex problems. Moreover, the firm attracted top talent from across
the country who were interested in working on a range of innovative and challenging projects
instead of the common and traditional consulting roles or in-house employment. The same
qualities and opportunities afforded by the innovative environment created a challenge for the
organization in its ability to manager resources effectively. Historically, PNW organized its
departments and people around job functions. While the flexible environment promoted ad-hoc
teams that could work on many different projects depending on availability, it did not lend itself
well to creating institutional knowledge. The flexibility made it difficult for employees to
specialize due to always being involved in developing a multitude of platforms requiring a
diverse set of disciplines. Also, there was no single person accountable for project success.
Moreover, it generated people management issues of not having managers and employees aware
of and working on the same projects, and not having a single goal or mission to align to.
Alignment with the new business strategy is important for the success of the initiative and
the organization; otherwise, the new business model could have become an example of the 70%
of organization wide failures seen in organizational changes. Another issue with being an
innovator and focusing on custom one-off solutions is that the company relied heavily on its
business development unit and management to line up new contracts and ensure it had the
required resources to staff the project. Developing leads with potential clients was time
consuming and time sensitive because the organization needed to always have projects in the
pipeline to maintain a consistent revenue stream. If the organization fails to line up projects, the
company could easily have a bad year financially that could affect employee retention and the
affordability of their headquarters space. According to the CEO, there was not a lot of room for
mistakes in lining up clients, which was why a standardized consulting type business model had
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been developed. The new business strategy, referred by PNW as the Global Strategy, will help
alleviate some of the stress by generating long-term engagements and clients that generate
consistent revenue. By placing employees on-site through long-term engagements, the new
business strategy will be in a position to create opportunities to identify custom one-off projects
within established clients, increasing opportunities in long-term and one-off projects, stability,
and growth.
Related Literature
Alignment is defined as linking individual activities, goals and outcomes with those of
the organization (Ayers, 2015). By creating alignment, managers are assisted in understanding
how their daily tasks support the overall objectives of the organization, ensuring those activities
promote the strategic goals resulting in desired outcomes (Ayers, 2015). A significant reason for
organizational change failures (Burnes & Jackson, 2011) is a misalignment between the values of
the change and those of the members carrying out the change. Organizational maturity and
growth require adaptations from a flexible and innovative entity to an organization focused on
efficiency through processes and protocol standardization (Bradley, Wiklund, & Shepherd,
2011). The efficiency gains during product and process maturity are a benefit to organizations
trying to compete on cost or volume, for example, but the rigidity and mundane and repetitive
work activities gained through process standardization lead to less flexibility and, as a result, less
innovation (Acemoglu, Gancia, & Zilibotti, 2010). Employees who enjoyed and excelled in
flexible and innovative work environments that fostered autonomy and ownership, now see
company maturity and business practice standardization as motivation and engagement
eradicators that require less skill and more rigid work environments (Acemoglu et al., 2010).
Innovation is the tool that entrepreneurs and innovators use to exploit changes as opportunities
for new endeavors that can lead to a competitive advantage (Santandreu-Mascarell et al., 2013).
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Companies and employees are proud of their past successes, innovations, and business
models. But organizations have to continue looking at the future to identify new trends or
products, fostering new ideas through proactive and risk taking cultures that generate innovations
over adoption and recreation of current industry or organizational practices to remain
competitive (Perez-Luno, Wiklund, & Cabrera, 2011). Enterprises trying to regain an
entrepreneurial spirit must foster a culture of flexibility, idea generation, business knowledge and
leadership development at all employee levels, organizational change at the organization and
individual level, and tolerance for risk taking, as these attributes are found to positively influence
innovative performance (Alpkan et al., 2010).
Connecting managers’ tasks to organizational objectives by clarifying their purpose and
importance drives employee engagement (Pulakos, Hanson, Arad, & Moye, 2015). Leveraging
the work itself through strong learning drivers enhances manager development. Linking work to
the organization’s mission and its successes inspires managers to focus on work that affects
business agility to quickly adapt priorities and results to business objectives (Pulakos et al.,
2015). As a result, alignment can be influenced by creating a shared understanding of the goals
and strategy of the organization (Pulakos et al., 2015), engaging managers to focus on tasks that
accomplish the organizational goals. On the other hand, a lack of employee or goal alignment
can lead to disastrous results for organizations. Blockbuster and Borders are two examples of
large and successful organizations that failed to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and
align the organization and its employees. As discussed in multiple articles (Candido & Santos,
2015; Perkov et al., 2014; Reichers et al., 1997) and presented in media reports (Bomey, 2011;
Ferguson, 2011; Hooper & Rawls, 2014; D. Johnson, 2011), Blockbuster and Borders failed to
align the organization and adapt to market change and capitalize on new technology and
direction of the market, resulting in their downturn. Organizations have to be responsive to the
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environment and continue to innovate processes, products, and management of its people to be
sustainable long-term, and not rest on its past innovations and use it as a means to gauge future
success (Alpkan et al., 2010; Perez-Luno et al., 2011). This requires aligning employees’ actions
and tasks with the company’s business strategy to ensure that the organization and management
are aligned and working to achieve organizational objectives, and not individual agendas.
Importance of the Organizational Innovation

The problem of employee alignment during organizational change efforts is important to
address because by aligning employees, the organization increases performance and reduces risk
of failure during organizational change initiatives (Sadeghi, 2011). Evidence suggests that lack
of employee alignment with organizational strategy accounts for 70% of organizational change
effort failure (Sikdar & Payyazhi, 2014). Organizations struggle with managing employee
alignment and motivation when organizational strategy and goals constantly change and adapt.
Organizational change initiatives are organizational transformation strategies used to
remain competitive in the market, enter new markets for diversification or to increase market
share, and meet new compliance regulations required by industry or regulatory entities.
According Reichers et al., (1997), organizational change efforts represent a large problem for
companies because employee alignment is negatively impacted during the transformation,
creating employee distrust about the change in 48% of the workforce. Losing employee
motivation, engagement and alignment leads employees to become less flexible and creative, and
as a result companies stop innovating and become stagnant in product and process improvement
and development (Jiang, Zhao, Zhang, & Chen, 2012). The flexible, adaptive, and creative
mentality that made the firm challenge established technologies and business models is what
organizations risk losing if they stop innovating by not engaging, motivating, and ultimately
aligning employees actions and tasks with the new business strategy (Markos & Sridevi, 2010).
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Organizational Performance Goal
PNW’s goal is that by June 2019, 100% of managers will implement leading practices in
leading organizational change. The Global Strategy alleviates revenue and client uncertainty
while aligning the organization around capabilities of focus and delivery; scalable delivery; and
expanded sales and marketing reach. Focus and delivery center around developing rigorous and
repeatable delivery processes and developing expertise of individuals and teams. Scalable
delivery focuses on elevating leaders, creating career opportunities, removing bottle necks, and
building a structure that allows for expanding future capabilities. Expanded sales and marketing
reach concentrate around specialization leading to thought leadership and targeted sales and
marketing messages. The objectives of the new business strategy are to more tightly integrate
company departments, remove friction, share information, create transparency and ultimately
improve PNW’s efficiency. The emphasis is to create, train, and maintain systems and processes
to operate more effectively day to day. This allows PNW to operationalize the business for
future anticipated growth. However, it also forms a challenge in employee motivation to work in
a consulting type environment that is regarded as less innovative, less creative, and more
standardized. Employees perceive themselves as innovators within their roles at PNW and that
professional identity matches the identity of the organization historically and how the company
is seen in the industry. Expanding to a standardized consulting work environment is perceived as
less desirable because it does not match the identities of the employees with their view of the
organization. Working offsite at a client’s location long-term during an engagement is not
considered desirable as well because the employee would be external to the PNW culture that
attracts many employees, feeling like they work for their client instead of PNW. Therefore, the
new business strategy generates organizational alignment issues.
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PNW organizational structure is built around three divisions, Operations, Revenue and
Services. Operations and Services serve supporting roles to the Revenue division as require per
project needs. The Operations division houses people operations (HR), IT, facilities, and other
business operating functions. The Revenue division houses marketing, finance operations, and
the engagement management unit comprised of the Engagement Managers (EM) that serve as
account managers to client accounts. EM’s responsibilities focused on key client engagement
areas organized around strategic account planning, client relationship management, sales,
industry expertise, and strategic delivery. The EM’s partner with Line of Business units to staff
resources and provide the required expertise around the expected lifecycle phase per project
requirements. The EM unit director supervises overall performance of the EM Managers and
their accounts, as well as perform client facing and account management responsibilities. The
EM managers oversee responsibility for their respective client accounts. The Services division
houses the Line of Business (LoB) group whose responsibilities concentrate on capabilities and
offerings, definition of delivery models, responsibility for project success, client partnering on
engagement and marketing, maintaining individual profit and loss accountability, and self-
sustaining and profitability of the LoB unit. PNW’s establishment of the Global Strategy is to
pair expertise in all phases of digital product development with sales, marketing, and account
management to identify potential clients and work with the clients to recognize potential long-
term and one-off projects. The LoB units make up a specific phase of the end-to-end
methodology that make up PNW’s digital product development approach and differentiate it
from most of its competitors. The four LoB phases are Co-Production, Production, Customer
Experience, and Rapid Innovation. The Shared Services unit is considered a LoB but is not part
of PNW’s end-to-end methodology. More LoB units will be added based on quarterly evaluation
of business requirements, client needs, and industry trends. Each LoB unit is managed by a
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director leading a team of engineers whose expertise aligns with their respective LoB
requirements. The LoB director manages their staff and coordinates with other units to identify
the resources and support required to secure and staff each project. Each of the LoB staffs the
unit with 80% of the required resources for a given project. The remaining 20% are contracted
from the Share Services LoB, comprising a flexible workforce of individuals with varied
experience and broad expertise, which allows them to be placed in any type of LoB to assist in
fulfilling staffing requirements. The Share Services LoB is an internal PNW unit that exists to
provide contract resources to the other LoB’s and is staffed by a skeleton crew of experts.
Historically, all project resources were staffed in the Shared Services unit and pulled to projects
as needed during one-off projects. However, in the new LoB strategy structure, Shared Services
became part of the LoB units under the Services division. As the Global Strategy matures, the
majority of engineers are allocated to specific LoB’s that best matches the engineers interests and
skills. Only a limited number of resources remain in the Shared Services LoB, only enough to
staff the remaining 20% of projected projects resources requirement that the LoB’s were required
to fulfil. The reasoning behind the LoB’s only staffing 80% of resources and contracting the
remaining resources from the Shared Services LoB is so that resources are not idle and remain
staffed in projects where they incur billable hours.
The focus of the Global Strategy was to combine sales, marketing, and account
management functions of an EM manager with the expertise of a LoB in Co-Production,
Production, Customer Experience, and Rapid Development phase to better acquire and serve
clients. Most of PNW competitors focus on one or a couple of the products in the development
end-to-end lifecycle that PNW offers as part of their LoB portfolio but do not have mastery in
the end-to-end delivery like PNW does. Often times, competitors’ partner with other firms to
provide a more complete end-to-end approach for clients. The Global Strategy emphasis is to re-
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organize the organization around its core capabilities and offerings that allow PNW to more
effectively focus on its strength as a complete end-to-end digital product development provider.
This allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors to capture more market
share.
The Global Strategy affords flexibility to employees on which Line of Business unit they
prefer joining given their personal and professional preferences and skillset. For those
employees who want to maintain a broad skillset and enjoy working on diverse projects, the
Share Services LoB suits their preferences and skillset. The objective is that by choosing to
partake on projects of interest, the employees are incentivized to participate and align with the
Global Strategy, generating interest in the success of the Global Strategy and the company. The
goal is to create an environment where managers help align employees and organizational goals
by matching employee interest to projects that offer opportunity for growth, making it less likely
that they will leave the company due to being forced to work on undesirable assignments.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
Reaching PNW’s goal is a collaboration between the executive team, managers and
employees within the organization. Executives serve as sponsors for business strategies within
the organization, setting values, goals, and resources. The executives provide active support,
coaching, and access to development tools for the managers to understand the change and be
more effective leaders. The executive stakeholder group is made up of the CEO and the
Revenue, Services, and Operations division leads.
Managers translate leadership strategy and direction for their units, provide guidance and
ensure the work meets organizational goals. Managers focus on operationalizing the strategic
direction of their respective business areas of business development. They do not incur project
billable hours like members of their units do indicating that their roles are that of people and
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business management. The manager stakeholder group for this study is comprised of the Line of
Business (LoB) directors and the Engagement Management director and EM managers. At the
time of the study, there were five LoB directors, an EM director, and two EM managers.
Employees carryout the development work in creating and supporting solutions for
customers and align daily activities and operations with project requirements and other
organization, business unit, or department directed activities. The employee group for this study
only includes the team of employees staffing the LoB and the EM units. The employee group is
mostly made up of software engineers, engineers, engagement managers, and support staff.
Stakeholder Groups’ Performance Goals
Table 1
Organizational Mission, Global Goal and Stakeholder Performance Goals

Organizational Mission
PNW exists to help our employees, company, and clients reach their highest potential; To
create transformative value in organizations through the creative application of technology;
Redefine the way organizations build their most important digital products by using
exceptional people and the best enablers.
Organizational Global Goal
By January 2020, 100% of PNW employees will have participated in the Global Strategy.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2019, 100% of managers will have implemented leading practices in organizational
change through motivational, engagement, goal development, alignment, and behavioral
intention strategies.
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Stakeholder Group for the Study
Although a complete analysis would involve all stakeholder groups, for practical
purposes, the managers’ group is the stakeholder of prime focus in this study of employee
alignment. Because managers are responsible for directing the employees’ daily activities, they
are the critical stakeholder group to build alignment with the Global Strategy. The stakeholder
goal of implementing the Global Strategy is created with the intent that managers will staff their
Line of Business (LoB) units with members whose interest and skill match the requirements of
the units and partner with EM managers to provide client engagement and technical expertise.
The focus of the managers is to create challenging work assignments, autonomy, and ownership
that allow for employee growth, while coaching and mentoring members of their staff to ensure
those activities are aligned with organizational goals. If managers’ professional development
goals and skills are not aligned with the Global Strategy, the managers will fail to engage and
motivate employees and match their interest and skills with organizational needs. This
misalignment will lead to low employee morale, increased turnover, and failure in carrying out
the Global Strategy as intended. The alignment requires managers to adapt to the new Global
Strategy and develop new competencies through successful completion of the leading practices
developmental training.
Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this project was to conduct a needs analysis in the areas of knowledge and
skill, motivation, and organizational resources necessary to reach the organizational performance
goal. The analysis began by generating a list of possible needs that were then examined
systematically to focus on actual or validated needs. While a complete needs analysis would
focus on all stakeholders, for practical purposes, the stakeholder group focused on in this study
was the manager group.
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23
1. What is the managers’ knowledge and motivation related to implementing leading
practices in managing organizational change?
2. What is the interaction between organizational culture and context and managers’
knowledge and motivation?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Methodological Framework
The Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework was adapted to conduct a systematic
and analytical examination of the organizational goals to baseline the current organizational
performance and identify the gaps needed to be addressed to achieve the future performance
goals of the organization. Knowledge through discussions with the CEO and a review of the
related literature generated assumed knowledge, motivation, and organizational needs. The
assumed needs were researched by conducting a literature review to identify the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences that the key stakeholder group needs to address. The
needs and influences were explored using observations and interviews. The analysis was
evaluated in a comprehensive manner to generate research-based recommendations that the
organization could incorporate to close the gaps and achieve the stakeholder goal.
Key Definitions
Organizational Change Initiatives (OCI): Also known as change initiatives, change
management projects, and transformations, are a process of creating new meanings for on-going,
widespread, and natural organizational activities that occur every day through interactions among
its actors and the environment (Thomas, Sargent, & Hardy, 2011).
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

24
Organizational Change Initiative Failure: Defined as a new initiative that was framed but not
implemented, an initiative that changed scope dramatically from the proposed solution, or an
initiative that was implemented with unintended results (Decker, Durand, Mayfield,
McCormack, Skinner, & Perdue, 2012).
Organizational Goal Alignment: Linking individual goal outcomes with organizational goal
outcomes (Ayers, 2015).
Change Leadership: Change leadership focuses on behavioral change that provides a practical
approach to make a significant difference in organizational culture, whether the individual has
positional authority or just influence (Farkas, 2013).
Executives: Stakeholder group consisting of members of the leadership team. The executive
group is made up of the CEO and the Revenue, Services, and Operations division leads.
Managers: The manager stakeholder group for this study is comprised of the LoB directors and
the EM director and EM managers.
Employees: The employee group is mostly made up of software engineers, engineers,
engagement managers, and support staff. For the purposes of this study, the employees will be
referred to as engineers.
Organizational Readiness: Integrates organizational factors such as vision clarity, change
appropriateness, change efficacy, top management support, presence of an effective champion,
organizational history of change, organizational conflicts, organizational flexibility, and cohesive
self-efficacy (Pare, Sicotte, Poba-Nzaou, & Balouzakis, 2011).
Organizational Learning: Promotes a culture of learning that enhances organizational capacity
and individual capabilities to effectively participate and make contributions to change efforts that
lead to success in organizational change initiatives (Choi & Ruona, 2011).
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25
Effective leadership: Encourages experimentation and risk taking, maintaining people together
and connected with the organization and one-another, providing external and internal
information to all concerned or affected, and assisting employees maintain focus in
accomplishing the goals (Mehta et al., 2014).
Leading Practice: A leading practice is a practice that is more efficient and effective for
delivering a particular outcome, based upon the constraints of the organization it is being applied
to. Leading practices are leading only in a particular point in time and are acknowledged to be
continuously developing. A leading practice will generally only be leading for a period of time,
after which other practices may become leading (Martin, 2010).
Organization of the Study
This study is organized into five chapters. Chapter One provides the reader with the key
concepts and terminology commonly found in a discussion about Organizational change
initiatives. The initial concepts of gap analysis adapted to needs analysis are introduced, along
with the organization’s mission, goals and stakeholders. Chapter Two reviews the current
literature surrounding the scope of the study, which include organizational change initiatives,
failure, alignment, impacts, and competencies for success. Chapter Three focuses on the
assumed needs and the methodology of data collection, analysis, and participants. Chapter Four
assesses and analyzes the data and results. Chapter Five provides solutions for addressing the
needs and performance gaps, providing recommendations that can be utilized in an
implementation and evaluation plan for solutions provided.

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Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
This chapter reviews the literature on organizational change initiative failure rate
associated with new business strategy, and its common causes. The review starts with a
definition of organizational change initiatives and failure. The causes of alignment with business
strategy are analyzed to understand the reasons for organizational change initiative
failures. Next, the chapter reviews the literature on learning and motivational theories to
establish a foundation of competencies for success. Finally, the chapter reviews the conceptual
framework and the knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors (KMO) through the Clark
and Estes (2008) gap analysis model to analyze the influences that impact the causes of
organizational change initiative failures.
Organizational Change Initiatives
The outcomes and impacts discussed below are derived from general theory and leading
practices in managing organizational change. First, organizational change initiatives are
presented as a process of creating new meanings for on-going, widespread, and natural
organizational activities. Next, because of high failure rates of change initiatives as a systemic
problem for organizations, poor outcomes in organizational change efforts are examined.
Finally, the impacts of organizational change initiatives are analyzed.
Definition of Organizational Change Initiatives
Organizational change initiatives (OCI) encompass a range of broad definitions but
usually include ongoing movement of current processes or culture to a desired future state with
the aid of change management (CM) methodologies and activities with a focus on the human
side of change (Parker, Charlton, Ribeiro, & Pathak, 2013). Organizational change initiatives,
also referred as change initiatives, change management projects, change efforts, transformations,
or simply as the change, are a practice of creating improvements for on-going, widespread, and
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

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spontaneous organizational activities through collaborations among the employees and the
environment (Thomas et al., 2011). Organizational change initiatives can encapsulate broad
themes such as total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural
change, and business turnaround amongst others (Parker et al., 2013). OCIs objectives are to
achieve improvements in how a business operates in order to meet the changing environment
(Kotter, 2007).
Change efforts are complex processes representing the transition between the current
behaviors and a desired state requiring thorough strategic planning to achieve the objectives of
the desired change (Mehta et al., 2014). The technical nature of OCIs has led to the adoption of
CM practitioners and methodologies with a focus on the human aspects of change. Historically,
project management and its activities have fixated on tasks and completion of project
deliverables, not considering behavioral change activities in its methodology (Parker et al.,
2013). Alternatively, change management does not concentrate on the hard or technical
objectives the PM does, instead pursuing softer objectives around changing the behavior of the
individuals affected by the change (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). Therefore, the goals and
objectives of CM are largely concentrated on organizational support and adoption since OCIs
require the willingness of employees participating in the change to implement, ensuring
alignment with the organizational strategy (Parker et al., 2013).
As a result, change management methodologies and activities are increasingly
incorporated in OCIs because behavioral change and culture adaptation are important and
required in successfully completing OCIs (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). By including CM
activities with traditional PM tasks in a unified approach, organizations can increase the success
of OCIs and enhance the success of organizational change interventions (Parker et al., 2013).

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Failure of Organizational Change Initiatives
Change initiatives fail when it does not meet the intended organizational outcomes,
which is a systemic problem. OCI failure is defined as a new initiative that was framed but not
implemented, an initiative that changed scope dramatically from the proposed solution, or an
initiative that was implemented with unintended results (Decker et al., 2012). The increased
budgets and time, human, and capital resources dedicated to increasing OCIs worry many
executives in charge of organizational transformations.
In 1996, John Kotter published in his book, Leading Change, statistics from field research
that only 30% of change efforts are successful (Kotter, 1996). According to Decker et al. (2012),
the high failure rates of change initiatives are a systemic problem for organizations. Published
failure rates of minor and major change initiatives are estimated at 67-80 % (Perkov et al., 2014).
In two surveys of 1,536 and 3,199 executives involved in OCIs, only 38% of change initiatives
were deemed successful, similar results to those seen by Kotter (Perkov et al., 2014). Of the
executives surveyed, only 30% believed they had contributed to the organizations sustained
improvement, indicating low leadership support of OCIs (Aiken & Keller, 2009; Isern & Pung,
2007).
Although organizational change initiative failure rates vary among published results,
more recent research by Candido and Santos (2015) show that published rates may be lower than
estimated. Cândido and Santos (2015) suggest some of the data in previous studies is
outdated, incomplete, or lacks scientific rigor. However, even if the publish rates of failures are
inflated, a consensus remains today that OCI initiatives do not deliver estimated and desired
results; failure for individuals to change is cited as one of the main reasons for the failures
(Candido & Santos, 2015; Perkov et al., 2014, Reichers et al., 1997).

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Impact of Organizational Change Initiative Failure
Employees in thousands of organizations have experienced the struggles,
accomplishments, failures, and irritations that are faced with changing the way work in an
organization (Reichers et al., 1997). OCIs begin with introductory fanfare and projections of
value the project will generate, followed by implementation difficulties and employee burnout,
ending with partial accomplishment of the predicted goals, ready to jump in to the next major
initiative without reflecting on the lessons learned from the previous effort. Poor outcomes in
OCIs represent a large problem for companies which can lead to poor management, low
employee commitment, distrust, and retention problems (Bordia, Restubog, Jimmieson, & Irmer,
2011; Reichers et al., 1997). Organizational change initiative failures negatively impact
employee alignment and elicit distrust of the transformation in 48% of the workforce (Reichers
et al., 1997). Low employee trust leads to employees considering exiting from the company due
to the employees believing the organization is not looking out after the employees’ interest
(Bordia et al., 2011). Research estimates that 25 to 40% of employees will react distrustfully to
the next announcement of an OCI as a result (Reichers et al., 1997). The employees’ past and
present experience with organizational changes shape their future view of the organization and
their attitudes towards the company as a result. Reasons for cynicism include lacking
meaningful opportunities to participate in decision making, feeling uninformed about what was
going on in the organization, having supervisors they felt did not communicate updates, and
lacking answers to questions (Reichers et al., 1997). Poorly managed change initiatives weaken
job satisfaction and employees lose faith in the organization. Accordingly, negative experiences
with change lead to lower trust among employees, especially those in the lower ranks (Bordia et
al., 2011). As a result, OCI failures can reinforce cynical beliefs and distrust about the change
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

30
efforts from past experiences and negatively impact commitment and motivation (Bordia et al.,
2011; Reichers et al., 1997).
There are multiple well-known organizations that failed to align the organization with
rapid changing industry trends. Borders failed to capitalize on market change to a digital
platform, instead expanding into foreign markets and continued growth through mega-sized
stores with physical media such as books and CDs (Bomey, 2011; D. Johnson, 2011). Early in
Border’s online presence, it used Amazon to host their online bookstore, receiving only the
proceeds from the sales that originated through Borders own website. Amazon profited the
majority of the time since buyers would go directly to Amazon’s hosted website instead Borders
own site (Bomey, 2011; D. Johnson, 2011). Eventually, Amazon became Borders’ biggest rival
in the bookstore marketplace through the experience and customer loyalty it built hosting
Borders’ online bookstore (Ferguson, 2011). Borders was slow to embrace the electronic book
segment, failing to establish a strong online sales operation early on and enabling Amazon to
become its chief competitor (Bomey, 2011).
Blockbuster was known as a well-run company by a multitude of experts in different
industries, but the company failed to adapt fast enough in an unpredictable market where things
change fast, and where companies reinvent themselves every few years to remain competitive
(Gandel, 2010). Blockbuster remained committed to physical store locations instead of
embracing and innovating in the online marketplace even after online competitors emerged.
Blockbuster clung to an outdated business model, while competitors such as Netflix innovated in
the rent-by-mail and video-streaming sectors (Gandel, 2010). Blockbuster and Borders went out
of business because both organizations failed to implement change quickly and successfully.
What Blockbuster and Borders needed to survive was a swift reinvention of themselves to be
successful through an adoption of ever-changing technology.
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31
Organizational Change Alignment
The alignment and its impacts discussed below are derived from general theory about
human performance (Clark & Estes, 2008) as well as leading practices in managing
organizational change. First, a definition of organizational alignment is presented. Next, an
overview on how to build organizational alignment through engagement of employees is
examined.
Definition of Organizational Alignment
As discussed in prior sections, alignment is critical to business strategy and is defined as
linking individual activities, goals and outcomes with those of the organization. Alignment
assists employees in understanding how their daily tasks support the overall objectives of the
organization ensuring those activities promote strategic goals resulting in desired organizational
outcomes (Ayers, 2015). Organizational alignment takes into consideration the fit between
organizational goals, objectives, and purpose with individual roles and responsibilities, group
and departmental structures, and the entire organization work practices (Alagaraja & Shuck,
2015). Goal alignment links organizational performance with individual goal outcomes, which
can enhance organizational performance when the achievement of goals is tied to individual
performance (Ayers, 2015). Accordingly, organizational alignment can be influenced by
creating a shared understanding of the goals and strategy of the organization with those of
individuals and groups (Pulakos et al., 2015). In order to affect organizational change,
companies must first understand how to align individuals and influence them to want to change,
then focus on groups, and finally on the organization, to get people on board one at a time (Hiatt
& Creasey, 2003). Individuals must change in order for the group or organization to change
because ultimately change occurs at the individual level (Hiatt & Creasey, 2003).

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Building Organizational Alignment
Lack of alignment between the organizational values of the change and those of the
members impacted by the change is a significant reason for failures during OCIs (Burnes &
Jackson, 2011). The estimated seventy percent of organizational change failure is attributed to
lack of employee alignment with organizational strategy (Pulakos et al., 2015; Sikdar &
Payyazhi, 2014). Alignment can be influenced by creating a shared understanding of the goals
and strategy of the organization (Pulakos et al., 2015). There is a need to develop an
understanding of how the new business process is aligned with the organizational strategy
because new business processes create a change in the organizational system of relationships,
workflows, tasks, systems, and structure (Sikdar & Payyazhi, 2014).
Leveraging the work to create learning opportunities are shown to enhance employee
engagement, professional development, and alignment (Pulakos et al., 2015). This is achieved
by first creating a critical mass at the operational level through engagement and commitment
strategies, next providing the necessary support to develop the competencies desired, and finally
modifying structures as well as appraisal and reward systems to sustain the continued
effectiveness of newly articulated roles and responsibilities, and finally spreading the change to
the entire organization (Sikdar & Payyazhi, 2014). Linking work to the organization’s mission
and its successes inspires employees to focus on work that affects business agility to quickly
adapt priorities and results to business objectives (Pulakos et al., 2015). Thus, organizational
alignment can be used as a strategic resource in creating synergy between different functions,
processes, products, and stakeholder groups. According to Powell (1992), alignment is strategic
and requires skill to execute properly and can generate economic gains through effectiveness and
efficiency gains.

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33
Organizational Change Initiative Competencies and Leading Practices
The competencies and leading practices required for OCI success discussed below are
derived from general theory and leading practices in managing organizational change. First, the
relationship between the competencies required for OCI success is represented in Figure 1.
Second, the role of leadership and its effect on OCIs is reviewed. Next, competencies required
for OCI success are presented. Then, change leadership as a driver for the competencies needed
in successful OCIs is examined. Lastly, organizational learning and how it relates to creating a
culture of learning is discussed.
Figure 1 represents the relationship of effective leadership, competencies for OCI
success, change leadership, and organizational learning and how the sections are organized into
an OCI competencies and leading practices framework.

Figure 1. OCI competencies and effective leadership contribute to change leadership which, with
organizational learning, creates OCI success.

Organization
Managers Leadership
Team

OCI
Competencies

Change
Leadership

OCI
Success

Effective
Leadership

Organizational
Learning

OCI
Success

ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

34
Role of Leadership
The rapid pace of change has triggered a radical shift in the role of senior managers from
the traditional authoritarian, command and control style to a more open, participative style of
leadership, emphasizing cooperation, collaboration, and communication (Greatz, 2000). Change
must be well managed through planning, organization, direction, and coordination, and more
importantly it requires effective leadership to introduce change successfully (Gill, 2002).
Implementing change ineffectively is not due to poor management of the change but more likely
a lack of effective leadership (Gill, 2002). Research suggests that organizational leaders lack a
clear understanding of implementation methods, the aptitude to modify one’s management style,
or ability to engage the steps needed to implement change effectively (Gilley, Gilley, &
McMillan, 2009). Organizational change effectiveness and success can be improved by leaders
having skills in change management (Gilley et al., 2009). Successful OCIs are a function of
effective leadership because these leaders understand the attitudes and motivational demands
required by the change (Mehta et al., 2014). Effective leaders recognize the fundamental
concerns surrounding change and the management of it in their organizations, understand all the
forces that exist in the environment affecting the organization, and are able to influence the
needed transformations (Mehta et al., 2014).
As the organization changes from the known to the unknown, the direct benefits of the
change must be explicitly stated to individuals at all levels, otherwise employees will resist the
change (Mehta et al., 2014). OCIs require an accelerated growth in leadership effort and requires
large changes in attitudes, beliefs, values, and needs (Mehta et al., 2014). Effective leaders must
understand the attitude and motivational demands required of the Global Strategy to bring about
the change (Mehta et al., 2014). The critical issue in managing change are individuals’ issues
with the change as well as the managers who bring about the change (Mehta et al., 2014).
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

35
Attitudes of the individuals, norms in operations and engagement, and history of change efforts
at PNW influence the organizational culture and affects organizational response to any change
(Mehta et al., 2014). Individuals' considerations on threats and benefits of the change are
impacted by communication, understanding, participation, trust in management,
management styles, and the nature of relationships with the change agents (Erwin &
Garman, 2010). Most change initiatives fail because the leaders who initiate the change do
not see the realities people affected by the change will face (Mehta et al., 2014). This
requires that the organization takes an active approach to manage the change due to the Global
Strategy and focus on individuals behaviors in response to change, thoughts about the change,
and feelings about the change (Erwin & Garman, 2010). Without connecting the change with
individuals’ emotions and getting buy-in from those who execute the change, change is difficult
to execute because people will resist the change and remain in their comfort zone (Mehta et al.,
2014).
Effective leaders should be concerned about helping employees develop through
participation in their work during change, providing adequate training for employees, and
helping enhance employees’ confidence in their own abilities to adapt to change (Choi, 2011).
Effective change efforts are a function of effective leadership which recognize the
fundamentals concepts around change and require a comprehension of the environment and
management of the forces that affect the organization in driving successful change (Mehta et
al., 2014). What is important is that leadership’s attention be built to diagnose, understand,
confront and reshape the reality as people see it (Higgs & Rowland, 2000). Leaders must learn
to capture the meaning and information attached to employees’ attitudes about change accurately
to reveal Global Strategy implementation problems (Choi, 2011). Effective leadership
encourages experimentation and risk taking, keeps people together and connected with the
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

36
organization and one-another, provides external and internal information to all concerned or
affected, and assists employees in maintaining focus to accomplish the goals (Mehta et al.,
2014). It is leadership that makes the difference in implementing change successfully (Gill,
2002). This study will explore the role of leadership and its effectiveness in developing
organizational learning and readiness in anticipation of the Global Strategy.
Competencies for Success in Organizational Change Initiatives
The degree of behavioral change required and the extent of changes to roles and activities
are factors that affect the success of the change (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). A leader’s role
as a change agent needs to be understood on the basis of the practices of organizational
change (Lakomski, 2001). Having a supportive culture focused on learning and effective
leadership that drive behavioral change are organizational factors that help achieve Global
Strategy goals (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010; Gill, 2002). Therefore, the change vision and
strategy need to build a culture of learning through sustainable shared values that empower,
motivate, and inspire those affected by the change states Gill (2002). Through development of
organizational learning that fosters leadership skills development, the right competencies can be
influenced by the organization to plan and embed the Global Strategy and its associated change
successfully (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010).
According to Crawford and Nahmias (2010), effective change efforts engage
stakeholders affected by the change through communications about the change. This requires
enlisting change champions to assist in getting buy-in for the Global Strategy, by managing
expectations of the change and influencing behaviors, and by facilitating political diffusion
(Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). The leaders’ inclination to involve others facilitates coalition
building and increases the likeliness to pay attention to employees' feelings about the change
(Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache, & Alexander, 2010). Leaders need to possess the
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

37
knowledge in using diverse set of communication techniques to engage employees by delivering
appropriate messages, soliciting feedback, creating readiness, and motivating members affected
by the change to act (Gilley et al., 2009). Thus, leaders need to interact with colleagues and
followers to initiate awareness and build desire for the Global Strategy through an emphasis on
communication activities supplementary to planned organizational change processes (Battilana et
al., 2010).
However, while leaders need to be effective at inspiring their teams, effective leaders are
able to mobilize both their team members and other stakeholders by redesigning processes and
systems required by the Global Strategy (Battilana et al., 2010). Findings confirm that
leadership competencies influence OCIs suggesting that the role of leadership in change
implementation should be considered as a complex multi-dimensional undertaking composed of
different competencies needed for success (Battilana et al., 2010). Therefore, in order to
implement the Global Strategy successfully, competencies such as leadership, stakeholder
management, team selection and development, communication, decision-making and problem
solving, and cultural awareness skills are required (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). These
behavioral competencies mentioned reflect core dimensions of leadership required for success
driving change (Gill, 2002). This study will explore the competencies of managers and the
support of leadership in fostering such competencies in developing and deploying a successful
Global Strategy.
Change Leadership
A leader’s thought and skills are demonstrated through their actions, structures, and
practices that enhance or impede the change effort, which establishes a relationship between the
leader’s behaviors and effectiveness in executing change (Gilley et al., 2009). Effective leaders
use personal power rather than positional power to influence others and possess an ability to
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

38
understand themselves and other people, display self-control and self-confidence, and to respond
to others in appropriate ways (Gill, 2002). Change leadership refers to the approach a leader
adopts with regard to the change initiative they are responsible for or involved in (Farkas, 2013).
Effective change leadership efforts can generate a very consistent level of support (Herold,
Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008).
Change leadership focuses on behavioral changes that provide a practical approach to
make a significant difference in organizational culture, whether the individual has positional
authority or just influence (Farkas, 2013). Abilities in leadership require intellectual, affective,
and cognitive abilities to perceive and understand information, make judgments, reason with it,
use intuition, imagine possibilities, make decisions, and solve problems (Gill, 2002). These
leadership factors influence the effectiveness of the Global Strategy brought about by the Global
Strategy (Farkas, 2013). These factors best reflect alignment with, or positive attitude toward the
change, and are likely to be influenced by leadership behaviors (Herold et al., 2008).
Change in behavior drives individual adaptation and ensures that the change is embedded
in the individual first, leading to eventual change in the culture (Farkas, 2013). Researchers’
and practitioners’ conclusions regarding practices such as communications regarding the change
and providing opportunity for individual input, are found to be effective change-leadership
behaviors (Herold et al., 2008). This ensures that behavioral change is addressed before cultural
change, displays a thorough understanding of how individual change can affect the culture once
enough members are bought in, and considers the adaptation required of the individual
throughout the change effort before it can be propagated throughout the organization (Farkas,
2013). Change leadership is contingent on the personal impact that the change has on the
individual, with highly impacted individuals being more responsive or sensitive to the effects of
the change (Herold et al., 2008).
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

39
Leaders can take steps to facilitate change by building consensus and support through a
change leadership approach (Farkas, 2013). Change leadership focuses on articulating a vision
for the change at hand and building support by involving others to improve their understanding
and ownership of the particular change, thus improving their motivation to enact the change
(Herold et al., 2008). A culture that can learn and facilitate change is a culture of trust where its
members are motivated to learn and change (Farkas, 2013; Higgs & Rowland, 2000). By
addressing change leadership, the competencies are more successfully addressed through an
integrative approach with organizational learning that builds consensus and support for the
Global Strategy (Farkas, 2013). This study will explore change leadership capabilities of
leadership and managers in driving behavioral changes that lead to the success of the Global
Strategy.
Organizational Learning
An organization’s culture is a major factor in any change initiative (Farkas, 2013).
However, when the culture is not conducive to building a culture of learning, leading
change can seem frightening (Farkas, 2013). A culture of learning is key to improving
organizational performance and strengthening the organization’s competitive advantage
(García-Morales, Jiménez-Barrionuevo, & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, 2012). While organizational
change cannot be predicted, the capability to harness change as a learning opportunity can
be developed (Higgs & Rowland, 2000). The ability to learn and adapt to internal and
external forces requiring change is critical to the performance and long-term success of the
organization and the Global Strategy (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). Through
development of new knowledge, organizational learning decreases the likelihood that a
firm's capabilities will become outdated, enabling the skills to remain dynamic and therefore
favoring improvement in the organization’s performance (García-Morales et al., 2012).
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

40
Because contextual factors such as leadership effectiveness and the history of past
change efforts play a significant role in how the organization culture perceives change, the
organization must explain past failures fully and align systems and policies appropriately
before initiating any OCI (Choi, 2011). Organizational learning occurs when an
organization is willing to question long-held assumptions about its mission, clients,
capabilities, and strategy, to generate changes in its practices, strategies, and values (García-
Morales et al., 2012). As a result, the organization must develop employee support,
participation, and trust, by encouraging open communication, offering training, and
implementing task forces designed to assist leaders and employees better understand and
support a learning culture (Choi, 2011). Higgs and Rowland (2000) state that building
learning capabilities drives successful change through adaptation of the organizational
culture. However, learning processes must be distributed across organizational members for
organizational learning to occur (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011).
Organizational learning is a change in the culture of an organization that ensues as the
business obtains experience and knowledge (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011; García-Morales et
al., 2012). The knowledge could be entrenched in a variety of sources, including individuals,
routines, and transactive memory systems (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011; García-Morales et
al., 2012). Through adaptation of cultural norms and values, the experiences and knowledge
embedded in the organization can contribute to the growth of the individual and facilitate
organizational learning (Gray, 2007). As a result, new business practices can be implemented
successfully by developing a culture of learning that can diagnose, understand, and manage
expectations of the change through growth with ourselves and relationship with others, our tasks,
and discovering new ways of seeing reality (Higgs & Rowland, 2000). Organizational learning
occurs because of the individuals, tools, tasks, and their networks form the principal mechanisms
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

41
through which knowledge is created, retained, and transferred, (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011;
García-Morales et al., 2012). The organization focused on learning identifies opportunities on
how to make and keep itself competent, changing its behavior and thus renewing innovative
behaviors that prevent it falling into stagnation (García-Morales et al., 2012). However, building
a culture of learning is a complex process that requires tactfulness and patience, requiring the
cooperation of the entire organization starting with leadership (Farkas, 2013; Mehta et al.,
2014). This study will explore the organizations ability to learn and adapt to change and
leadership’s role in creating a learning culture that leads to the success of the Global Strategy.
In conclusion, the literature review informed the study by providing a holistic view of the
variables needed to manage change successfully. Organizational change requires many variables
to be addressed for it to succeed, and the literature review helped to connect these variables with
concepts that allow me to develop a better and more holistic understanding to understanding and
measuring change. This in turned informed me on how to utilize the individual concepts to form
a model that incorporates various practices into a more complete model that can measure the
needed variables to succeed in leading change and which form the influences that were measured
in the study.
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analytic Conceptual Framework
The Clark and Estes (2008) model is a research tested problem solving model that
focuses on the knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational influences required for
managing successful organizational change. Knowledge and skills development support
employees in handling complex and changing environments (Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011).
It also enables the capacity to solve novel problems and challenges by generating new conceptual
knowledge and skills of tasks that increase employee engagement, transferring new knowledge
back to the organization (Clark & Estes, 2008). Mayer (2011) described motivation as an
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internal state that begins and maintains behavior aimed at reaching a goal, and the primary
precondition leading to meaningful learning through the exertion of effort. According to Clark
and Estes (2008), active choice, persistence, and effort are the factors of motivation and
cognition that influence employees to want to engage and stick to an activity in support of the
organizational goals. Self-improvement and mastery can lead to employee motivation by linking
tasks and activities with the individual’s interest and values (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Organizational factors, such as work processes, material resources, systems, political systems,
and organizational structure, impact the alignment between desired and actual performance
(Berger, 2014; Clark & Estes, 2008). Change can be facilitated in organizations by aligning
work processes, material resources, and communications about the change with organizational
strategy (Berger, 2014; Clark & Estes, 2008). As a result, organizations can close performance
gaps by aligning organizational goals, policies, or procedures with the organizational culture
(Clark & Estes, 2008).
Managers’ Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences
The influences discussed below are derived from general theory about human
performance (Clark & Estes, 2008) as well as leading practices in managing organizational
change. First, knowledge and skills influences are presented. Then, motivation influences are
examined. Lastly, organizational influences are reviewed.
Knowledge and Skills
Goal alignment and meeting organizational goals are achieved with knowledge and skills
development (Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011). Knowledge and skills are essential for job
performance in changing environments, helping employees handle complex and novel challenges
(Clark & Estes, 2008). Tying the development of knowledge and skills to organizational goals is
a key to success in today’s business climate (Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011). Identifying the
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current level of knowledge and skills provides an understanding of how productive employees
are and how successful they will be in problem solving and achieving of goals (Clark & Estes,
2008). Acquiring the knowledge and skills required enables the capacity to solve novel
problems and challenges by generating new conceptual knowledge that is transferred to the
organization. Knowledge and skill development increases employee engagement in achieving
organizational goals. Managing organizational change requires the knowledge and skills of the
specific tasks, the timing and sequence of the process, and which actors and roles are involved
especially when future challenges require novel problem solving (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Literature review of this section focuses on the knowledge and skills competencies
required for alignment of the managers with the Global Strategy business model and its goals.
First, a brief introduction to knowledge influence literature is presented.
Knowledge influences. In order to optimize performance, individuals need different
types of knowledge. Four types of knowledge have been identified: factual, conceptual,
procedural, and metacognitive (Rueda, 2011). Factual knowledge refers to knowledge that is
basic, and includes terminology and facts or elements needed to understand the context to solve
problems (Rueda, 2011). Conceptual knowledge is the interrelationships of basic knowledge
such as classifications, principles, categorizations, theories, models, and structures that enable
them to work jointly (Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011). Procedural knowledge is knowing how to
do something, but it can also refer to criteria for using skills, techniques, and methods for
accomplishing an activity (Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011). Metacognitive knowledge is
awareness of one’s self cognition by allowing one to know when and why to act (Krathwohl,
2002; Rueda, 2011).

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Managers need to reflect on how to motivate and engage employees to commit to the
Global Strategy. Individuals can adjust to environmental changes and demands through self-
directed learning and development that leads to diagnosing their learning needs, formulating
learning goals, identifying resources for learning, implementing learning strategies, and
evaluating learning outcomes (Nesbit, 2012). Self-awareness requires individuals to capably
participate in self-reflection and management of emotional reactions as part of reflective
processing of development needs (Nesbit, 2012). Enhancing self-development through reflection
can apply to a range of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and conceptual knowledge and skills,
developing the capacity for continuous learning and adaptability as a critical skill in self-
development (Gray, 2007; Nesbit, 2012). Self-reflection results in double-loop learning that
makes clear the rules, strategies, structures, and roles that are the fundamentals of conceptual
knowledge and learning to change and the realization of values and goals (Caldwell, 2012).
Self-reflection is at the core of learning and development, leading to discovery of self (Cseh,
Davis, & Khilji, 2013).
Managers that reflect on the quality of their reflections, critical reflection, and engage in
the process for self-development are able to enhance employee engagement and motivational
skills (Gray, 2007; Nesbit, 2012). Managers’ reflections can provide insights into framing
problems differently by considering multiple perspectives to better understand unmotivated
employees (Gray, 2007). Reflection is more than understanding. It is a process of discovery and
exploration that leads to managers learning how to motivate and engage employees by proactive
critical reflective practices (Gray, 2007). Critical reflectivity can enhance learning as managers
reflect on their experiences with unmotivated employees as a source for development in
recognition for imbalances of knowledge (Gray, 2007). Self-reflective practices allow managers
to make meaning of their learning and identify development needs and knowledge gaps
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associated with motivating and engaging their employees. Thus, reflection will facilitate
engagement with employees and their motivational needs, understanding how to align the work
with the employees’ interests, and evaluate feedback about different approaches to commit to the
Global Strategy (Gray, 2007).
Managers need to self-assess their understanding of roles and goals of the
organization and determine how to fill in gaps in their understanding. Engaged individuals are
motivated to grow by improving their skills and the efficiency of their work through task appeal
and interest, which is recognized as the most important motivator for individual engagement and
growth (Jensen, 2012; Mayo, 2000). Metacognitive processes affect achievement and task-
bound processes that are used to regulate information processing and growth (Roebers, Cimeli,
Röthlisberger, & Neuenschwander, 2012). Individuals can achieve growth and development by
making personal and emotional investments in their metacognitive process awareness and by
pursuing learning opportunities through shared understanding of organizational purpose and how
it relates to their goals (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015; Mayo, 2000).
Alignment provides a sense of purpose and understanding of organizational goals, vision,
and practices that the manager can interpret, search for, make meaning, and identify with the
organizational strategy (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015; Mayo, 2000). Organizations change through
the individual contribution of each employee leading to an organizational movement (Alagaraja
& Shuck, 2015). To create alignment, effective managers connect the overarching goals at the
individual level, generate emotion, and drive behavioral intention with everyone affected to want
to adopt the change (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015).
Engagement affects strategic alignment understanding and awareness of and allows for
full cooperation and willingness to put full effort in contributing to the new strategy (Agarwal,
2012; Biggs, Brough, & Barbour, 2014). As such, strategic priorities, awareness, understanding,
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importance, and job relatedness contribute to higher levels of manager engagement and support
of the change (Agarwal, 2012; Biggs et al., 2014). Managers can stimulate their individual and
collective learning to acquire knowledge, comprehension, and know-how satisfying
organizational and personal goals (Cicin-Sain, Vukmirovic, & Cicin-Sain, 2013). Thus,
managers share their knowledge, skills, and abilities when they are emotionally invested and
share their belief in the organizational goals and mission which affects the success of the Global
Strategy (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015).
To create alignment, managers must understand how to connect the overarching goals
at the individual level. Employee alignment is the level to which individuals comprehend how
their work supports the organizational priorities and goals (Ayers, 2013, 2015). Goal alignment
assist individuals comprehend how their daily tasks and activities support the goals of the
organization, promoting strategic objective outcomes. Employee involvement in the creation of
goals increases the likelihood of buy-in to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization,
increasing employee alignment (Ayers, 2015). Employee alignment can be increased by creating
trust in the organizational strategy and objectives through generating understanding of the
objectives and success outcomes of the organizational goals (Chong, Ooi, Chan, & Darmawan,
2011). Through communications, organizations can facilitate the technical and psychological
alignment of employees with the organizational goals (Wong, Ngan, Chan, & Chong, 2012). As
a result, communication of goals and objectives is essential in creating trust that generates
commitment in the pursuit of mutually beneficial goals and outcomes (Wong et al., 2012).
Through an understanding of effective communication techniques and feedback delivery,
managers can build trust and knowledge of the organizational goals and generate direct and
positive employee alignment (Wong et al., 2012). Communication of organizational goals and
objectives with employees’ activities and goals provides the employees greater clarity as to how
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their activities align with the goals of the organization (Ayers, 2013). Managers facilitate
support of organizational strategic goals by enhancing the effectiveness of communication, thus
securing employee trust and knowledge that develops employee alignment (Wong et al., 2012).
Feedback mechanisms about the employees and their understanding of how their work
relates to the organizational goals and priorities have been shown to positively impact employee
alignment (Ayers, 2013). Managers can develop alignment by devoting time communicating
with employees to create knowledge as to how their work and tasks relate and support the goals
of the organization (Ayers, 2013, 2015). As a result, through shared knowledge and meaning,
managers can enhance the effectiveness in communicating to employees, generating alignment,
trust, knowledge, and commitment of the Global Strategy (Wong et al., 2012).
Managers need to know how to recognize and generate the appropriate emotional
states in their employees. Emotions link environmental input with behavioral output, and the
intensity of the reaction or behavior can result in positive or negative behaviors that impact
performance (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010; Kaplan, Cortina, Ruark, LaPort, &
Nicolaides, 2014; Lord & Kanfer, 2002). Emotional perception leads to higher levels of follower
satisfaction and supportiveness, impacting individual judgement and attitudes of social process
such as trust, perceptions of honesty, interpersonal attraction, and group commitment (Gooty et
al., 2010; Lord & Kanfer, 2002). The interaction of emotional reactions to organizational events
has an influence in motivational intent that leads to persistence in accomplishing complex tasks
and goal commitment (Gooty et al., 2010; Lord & Kanfer, 2002). Interactions and relationship
with employees that are fair and ethical and maintain open and frequent communication can
generate positive emotions (Kaplan et al., 2014). Moreover, employees can also be challenged
by structuring work environments with complex tasks that are specific and manageable,
generating positive emotions (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014).
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Managers can assist their employees in regulating their emotional experiences and create
an affective relationship between the manager and follower that facilitates employee
performance, generating commitment in the accomplishment of organizational goals (Gooty et
al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014). Facilitation of organizational goals can be accomplishment by
recognizing and generating the appropriate emotional states in the employees, causing positive
behavioral intent in the completion of their tasks (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014).
Supportive managers that prevent undue environment distress that create negative emotions can
generate greater employee self-efficacy, performance, and trust (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al.,
2014). Managers can influence employee behavior through emotional displays that provide
frequent emotional uplifts, generating positive emotions and perceptions of the manager in
employees and work groups (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014). Thus, managers can
influence positive emotions and behaviors by thoughtfully interacting and communicating with
employees, demonstrating empathy, consideration and support that result in increased follower
satisfaction and commitment with the Global Strategy (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014).
To drive behavioral intention, managers must know how to inspire trust by modeling
the behaviors expected from employees. Leader attributes, values, and behaviors are reflective
of employees’ behavioral intention to change due to the proximal and immediate effect on
employees’ attitude and beliefs (Oreg & Berson, 2011). Leader characteristics such as
inspirational leadership, follower intellectual stimulation, follower consideration, and consistent
communication help employees navigate through crises by creating a vision that provides
direction for change, inspiring followers through behavioral modeling (Fritz, O'Neil, Popp, Fritz,
O'Neil, Popp, Williams, & Arnett, 2012; Oreg & Berson, 2011). A follower’s willingness and
intent to adopt or resist change is correlated to the leader’s own openness and disposition to
change, linking the leader’s values with the follower’s outcomes (Oreg & Berson, 2011).
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Leaders who are open to new ideas and stimulate innovative practices affect employees’ beliefs
and attitudes, encouraging employees to take risks and innovate by building trust through
consistent organizational strategies and policies that align the leader’s behavior with the
organizations (Li & Betts, 2003; Oreg & Berson, 2011). Intention is a function of attitude, which
looks at an individual’s positive and negative feelings associated with performing a behavior and
gauging the desirability of the consequences associated with it (Ngoqo & Flowerday, 2015). A
leader’s thoughts and skills are demonstrated in actions, structures, and processes that enhance
the possibility of success, creating trust and demonstrating a linkage between modeled behavior
and effectiveness in accomplishing the goals (Gilley et al., 2009). Thus, leaders can empower
their managers to lead by example in supporting the change efforts because management support
is a major determinant of success or failure in OCIs (Farkas, 2013).
Managers’ communications and behavior modeling with organizational expectations are
highly correlated to employee compliance with the organizational goals and objectives (Fritz et
al., 2012). Managers can develop employee commitment to the organizational objectives by
creating awareness of the organizations’ expectations and behaving consistently with the
organizations’ mission (Fritz et al., 2012). By acting consistently in alignment with the
organizational goals, managers generate higher employee commitment due to lower level of
cynicism about the change (Fritz et al., 2012). Managers consistent messaging and actions with
organizational objectives fosters trust and confidence in employees, serving as roles models for
behavior and attitudes that generate commitment (Fritz et al., 2012; Li & Betts, 2003). As a
result, managers can implement expectations of appropriate compliance with the organizational
objectives by creating awareness through messages and behaviors consistent with the
expectations of the Global Strategy (Fritz et al., 2012).

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Table 2
Knowledge Influences and Types

Motivation
Motivation is a belief regarding learning, development, and the achievement of goals
which requires both cognitive and emotional qualities (Rueda, 2011). These cognitive and
emotional qualities can be divided into the benefits of completing the task and the risk of not
doing so (Clark & Estes, 2008). Although motivation is a broad and abstract concept, active
choice, persistence, and effort are used as visible manifestations of motivation (Clark & Estes,
2008; Rueda, 2011). Motivation is important in organizational change because it can create a
Knowledge Influence Knowledge Type (i.e., declarative
(factual or conceptual), procedural, or
metacognitive)

Managers need to reflect on how to motivate and
engage employees to commit to the Global
Strategy.
Metacognitive
Managers need to self-assess their understanding
of roles and goals of the organization and
determine how to fill in gaps in their
understanding.
Metacognitive
To create alignment, managers must understand
how to connect the overarching goals at the
individual level.
Conceptual
Managers need to know how to recognize and
generate the appropriate emotional states in their
employees.
Conceptual
To drive behavioral intention, managers must
know how to inspire trust by modeling the
behaviors expected from employees.
Conceptual
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positive environment that drives self-development and growth interests and enhances knowledge
through mastery and self-improvement (Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011). Another important
result of motivation is that learning opportunities through goals that focus on mastery can be
created (Rueda, 2011).
Literature reviewed in this section focuses on the motivational competencies required for
alignment of employees with the new organizational business model and its goals. First, a brief
description of expectancy value theory and the utility value influences is offered. Next, goal
orientation and the mastery and self-improvement influences managers need to address is
explored. Third, self-efficacy needs are presented. Finally, the motivational influences’ table is
included.
Expectancy Value Theory. Individuals will engage with tasks if they have high
expectations of success being likely, value doing well, and have confidence in their individual
abilities to be successful at a task at hand (Eccles, 2009). Expectancy-value theory focuses on
two motivational aspects: expectancy, or whether individuals believe they can do the task, and
value, or whether individuals want to do the task. Confidence and personal value are affected by
the enjoyment, ability to master, perceived appropriateness, utility value, and cost of the
associated material (Eccles, 2009). Expectancy value is composed of intrinsic, attainment,
utility, and cost value constructs. Intrinsic value refers to the feeling or experience of enjoyment
while engaging in a task; attainment value is associated with the extent that the task correlates
with self-identity; utility value is how well a task fits with ones’ goals and fulfilment of rewards;
and cost value pertains to the perceived cost of engaging in an activity such as fear failure,
anticipated anxiety, and anger from key people (Eccles, 2009).

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Managers need to value the organizational benefits of engineers performing Global
Strategy objectives. Utility value focuses on the perceived usefulness of accomplishing a task to
get people to engage in an activity in which they may lack interest (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Expected usefulness of a task or action creates motivation to engage in actions that are
anticipated to produce desirable outcomes (Guo et al., 2016; Tamir, Bigman, Emily, Salerno, &
Schreier, 2015). By focusing on the usefulness of tasks that match an individual’s personal
goals, one can increase receptivity and engagement that develops more task interest, increasing
satisfaction and motivation (Durik, Shechter, Noh, Rozek, & Harackiewicz, 2014; Dysvik &
Kuvaas, 2011).
Managers can be engaged through goal attainment by understanding the utility and
relevance of new tasks, leading to motivation (Rozek, Svoboda, Harackiewicz, Hulleman, &
Hyde, 2017). Managers can be motivated by creating a connection with the new tasks and goals
of the Global Strategy that meets the employees’ professional and personal developmental
interests. By focusing on managers, an organization can have a long-term benefit in that the
managers reinforce the value of the diversified work over time. If managers see the Global
Strategy as benefiting their personal development and career, they will influence others to see the
benefits as well, driving positive change (Rozek et al., 2017).
Goal orientation. Goal orientation is a social-cognitive theory and examines the reason
why individuals engage in goal-oriented activities (Yough & Anderman, 2006). There are two
types of goal orientation: mastery and performance orientation. Goals that focus on mastery
motivate individuals to improve their skills and gain new competence in challenging situations
by focusing on the task as a learning opportunity (Rueda, 2011). Mastery-oriented goals
motivate individuals by focusing on self-improvement and accomplishing higher levels of
achievement to their prior accomplishments (Yough & Anderman, 2006). On the other hand,
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performance oriented goals concentrate on competition by demonstrating competence in
comparing and outperforming others (Yough & Anderman, 2006). Performance oriented goals
focus on competition with an emphasis on scores and relative ability to others, causing employee
anxiety and fear of making mistakes. Performance goal orientation of a change focuses on
compliance with the new objectives by causing negative feedback and consequences, while
mastery-oriented goal orientation focuses on employee growth to achieve the objectives (Yough
& Anderman, 2006). Therefore, motivation can be increased by defining goals from the
perspective that individuals are gaining knowledge and learning new skills by performing new
tasks that align the organizational goals with the individuals’ interest (Rueda, 2011).
Managers need to recognize Global Strategy tasks as opportunities for mastery and
self-improvement of themselves and employees. Ideally, individuals develop and acquire
competence in tasks by setting mastery approach goals (Belenky & Nokes-Malach, 2013).
Mastery goals provide focus and a path to align the individuals’ energy toward competence-
relevant behaviors that support deep conceptual engagement (Belenky & Nokes-Malach, 2013)
and intrinsically satisfying tasks predictive of long-term success (Cerasoli & Ford, 2014).
Mastery oriented motivation focused on task increases learning behavior that requires challenge
and persistence (Cerasoli & Ford, 2014; Roebers, Krebs, & Roderer, 2014). Therefore, mastery
leads to better understanding of the goals and facilitates adoption of new challenges such as
shifting to diversified work (Belenky & Nokes-Malach, 2013), whereas performance goals lead
to less willingness to interact and work with partners because the focus is on outperforming
others, reducing the dependency on partner actions due to perceiving partners as adversaries
(Poortvliet & Darnon, 2010).
When managers adopt mastery-oriented goals, they are able to achieve Global Strategy
objectives by supporting the employees. This understanding gives managers the ability to create
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a safe learning environment instead of a performance goal environment (Ashauer & Macan,
2013). Performance-oriented goals can lead to anxiety and fear of making mistakes whereas by
focusing on mastery, managers can increase employees’ desire of positive emotions related to
accomplishing tasks that helps them grow and develop (Tamir et al., 2015). Performance goals
endorse maladaptive behaviors such as exploitation of others and hindering team work, whereas
managers focused on mastery goals understand collaboration and the integration of differing
opinions to build relationships and aid their learning (Poortvliet & Darnon, 2010). Managers,
therefore, play a direct role in being able to generate positive motivation through understanding
of mastery (Yough & Anderman, 2006).
Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy influences an individual’s belief system and provides a
foundation for motivation, well-being, and personal accomplishment through interpretation of
information from mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physiological
reactions (Pajares, 2006). Self-efficacy determines engagement in self-regulatory practices of
self-correcting actions and cognitions (Pajares, 2006). The beliefs of self-efficacy enrich
accomplishment and well-being by affecting the choices individuals make and the actions they
pursue, selecting tasks the individual has confidence and competence in accomplishing
successfully. Self-efficacy regulates the effort individuals spend on an activity, their
perseverance when encountering obstacles, and their resilience confronting adverse situations.
Additionally, self-efficacy affects thought patterns and emotional reactions, creating feelings of
calmness during difficult tasks and activities if individuals have high-efficacy beliefs (Pajares,
2006).

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Managers need to feel capable of leading the employees to adhere to the Global
Strategy. Self-efficacy is an important factor in changing and affecting individual behavior
(Cherian & Jacob, 2013). Performance is consistent with the individual’s self-efficacy beliefs,
influencing persistence. The complexity of tasks and expected performance outcomes are
influenced by self-efficacy, which can positively influence employee’s performance (Cherian &
Jacob, 2013). Performance is consistent with their self-efficacy beliefs, as it influences
persistence (Lunenburg, 2011). Self-efficacy can lead to increased individual performance and
productivity through high perseverance (Cherian & Jacob, 2013; Lunenburg, 2011). It affects
individual beliefs about the successful performance in activities, strongly affecting learning,
motivation, and performance associated with successful completion of the task (Lunenburg,
2011). Self-efficacy influences learning and effort, and the goals individuals set for themselves.
Individuals with high self-efficacy have confidence that they will be successful and are willing to
work harder and put more effort in learning new tasks. Additionally, individuals with high self-
efficacy are confident about their ability to learn and perform new tasks, persisting in their
efforts even if problems arise (Lunenburg, 2011).
Through cognitive and skill development initiatives in understanding and performing new
tasks, managers can improve their self-efficacy in successfully adapting to and leading change
(Cherian & Jacob, 2013). By understanding the facts, concepts, available methods, and technical
skills required for successful performance in solving complex or new tasks, managers can feel
capable in leading their employees through change (Cherian & Jacob, 2013). Reflecting on past
accomplishments can boost managers’ confidence in completing similar tasks to ones they have
succeeded in before (Lunenburg, 2011). Managers can boost their self-efficacy through
completion of challenging assignments, professional development opportunities, coaching and
being coached, goal setting, providing and seeking supportive leadership, and providing and
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receiving rewards for improvement (Lunenburg, 2011). By improving self-learning skills,
manager can boost their self-efficacy and positively influence their achievement motivation in
successfully leading change (Yusuf, 2011).
Table 3
Motivational Influences

Organizational Influences
Culture is a powerful influence in performance and it exists within organizations at the
environmental, group, and individual levels (Clark & Estes, 2008). When desired and actual
performance match, organizational and employee alignment can be achieved through a rework of
organizational factors such as work processes, material resources, work and political systems,
and organizational structures. (Berger, 2014; Clark & Estes, 2008). Misalignment between
organizational goals, policies, or procedures with organizational culture can create performance
gaps (Clark & Estes, 2008). Work processes make up the employee’s jobs and if those change,
Assumed Motivation Influences

Motivational Influence Assessment

Utility Value – Managers need to value the
organizational benefits of engineers performing
Global Strategy objectives.
Interview – Ask managers to
assess the utility value in the
Global Strategy and how it fits
within organization.
Goal Orientation – Managers need to recognize
Global Strategy tasks as opportunities for mastery
and self-improvement of themselves and
employees.
Interview- Ask managers to
explain the goals set to drive
mastery and self-improvement of
employees.
Self-efficacy – Managers need to feel capable of
leading the employees to adhere to the Global
Strategy.
Interview – Ask managers to
explain their feelings about their
ability to lead employees to the
Global Strategy.
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so do the employees tasks (Clark & Estes, 2008). Any changes that are met with insufficient
work processes, material resources, and communications about the change create a performance
gap, resulting in chaos and inefficiency (Berger, 2014; Clark & Estes, 2008).
Strategic employee communications are the foundations for success in change and
performance is likely to improve and strengthen with strong communications targeted at
employees (Berger, 2014). Rewards can be used to motivate employees but the structure,
frequency, and type can have a negative organizational impact due to misalignment between
employees’ short and long-term performance goals and those of the organization (Hansen, Smith,
& Hansen, 2002). Organizational change is so prevalent that performance issues must be given
special attention, because a solution in one area due to a change can create a performance gap in
another part of the organization (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Literature review of this section focuses on the organizational context required for
alignment of employees with the new organizational business model and its goals. First, a brief
introduction to cultural models and settings literature is reviewed. Then, the organizational
context on learning culture and organizational readiness managers need to address is explored.
And lastly, the organizational context influences table is presented
Cultural models and cultural settings. Cultural models and settings make it clear to
understand the way people and organizations think, act, and respond to change. Cultural models
are shared mental representations of how organizations and individuals work through dynamic
traits that are not noticed or invincible to its members (Rueda, 2011). Cultural settings are
visible and understood social contexts made up of organizational policies and practices. Models
are the aspects of an organization that are customary and normal while cultural settings are
visible policies and procedures that drive tasks and duties. Settings can impact behavior, while
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cultural models are formed by individuals and groups whose behaviors are impacted by cultural
settings (Rueda, 2011).
Rueda (2011) encourages asking probing questions to ensure constructive cultural models
and settings among the organizations managers. The questions should at a minimum describe
the cultural models and settings and the organization, norms and routines, spoken and unspoken
rules, circumstances that lead to the current situation, and how decisions are made. These
questions provide insights into the organization that influence individual behavior during an
organizational change initiative (Rueda, 2011).
Leadership must create a strong learning culture with emphasis on learning.
Organizational learning can increase organizational knowledge through cognitive and behavioral
change by transforming and integrating individual knowledge in a systematic approach (García-
Morales et al., 2012). Organizations with strong learning cultures through organizational
learning methods show a strong emphasis on learning and organizational readiness and are likely
to prosper in changing environments (Choi & Ruona, 2011). Organizational learning promotes a
culture of learning that enhances organizational capacity and individual capabilities to effectively
participate and make contributions to change efforts that lead to success in organizational change
initiatives (Choi & Ruona, 2011).
Leadership’s ability to create a strong organizational learning culture that affords the
organization the ability to learn and adapt to changes is critical for long-term organizational
success (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). Through organizational learning, leadership can
support knowledge transfer and can assist managers’ development in support of OCIs such as
distributed work arrangements, multi-unit organizational form, globalization, mergers and
acquisitions, and alliances (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). Leadership’s support of
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organizational learning allows organizations to maintain or improve performance by harnessing
and sharing of organizational and employee experience (García-Morales et al., 2012).
Leadership must create a healthy organizational environment that is prepared in
anticipation of the Global Strategy. Readiness is important in identifying whether an
organization is prepared for change and a good predictor of whether an organizational change
initiative will be successful (Pare, Sicotte, Poba-Nzaou, & Balouzakis, 2011). According to Pare
et al. (2011), organizational readiness integrates organizational factors such as vision clarity,
change appropriateness, change efficacy, top management support, presence of an effective
champion, organizational history of change, organizational conflicts, organizational flexibility,
and cohesive self-efficacy. Organizational readiness of a change can help identify if an
organization is ready for organizational change (Lerch, Viglione, Eley, & James-Andrews, 2011)
and what areas of readiness need attention (Pare et al., 2011).
Trying to implement a change without identifying and addressing deficiencies in
organizational and managers’ readiness can negatively impact the change initiative and the
organization (Lehman, Greener, Rowan-Szal, & Flynn, 2012; Lerch et al., 2011). Leadership has
a duty to assess the readiness of the effort to change by providing information about the health of
the organization and management preparedness that is pertinent to the change and identifying
barriers (Lehman et al., 2012). The change initiative can be supported by leadership identifying
useful organizational factors for the company to assess readiness in support of managers’
capacity to lead the change (Gagnon, Labarthe, Legare, Ouimet, Estabrooks, Roch, & Gimshaw,
2011; Khan, Timmings, Moore, Marquez, Pyka, Gheihman, & Straus, 2014).

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Table 4
Organizational Influences and Types

Conceptual Framework for the Study:
Integrating Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences
A conceptual framework is the structure used to frame the study and consists of concepts,
theories, and the practitioner’s orientation that includes vocabulary, concepts, and theories from
their discipline (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The practitioner’s orientation
determines what questions to ask through their lens which frames their world (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Those questions and the concepts, terms, definitions, model, and literature
review used to form the framework in turn form the problem of the study (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). As a change management practitioner, I view the world through the lens of behavioral
change that leads to employee alignment required to make organizational change initiatives
succeed.
Managers need the knowledge, motivation, and organizational structure necessary to
support the organizations’ Global Strategy. Enterprises going through large change initiatives
need to foster a culture of flexibility, idea generation, business knowledge development at all
employee levels, change at the individual level, and tolerance for risk taking because these
attributes are found to positively influence organizational transformations (Alpkan et al., 2010).
Organizational Influence Organizational Type (cultural model or
cultural settings)
Leadership must create a strong learning culture
with emphasis on learning.
Model
Leadership must create a healthy organizational
environment that is prepared in anticipation of the
Global Strategy.
Setting
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The study presented will investigate the managers’ abilities to implement the new Global
Strategy. The knowledge, motivation, and organizational context must be evaluated as
components that intertwine and interact at all levels of the organization and work together to
realize a successful change effort.
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Figure 2. The structure used to frame the study is based on manager knowledge and motivation
affecting organizational influences.
Organizational
Influence
•Leadership must create a
strong learning culture
with emphasis on
learning.
•Type: Model
Manager knowledge
and motivation
•Knowledge Influence
•Managers need to reflect on how to motivate and
engage employees to commit to the Global
Strategy.
•Managers need to self-assess their understanding of
roles and goals of the organization and determine
how to fill in gap in their understanding.
•To create alignment, managers must understand
how to connect the overarching goals at the
individual level.
•Managers need to know how to recognize and
generate the appropriate emotional states in their
employees.
•To drive behavioral intention, managers must know
how to inspire trust by modeling the behaviors
expected from employees.
•Motivation Influence
•Managers need to value the organizational benefits
of engineers performing Global Strategy
objectives.
•Managers need to recognize Global Strategy tasks
as opportunities for mastery and self-improvement
of themselves and employees.
•Managers need to feel capable of leading the
employees to adhere to the Global Strategy.
Organizational
Influence
•Leadership must create a
healthy organizational
environment that is
preprated in anticipation
of the Global Strategy.
•Type: Setting
Organizational Global Goal
By January 2020, 100% of PNW employees will participate in the Global Strategy.

Stakeholder Goal
By June 2019, 100% of managers will implement leading practices in organizational change through reflection, motivation and
engagement, goal orientation, self-efficacy, utility value, and behavioral intent generation strategies.
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Reflecting on the required knowledge and skills to achieve the organizational goals is
essential for job performance in changing environments, helping managers handle complex
organizational change that requires knowledge and skill development that increases employee
engagement in achieving organizational goals (Clark & Estes, 2008). Organizational change
initiatives are complex and require significant planning and understanding of multiple and varied
subjects, groups, and organizational knowledge to be implemented successfully. Self-reflection
by managers to realize what they know and do not know is important in creating a strong
learning culture that leads to inquiry and investigation before implementation plans are devised.
A learning culture encourages managers to be inquisitive and investigate the reasons why a
change is being implemented, having a solid understanding that they can use to develop any
skills lacking in leading their teams successfully. The managers can also share with their team
their knowledge and understanding to build support by identifying and closing gaps in their
employees. Engaged managers are motivated to grow by improving their skills and the
efficiency of their work through task appeal and interest which is recognized as the most
important motivator for employee engagement and growth (Jensen, 2012; Mayo, 2000). The
reflection and self-improvement required for the change initiative to be successful must be
measured and any gaps identified, checking organizational readiness in preparation for the
change. Without a readiness check, managers will be deploying activities without a baseline that
informs them where to focus their attention, without analyzing if the goals can be achieved, and
ultimately whether the change is feasible and should be implemented. Organizational readiness
provides information about the health of the organization that is pertinent to the change being
proposed and identifies barriers in the organization and needs that must be addressed (Lehman et
al., 2012). Organizational readiness of a change can help identify if an organization is ready for
change and what areas of readiness need attention (Pare et al., 2011).
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Organizational change initiatives may bring about changes that individuals may not want
because they introduce uncertainty. Managers need to create an understanding of how the
Global Strategy generates opportunities for mastery and self-development, shifting their
perceptions of the change and using it as an opportunity for improvement. By focusing the
change on self-development and growth, managers can develop an organizational change into an
opportunity to improve on current skills and learn new ones, possibly leading to new
opportunities down the road because of a willingness to learn, grow, and adapt. This growth
mindset helps establish a culture of learning, which can lead to managers focusing on growth and
taking on new challenges. As a result, managers can adjust to environmental changes and
demands through self-directed learning and development that leads to diagnosing their learning
needs, formulating learning goals, identifying resources for learning, implementing learning
strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes (Nesbit, 2012). By focusing on mastery and self-
improvement to provide focus and a path to align their energy, managers develop competence-
relevant behaviors that support engagement (Belenky & Nokes-Malach, 2013) and practice
intrinsically satisfying tasks predictive of long-term success (Cerasoli & Ford, 2014). These new
behaviors positively influence the culture by enforcing a learning environment that permeates
throughout the organization. This culture shift influences employee behavior, which influences
the culture further, creating a cycle of learning and ultimately, a learning organization ready for
any change.
Applying Rueda’s (2011) research, managers can link individual values with
organizational goals to create a positive and motivational environment that generates interest and
perceives the change effort as a learning opportunity creating motivation. Managers need to
understand the value that the Global Strategy creates for the organization, motivating them to see
the change as a positive and valuable opportunity. Utility value linked to goals that impact the
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organizational culture sends a strong message to managers because they understand the reason
for the tasks needed and how they align with the organizational goals. Utility value motivates
managers by focusing on tasks that have meaning for them and that they find useful in helping
their organization succeed. Managers can be engaged through goal attainment by demonstrating
the utility and relevance of new tasks, leading to motivation (Rozek et al., 2017). Those values
feed into the organizational learning culture and encourage managers to perform and achieve the
organizational goals, creating a cycle where employees see value in their actions. That cultural
shift then motivates employees because they see the value of their tasks, enforcing the culture
with their actions. Utility value and goal orientation development feed into the readiness analysis
of the change and provide goals the organization can use to measure the gap between the
envisioned environment and the current situation.
Conclusion
This study is focused on organizational change initiative employee alignment. Chapter
Two reviewed the literature on organizational change initiatives. The review began with a
definition of organizational change initiatives, failures, and finally impacts. The causes of
alignment with business strategy were analyzed to understand the reasons for organizational
change initiative failures. Next, the chapter reviewed the literature on learning and motivational
theories to establish a foundation of competencies and leading practices for success. Then, the
chapter reviewed the conceptual framework and the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
context (KMO) through the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis model to analyze the influences
that impact the causes of organizational change initiative failures. Finally, the study’s
conceptual framework presented investigates the managers’ abilities to implement a new
organizational business model as part of the company’s Global Strategy. The knowledge,
motivation, and organizational context must be assessed as components that intertwine and
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interact together to realize a successful change effort. The study’s methodological approach and
validation process will be presented in Chapter Three.

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Chapter Three: Methods
The purpose of this study was to conduct a needs analysis in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational factors necessary to reach the Global Strategy’s organizational
performance goal. The literature review focused on organizational change initiative outcomes
and impacts associated with the Global Strategy, and its common causes. The analysis began by
generating a list of possible needs associated with the Global Strategy deployment and was
followed by systematically examining the needs identified in the data to focus on actual or
validated influences. While a complete needs analysis would focus on all stakeholders, for
practical purposes, the stakeholder group of focus in this study was the manager group.
1. What is the managers’ knowledge and motivation related to implementing leading
practices in managing organizational change?
2. What is the interaction between organizational culture and context and managers’
knowledge and motivation?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
This chapter reviews the research design and methods for data collection and analysis.
The chapter starts with an analysis of the participating stakeholders. The stakeholder population
is described, and the criteria that were used to select the type of participant is identified. The
sampling strategy explains the participants’ selection, timing, and composition of the sample,
and the appropriate approach to gaining access to these settings. Data collection and
instrumentation discusses the methods chosen and the reason for using observations, interviews,
and documents for data collection. Credibility and trustworthiness sections examine the
strategies that were used to maintain the credibility and trustworthiness of the study. The ethics’
section describes the responsibilities involved with informed consent, confidentiality of data,
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anonymity of the participants, and data security. Lastly, the chapter describes the limitations and
delimitations in the study.
Participating Stakeholders
The stakeholder of focus is the managers’ group who lead the different Line of Business
units (LoB) and the Engagement Managers (EM) who managed client accounts and partner with
the LoB units on client engagement. The four LoB phases are Co-Production, Production,
Customer Experience, and Rapid Innovation. The Shared Services unit is considered a LoB but
is not part of PNW’s end-to-end methodology. The Share Services LoB is an internal PNW unit
that exists to provide contract resources to the other LoB’s and is staffed by a skeleton crew of
experts. The EM’s partnered with Line of Business units to staff resources and provide the
required expertise around the expected lifecycle phase per project requirements. There are five
LoB managers and two EM managers. The managers demographic is made up of mostly white,
males in their 30’s. The managers have been employed at PNW for less than 6 years, with most
ranging about two to three years, and the EM managers less than a year. The LoB managers lead
their respective LoB units whose responsibilities concentrate on capabilities and offerings,
definition of delivery models, responsibility for project success, client partnering on engagement
and marketing, maintaining individual profit and loss accountability, and self-sustaining and
profitability of the LoB unit. Each LoB unit is managed by a director leading a team of
engineers whose expertise align with their respective LoB requirements. The LoB directors
manage their staff and coordinate with other units to identify the resources and support required
to secure and staff each project. The EM unit director supervises overall performance of the EM
Managers and their accounts, as well as performs client facing and account management
responsibilities. The EM managers oversee responsibility for their respective client accounts.
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The EM managers partner with Line of Business units to staff resources and provide the required
expertise around the expected lifecycle phase per project requirements.
The study participation criteria for the managers are that they serve in director and
manager roles in the LoB and EM units, are not part of the executive team, and do not function
as team leads or employees. The managers have to be independent from the executive and
employee groups since they are taking direction from the executive team to operationalize the
Global Strategy and need to be able to direct those in their units to carry out the Global Strategy.
Because of the relatively small number of managers and their location at a single site, all
managers are asked to participate in the study (Fink, 2012; Johnson & Christensen, 2015).
Observation Sampling Criteria and Rationale
The following criteria guided sampling.
Criterion 1. Stakeholders were located in the corporate office. Managers in the remote
office were excluded from observation because they were not physically on sight to be observed
for reactions and interactions with the rest of the participants about the Global Strategy.
Criterion 2. Managers participated in the Services meeting. Participation allowed for
observations on their reaction to communication and updates around the Global Strategy and any
interactions with their leadership about the proposed change.
Criterion 3. Only managers observations were recorded. Because participant interaction
was valuable, if a manager interacted or reacted to another manager, observational data was
collected. If an executive (COO, VP of Services, and CEO who are participants of the Services
meeting) interacted and received a response or reaction from managers, the data was recorded. If
an executive interacted with a manager but received no response or reaction from the manager,
the data was recorded and utilized in providing insights to a manager’s reaction. If an executive
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interacted with other executive attending meeting, the data was recorded but not utilized unless
deemed pertinent in providing insights to a manager’s response or reaction.
Observation Sampling (Access) Strategy and Rationale
The timing of the sample collection began before interviews were conducted, although
observation continued during interviews. The observation took place in their corporate office
building during attendance to the Services meeting where all LoB managers and the EM director
were invited to attend to discuss the Global Strategy and other strategic and operational business
related to their units with the COO, VP of Services, and CEO. First an initial observation was
conducted to establish a baseline of the meeting format and general interaction among the
managers. Attention was paid only to material and information related to the Global Strategy
being discussed as a criterion for the observation, concentrating on the reactions and interactions
of the managers. If a manager interacted or reacted to a manager or executive, observational data
was collected. If an executive interacted with managers, the data was recorded and assessed as
to whether it was pertinent in providing insight to a manager’s response. The reactions and
interactions indicated a level of organizational readiness as to whether the managers were
knowledgeable and felt confident in deploying the Global Strategy. The observations
corroborated the interview data collected and helped formulate some of the questions for the
interviews.
Interview Sampling Criteria and Rationale
The following criteria guided sampling.
Criterion 1. Stakeholders served in director and manager roles in the LoB and EM units,
were not part of the executive team, and did not function as team leads or employees.
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Criterion 2. Managers performed in the developer role earlier in their career. By having
performed the engineers’ function, it allowed the manager to understand engineers’ drivers and
motivation with regard to their work.
Criterion 3. Managers needed to be familiar with the Global Strategy. Understanding
the change allowed managers to understand how the change impacted them and their business
unit, customers, and the organization as a whole.
Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
A purposeful sampling strategy utilizing maximum variation was employed, seeking
identification and selection of information-rich cases for the most effective use of limited
resources (Palinkas et al., 2015; Patton, 2002). In purposeful sampling, the researcher specifies
the individuals who will participate and the characteristics of the population of interests (Johnson
& Christensen, 2015). Maximum variation sampling selects a wide range of cases so all types in
the criterion selected are included (Johnson & Christensen, 2015). Thus, all managers in the
LoB and EM units were included regardless of how many years they had served in those roles,
the LoB managers had previous developer experience, had been employed at the organization
long enough to be familiar with the Global Strategy, and irrespective of whether they were
promoted to managers in the organization or hired in as a manager. The sample size consisted of
five LoB and two EM managers. Participation in the study was voluntary. The purpose of the
study and the process was explained to the managers so that they could decide whether or not to
participate. The participants were able to withdraw at any time during the data collection
process.

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Data Collection and Instrumentation
Observations and interviews were the primary tools utilized to collect data from
participants to address the research questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Observations were
conducted first to evaluate the reactions of the managers on the knowledge and motivation and
readiness of the organization in carrying out the Global Strategy. Interviews were conducted to
further explore items highlighted by the observations and to identify gaps in their knowledge,
motivation, and organizational readiness in preparation for success in the Global Strategy as
identified by the literature. Documents are ready-made sources of supporting data that are easily
accessible and can include written, visual, digital, and physical material relevant to the
researcher’s study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The purpose of conducting the three types of
information gathering methods was to gather data about actual behaviors via observations, then
to obtain self-report data about beliefs and attitudes as well as knowledge of the managers via
interviews. The documents served as supporting documentation to the observations and
interviews. In the following sub-sections, the three methods are discussed in greater detail.
Observations
Observations allowed the researcher to collect evidence in a naturally occurring setting
and capture a firsthand encounter of the executives and management communicating about the
Global Strategy (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Insights were gathered by observing the
participants’ reaction and interaction during the meetings, allowing the researcher to gauge the
temperature of the meeting and how receptive the participants were by how many questions they
asked, the quality of the questions, and any reactions to the information being shared. The
researcher did not interact with the participants during the meeting, performing a complete
observer role (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
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Observations provided insights to motivation, knowledge on the topic, whether they felt
the organization was ready, and whether they saw the change as valuable. Demonstration of
knowledge was indicated by managers’ awareness of the new goals and direction and suggesting
feedback about the Global Strategy. Validation of attitudes were exemplified by positive or
negative expressions or voicing acceptance for versus resistance to the Global Strategy.
Demonstration of organization influences were indicated by leadership making references to
workforce development, resource need and availability support, and adaptations to the change
process and business strategy as issues were discovered.
Observations focused on the readiness and preparedness of the organization by analyzing
material presented, evaluation of knowledge by managers in the material discussed, and in the
overall discussion. Motivation was evaluated by noting the reactions of the participants to the
material presented and the discussion held around the topic. Observations considered the
physical environment, providing context to the meeting and describing the setting (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Participants’ attendance and medium of attendance was documented, how they
organized themselves in the room, frequency of interaction among the participants, and any
relevant characteristics of those in attendance. Activities and interactions were observed to
identify any sequence of activities, how participants connected with one another, how the
participants interacted with the activity and one another, level of immersion, and any unusual
topics, actions, or questions that emerged. Conversations were analyzed on the content, format
of the discussions, and based on who spoke and who listened. Any subtleties were documented
such as symbolic meanings of words, informal and unplanned activities, and nonverbal
communication such as reactions, mood, and the surrounding space. Trustworthiness of
interpretations was addressed by accounting for socially desirable behaviors and language.
Lastly, the researcher’s own behavior and interaction with the participants and the meeting was
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documented for the researchers role, influence on the activity or the participants, thoughts about
the activity or participant interaction, and any communication with the participants (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016).
Observations were conducted during the Services meetings focused on gathering
information where business decisions and announcements around the Global Strategy were
made. The Services meetings were one hour and fifteen minutes in length and scheduled every
Tuesday in the headquarters executive meeting room. Remote attendees could join via video
conferencing. The COO led the meeting and the CEO and VP of Services division discussed
information with the LoB managers and the EM director on new initiatives or decisions about the
Global Strategy, financials for that period, organizational issues, and any other topic that
leadership felt needed to be addressed that impacted the LoB and EM units. The meetings were
an open forum for the managers to voice concerns, support one another, and discuss topics
regarding their units. For these reasons, a systematic closer look during the meeting was useful
in understanding manager perception about the Global Strategy to gauge organizational
readiness.
The observations occurred between August and September of 2018. Attendance to the
meetings took place when the executive team was presenting information on the new business
strategy, although a prior meeting was attended to get a baseline of the general mood and
interaction of the managers and employees. Observations took place over multiple meetings to
observe the reaction, mood, and conversations around the Global Strategy information being
discussed. To limit an overwhelming creation of notes that did not add value to the study,
observations concentrated on Global Strategy discussion only. A baseline observation was
conducted before the first official observation took place, and ensuing observations used to
collect data started before the first interview. Observations continued during the interview
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process. Notes taken during the observations helped formulate or tailor some of the interview
questions. The observation protocol in the appendix section was utilized. The CEO was very
transparent in providing access to meetings and participants. We both concluded that the
Services meetings would be the ideal meeting to observe, but I was given access to any meeting
that would be of benefit to the study.
Notes were taken during the observation and audio recordings of the observation were
accomplished with a digital recorder and an iPad as a backup device for voice recordings.
Recordings and notes taken were protected by transcribing them soon after the observation is
complete and removing the files from the recording device. The digitally transcribed material
was stored in in a protected folder to ensure security of the material.
Interviews
Interviews were utilized to gather information that cannot be collected through
observations, such as attitudes, feelings, thoughts, or intentions (Patton, 2002). Interviews also
allowed the researcher to inquire about past experiences and events that cannot be replicated
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Interviews provided an in-depth understanding to participants’
knowledge and motivation and organizational readiness to the Global Strategy. By allowing the
researcher to evaluate employees by the answers given, interviews revealed managers knowledge
about whether they know what is essential to engage and motivate employees to want to change,
and the organizational readiness in preparation for the change.
Interviews focused on the self-reflection of the managers’ understanding in motivating
employees, dealing with unmotivated employees, employee and organizational goal alignment,
self-efficacy in their abilities to lead, and engaging employees to commit to the Global Strategy.
Interviews asked participants to self-assess their understanding of roles and goals of the
organization to determine how to fill the gaps in their understanding. Moreover, managers were
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asked to explain the direct organizational benefits in engineers performing the Global Strategy
and the value of diversified work as an opportunity for mastery and self-improvement of
engineers.
The interviews were conducted in between August and September 2018 after the initial
observations took place. Each interview was scheduled for one hour. Each manager participated
in one interview comprised of informal conversational type, interview guide type, and
standardized open-ended type questions. Standardized open-ended type questions focused on
demographics and organizational readiness regarding the Global Strategy (Patton, 2002). This
type of questions had predetermined order and wording, allowing the researcher to elicit
participants preconceived notions and knowledge about the Global Strategy (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). The interview protocol in Appendix A was the tool utilized during the open-ended
questions. Informal conversational interview type questions generated discussion around
information that emerged during observations that might provide insights by exploring deeper
(Patton, 2002). This type of questions were also useful as exploratory inquiries to learn more
about the employees’ reaction to the Global Strategy, communications and materials shared, and
to formulate questions for subsequent standardized open-ended type interviews (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Interview guide questions were utilized to ask questions to individual
participants that focused on motivational, knowledge and skills competencies, and readiness of
the organization to identify gaps required for a successful adoption of the Global Strategy
(Patton, 2002). This type of questions allow the researcher the ability to respond to the managers
answers by allowing flexibility on question sequence and wording, as well as allowing the
managers to express their unique views (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For example, when asked
about motivational aspects about their ability to lead change, depending on their response, a
follow-up question could center on whether the participant has the knowledge required to
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understand how to lead change. The interview protocol in Appendix A was the tool utilized
during the interview guide questions. The CEO was very transparent in providing access to the
participants and anyone else that would be of benefit to the study.
Audio recording of interviews was accomplished with a digital recorder and an iPad as a
backup device. Notes were taken during the interview as a supplement to the audio recordings.
Protection of recordings and notes collected was conducted by transcribing them soon after the
interview was complete and removing the files from the recording device. The digitally
transcribed material was stored in in a protected folder to ensure security of the material.
Documents and Artifacts
Documents and artifacts were sources of data that did not intrude or alter the research
setting such as observations and interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Documents were ready-
made sources of supporting data that were easily accessible and can include written, visual,
digital, and physical material relevant to the researcher’s study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Strategy documents included executive strategy, planning, and communication materials related
to the Global Strategy presented or shared with employees in preparation for or during meetings.
Recorded video of the presentations was also made available. Collection was focused on
material that supports interview responses and observational data related to the motivation,
knowledge, and organizational readiness of the Global Strategy. The CEO was very transparent
in providing access to and sharing of information and documents that were deemed valuable to
the study.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Internal validity is a check on the construction of reality, comparing how the research
findings to the participants understanding of the world, a construction of reality (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Triangulation is the best-known strategy to validate the research findings, using
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multiple sources for comparing and cross-checking the data collected to increase the internal
validity of the study (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I used triangulation by
collecting documents, observing meetings, and interviewing sources to compare and cross-check
the data collected. Sources can be observations, interviews, and documents and can include
multiple investigators collecting or analyzing the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Other
methods that ensure internal validity include member checks, asking respondents to validate their
responses by soliciting their feedback (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I used member checks to have
sources validate their responses for accuracy. Also, internal validity can be ensured by observing
participants for a period whereby the researcher can get close enough to understand the
phenomenon and the findings are saturated with rich information that is becoming repetitive
(Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I attended three managers meetings and a leadership
meeting to observe the sources and get close enough to understand the findings, as well as
validate interview data and documents collected. Lastly, another strategy is for the researcher to
state their position and describe any biases that affect or are affected by the research process
(Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I communicated to the participants the expectations
of the study on my part as well as theirs, attempting to build trust and encouraging them to be
transparent and sincere in the interviews. I explained to the participants that my primary
interested is learning their viewpoints and opinions regarding their roles as managers and in
support of the Global Strategy. After the observations, interviews, and data analysis, I reviewed
notes and transcripts and reflected on the material to ensure that confronted my own personal
biases that could influence my interpretation of the data. Researcher bias is not problematic as
long as the researcher accounts for any preconceived assumptions about the research study and
disclose any biases that could influence data analysis. As a change management practitioner, I
had a few preconceived assumptions about change management and leadership best practices due
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to my professional experience on the subject matter. Because of this, I purposefully selected
literature that confronted my biases, attempting to be transparent in my reflective practice while
analyzing and interpreting the data collected. Internal validity of this study was addressed
through triangulation, checking interpretations of interviews and observations with the
participants, and observing multiple meetings to ensure the findings are credible (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016).
Reliability refers to repeatability of the research findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). In
qualitative studies, however, repeatability is difficult because the social world is in constant flux.
However, so as long as the study finding are consistent with the data collected and its findings,
the study can be considered dependable (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Reliability can be improved
with an audit trail, providing detailed accounts of the data collection process, explaining how
categories were derived, and detailing how decisions were asserted in the study. The reliability
of this study was enhanced by describing how the study was conducted and the findings derived
from the data, leaving an audit trail that can be used to reconstruct the study and validate the
findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Ethics
As a doctoral student conducting research in an organization with no personal or
professional affiliation, any influence by the researcher on the employees of the organization
being assessed was minimal. However, any responses the participants provided could have been
used by the CEO or executive team against them in some form. Because of this, respondent
response anonymity was critical in ensuring the privacy of the participants. By collecting
information and sharing the study findings and recommendations with the CEO of the company,
it was my responsibility to protect the data and not share any information without the participants
and CEO permission. There was no release of information or discussion of the findings until it
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was presented to the participants to verify and validate information gathered. After the study
was completed, the findings were shared with the CEO and participants, at which point the CEO
decided how to present the information to the remaining employees, and whether to use the
information from the study to inform their implementation of the Global Strategy and future
business decisions.
The University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviewed the
study to ensure participants were not harmed. Internal validity of the study was addressed
through checking interpretations of interviews and observations with the participants, clarifying
researcher biases and assumptions, and staying on site for some time to ensure the findings were
credible (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Anonymity of the participants and of the organization was
achieved by codifying the names to ensure confidentiality, to encourage participation, and reduce
biases on my part. The participants have the right to confidentiality and anonymity as part of
their participation during the study (Glesne & Glesne, 2011). Reliability and validity measures
were built in the protocols to reduce any risk by participating in the study and maintain the
welfare and confidentiality of the participants. Reliability of the study was enhanced by
describing how the study was conducted and the findings derived from the data, leaving an audit
trailed that can be used to reconstruct the study and validate the findings (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016).
The study’s data was collected via observational notes from the Services meetings and
interviews conducted with the participants. Participants were required to sign an informed
consent form before proceeding with interviews. Participants reviewed the informed consent
form before signing the document and receiving a copy explaining that they could withdraw
from the study at any time without penalty. The consent form explained the IRB review and
approval process that assures them confidentiality and welfare, as well as an explanation of the
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process, purpose of the study, and the researcher and University contact info. After the
observations and interviews, copies of notes taken during our engagement were provided to the
participants. The reason for sharing the information after observations and interviews was to
ensure the data was not misrepresented in any way. Bogdan and Biklen (2007) state that
researcher bias may not be problematic as long as researcher states their preconceived
assumptions and discloses their biases which could affect the study. I have preconceived
assumptions about change management and leadership best practices and implementations based
on my professional career, but I acknowledge my biases during literature review and data
collection and analysis. I had discussions with my dissertation chair as well as personal
reflection after data collection and during analysis to overcome any biases that might have
impacted the privacy and safety of the participants in this study.
Protection of the data collected via notes and recordings in observations and interviews
was performed by transcribing the data soon after the recordings were made and removing them
from the recording device. Each interview began with a standard interview protocol that
included obtaining permission to record the interview for later transcription and coding. Two
copies of the interview and coded transcriptions were maintained for backup purposes and stored
in a password-protected laptop as well as a secured cloud-based location. Additionally, two
copies of identifiable information were stored separately from the interview and coded
transcripts in a password-protected laptop as well as a secured cloud-based location. The
pseudonyms used in the study to identify each participant were numbers. The list was composed
of the following: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for each participant and was chosen at random. Two years
after the study was completed, all copies of the observation, interview, transcripts, and any
identifiable information were scheduled to be destroyed.
A thank you card was given to the participants of the study with a gift certificate for free
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coffee. The thank you cards were sent to the company address after the data collection and
analysis phases were completed to thank each participant and any executives involved for their
support. No other incentives were provided to minimize coercion on the part of the researcher.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations of the study are outside of the researcher’s control but could affect the study
outcome (Price & Murnan, 2004). The short duration of the observation period in this study was
a limitation that could prevent developing a relationship with the participants, possibly leading to
holding back and not being forthcoming due to lack of trust, fears about their responses being
identified, and fears of reprisal (Maxwell, 2013). The participants might not have believed in the
Global Strategy and could have provided misleading information to negatively impact the
organizational success. Moreover, managers could have provided misleading information
because they feared reprisal of any kind and would misrepresent information in a positive
manner. Another limitation was access to the participants and resources. A year and a half after
the agreement was made to conduct the study, data gathering was performed. Because of the
long-time frame between agreement of the study and data collection, I feared that the sponsoring
entity might no longer be interested in the study, at which point the study would have been in
jeopardy. For example, the CEO could have chosen to stop the study by denying the researcher
access to his sources to conduct interviews and observations, as well as withhold documents that
would be used as supporting evidence. Moreover, the CEO could have limited evidence because
there was a potential for bias. For example, meetings with more negative emotions or
discussions could have become unavailable for observation, making the change appear to be
more positive by disallowing access to such meetings. These were limitations of concern during
the study. Ultimately, there was no real incentive for the organization, other than good will, in
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honoring the agreement to provide access to the organization to conduct the study, and the long-
time frame of the study compounded these limitations further.
Delimitations of the study included researcher choices such as the objectives of the
questions, the number of observations conducted, and type of documents collected (Maxwell,
2013). The interview questions were formulated based on the observation notes from the
meetings and the literature review, and not end up being representative of the objectives of the
study. Information could have been misrepresented and questions constructed poorly, leading to
poor answers from the participants. The collection period was short, allowing for only a few
meetings to observe the participants and prepare for the interviews. Moreover, more time
observing participants and collecting documents would have allowed for better questions to be
constructed and allowed for more follow-up with participants after the interviews to clarify
answers. Ideally, more observations in other meetings or organizational settings would have
been performed, to have more data to inform the study.

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Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of this project was to conduct a needs analysis in the areas of knowledge and
skill, motivation, and organizational resources necessary to reach the goal that by June 2019,
100% of managers will have implemented leading practices in organizational change through
motivational, engagement, goal development, alignment, and behavioral intention strategies.
The analysis began by generating a list of possible needs that were then examined systematically
to focus on actual or validated needs. While a complete needs analysis would focus on all
stakeholders, for practical purposes, the stakeholder group focused on in this study was the
manager group.
1. What is the managers’ knowledge and motivation related to implementing leading
practices in managing organizational change?
2. What is the interaction between organizational culture and context and managers’
knowledge and motivation?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
To address these research questions, Chapter Two presented the factors, variables and
causes of the assumed influences which were identified through a literature review. In Chapter
two, the conceptual framework of the study was presented and focused on the interaction of the
stakeholder’s knowledge and motivation and the organizational context. Additionally, the
study’s methodology was presented, outlining the research design and methods for data
collection and analysis, anchored on three observations, seven interviews, and communication
and presentation document review.
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The interview data was fully corroborated by observations and documents. There was
complete alignment among the documents, observations, and interviews. During the interviews,
follow-up questions and clarification of observation data and documents collected were asked to
support answers provided by participants. The goal was to use triangulation to substantiate
answers provided with the reactions of participants observed during meetings, and
communication and strategy documents provided by leadership. Triangulation helps by
collecting documents, observing meetings, and interviewing sources to compare and cross-check
the data collected (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Internal validity of this study was addressed
through triangulation, checking interpretations of interviews and observations with the
participants, and observing multiple meetings to ensure the findings are credible.
In this chapter, the research questions and participating stakeholders are revisited, and a
discussion of the key findings is presented organized by the assumed knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences identified in the conceptual framework. Furthermore, applicable
emergent influences not previously identified in the analysis of the assumed influences are
presented. The findings presentation is structured on the KMO influences stemming from the
conceptual framework presented in Chapter Three. Each assumed influence findings section
follows the KMO order presented in Chapter two and is compose of the assumed influence assets
and applicable emergent influence assets.
Participating Stakeholders
The stakeholder of focus is the managers’ group which lead the different Line of
Business (LoB) units and the Engagement Managers (EM) who manage client accounts and
partner with the LoB units on client engagement. The four LoB phases are Co-Production,
Production, Customer Experience, and Rapid Innovation. The Shared Services unit is considered
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a LoB but is not part of PNW’s end-to-end methodology. The Share Services LoB is an internal
PNW unit that exists to provide contract resources to the other LoB’s and is staffed by a skeleton
crew of experts. The EM’s partner with Line of Business units to staff resources and provide the
required expertise around the expected lifecycle phase per project requirements. There are five
LoB managers and two EM managers. The managers demographic is made up of mostly white,
males in their 30’s. The managers have been employed at PNW for less than six years, with
most ranging from two to three years, and the EM managers less than a year. The LoB managers
lead their respective units whose responsibilities concentrate on capabilities and offerings,
definition of delivery models, responsibility for project success, client partnering on engagement
and marketing, maintaining individual profit and loss accountability, and self-sustaining and
profitability of the LoB unit. Each LoB unit is managed by a director leading a team of
engineers whose expertise aligns with their respective LoB requirements. The LoB directors
manage their staff and coordinate with other units to identify the resources and support required
to secure and staff each project. The EM unit director supervises overall performance of the EM
Managers and their accounts, as well as perform client facing and account management
responsibilities. The EM managers oversee responsibility for their respective client accounts.
The EM managers partner with Line of Business units to staff resources and provide the required
expertise around the expected lifecycle phase per project requirements.
The criteria for the managers to participate in this study were that they served in director
and manager roles in the LoB and EM units, were not part of the executive team, and did not
function as team leads or employees. The managers must be independent from the executive and
employee groups since they will take direction from the executive team to operationalize the
Global Strategy and need to be able to direct those in their units to carry out the Global Strategy.
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Because there were only five LoB managers and two EM managers during the study and all are
located at a single site, all managers were asked to participate in the study.
The threshold of responses that indicate whether an influence is an asset or a barrier was
substantiated during interviews by at least three of the seven participants. This is true for all but
two of the knowledge influences. Because Co-Production and EM are the only units that deal
with clients directly and place employees offsite or spend significant amount of time at client
locations, the threshold for determining whether the influence is an asset or barrier is different
for the last two knowledge influences - some managers used effective strategies to generate
positive emotions in employees, and some managers used effective strategies in building trust by
modeling behaviors. By using a threshold of one participant out of three instead of three out of
seven, the change allows a more accurate reflection by only counting the managers in Co-
Production and Engagement Management which are the only participants with external client
facing duties to determine whether the influence is an asset or barrier. The rest of the influences
use a threshold of three out of seven to determine whether an influence is an asset or barrier.
Knowledge Findings
In this section, the knowledge findings resulting from the data analysis are discussed.
Specifically, the assumed knowledge findings emerged in alignment with the conceptual
framework examined in Chapter 3, Figure 2. Five interview questions were asked to explore the
knowledge influences as the foundation of managers capacity to implement leading practices in
organizational change through reflection, motivation and engagement, alignment, and behavioral
intent generation strategies. The reflections and the ensued strategies are influenced by the
participants varying backgrounds and business unit requirements or current state at the time of
the interviews. For example, not all managers had employees that directly reported to them
because the majority still resided in the Share Services unit at the time of the study. Only five of
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the seven the participants had prior engineering experience while the remaining two came from a
sales and consulting background. Although most had read books on leadership, only three had
prior formal leadership training. Only the EM managers had business training or experience, and
only three participants had people management experience. Lastly, only the Co-Production LoB
unit required employees to be placed offsite.
The knowledge influence findings are as follows: (a) all managers used effective
strategies to motivate and engage employees, (b) all managers used self-assessment strategies in
understanding organizational roles and goals, (c), all managers used effective strategies to align
employees, (d) some managers used effective strategies to generate positive emotions in
employees, and (e) some managers used effective strategies in in building trust by modeling
behaviors. A discussion of each influence follows sequentially and includes key findings that
surfaced from the study.
All managers used specific strategies to motivate and engage employees. The
interview results indicated an asset in that all participants demonstrated that they could motivate
and engage employees to commit to the global strategy. According to Gray (2007), managers’
reflections can provide insights into framing problems differently by considering multiple
perspectives to better understand unmotivated employees. Similarly, the responses showed that
participants reflected and considered multiple perspectives to better understand and motivate
employee. All participant responses demonstrated that they engaged in reflective practices
related to motivating and engaging employees by employing the following strategies: getting
people involved, explaining the “why” and the “what is in it for me” (WIIFM) (Hiatt & Creasey,
2003), and using career pathing. Each will be discussed next.
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Getting people involved. Employee involvement was a strategy employed by five of the
seven participants. As evidence of employee motivation and engagement, one participant stated
using involvement to leverage employees to contribute to the creation of the LoB’s, saying that
“our delivery team has been involved across the board in creating whether it's documentation, its
processes, its insight that they're giving.” By explaining the health of how their group is doing
and how they are performing as a team, another participant engages members to contribute
through involvement, saying “‘Hey, here's what we have coming up in sales, here's our hiring
needs, here's how our margin looks right now, here are issues, here's what I'm struggling with.’”
Having people be part of generating solutions was described as a powerful strategy by a
participant, saying that “I think one of the critical things to being successful is having people be
part of the journey…is having people be part of the process…This is where we're going. Here
are some of our steps we're going to improve.” In order to get team members involved in
generating solutions, a participant used transparency as a tool by discussing task and business
unit growth needs to generate a partnership with the employees, “we all talk about what we're
working on, and then we all talk about what we need help on…‘Hey, here's all the stuff that we
have coming in…where do you guys want to feel a part of it?’” In creating an open environment
where participants can share, an additional participant explained how open dialog creates
motivation and engagement by making “almost all of the employees feel very empowered to
speak their mind, feel like they're influencing. They're part of the strategies…and we'll get
constant challenges from the employee base.” All of the quotes are evidence that the vast
majority of participants demonstrated that they understand a critical issue in motivating and
engaging employees to change is involving the individuals’ affected by the change as well as the
people who bring about the change. Table 5 includes additional comments from five of the
seven participants related to the strategy that managers used to involve their employees.
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Table 5
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Getting People Involved
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: Please tell me how you would go about
motivating employees to engage with the Global
Strategy? Can you describe some steps necessary
towards building staff motivation regarding the
new business processes?

“The benefit of that is that it does start to create
some opportunities for the people, who are more
senior to have people that they can mentor and
people that they can coach.”

“Next week on Tuesday, we're all doing a full day
planning session, a strategic offsite, for what
we're going to do to build the future of this line
business. I didn't even build the agenda, they all
got to build the agenda for what we need to do,
and then I just approved it. It's doing that kind of
thing and that way, they've really bought into
what this team can be and how it can impact the
rest of the company.”

“What we want to do though is have the open
forum, the culture that says, ‘Hey, we rolled out
this new change. We thought it was right. We…
you evaluated it, it's not the best thing.’ Open
feedback and show the willingness to change.”

Explaining “why” and “what is in it for me” (WIIFM). Communicating the “why” and
the “what is in it for me” (Hiatt & Creasey, 2003) was a strategy employed by six of the seven
participants. As evidence of motivation and engagement, buy-in can be achieved by explaining
the benefits behind the reason for established protocols and processes, describing that “if you can
get them behind those concepts, ‘that's how we do it,’ and then you get a few successes if you do
it right…and that's a motivator, too.” By explaining the “what’s in it for me” in helping with
employee buy-in, another participant described that “we can see the advantages to the
businesses, but we also need to remind ourselves what is the advantage to the delivery
team…how is that going to change, how does the new structure affect my day-to-day?” In
addition, explaining how contribution impacts the organization can aid in employee motivation,
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by being “respectful of the person, respectful of their time and then, make them understand how
what they do contributes back to the organization.” As evidence of why employee buy-in is
important, understanding the reason for decisions is important because “if an employee doesn't
understand why we're making the changes...there's no understanding of the underlying reasons
on why we think this strategy is the best move for PNW to make right now. They're never going
to be bought in.” Additionally, a participant added that “clients are imposing some structure at
how we do things…I constantly am working with the team to try to help them navigate that
particular situation and still marry that back to why it's good for all of us.” Explaining that
employee motivation can be used to create buy-in and that “understanding how, like what
motivates people, why are people here...connecting them to a common purpose, and helping
them understand, and getting the buy-in to that common purpose is really important. Then you're
all running in the same direction.” All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of
participants demonstrated that they engaged in reflective practices related to motivating and
engaging employees by understanding the attitudes and motivational demands required by the
change.
Career pathing. Using career pathing was a strategy employed by three of the seven
participants. By explaining the use of career pathing to motivate and engage employees, one
participant stated:
I take again a slightly different approach to career pathing, where I have a based set of
expectations for all employees, like here are the things that a team member has. You can
add on, I'm also a senior, I'm also a mentor, I'm also a team lead, I'm also a support lead,
but those things are all mutually exclusive from one another. In a lot of organizations, to
be considered a mentor, you have to be a senior developer. You have to have engineering
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and the seniority and then be a mentor. Well that doesn't always work for everybody.
Not every engineer wants people management to be the pinnacle of their career. You
could be an engineer, who is just progressively a better and better and better engineer and
management is never in your track. You can also be an engineer, who definitely wants to
go into people management. We steer those things in different directions. They're just
plus modifiers on top of your current job title.
As evidence of why explaining the reason behind professional development can motivate
employees, another participant explained, “it's more of helping them discover their underlying
motivations, and what are the things that they're interested in in their career.” Additionally, by
explaining why it is important to their careers, a participant described their approach in
motivating and engaging employees by saying that “I touched on why growth is good for each
individual…it's sitting down with them and building a personal development plan and really
understanding what motivates them. A lot of cases especially with our younger generation
they're looking for pathing.” All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of participants
demonstrated consideration on the benefits of the change to the employee’s careers and goals
to motivate and engage employees. Table 6 includes additional comments from three of the
seven participants related to the strategy of career pathing.

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Table 6
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Career Pathing
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: Please tell me how you would go about
motivating employees to engage with the Global
Strategy? Can you describe some steps necessary
towards building staff motivation regarding the new
business processes?
“I think finding those points of intersection is the
biggest way that I can motivate someone, whether
it's someone who's very interested in the people side
of things. And so being able to focus on the people
that are going to be impacted by the software that
we create, and how that's going to change their
lives. Or people that are more excited about and
motivated by interesting technology and how, by
working with this client, we're going to be able to
use this new technology in a different way. But
ultimately, it's about finding alignment and getting
people moving in the same direction.”
“We have to find a way to motivate them and keep
them happy, at the same time finding ways to bring
in additional disciplines to do all the things we
talked about to enable the strategy and reward
them, incent them, show them growth without
influencing or negatively impacting the engineer's
growth and what they're looking for in their
careers.”

All managers used self-assessment strategies in understanding organizational roles
and goals. The interview results indicated a barrier in that all participants self-assessed gaps in
their understanding of roles and goals of the organization. Managers can stimulate their
individual and collective learning to acquire knowledge, comprehension, and know-how
satisfying organizational and personal goals (Cicin-Sain et al., 2013). Similarly, the responses
showed that participants identified gaps regarding business knowledge required to effectively
perform their managerial duties. All participant responses demonstrated that they self-assessed
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their understanding or roles and goals to identify the following needs: business and leadership
training, and manager preparation.
Business and leadership training. A need for more business training was identified by
six of the seven participants while a need for more leadership training was identified by three of
the seven participants. As evidence of self-assessment, one participant described their view of
themselves in their new business role, stating “I'm a nerd, I am not a business person, which
means I suck at all of that stuff because I don't know about it and it frightens me…I need training
in how to run a business.” As indicative of the barrier related to lack of training, another
participant explained how little training the managers had received, stating that “I think that's one
of the challenges that we've experienced is we're trying to take a wide variety of backgrounds
with minimal training, I guess if you will, formal training, try and get everyone running in the
same process.” Furthermore, challenges in getting leadership training was described by a
participant, stating:
We have a plan to get leadership training and things like that. I think it's something that
we could have done better is having that done before we rolled this out. You have
people, mostly the folks who are people managers to some degree before, but we also
didn't have formal training for our people managers before either. So, I think there's a lot
of opportunity for all of us to grow and to be reinforced on our leadership skills, what's
expected of a leader, of how to deal with difficult situations, difficult conversations, and
be empowered to have those conversations as opposed to shying away from them.
As evidence indicating a lack of preparation by some of the managers, a participant expressed
their lack of experience in their new role by describing, “I've expressed this to leadership. I've
asked them to help me find a mentor who has done this type of work at an enterprise level
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before.” Another participant was more specific, adding that “from an educational standpoint, it's
the finance side of things that I think most of us in the lines of businesses have struggled with.
None of us have a finance background. None of us have run a business before.” By describing
all the proficiencies that the job requires, a participant described their lack of preparation, stating
that “there’s not the skill set for someone to be talented in everything that they're asked to do,
which goes from people management, to technical direction, to design and product direction, to
contract negotiation, and sales support.” Additionally, a participant described wanting training
while the organization is still small and able to prepare for the anticipated growth, saying “I'd
love to receive more training around running a business…We're still in a point where we could
still have visibility…as you grow, as you scale operation...what do you look for as you grow?
All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that they
reflected on their learning needs to acquire knowledge, comprehension, and know-how satisfying
understanding of organizational roles and goals. Table 7 includes additional comments from six
of the seven participants related to their need of business and leadership training.
Table 7
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Business and Leadership Training
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q6: Describe what you see as challenges in
rolling out the Global Strategy? Are there areas in
which you would like to receive more training or
gain more knowledge in supporting the Global
Strategy?

"I think a large challenge is going to be full
delegation of responsibility further down the org
chart, so that we can continue to grow. I think
one challenge is, at the rates that we would like to
be growing at, I don't know if we're creating
enough new leaders fast enough…One of the
things that I learned about leadership as I've been
reading a bunch of books is, good leaders create
more good leaders.”

“What happens when it's time to hire, like what
are the things we can ask. What are the things
that we can’t ask? All the things around
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Interview Question Participant Comments
personnel and hiring and the legality there, none
of us have real formal training”

“I say that, there was a ton of planning that went
into making this change. We talked about it for a
very long time, but when we actually got into it, it
was just sort of, ‘Let's go, we're going to go now
and we're going to learn all this stuff on the way
as we go.’ Day one, when I first started being a
line of business director, I didn't have any idea
what P&L meant for example. It was a little ways
in before I knew what that meant and I knew it's
relationship back to the business. We're learning
as we go and so I think just any opportunity to do
some more formal training would be ideal.”

“Our finance director spent a lot of time sort of
explaining those things to us and the importance
of them, but I feel like what we're getting is
PNW’s current way of handling those situations,
we know that context. Maybe there's better ways
to do those things, maybe there's better ways to
look at those numbers, maybe there's better ways
that we can run our organizations to optimize
those numbers. I don't feel like I have that kind of
education. That's definitely an area in which I
could grow. Aside from that probably like some
critical situation skills would be good to have.”

“I think the challenges right now are, we know
where we are at the current state and we have a
vision of what we want to be at the future state,
but we weren't necessarily well prepared for the
transition state because we're not fully staffed up
yet, and because we're not at a scale where our
future state vision completely makes sense.
There's a lot of growing pains with it.”

Manager preparation. Experiential training for different situations and techniques on
how to analyze situations was a need identified by five of the seven participants. As evidence of
self-assessing a lack of preparation, one participant explained challenges in understanding how
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the LoB’s would function, stating that “with five lines of business…it's a little complex for the
size of the business it feels...you have disparity from the size of each line of business…how
those work and so they're not as full functioning businesses as we thought.” As indicative of a
barrier related to lack of preparedness, another participant described concerns of scaling their
LoB because they lack people with experience, saying that “I'm only one person and we're
selling a lot more of this work, and if everything is in my head, there is no value to it. My goal
was to teach as much as I do and create scalability.” In addition, by explaining how the change
might affect job responsibilities and fulfillment, concerns about growth and career progression
were described as:
We should all be trying to align to what is good for PNW. But inside of that, it's not
doing what actually helps move this transition forward, and what helps me grow what
I've been given to care for inside of PNW. And so that's almost counterintuitive to what
we need to be doing in order to complete the change organizationally…And it took some
of the thinking about, ‘What could success look like, and how could that still be tied to
my job satisfaction?’ And so, I think there are still questions there, on the further I get
away from the project work, am I still going to be happy in a role that looks like that?
There's definitely some of that that's on me to figure out on my own. And then, inside of
PNW, "What are the things that I am good at? How can I best apply this to create value
for PNW?
As indicative of a lack of manager preparation, promoting engineers to managers may not be
ideal and that with some of “the software engineers, it's not actually something they would like
to do as part of their career.” Furthermore, as evidence of lack of readiness, another participant
explained that there is no clear separation between some business units, stating that “We're just
figuring it out. When we staff for a project it's a conversation. Right now, the line between line
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of business and Shared Services are pretty blurred. They don't really exist.” All of the quotes
are evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that they reflected on their
current knowledge and skill development, identifying their understanding of how productive and
successful they will be in problem solving and achieving of goals. Table 8 includes additional
comments from five of the seven participants related to the need of manager preparation.
Table 8
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Manager Preparation
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q6: Describe what you see as challenges in
rolling out the Global Strategy? Are there areas in
which you would like to receive more training or
gain more knowledge in supporting the Global
Strategy?

“Each individual on the opposition is for the most
part, it's their first time taking on that type of
responsibility. Most are in positions or stretched
positions where they haven't had experience doing
that, so this is their first time being a team lead,
or having managerial responsibility, or dictating
and setting performance plans with each person,
or helping upscale and coach them.

“Now that we're growing as rapidly as we are, do
we need career pathing? Do we need new
incentives for our teams? Do we need to rethink
how we staff these types of projects to make sure
that we're preserving the culture?”
All managers used specific strategies to align employees. The interview results
indicated an asset in that all participants felt that they could connect the overarching goals at the
individual level to generate alignment. According to Ayers (2013), communication of
organizational goals and objectives with employees’ activities and goals provides the employees
greater clarity as to how their activities align with the goals of the organization. Similarly, the
responses showed that participants communicated organizational goals and objectives with
employees, providing transparency on activity alignment with the goals of the organization.
Nevertheless, all participant responses demonstrated their understanding of employee alignment
to identify the following strategy: goal alignment.
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Goal alignment. Alignment of organizational goals with employees was a strategy
deployed by seven of the seven participants. By explaining how the employees’ vision can
impact the business unit, a participant described that “you can drive how a line of business
functions operationally, you can have more of a focus on how we do that particular delivery, how
we deliver software and your opinion can effect it.” Work preferences can help align employees
by taking into consideration questions such as, “how do we align it with your goals and how do
we align it with the style of work that they like.” As indicative of the employee alignment asset,
the new structure “creates more avenues for people to grow in the directions that they want to
grow in.” Additionally, by connecting employee goals with the new structure affords the
employees opportunities to specialize further and that employees have “seen benefit from their
career pathing, being with a smaller group that's a little bit more specialized that matches up with
their desires for their career.” Another participant gave more input, adding that “By changing
from a hierarchical model of management to a more skill aligned method of leadership and
career pathing that it creates more opportunities for team members.” In addition, as evidence of
employee alignment, a participant explained that “a lot of it is finding alignment in where
someone wants to be heading in their long-term career, and trying to talk with them about, ‘How
does your long-term career ambitions line up with where PNW is going?’” As evidence of
alignment, another participant described how they have “spent quite a bit of time from a top
down perspective really communicating and helping others understand why we should grow and
what that means for them personally. Why growth is good for them.” Furthermore, aligning
folks with the change is important, and that “getting people to buy-in on growth is good, but it
also means change, and having people really buy-in to why that's important.” All of the quotes
are evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that employee alignment is
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achieved by individuals comprehending how their work supports the organizational priorities and
goals. Table 9 includes additional comments related to the strategy of goal alignment.
Table 9
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Goal Alignment
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: How would you connect the overarching
business goals with the individual employee
goals?

“It's really all about the way that people see the
projects and how we can incorporate their career
growth and potential for learning into those
projects and being very strategic about that.”

“He'll create an entire separate organization with
its own hierarchy and more opportunity for
people to grow there. I think as the organization
sees this happen and we see success in creating
these lines of business that we immediately start
to create new paths for people to move into.”

“What can I do to help move you forward in the
direction that you want to be heading, through
what I know of where PNW is going? And how
can we both benefit from this time that we're
together?”

“It's more of helping them discover their
underlying motivations, and what are the things
that they're interested in in their career, and then
trying to point out to them the places where that
lines up with the things that they can do at PNW,
both now and in the future.”

“I believe I've had a chance to influence and
bring some alignment around why growth is good
for each individual person, so we spent a lot of
time doing that.”

Some, but not all managers used specific strategies to generate positive emotions in
employees. The interview results indicated an asset in that two of the three participants who
work directly with clients recognized and generated positive emotions in employees. Facilitation
of organizational goals can be accomplishment by recognizing and generating the appropriate
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emotional states in the employees, causing positive behavioral intent in the completion of their
tasks (Gooty et al., 2010; Kaplan et al., 2014). Similarly, the responses showed that the
participants assisted the employees in regulating their emotional experiences, creating an
affective relationship that facilitated employee performance, generating commitment in the
accomplishment of organizational goals. All participant responses demonstrated that the
managers recognized the importance of managing employee emotions through the following
strategies: advocacy and empathy.
Advocacy. Being an advocate for employees was a strategy employed by one of the three
participants whose units interact with clients. As evidence of generating positive emotions, a
participant explained their role to prevent undue environmental distress that can create negative
emotions in the employees that are at client sites, describing that within projects:
The role that I play is I step in a project to clear blockers, to keep them focused on the
work, to get team members out of meetings and to be an advocate for them inside of the
project that they're on. Within the organization that's the same thing. I'm their first
advocate back to the company if they have personnel problems. If they're inside of a
project that's not working well for them, I'll go to the client and advocate for them to have
an improved situation to resolve those personnel conflicts. They know that I'm their
friend and that I'm there for them and I've got their back.
The quotes are evidence that the participants demonstrated that managers can influence
employee behavior through advocacy that provide frequent emotional uplifts and generate
positive emotions and perceptions. Table 10 includes additional comments from one of the three
participants related to the strategy of advocacy.

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Table 10
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Advocacy
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: Please tell me how you would go about
motivating employees to engage with the Global
Strategy?

“I'm their advocate and that they know that I care
about them and their well-being.”

“There have been a number of occasions recently,
where we put a team member on site inside of an
organization and the organization has different
beliefs than we do. It's may be a toxic scenario,
bad team members, bad practices. I’ll sit down
with the client and have those conversations. If
it's a situation that we just simply can't work out,
we remove the person from that situation. We
also actively turn down work in any place that we
feel like is going to be a bad fit for our people. I
don't put one person on site in any organization
because it's a bad experience for them. They're
alone by themselves on an island. I think from the
motivation side; first thing is that I'm your
friend.”

“A lot of the things that go on there that they see
aren’t ideal. They get the opportunity to come
back here and we talk about those things and get
it off their chest. They express their frustrations.
There's somebody to listen to them and then
provide some context to the things that they're
seeing and provide some counterpoint…’You saw
this thing, which is really bad, how would you
approach that, what would you have done
differently in this situation?’”

Empathy. Displaying empathy with employees was a strategy employed by two of the
three participants whose units interact with clients. As indicative of generating positive emotions
in employees, one participant described the intersection of leadership and empathy by saying that
“you have to be an empathetic person to be an effective people manager because you have to
care about the people that work for you or otherwise, they're going to know that you don't care
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about them.” As further evidence, clarifying to the engineers how client’s expectations differ
from the engineer’s expectations was described as:
You can't get frustrated that the client's not going to drop everything they're doing today
to change based on this one consultant that's come in and said, ‘I think that's a bad idea.’
We have to see it as, ‘How can we help our clients take the next step forward in their
slow progression as they evolve as a company?’
Additionally, coaching the employees why and how decisions are made to understand the
underlaying reason can create empathy to the situation, “we're sitting down and going, ‘That
client didn't make that decision. They have a boss and let's be empathetic to their position and
try to help them be successful.’” All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of
participants demonstrated that managers can influence positive emotions and behaviors by
thoughtfully interacting and communicating with employees, demonstrating empathy,
consideration and support that result in increased follower satisfaction. Table 11 includes an
additional comment from two of the three participants related to the strategy of empathy.
Table 11
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Empathy
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: Please tell me how you would go about
motivating employees to engage with the Global
Strategy?

How engineers think through building the best
product and why. It's so important to them. It's
very helpful in my position because in having
empathy to their point of view and understanding
where they're coming from. Then it's easier for us
to reconcile any sort of different point of view that
we might have, so it just helps us collaborate
much better.”

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Some, but not all managers used specific strategies in building trust by modeling
behaviors. The interview results indicated an asset in that two of the three participants who
work directly with clients inspired trust by modeling the behaviors expected from employees.
Managers consistent messaging and actions with organizational objectives fosters trust and
confidence in employees, serving as roles models for behavior and attitudes that generate
commitment (Fritz et al., 2012; Li & Betts, 2003). Similarly, the responses showed that the
participants demonstrated consistent messaging and actions with organizational objectives,
fostering trust and confidence in employees by serving as roles models. Nevertheless, all
participant responses demonstrated knowledge in building trust by modeling behaviors to
identify the following strategy: coaching.
Coaching. Coaching employees about dealing with clients or engineers was a strategy
deployed by two of the three participants. As indicative of building trust by modeling behaviors,
one participant described:
It helps them to learn like what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do
and how do bad decisions have a bigger impact on the team. So that someday when
they're in those positions and they're the manager, who’s there making the decision based
on what's best for their career, they have been in that position themselves. They know
the impact that the decisions that they make have on the people that are subordinate in the
organization.
As further evidence of modeling behaviors, another participant explained that by providing a
different lens they can coach the employees on different business strategies, describing how their
approach is very different and it brings “more of a business lens to a conversation. There's a lot
of time and energy put into sitting down and sharing each other's point of view in how we arrive
to a particular conclusion or why we said certain things.” All of the quotes are evidence that the
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vast majority of participants demonstrated that managers’ actions create trust by demonstrating a
linkage between modeled behavior and effectiveness in accomplishing the goals. Table 12
includes additional comment from two of the three participants related to the strategy of
coaching.
Table 12
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Coaching
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q5: Please tell me how you would go about
motivating employees to engage with the Global
Strategy?

“It can't be a transactional relationship that you
have with your team members. For an
organization like ours that prides itself on its
people, it has to be a friendly people first
approach.”

Motivation Findings
In this section, the motivational findings resulting from the data analysis are discussed.
Specifically, the assumed motivational findings emerged in alignment with the conceptual
framework examined in Chapter 3, Figure 2. Three interview questions were asked to explore
the knowledge influences as the foundation of managers capacity to implement leading practices
in organizational change through goal orientation, self-efficacy, and utility value strategies. The
reflections and the ensued strategies are influenced by the participants varying backgrounds and
business unit requirements or current state at the time of the interviews. For example, not all
managers had employees that directly reported to them because the majority still resided in the
Share Services unit at the time of the study. Only five of the seven the participants had prior
engineering experience while the remaining two came from a sales and consulting background.
Although most had read books on leadership, only three had prior formal leadership training.
Only the EM managers had business training or experience, and only three participants had
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people management experience. Lastly, only the Co-Production LoB unit required employees to
be placed and work alongside with clients at their locations, and only the EM managers go out to
client sites as account managers. The motivation influence findings are as follows: (a) all
managers recognized value in the Global Strategy organizational benefits, (b) all managers
recognized Global Strategy tasks as opportunities for mastery and self-improvement, and (c) all
manager’s felt efficacious in leading employees. A discussion of each influence follows
sequentially and includes key findings and themes that surfaced from the study.
All managers recognized value in the Global Strategy organizational benefits. The
interview results indicated an asset in that all participants valued the organizational benefits of
the Global Strategy objectives. By focusing on the usefulness of tasks that match an individual’s
personal goals, one can increase receptivity and engagement that develops more task interest,
increasing satisfaction and motivation (Durik et al., 2014; Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2011) Similarly,
the responses showed that participants focused on the usefulness of tasks to match employee
goals, developing more task interest and increasing satisfaction and motivation. All participant
responses demonstrated that they recognize the value of the following Global Strategy benefits:
professional developmental interests, and usefulness of tasks.
Professional developmental interests. Value in the new objectives and tasks was
perceived by all participants. As evidence of recognizing organizational benefits in this area, one
participant explained the benefits in delegating decisions, saying that “you can't scale out under
one person, so I certainly see that as a huge benefit. I think we've gotten to be a better company
because of it.” The strategy benefits are seen as “a very positive experience and we're heading
down the right path with that structure.” Further evidence was described by a participant who
has “played both roles and definitely see the value of the role, having done it and pioneered it at
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PNW.” As indicative of the benefits, another participant added that “I think it's a solid strategy.”
The new structure helps people take a step back and take in a larger view of the business, putting
“in place incentives to make that a mutually beneficial arrangement where people are now
interested in growing PNW's client base, rather than maybe necessarily be focused on work-life
balance individually, or their enjoyment of the specific project.” As evidence of the
organizational benefits, the new strategy allows the organization to “plan ahead…before we had
trouble planning four-to-six weeks out from being able to deck cost for the work that we had
coming. Now we're able to see them six months out.” Moreover, a participant believes that
“from a cultural standpoint, the line of business shift was a good move. All of the quotes are
evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that employees see the Global
Strategy as benefiting the organization and their personal development and career. Table 13
includes additional comments related to the assessment of organizational benefits, demonstrating
that…
Table 13
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Organizational Benefits
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q3: How do you feel about the new strategy?
What organizational benefits do you see in it, if
any?

“The main benefit that I have seen so far is that it
has empowered people at the company to feel like
they are more a part of the company's direction,
company's decisions, strategic growth and
requirements, and there's more people thinking
about the future of the company from a strategic
perspective than there was before.”

“We basically try to go in and make the
organization that we're embedded within run
more correctly and more properly based on our
experience in best practices.”

“On the engagement management side of things, I
see a lot of benefits there, in that having sales
people focused on relationship building and
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Interview Question Participant Comments
relationship maintenance with specific clients has
helped lead to a lot more work. And it helps us
become more of a trusted partner, where we can
take on larger and more strategic projects for our
clients, which are not always people's favorite
projects. But it does put us in a position to take
on some of the more impactful projects for clients
because often clients don't want to just give you
their biggest, toughest project up front, that
maybe has a really interesting problem in it.”

“It just allows for us to build in greater certainty
into our business…Stability. Confidence in the
future has helped quite a bit.”

“I think from engagement management
standpoint…I think it's the right lever to pull,
especially as enterprise accounts become really
the focus of how we grow.”

Usefulness of tasks. Perceived usefulness of new tasks was mentioned by all
participants. As indicative of organizational benefits, one participant described “being able to
grow not only my skill sets in areas that I think will be interesting…and I think it will help us
grow, legitimately grow as a company.” By focusing on usefulness of tasks, the new line of
business structure is “great because there are people who are dedicated to monitoring projects,
working with people on the projects, helping people grow on the projects.” As further evidence
of benefits, a benefit seen is that it has “empowered people at the company to feel like they are
more a part of the company's direction, company's decisions, strategic growth and requirements,
and there's more people thinking about the future of the company from a strategic perspective.”
Additionally, usefulness of tasks in the new structure “definitely does provide more bandwidth
for us to take on more business, and to ensure quality of the work that we do for our clients.
Another participant described how the new structure helps foster expertise, stating that “really
building out expertise I think is going to be a big catalyst for our growth.” All of the quotes are
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evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that employees can be motivated by
creating a connection with the new tasks and goals that meets the employees’ professional and
personal developmental interests. Table 14 includes additional comments related to the
perceived usefulness of skill development.
Table 14
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Skill Assessment
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q3: How do you feel about the new strategy?
What organizational benefits do you see in it, if
any?
“Also getting ahead of those issues so as we start
to feel maybe are heading in the wrong direction,
we can course correct, we can be an escalation
point for the people on the projects as opposed to
letting it go, no one being aware of it, and no one
certainly responding.”

“For the most part, I find it to be a very positive
influence. Then when you talk about sales
support, supported financials, we have a team
that's dedicated to thinking about that now as
opposed to our finance director, just looking at
the spreadsheets and telling us if we're doing okay
or not. There’re people who are dedicated to
project financials in a way that we've never had,
so from the business, from the people, from
program management and from a sales support
standpoint, we have people dedicated to that. In
the past, sales support was in addition to your day
job, so you come in and you work your regular
project, and maybe sales is looping in for stuff.”

“Also, let's individuals focus more on a more
focused set of tasks for them to complete, that's
kind of a more focused job description. Besides
the line of business director, someone can become
an expert at supporting and selling their type of
work that they're responsible for. And I think
that's a very good thing. It's led to the line of
business directors taking more ownership of
decisions. It's brought more alignment between
where is PNW trying to head, and where do
people want to be going in their careers.”

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Interview Question Participant Comments
“Having a model that really fosters expertise, and
allowing people to go deep, not just having one
person that knows everything, but having a full
team that can really bring different skill sets to the
table. I think it's going to be huge for us.”

All managers recognized Global Strategy tasks as opportunities for mastery and
self-improvement. The interview results indicated an asset in that all participants recognized
Global Strategy tasks as opportunities for mastery and self-improvement of themselves and
employees. According to Rueda (2011), goals that focus on mastery motivate individuals to
improve their skills and gain new competence in challenging situations by focusing on the task
as a learning opportunity. Similarly, the responses showed that managers defined goals from the
perspective that individuals are gaining knowledge and learning new skills by performing new
tasks that align the organizational goals with the individuals’ interest. A strategy of growth was
employed by all participants. A participant explained the growth possibilities by saying that “we
have all of the potential directions for growth for people to want to do what we do. So, if people
want to go up…want to become technical experts, they'll be able to do that.” As indicative of the
opportunities for self-improvement, another participant described the growth potential as
“exciting because I want this company to grow. I want us to get better. I want us to continue to
improve and being instrumental in that is really great.” Evidence of self-improvement
opportunities were described by a participant as “it's a huge growth opportunity for me just to be
able to manage people, to understand the issues that they're having.” Further evidence of self-
development was provided by another participant, expressing that “the opportunities I see are
there's a chance here for me to learn sort of business and financial side of things that I've never
really been exposed to before.” The new strategy is seen as providing opportunities for career
growth for employees, explaining that “as we grow, a lot of our large projects with these clients
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need someone in more of a technical leadership type role…. there will be more opportunities for
people to progress in their careers.” As indicative of the opportunities for self-improvement
afforded with the new structure, “folks coming over joining the engagement management team
will have an opportunity to take on more responsibility and accountability.” A participant
described his vision for growth, stating that “I'll love to elevate myself not just to one account,
but also to really manage multiple accounts, help the other engagement managers to have a team
to really provide strategic direction and guidance for them. All of the quotes are evidence that
the vast majority of participants demonstrated that by adopting mastery-oriented goals, they are
able to achieve growth and the Global Strategy objectives. Table 15 includes additional
comments related to the strategy of growth.
Table 15
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Growth
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q12: What opportunities for professional growth
do you see for yourself, if any? How about for
the employees you lead, what opportunities for
growth do you see for them, if any?

“It also gave a growth path to a lot of people that
would not have had that otherwise. That kind of
works towards retention. No one's going to stay
here forever if they can't grow to where they want
to grow.”

“For myself…I think this has already been a great
opportunity to take ownership of part of the
business. Areas for growth, I think I still need
coaching and support around the business side, so
obviously delivery.”

“So, you create your own scale, create your own
career path, versus me promoting one of you to
manage the other ones that are all at the same
level anyways.

“But I do see opportunities for people to move
forward in their careers, and to take more
ownership of things. I'm trying to create capacity
for myself by delegating out things off of my plate,
as I run out of the ability to do things.”
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Interview Question Participant Comments

“I think they get a chance to just push their career
and be part of more innovative and transformative
work, so it represents a different type of work
that's got more of a tangible impact with clients.”

All managers felt efficacious in leading employees. The interview results indicated an
asset in that all participants feel confident in their ability of leading the employees to adhere to
the Global Strategy. According to Cherian and Jacob (2013), by understanding the facts,
concepts, available methods, and technical skills required for successful performance in solving
complex or new tasks, managers can feel capable in leading their employees through change
(Cherian & Jacob, 2013). Similarly, the responses showed that managers understand the
concepts, available methods, and technical skills required for successful performance in leading
their employees through change. An explanation of feeling efficacious was provided by seven of
the seven participants. A participant described their effectiveness in leading change by saying
that “I feel okay about our ability to sell. Not great, but not horrible. We're doing really well,
that answers a lot of questions in and of itself.” Further evidence is provided by another
participant describing their approach, saying that “I try to do it subtly day-to-day…‘Hey, this
isn't going to be a drastic change for you, not going to affect you in a negative way,’ really trying
to reinforce that.” Feeling efficacious as a manager in leading employees to change is explained
as “It's definitely something that's very intentional on my part.” Self-efficacy in leading and
motivating employees is described by another participant, saying “I feel pretty good about that. I
think that's one of my stronger suits is the people management and people motivation side.”
Improvement in their current ability to lead people is described by a participant, explaining that
“I feel like one of the things that I feel like I've gotten better at recently is casting vision for
people individually and helping them take a step back and think about their career.” Another
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participant labeled themselves as being “an influencer personally.” Further evidence is provided
by a participant new to the organizational explained their efficacy by stating, “I feel strong about
it, even though I've only been with the company for four or five months…I think the culture here
definitely allows someone, even if you're new to really buy-in to it, and really impact change.”
All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that they feel
efficacious in successfully adapting to and leading the Global Strategy objectives. Table 16
includes additional comments related to the high level of self-efficacy expressed by the
participants.
Table 16
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Efficacy
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q4: How do you feel about your ability to
motivate the employees to embrace and
implement the new Global Strategy?

“I would say I think we did a really good job of
being very thoughtful about how we created this,
taking our time to work through it with the
leadership team, getting ownership there as well
as doing that at the lower level. Then also
admitting when we're already reevaluating how
things work and what things should be done and
how we can tweak and adjust, because we've
learned things in the five or six months that we
rolled this out that we still needed to address, and
we always will be. I think that that's how we
engaged both leadership as well as delivery in
developing and rolling this thing out.”

“They're very bought in from feeling like they
have some ownership of the team, of the offering,
and that they're building it with me, versus having
something that is rolled out to them. I tell them
that, ‘This is something that's going to evolve over
time,’ and they own it just as much as I do, and
that everything we have today is just our best
guess right now, and we should always be looking
for opportunities to improve it. They've really
taken that to heart and are taking ownership of it.
I think it's help them buy into the model from our
team's standpoint.”
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Interview Question Participant Comments

“I was fortunate enough to be exposed to some
soft skill training in previous life of facilitation
results, so getting in front of a big room within a
large diverse organization.”

Organizational Findings
In this section, the organizational findings resulting from the data analysis are discussed.
Specifically, the assumed organizational findings emerged in alignment with the conceptual
framework examined in Chapter 3, Figure 2. Three interview questions were asked to explore
the knowledge influences as the foundation of managers capacity to implement leading practices
in organizational change through organizational learning and readiness strategies. The
reflections and the ensued strategies are influenced by the participants varying backgrounds and
business unit requirements or current state at the time of the interviews. For example, not all
managers had employees that directly reported to them because the majority still resided in the
Share Services unit at the time of the study. Only five of the seven the participants had prior
engineering experience while the remaining two came from a sales and consulting background.
Although most had read books on leadership, only three had prior formal leadership training.
Only the EM managers had business training or experience, and only three participants had
people management experience. Lastly, only the Co-Production LoB unit required employees to
be placed offsite. The organizational influence findings are as follows: (a) Leadership has
developed a strong learning culture, and (b) Leadership has not prepared the organization in
anticipation of the Global Strategy. The two emergent motivation influence findings are: (a)
desire to maintain current organizational cultural identity, and (b) the managers’ need for more
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autonomy. A discussion of each influencer follows sequentially and includes key findings and
themes that surfaced from the study.
Leadership has developed a strong learning culture. The interview results indicated
an asset in that leadership has created a strong learning culture that is likely to prosper in the
Global Strategy. Leadership’s support of organizational learning allows organizations to
maintain or improve performance by harnessing and sharing of organizational and employee
experience (García-Morales et al., 2012). Similarly, the responses showed leadership’s support
in assisting managers’ development by harnessing and sharing of organizational and employee
experience. All participant responses demonstrated that leadership has created a strong learning
culture that demonstrate the following support: leaderships encouragement, and self-directed
training.
Leadership’s encouragement. All participants mentioned having received plentiful
encouragement from leadership to develop skills and knowledge. Evidence of a learning culture
and how leadership supports the organization is described as, “we change well, I will say that.
That comes directly from the CEO. If something's not working, he'll dump it immediately. We
don't keep people here if they don't fit in or it's not the right move for them.” Leadership support
was described by a participant, explaining that the CEO is “coaching us…I feel like he's
coaching me…Some of the times it's me bringing problems…It can also work the other way.”
Further evidence of organizational learning and encouragement was described by a participant,
explaining that they feel empowered to challenge leadership around strategy decisions and that “I
think we're going to be able to raise the issues and have our voices be heard and discuss really
well.” Leaderships encouragement and transparency in creating an organizational culture that is
“always been fantastic about being open and information sharing…where the leadership was as
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concerned and considerate of what its team knew and thought and felt about new changes and
new plans…very transparent, very giving of their time” is indicative of organizational learning.
Furthermore, the organization encourages having an “open forum, the culture that says, ‘Hey, we
rolled out this new change. We thought it was right. We, you evaluated. It's not the best thing.’
Open feedback and show the willingness to change.” Leadership encourages a culture of testing
ideas to learn, described as “the preparation was kind of having a plan, having a hypothesis on,
‘We think this will be successful because of this. Let's actually test it, and then look at the
results.’” Moreover, a participant explained how leadership is challenging the status quo stating,
“I'm one of the first ones that they've brought in this type of experience and allowed into the
room. I feel like very well-received. They don't always agree but very well received so there's
certainly mutual respect.” All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of participants
demonstrated that through support of organizational learning, leadership can encourage
knowledge transfer and can assist managers’ development in support of objectives. Table 17
includes additional comments, indicating the support participants felt through encouragement.
Table 17
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Encouragement
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q9: How would you generally describe the
organizational environment in deploying new
strategies or changes?
Q11. Let’s focus specifically on the relationship
between the organizational leadership and
managers. How would you describe the
relationship between the organization and
leadership?

“I don't know that there's anything that we do
specifically intentional to reinforce people to
embrace change. Obviously, we hold that as a
core value and we teach people that when they
come into this as part of it.”

“One of our core values is to embrace change.
I've been here just over four years and seen many,
many changes, whether it's in the org structure,
whether it's in the type of clients we have, whether
it's in the vision that we have for the organization,
we are always changing, and I think that that's
part of what the organization.”

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Interview Question Participant Comments
“It is absolutely something that we all have to be
comfortable with. As an organization, it's just
who we are. We do it constantly and I think
everybody here is bought into the idea of
change.”

“I appreciate that they're all taking time to help
make us better leaders just through observation
and through setting up meetings or just sitting
down with us and just showing us how to do these
things and stressing the importance.”

“That is a microcosm of what it's like to work
here, is that whatever the situation is that the
leadership team is willing to get involved, give
their time and help you through whatever
situation that is.”

“Self-taught, self-motivated. Back to our
autonomy, we allow individuals to learn at their
own pace, learn the way that they would like to
learn. It's encouraged though it's not enforced.”

“Our employee satisfaction survey is no longer
anonymous, so folks are comfortable sharing
feedback knowing that could tie back to them. We
could certainly get some challenges. I think it's
very healthy that all feel like they certainly can
challenge.”

“I think from a cultural standpoint we've been
great to changing, and how we position ourselves
and brand ourselves in the market, and stay
relevant, and stay ahead. I think from an
operating standpoint we're showing, we're
definitely showing signs of change. We each now
have a training budget. Now that's never existed
before. We have a formalized training budget,
that's new. We recognize that people want to
advance their careers, want to advance whatever
their interests are. I think on the lines of business,
knowing strategically we want to go more of a
consultative route, changing the operating model
from lines of businesses in a structure that will
foster thought capital, and expertise, is a great
show of change.”
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Interview Question Participant Comments

“We allow people to...Last Friday we had a
retro…I think those types of forums are important,
obviously from a community standpoint, but also
fostering that type of work…it's going to foster
innovation….But also, it's people providing
feedback too, it's critique, and that's a good thing
that people are open to that.”

Self-directed training. All participants mentioned having received encouragement by the
organization for self-development. While organizational change cannot be predicted, the
capability to harness change as a learning opportunity can be developed (Higgs & Rowland,
2000) through development of new knowledge, enabling the skills to remain dynamic and
therefore favoring improvement in the organization’s performance (García-Morales et al.,
2012). Similarly, the comments reflect the literature on organizational learning. Evidence of a
strong culture of learning was by a participant, explaining how they seek self-development and
gave an example of how some of the participants “are working very specifically on what metrics
we're going to start collecting around projects and how we're going to make it easy to do so that
it's not an uphill battle to find these things for every project.” Self-directed training was
described by how engaged the employees are, and that “the people we have involved is, these are
driven people who are doing research and learning on their own. Further evidence is provided,
described by how driven the employees are in acquiring knowledge and that “people are so
hungry to develop these offerings, everyone's reading books, everyone's posting articles,
everyone's thinking about ideas, everyone's suggesting improvements to what we do.
Additionally, a participant explained after-hour activities and how the employees “get together
for social meet-ups and things like that as well, but typically, it's focused around learning in
some capacity. Because technology is always changing, that the organization encourages self-
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learning to improve skills and “to learn something new to stay abreast of what's modern.
Another participant stated that “PNW is full of smart motivated people who want to get
better…because these are probably the type of people who will actually follow through on self-
directed growth.” However, the participant also has concerns about self-directed learning,
stating that:
I feel like self-directed growth only can take you so far on something without having
someone who is an example or is a coach that is challenging…And that's why coaches
exist, because you need an outside perspective to question when you're getting too
comfortable, or when you're only listening to the things that you agree with.
Additionally, another participant mentioned that:
I think that could be the problem with leaning on more of a self-directed approach.
There's this initial assessment, and then a one-day class, and then it's self-directed. And
then we're going to do a follow-up at the end of the year, with a couple of classes here
and there. But it's not direct mentorship that's one-on-one for any line of business
directors. I think it's difficult inside of PNW to find mentors for people after you get to a
certain level because we're a young company, both how long the company's existed, and
also just average age of employees is not terribly high. And there's a lot of people that
are new to leadership positions that they're in.
As indicative of self-directed training, employees “constantly challenge themselves learning new
topics, doing quite a bit of reading, always pushing themselves to learning what the new trends
are. I would say it's not really controlled, it's self-motivated but also I think as a group.” Further
evidence on the benefits of a culture focused on learning is seen as “it's going to foster
innovation. It's like, ‘I want to show my work. I want to demonstrate my work, so I want to do
cool things.’ But also, its people providing feedback too, it's critique. All of the quotes are
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evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that organizational learning
promotes a culture of self-development and learning that enhances organizational capacity and
individual capabilities to effectively participate and make contributions to change effort. Table
18 includes additional comments related to support on self-directed training.
Table 18
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Understanding Employer Desired Skills
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q7: Are there aspects of the company’s culture
that you see in support of the change to a new
consulting model?
Q8: Describe the organizational efforts in its
ability to learn and adapt to change?
“I think we reinforce that on a day-to-day basis in
subtle ways. It's not intentional, it's not
thoughtful, it's just we hire all these people who
think in a similar way and then they contribute
that back to the organization.”

I've read a lot on...Mostly, it comes from books, is
where I do most of my learning. I usually read two
or three at a time about different things when it
comes to the company.

“PNW hosts a lot of those events, where we
sponsor and pay for a lot of those events or we
provide food for a lot of those events. Oftentimes,
it's our team members that are speaking at those
events and doing the education. The upside of that
is that we get exposure to 1,600 developers in the
community.”

“As a result, the organization is constantly
making small improvements in the way that we
operate or we're pivoting slightly to meet our
client demand or to meet the industry demand or
to meet the marketplace demand.”

“It's been impressive that each individual takes
upon themselves to push themselves to learn. I
think it’s part of our recruiting process. We're
bringing individuals in that are wired that way.
They're self-motivated to constantly challenge
themselves and learn new things. A lot of folks are
knee-deep in books so there's a lot of readers
here. There's a lot of folks that are hooked up to
the latest trend magazines or very connected to
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Interview Question Participant Comments
their communities either the design community or
the dev communities, testing new ideas,
understanding the new trends and new techniques
that are being used in the field.”

Leadership has not prepared the organization in anticipation of the Global Strategy.
The interview results indicated a barrier in that leadership has not created a healthy
organizational environment that is prepared in anticipation of the new business model to guide
change from the top in supporting managers. Leadership has a duty to assess the readiness of the
effort to change by providing information about the health of the organization and management
preparedness that is pertinent to the change and identifying barriers (Lehman et al., 2012).
Similarly, the responses showed that leadership did not close gaps in the readiness of the
organization and management preparedness. All participant responses demonstrated that
leadership has not addressed all barriers in creating a healthy organizational environment and
identified a clear need for training. A description of managers needing training was provided by
five of the seven participants. A participant explained how there are still questions about the
new structure, stating that “we don't get it. Again, you're taking four people that know what
PNW does, but don't know necessarily how to run a business, and asking them to start running a
business.” Further evidence of a lack of readiness is described by saying that their different
backgrounds is a “challenge that we've experienced. Is we're trying to take a wide variety of
backgrounds with minimal training, I guess if you will, formal training, try and get everyone
running in the same process.” Additionally, a participant explained that they “don't understand
all the financial implications of the business…I think there's definitely more training for us to
understand their world than it is for their world to understand ours.” As indicative of a barrier in
organizational readiness, training is needed in “all the things around personnel and hiring and the
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legality there. None of us have real formal training...the five of us that came into these roles had
no formal experience doing that whatsoever.” Furthermore, a participant stated that, “I believe
I'm the only one who's actually gone through formal executive coaching and training before.”
All of the quotes are evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that leadership
did not address deficiencies in organizational and managers’ readiness which can negatively
impact the change initiative and the organization. Table 19 includes additional comments related
to needs in training.
Table 19
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Training
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q10: How would you describe any preparation
efforts in anticipation of the Global Strategy?

“I think those are some of the big challenges, the
training. We have a plan to get leadership
training and things like that. I think it's something
that we could have done better is having that done
before we rolled this out. You have people mostly
the folks who are people managers to some degree
before, but we also didn't have formal training for
our people managers before either. So, I think
there's a lot of opportunity for all of us to grow
and to be reinforced on our leadership skills,
what's expected of a leader, of how to deal difficult
situations, difficult conversations, and be
empowered to have those conversations as
opposed to shying away from them.”

“I've asked them to help me find a mentor who has
done this type of work at an enterprise level
before, because like when I have questions about
the go to market strategy of my product and how to
grow that product in the market, and its place. I've
shared this with them. I don't necessarily have
someone to go to who has done this work really
successfully at a high level before.”

“From an educational standpoint, it's the finance
side of things that I think most of us in the lines of
businesses have struggled with. None of us have a
finance background. None of us have run a
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Interview Question Participant Comments
business before. None of us have been responsible
for P&L before or profitability or any kind of
gross margin, percentage or anything like that.
Those are all new things for us.”

“And so that I think a large challenge is going to
be full delegation of responsibility further down
the org chart, so that we can continue to grow. I
think one challenge is, at the rates that we would
like to be growing at, I don't know if we're creating
enough new leaders fast enough.”

“And so, on the larger lines of business, I would
say there's not enough capacity, and there's not the
skill set for someone to be talented in everything
that they're asked to do, which goes from people
management, to technical direction, to design and
product direction, to contract negotiation, and
sales support, and all of that. None of the line of
business directors are good at all of that…And I
think that along with the skill set, I think each of
the line of business directors is leaning towards
what they're most talented at. And so, when any of
them do have any level of capacity in a given week,
to take on something else, they lean towards what
they're good at and comfortable with, rather than
what moves their line of business forward from a,
‘What does that line of business need?’”

“Feedback I think is probably the most important
thing…for us to work on is a better feedback
culture. And I think that we have a plan to get that
training in place, but I think it was a bit of a miss
for us to not do that ahead of time. Just from a
standpoint of the first couple months are going to
be so critical for success optics, then also creating
habits and patterns.”

“Quality, delivery management, risk management,
is absolutely needed across the board…That's a
delivery management discipline that's going to
need to be provided by the service team through
team leads, et cetera.”

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Additional Organizational Influence Findings
In addition to the assumed organizational influences discussed in the previous section,
two additional organizational influences emerged during the analysis of interview transcripts.
This section presents the emergent organizational influences and how they impact the successful
development and self-reflection of manager leadership skills.
Desire to maintain current organizational cultural identity. The interview results
indicated a barrier with six of the seven participants mentioning having concerns about wanting
to maintain the current cultural identity. As evidence of a desire to maintain the current
organizational identity, one participant described that staff might not like the changes, expressing
how employees might react to the change, “like you guys are getting too corporate, I'm out.”
Another participant explained,
Our culture of doing the highest quality work, being on the bleeding edge, that's probably
the only risk that I would see…We deliver great products, we deliver great work, we
have to figure out how to keep that as we grow and as we change. I think it's not so much
a risk as it's a challenge for us to make sure that we bring that as we grow.
Additionally, a participant described the culture by stating that “we're very much an engineering
culture here. It's the nerds of the class this organization is made up of and now, we're bringing
the jocks into the organization.” Further evidence of the desire to maintain the current cultural
identity is explained by a participant describing the introduction of the EM managers, saying that
“it’s difficult as an organization to start to absorb a new kind of person and make them part of
your culture and not lose the culture that we have, which has always been very much an
engineering, constant learning.” Moreover, the integration of new members and incorporating
new ways of thinking is “a huge challenge for our growth strategy, is preserving our culture,
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preserving the way we like to do things.” Another participant added that “as we move forward
with our global strategy, is keeping who we are, maintaining...There's a reason why people came
here, there's a reason I came here, making sure we don't lose that identity.” All of the quotes are
evidence that the vast majority of participants demonstrated that managers are concerned with
organizational culture identity in maintaining the current culture that attracts employees to the
organization. According to Ravasi and Schultz (2006), organizational culture is a central
construct in understanding the evolution of the organizational identity in the face of
environmental changes. Table 20 includes additional comments from six of the seven
participants related to culture identity.
Table 20
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Cultural Identity
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q7: Do you believe anything might hinder the
ability to implement the Global Strategy?

“I think that that's been a part of the culture that,
I don't want to say it's new, but it's something that
I have seen change over the years that I've been
here. So, going from technology purists where
we're focused on just doing the best thing possible
to probably more business minded and maybe it's
consulting focused, ‘hey, we know we need to do
what's right by our clients and continue to work
with them if we're ever going to grow.’”

“Our biggest challenge is just from a cultural
standpoint, making sure that we bring in people
who are closer aligned with the organization or
making sure that the people that we bring in are
aware of the culture that we have, and that is the
culture we want to maintain and that is the culture
we're going to foster.”

“Do we need to rethink how we staff these types
of projects to make sure that we're preserving the
culture? There is a constant conversation across
PNW on growing as fast as we are to make sure
we preserve what got us here and the culture that
we attribute to attracting the right talent.”
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Interview Question Participant Comments

“Let's find commonality without the feeling of
degrading the principle driven culture. It's a
challenge and that's an active conversation.”

“Making sure everyone agrees on what culture
should be or what your barriers are going to be
when you scale.”

“I think that will be a big cultural shift, that we'll
have to really be careful about. Because again,
we don't want to lose who we are and our identity
of why people are here. I think that will be a big
challenge.”

“We don't lose sight of who we are, what we do in
our people, I think it would be really important.”

“And it's a cultural thing. I think that...that's
important in maintaining as we move to a more of
a consultant based.”

Managers’ need for more autonomy. The interview results indicated a barrier that
needs attention by leadership even though only two of the seven participants mentioned that they
would like more autonomy in their roles as LoB directors. As evidence of a barrier on managers
need for more autonomy, one participant added that “all of the line of business directors, based
on our conversations, would agree that we'd like a little bit more autonomy.” Another participant
explained that:
It does get a little frustrating at times because there are some things that I wish that they
would let go of, more of the hiring decisions sort of thing. Like I would love the
autonomy to be able to go out, recruit somebody, hire them and bring them into my
organization without necessarily having to get approval from every single other person
involved.
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The participant responses demonstrated that managers are concerned with not having autonomy
in hiring and other decision making within their LoB’s. According to Iliopoulou and While
(2010), there is evidence of a strong association between professional autonomy and job
satisfaction. Table 21 includes additional comments from two of the seven participants related to
manager’s autonomy.
Table 21
Interview Participant Comments Regarding Manager’s Autonomy
Interview Question Participant Comments
Q7: Do you believe anything might hinder the
ability to implement the Global Strategy?
Q11: Let’s focus specifically on the relationship
between the organizational leadership and
managers. How would you describe the
relationship between the organization and
leadership?

“There's not a complete level of trust between all
the different levels. Not saying trust in a negative
way. I think it's more of a subconscious thing
where people have been in these roles, they've
been part of these decisions for a long time, they
still want to be a part of it, but they're not quite all
ready to let go of all those decisions yet.”

“There are some things that I think that we could
be more efficient at, they could let go off a little
bit more, things that are more in the weeds that
they don't need to concern themselves with and
start to give some of that autonomy back to those
of us, who've been charged with running the line
of business.”

That was not part of the initial plan of how this
was going to work because they're not empowered
to make hiring and firing decisions when they
only have one full time employee that they're
responsible for. And so that's a piece of how do
they control their costs that they aren't touching
at all, because they don't have any power over
that.”

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Findings’ Summary
All participants utilized effective strategies for employee commitment to the Global
Strategy by reflecting on multiple perspectives to better understand and motivate employees.
The participants self-assessed gaps in their understanding of roles and goals of the organization,
identifying needs to acquire knowledge, comprehension, and know-how satisfying organizational
and personal goals. Also, the participants used effective strategies to align employees by
communicating organizational goals and objectives with employees’ activities and goals. Some
of the participants used effective strategies to recognize and manage emotions in employees by
assisting them in regulating their emotional experiences, creating an affective relationship that
facilitated employee performance, generating commitment in the accomplishment of
organizational goals. Moreover, some of the participants used effective strategies in building
trust by modeling the behaviors expected from employees, demonstrating consistent messaging
and actions with organizational objectives, fostering trust and confidence in employees, serving
as role models.
All participants valued the organizational benefits of the Global Strategy objectives,
focusing on the usefulness of employee tasks and goals, developing more task interest,
increasing satisfaction and motivation. The participants recognized Global Strategy tasks as
opportunities for mastery and self-improvement of themselves and employees by gaining
knowledge and learning new skills that align the organizational goals with the individuals’
interest. Moreover, participants felt efficacious in leading the employees to adhere to the Global
Strategy by understanding the concepts, available methods, and technical skills required for
successful performance in leading their employees through change.
Leadership has created a strong learning culture that is likely to prosper in the Global
Strategy, showing support of organizational learning by harnessing and sharing of organizational
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and employee experience. However, leadership has not created a healthy organizational
environment that is prepared in anticipation of the new business model to guide change from the
top in supporting managers. Leadership did not close gaps in the readiness of the organization
and management preparedness, not addressing all barriers in creating a healthy organizational
environment.

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Chapter Five: Recommendations
Introduction and Overview

Chapter four covered the knowledge, motivation and organizational findings in the
development and self-assessment of manager leadership skills during the Global Strategy
initiative through implementation of organizational change leading practices. Chapter 5 presents
the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge, motivation and
organization resources related to the achievement of the Global Strategy goals. The
implementation plan for the study’s final recommendations is an integrated program that
includes professional development workshops, one-on-one coaching, peer modeling, and live
observations.

Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences
The following sections are the recommendations made to PNW to help address the gaps
in knowledge and organization influences. The knowledge gaps were in the areas of business
and leadership. Organizational gaps emerged in the area of lack of readiness, desire to maintain
cultural identity, and lack of manager autonomy. The interviews demonstrated that the
organization had a strong supportive culture in place that already addressed all of the
motivational influences, most of the knowledge influences, and some of the organizational
influences.
Knowledge Recommendations
According to Clark and Estes (2008), stakeholder knowledge is critical to individual and
organizational goal attainment. Through knowledge of subject-specific elements and their
interrelations in content specific skills and techniques, and reflective knowledge, knowledge
contributes to performance goal achievement (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Metacognitive
knowledge is awareness of one’s self cognition that allows one to know when and why to act,
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having the potential to make the greatest impact on stakeholder goal achievement (Krathwohl,
2002; Rueda, 2011). Interviews, observations, supporting documents, and literature review
support the assumed knowledge influences and represent a high priority for achieving the
stakeholders’ goals. Table 22 represents the recommended solutions for the knowledge gap
based on theoretical principles.
Table 22
Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations
Knowledge Influences Principle and Citation Context-Specific
Recommendations
Managers need to self-
assess their understanding
of roles and goals of the
organization and
determine how to fill in
gaps in their
understanding.
(Metacognitive
Knowledge)
Individuals can achieve growth
and development by making
personal and emotional
investments in their metacognitive
process awareness and by
pursuing learning opportunities
through shared understanding of
organizational purpose and how it
relates to their goals (Alagaraja &
Shuck, 2015; Mayo, 2000).

Professional development
workshops coaching on the
self-reflective theories on
how managers can develop a
comprehension of the roles
and goals, and how to
evaluate feedback about
different approaches.

Managers’ training needs. Metacognitive knowledge is awareness of one’s self
cognition by allowing one to know when and why to act (Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011),
assisting in performance problems’ identification by requiring an understanding of the level of
knowledge and skills of the employee’s abilities trying to achieve the organizational goals (Clark
& Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011). The data showed that PNW managers self-assessed the need for
leadership and business training and preparedness to their current roles. Individuals can achieve
growth and development by making personal and emotional investments in their metacognitive
process awareness and by pursuing learning opportunities through shared understanding of
organizational purpose and how it relates to their goals (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015; Mayo, 2000).
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The recommendation is to deliver professional development workshops coaching on the self-
reflective theories on how managers can develop a comprehension of the roles and goals, and
how to evaluate feedback about different approaches.
Self-assessment of roles and goals of the organization requires a sense of purpose and
understanding of organizational goals, vision, and practices that the manager can interpret,
search for, make meaning, and identify with (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015; Mayo, 2000). To
generate understanding, effective managers connect roles and the overarching goals at the
individual level (Alagaraja & Shuck, 2015). Understanding and awareness of strategy alignment
allows for full cooperation and willingness to put full effort in self-assessing the organizational
roles and goals in the Global Strategy (Agarwal, 2012; Biggs et al., 2014). As such, awareness
and understanding contribute to higher levels of manager engagement and support of the Global
Strategy (Agarwal, 2012; Biggs et al., 2014). Managers can stimulate their individual and
collective learning to acquire knowledge, comprehension, and know-how satisfying
organizational and personal goals (Cicin-Sain et al., 2013). Thus, managers self-assess their
knowledge, skills, and abilities when they are emotionally invested and share their belief in the
organizational goals and roles which affects the success of the Global Strategy (Alagaraja &
Shuck, 2015).
Organization Recommendations
Culture is a powerful influence in performance and it exists within organizations at the
environmental, group, and individual levels (Clark & Estes, 2008). Organizational culture is the
set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize the core values, goals,
beliefs, and emotions develop over time in institutions (Clark & Estes, 2008). Cultural models
and settings make it clear to understand the way people and organizations think, act, and respond
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to change. Settings can impact behavior, while cultural models are formed by individuals and
groups whose behaviors are impacted by cultural settings (Rueda, 2011).
Interviews, observations, supporting documents, and literature review support the
assumed organizational influences and represent a high priority for achieving the stakeholders’
goals. Table 23 represents the recommended solutions for these organizational gaps based on
theoretical principles.
Table 23
Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations
Organizational Influences Principle and Citation Context-Specific
Recommendations
The organization must create
a healthy organizational
environment that is prepared
in anticipation of the Global
Strategy to guide change
from the top in supporting
managers. (Cultural Setting)
Changes in the environment
can affect behavior (Daly,
2009; Tuckman, 2009).

Professional development
workshops providing
leadership instruction on how
to prepare in anticipation of
the Global Strategy to guide
change from the top in
supporting managers.

PNW managers desire to
maintain the current
organizational culture because
it attracts employees to the
organization. (Cultural Model)
Organizational culture is a
central construct in
understanding the evolution
of the organizational
identity in the face of
environmental changes
(Ravasi and Schultz, 2006).
PNW should continue their
efforts in maintaining current
cultural identity.

Managers are concerned with
not having autonomy in hiring
and other decision making
within their LoB’s. (Cultural
Model)
Autonomy has been
significantly and positively
related to motivation and
self-efficacy (Jungert,
Koestner, Houlfort, &
Schattke, 2013).
Managers attend business and
leadership training to become
efficacious and effective in
leading their business units.

Organizational readiness and management preparedness needs. Cultural settings are
visible social contexts made up of organizational policies and practices that can impact behavior
(Rueda, 2011). The data showed that PNW leadership had not completely addressed
organization preparedness as all gaps in creating a healthy environment were not addressed.
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Organizational readiness of a change can assist in identifying if an organization is ready for
organizational change (Lerch et al., 2011) and what areas of readiness need attention (Pare et al.,
2011). The recommendation is to deliver professional development workshops that provide
leadership instruction on how to prepare in anticipation of the Global Strategy to guide change
from the top in supporting managers.
Readiness is important in identifying whether PNW is prepared for change and a good
predictor of whether the Global Strategy initiative will be successful (Pare et al., 2011).
Leadership has a duty to assess the readiness of the Global Strategy by providing information
about the health of the organization and management preparedness that is pertinent to the change
and identifying barriers (Lehman et al., 2012). Thus, the Global Strategy can be supported by
leadership identifying useful organizational factors for the company to assess readiness in
support of managers’ capacity to lead the change (Gagnon et al., 2011; Khan et al., 2014).
Desire to maintain current cultural identity. Cultural models are shared mental
representations of how organizations and individuals work through dynamic traits that are not
noticed or invincible to its members (Rueda, 2011). The data showed that PNW managers desire
to maintain the current organizational culture because it attracts employees to the organization.
According to Ravasi and Schultz (2006), organizational culture is a central construct in
understanding the evolution of the organizational identity in the face of environmental changes.
Cues such as collective history, organizational symbols, and consolidated practices of the
organization help employees make new sense of what their organization is really about (Ravasi
& Schultz, 2006). However, Gioia, Schultz, and Corley (2000) argue that instability in cultural
identity facilitates organizational adaptation, conferring benefit to the organization by allowing
better adaptation to the demands of internal and external environments that are undergoing
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continuous change. PNW is adapting to environmental demands by bringing in EM managers
who might not fit the mold of the typical PNW engineer. In this regard, PNW is adapting but it
also is very intentional in maintaining the current culture that they have developed and have an
extensive hiring process that last a minimum of 30 days and requires approval from all
leadership members before a new employee can be hired. A large number of the members in the
organization have been referrals from internal employees, having worked with them previously
at other companies or clients. As such, the recommendation is for PNW to continue their efforts
in maintaining current cultural identity. However, the strategic concern of PNW leadership is the
ability to manage and balance a flexible cultural identity in adapting to internal and external
changes (Gioia et al., 2000).
Managers’ increased autonomy needs. Cultural models are shared mental
representations of how organizations and individuals work through dynamic traits that are not
noticed or invincible to its members (Rueda, 2011). The data showed that PNW managers are
concerned with not having autonomy in hiring and other decision making within their LoB’s.
Autonomy has been significantly and positively related to motivation and self-efficacy (Jungert
et al., 2013). According to Iliopoulou and While (2010), there is evidence of a strong association
between professional autonomy and job satisfaction. Also, perceptions of the employee’s
autonomy support from managers were strongly related to work motivation and may set an
example and serve as a model for how co-workers support one another’s autonomy (Jungert et
al., 2013). Therefore, organizations should not only train leadership how to support the
autonomy of their managers, but should also encourage and provide guidance for how the
managers can support the autonomy of their colleagues (Jungert et al., 2013). However, because
all LoB managers do not yet possess the skill necessary to perform all the job functions required
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from them as directors, the recommendation is that managers attend business and leadership
training for them to become efficacious and effective in leading their business units. Once
leadership sees the managers ability to lead their business units independently, hiring and other
decision-making autonomy should be granted to the managers.
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan
The following sections provide a detailed plan on implementing the strategies discussed.
They include discussion on the leading indicators used to influence and express the results of the
organization, critical behaviors needed to produce intended results, learning required of
employees, and reaction to the training given. To be able to assess the effectiveness of the plan,
an evaluation method is also presented.
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
To frame the integrated implementation and evaluation plan, the New World Kirkpatrick
Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) is utilized. The model is grounded in four levels: 4)
results and leading indicators, 3) behavior, 2) learning, and 1) reaction. The New World
Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) suggests organizations should first
consider the leading indicators they plan to influence and express how this will contribute to the
result of the organization (Level 4). Next, organizations should consider what behaviors are
needed on-the-job to produce the intended results (Level 3). Then, organizations should consider
what training or other support required for employees to be successful on the job (Level 2).
Finally, organizations should consider what type of training will be conducive to instructing the
skills needed (Level 1). Each level intends to examine and evaluate the stakeholder in question
to ensure intended results are being achieved. Learning that translates into improved
performance on-the job can positively impact the achievement of organizational goals
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Therefore, Level 3 and 4 of the New World Kirkpatrick
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Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) provide data required to highlight training
effectiveness due to training and reinforcement by measuring on-the-job and organizational
results (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Level 1 and 2 present data related to effective training
by measuring the quality of instruction and the degree to which it results in knowledge and skills
that are applied on the job. As such, using The New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016) to develop an implementation and evaluation plan will assist the organization
in considering what will happen before, during, and after training to achieve the intended
influence on desired outcomes.
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations
PNW’s purpose was to maximize the potential of its employees, improving client value
by providing a rewarding experience in smarter technology implementations through innovative
technology offerings. PNW’s mission was to continuously improve the methods it uses to
develop products, build proprietary tools that add value, seize new markets to improve growth
and stability, and adapt more quickly than competitors while attracting and motivating talent.
PNW’s vision was to offer a differentiated end-to-end client experience, be respected as a
thought leader by peers in the industry, contribute to the community, and enrich the lives of its
employees. PNW was systematic about its growth through business decisions that focused on
earnings, efficiency, and scalable solutions. The goal of PNW is that by June 2019, 100% of
managers will implement leading practices in organizational change through motivational,
engagement, goal development, alignment, and behavioral intention strategies. Alignment with
the new business strategy was important for the success of the initiative and the organization;
otherwise the new business model could have become an example of the 70% of organization
wide failures seen in organizational changes. The expectations of the Global Strategy was to
develop long-term engagements and clients that generated consistent revenue. By placing
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employees on-site through long-term engagements, the new business strategy would be in a
position to create opportunities to identify custom one-off projects within established clients,
increasing opportunities in long-term and one-off projects, stability, and growth.
Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators
Level 4 focuses on the degree to which anticipated outcomes are achieved (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016). If internal outcomes are achieved as a result of training and organizational
support for managers, then the external outcomes should have been achievable. Level 4
components are the leading indicators which describe short-term observations and measurements
which suggest if the critical behaviors are on track in creating positive impacts on the desired
results (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Table 24 shows the proposed Level 4 Results and
Leading Indicators in the form of outcomes, metrics, and methods for both external and internal
outcomes.

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Table 24

Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes

Outcome Metric(s) Method(s)
External Outcomes
Increased number of new
clients
Number of new client contracts
per month
Gather data from account
managers on a monthly basis
Increased number of on-
going projects
Number of projects with
contracts lasting for a year or
longer
Collect data from account
managers on a quarterly basis
Increased marketing
efforts
Number of dollars spent on
marketing

Gather data from account
managers department on a
quarterly basis
Improved relationships
with clients
Number of positive comments
made by client during account
review with account manager
Solicit feedback from clients by
account managers
Increased number of one-
off projects due to long-
term engagements
Number of new projects that
come from long-term
engagement projects
Collect data from account
managers on a quarterly basis
Internal Outcomes
Increased confidence in
managers leading their
employees
Level of manager’s confidence Survey to be given quarterly
Increased time coaching
colleagues and employees
on leadership and business
skills
Allocated time spent per month Time reports
Improved employee
satisfaction after change
implemented
Percentage of managers
satisfaction with managers’
direction of the Global Strategy

Survey to be given on a
quarterly basis

Level 3: Behavior
Critical behaviors. Level 3 focuses on the degree of learning that managers actually
learn from the professional training program and are able to demonstrate on the job to achieve
the intended organizational outcomes (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). The stakeholders of
focus are managers in the organization carrying out the Global Strategy. The first critical
behavior is that managers attend professional development workshops on leadership and
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business topics to develop skills. The second critical behavior is that managers reflect on work
activities such as roles, goals, decisions, after-action reviews, and planning. The third critical
behavior is that managers solicit input from leadership on business and leadership skills
development. The fourth critical behavior is that managers solicit feedback on the performance
of their development. The specific metrics, methods, and timing for each of these outcome
behaviors appear in Table 25.
Table 25
Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
Managers attend
professional
development
workshops on
leadership and
business topics to
develop skills

Number of
professional
development
workshops
attended
Leadership monitors
completion of program
As scheduled
Managers reflect on
work activities such
as roles, goals,
decisions, after-action
reviews, and planning
with leadership and
colleagues

Number of
times
managers and
leadership
meet to reflect
on activities
Discuss with leadership
and other managers
During one-on-one
meetings or at least
monthly
Managers solicit input
from leadership on
business and
leadership skills
development
Number of
times
managers
solicit input
from
leadership
Leadership interview
employees
During one-on-one
meetings or at least
monthly

Managers solicit
feedback on the
performance of their
development

Number of
times
managers
solicit
feedback on
their
performance
Leadership interview
managers and
employees
During one-on-one
meetings or at least
monthly

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Required drivers. Level three required drivers are the methods and systems needed to
either reinforce, monitor, encourage, and reward critical behaviors needed for success
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Managers need the support of their leadership and the
organization to reinforce what they learn in training and the encouragement to adopt and sustain
the Global Strategy. The required drivers are classified as support or accountability drivers
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Valuable support drivers recommended are professional
development workshops, individual coaching, reflection, and the use intrinsic rewards. One-on-
one meetings with the leadership team are accountability drivers that are part of the professional
development program. Therefore, methods to reinforce, reward, encourage, and monitor should
be established for the achievement of performance goals to enhance the organizational support of
managers. Table 26 summarizes the recommended drivers to support critical behaviors of
managers.

Table 26
Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing Critical Behaviors Supported
1, 2, 3 Etc.
Reinforcing
Provide job shadowing in
which managers can directly
observe leadership or other
trusted expert perform the
steps of the intervention
strategy
Ongoing 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9, 10
Provide training that includes
leadership and business topics

Ongoing
1, 6, 7, 8, 9,10
Provide training that include
business unit specific topics

Ongoing
1, 6, 7, 8, 9,10
Manager meetings with
leadership and other
colleagues to discuss
leadership and business topics
Ongoing 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
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Encouraging
Collaboration and peer
modeling during manager
meetings with leadership
Monthly 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10
Feedback and coaching from
leadership
Ongoing 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10
Rewarding
Public acknowledgement,
such as a mention at All-
Hands meetings, when team
performance hits a benchmark
Ongoing 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Coaching colleagues or other
employees
Ongoing 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Monitoring
Three months after training,
leadership can ask managers
to self-report their confidence
and self-efficacy in job-
related tasks
Three Months After
Training
1, 3, 8, 9,10
Leadership can assess the
performance of the managers.
Frequent, quick checks can
help the organization monitor
progress and adjust if results
do not match expectations at
that time
Ongoing 1, 3, 8, 9,10

Organizational support. The organization plays a significant role in the support of
stakeholders’ critical behaviors. The critical behaviors and required drivers monitored for
performance in the above section assume the recommendations at the organizational level have
been implemented. For the stakeholder to achieve their goals, the organization needs to provide
information and education to managers and leadership to ensure the organization knows why
change is necessary; addressing organizational barriers as well as knowledge and skills.
Furthermore, the organization needs to provide resources to facilitate goal achievement for
managers and leadership, aligning resources with organizational priorities.

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Level 2: Learning
Learning goals. Level 2 focuses on how effectively managers acquire the intended
knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment as a result of the training
program. Following completion of the recommended solutions, most notably professional
development workshops, the managers will be able to:
1. Reflect on the interrelationships of how to motivate and engage employees.
(Metacognitive Knowledge)

2. Reflect how to self-assess their understanding of roles and goals of the organization.
(Metacognitive Knowledge)

3. Differentiate the principles on how to create alignment and connect the overarching goals
at the individual level. (Conceptual Knowledge)

4. Classify the various ways on how to recognize and generate the appropriate emotional
states in their employees. (Conceptual Knowledge)

5. Classify the principles on how to drive behavioral intention and inspire trust by modeling
the behaviors expected from employees. (Conceptual Knowledge)

6. Value the usefulness of developers performing diversified and innovative work. (Utility
Value)

7. Recognize diversified work as an opportunity for mastery and self-improvement of
themselves and employees. (Goal Orientation)

8. Feel capable in leading the employees in a diversified business model. (Self-efficacy)

9.

In addition, leadership will be able to:

1. Display a strong learning culture with emphasis on learning that drives adoption and
sustainment in the new business model. (Cultural Model)

2. Display support for a healthy organizational environment in guiding change from the top
in support of managers. (Cultural Setting)

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Program. The learning goals listed in the previous section will be achieved with a
training program that will explore the theories and principles in aligning managers and
employees to the Global Strategy, reflection on one’s abilities to lead and motivate others, and in
supporting a learning organization. The program consists of one-hour in-person professional
development workshops for a period of 20 weeks. The total time for completion is 20 hours.
During the in-person professional development workshops, learners will be exposed to
the theories of organizational alignment. Each course will focus on an influence of knowledge,
motivation, organizational factors, or a combination thereof. The first unit will discuss reflection
and self-assessment of the managers’ needs to create a training plan. The second unit will focus
on an overview of business skills required as a manager in the Global Strategy. The third unit
will cover basic finance topics. The fourth unit will cover advanced finance topics. The fifth
unit will basic HR related topics. The sixth unit will cover advanced HR related topics. The
seventh unit will focus on an overview of leadership skills required as a manager in the Global
Strategy. The eight unit will focus on employee motivation and engagement. The ninth unit will
discuss reflection and self-assessment. The tenth unit will cover employee alignment and goal
development at the individual level. The eleventh unit will focus on how to generate positive
behavioral intent in the accomplishment of the organizational goals. The twelve unit will discuss
how to inspire trust by modeling the behaviors expected from employees. The thirteenth unit
will focus on creating utility value regarding organizational tasks and goals. The fourteenth unit
will focus on goal orientation as an opportunity for mastery and self-improvement. The fifteenth
unit will discuss self-efficacy in leading the employees. The sixteenth unit will focus on how to
create a strong learning culture with emphasis on learning. The seventeenth unit will discuss
organizational readiness and how to support a healthy organizational environment. The
remaining three sessions will be used on the reflection and reinforcement of the previous units’
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topics, theories, and principles, where learners will be coached on how to apply the information
to ongoing work-related activities and issues, cementing their understanding of the material.
During the units, the coach will pause to enable the learner to check their understanding while
participating in topic-specific discussions.
During the first seventeen synchronous in-person sessions, the focus will be on
discussing and learning the material through group discussions, role-playing, and peer modeling.
In the remaining thirteen sessions, the learners will have the opportunity to apply the new
strategies learned and receive feedback as to how well they are applying the material. The
leadership team will attend the sessions focused on discussing the value and benefits of
achieving organizational learning and readiness and on how leadership can provide support to
management.
Evaluation of the components of learning. Level 2 learning is evaluated by
considering the learning components of knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence and commitment
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Knowledge-learning relates to the amount of knowledge
gained by the participants, which is declarative knowledge. Skill-learning relates to the abilities
to perform the new tasks by the participants, which is procedural knowledge. Attitude relates to
analyzing participants buy-in to the purpose and benefit in changing. Confidence relates to the
participants’ beliefs in being able to demonstrate knowledge gained from training. Commitment
relates to the participants’ intent to actually apply the new knowledge. Demonstrating
declarative knowledge is a necessary as a precursor to applying metacognitive knowledge to
solve problems. Thus, it is important to evaluate learning for both declarative and metacognitive
knowledge being taught. It is also important that learners value the training as a prerequisite to
using their newly learned knowledge and skills on the job. However, they must also be confident
that they can succeed in applying their knowledge and skills and be committed to using them on
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the job. Table 27 lists the learning components, including the evaluation methods and timing for
these components of learning.

Table 27
Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program.
Method(s) or Activity(ies) Timing
Declarative Knowledge “I know it.”
Knowledge checks by facilitator during one-
on-one and group discussions.
Periodically during the in-person workshop
and documented via observation notes.
Knowledge checks through discussions and
other individual and group activities.
Periodically during the in-person workshop
and documented via observation notes.
Procedural Skills “I can do it right now.”
During the asynchronous portions of the
training using scenarios with multiple-choice
items.
In the asynchronous portions of the training at
the end of each unit.
Application of skills during individual
activities, role-playing scenarios, and group
discussions.
During workshop
Quality of the feedback from peers during
group sharing
During workshop
Pre and post-test assessment survey asking
learners about their level of proficiency before
and after the training.
At the end of the training
Attitude “I believe this is worthwhile.”
Facilitator observation of participants
statements and actions that demonstrate they
see the benefit of what they are being asked to
do on the job.
During the workshop
Discussions of the value of what they are being
asked to do on the job.
During the workshop
Retrospective pre- and post-test assessment
item.
After the course.
Confidence “I think I can do it on the job.”
Survey items using scaled items Following each module/lesson/unit in the
asynchronous portions of the course.
Discussions following practice and feedback.

During the workshop.
Retrospective pre- and post-test assessment
item.
After the course.
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Commitment “I will do it on the job.”
Discussions following practice and feedback.

During the workshop.
Create an individual action plan.

During the workshop.
Retrospective pre- and post-test assessment
item.
After the course.

Level 1: Reaction
Reaction refers to degree to which learners find the training favorable, engaging, and
relevant to their jobs. Formative methods such as facilitator observations and pulse checks are
utilized, in addition, to summative post-program surveys to obtain information on the quality of
the training program and facilitator. Table 28 below lists methods used to determine how
learners react to the training.
Table 28
Components to Measure Reactions to the Program
Method(s) or Tool(s) Timing
Engagement
Data analytics in the e-learning management
system
Ongoing during asynchronous portion of the
training.
Completion of online units Ongoing during asynchronous portion of the
training.
Facilitator feedback, pulse check During workshops
Facilitator observation During workshop
One on one check-ins with participants During workshops and staff meetings
Program evaluation Two weeks after training completion
Relevance
Facilitator feedback, pulse checks with
participants via survey (online) and discussion
(workshop)
After every unit online and during the
workshop
Program evaluation Two weeks after training completion
Customer Satisfaction
Facilitator feedback, pulse checks with
participants via survey (online) and discussion
(workshop)
After every unit online and during the
workshop
Program evaluation Two weeks after training completion
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Evaluation Tools
During and immediately following the program implementation. During the
recommended workshops, the facilitator will collect data to measure declarative as well as
metacognitive knowledge. The makeup of the data will be that of Level 2 focused on learning
and Level 1 focused on reactions on the theories and principles of each influence.
Learning will be evaluated through direct observations and periodic knowledge and skills
checks during collaborative learning activities such as discussions, role-playing, and peer
modeling. Level 2 attitudes will be assessed by observing and documenting participant
statements and actions revealing perceptions of the value of what is being learned. Level 2
confidence and commitment will be assessed via discussions with participants and feedback. A
post-workshop survey will also be given to further assess above characteristics.
Reaction will be assessed through observation and feelings of participants towards the
relevance of the content they are learning, and the degree of satisfaction they have in the
workshops. Immediately following the event, there will be a post-workshop survey with
questions asking the learners to reflect on their engagement with the learning activities, the
degree to which the content was relevant and their overall satisfaction with the training
experiences. Appendix A exhibits example of Level 1 and 2 rating items for post-online and live
training surveys.

Delayed for a period after the program implementation. Leadership will administer
a survey to learners approximately six weeks after the implementation of the training program,
and then again at 12 weeks, containing open and scaled items using the Kirkpatrick Blended
Evaluation approach (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) to measure the following: training
relevance and satisfaction (Level 1), attitude towards training content (Level 2), application of
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training to work on the job (Level 3), and the extent to which their application of training content
has influenced desired results or improvement in support of the organization's goal (Level 4).
Data Analysis and Reporting
The data collected throughout this program will include various formative and summative
measures that capture manager and leadership reaction, engagement, learning, and behaviors over
time in deploying and supporting the Global Strategy. The data is gathered with the intent of
increasing the chance of achieving the desired results in deploying the Global Strategy successfully
(level 4). The results of the training program at all four Kirkpatrick levels will be tracked and
monitored by the leadership team to ensure the recommendations are producing the intended
results. The data will also inform future changes to Global Strategy to adjust, develop employees,
and maximize the long-term adoption and sustainment of the strategy. The design of the data
analysis is intended to capture and review participant receptivity, interest, and engagement,
measuring learning through data collection that will influence adjustments to the training program
to ensure progress toward achieving expectations (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Sharing of
the data will not only provide information to the facilitator for planning to make course corrections
and changes, but it will also give the leadership team insight into how managers are interpreting
and feeling about the information they have learned in the professional development workshops.
Communicating the intended outcomes at each level to all stakeholders assists in showing how
one level supports the others (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Additionally, the use of data
analysis reporting increases the chance of implementing a successful new business strategy that is
not based on subjectivity but instead on actual data. The data will be shared with the CEO who
will work with his leadership team at his discretion to distribute to managers and staff as an
additional means for awareness of progress toward achieving long-term businesses strategy
adoption and sustainment.
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Table 29
Summary of Quality Service Training Metrics
Metric Frequency Who Tracks Who Receives Purpose Dashboard
Representation
Level 1:
Reaction

Participant
Course
Evaluations

At the end
of the
training
Facilitator Facilitator
Leadership
Team
and Managers
1. Assist facilitators
improve training
delivery.
2. Assist leadership
team verify facilitator
performance and monitor
participant satisfaction.
3. Show managers
that their feedback is
valued and used to
improve future
programs.
Infographic
outlining the
topics, number of
attendees, and data
relevant to metrics
that are and are
not meeting
expectations.

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Level 2:
Learning

Knowledge
Verification
At the end of
the
synchronous
workshop.
Facilitator Facilitator
Leadership
Team
and Managers

1. Provide leadership
team with individual
learner reports for each
manager to help them
coach more effectively
2. Provide the
facilitator information to
verify they are covering
material adequately or
indicate places where
material or delivery
should be modified for
more effective learning.
3. Give the leadership
team the information to
gauge entering and
exiting participant
knowledge to tailor
training materials to their
needs, while meeting
stakeholder expectations
of content mastery.
Infographic
outlining the
topics and data
relevant to metrics
that are and are
not meeting
expectations.

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Level 3:
Behavior

Adoption
and
Sustainment
of Global
Strategy
Quarterly Leadership
and Managers
Facilitator
Leadership
Team
and Managers
1. Managers are
provided feedback from
managers on their
performance of
integrating the Global
Strategy.
2. Leadership team
verify current
performance of
managers for improved
performance.
3. Facilitator uses the
information as part of the
verification of whether
the training program was
effective in changing
behavior on the job.
Table (Examples
of positive and
negative
experiences at
specific
touchpoints)

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Level 4:
Results

Staff
Feedback
On-going Leadership
and Managers
Facilitator
Leadership
Team
Managers and
Staff
1. Positive and
negative comments are
tracked to determine the
Culture Score. Culture
Score should rise after
managers have
completed the
professional
development workshops.
2. Leadership Team
uses this information to
justify training costs.
3. Managers use this
information to justify
training their employees
in adoption and
sustainment of the new
business strategy
processes.
4. Managers use this
information to coach
employees in adopting
the new business
strategy processes.
Dash (Culture
Score)

As shown in Table 11, an example of the dashboard representation of culture score. The data
will be used as a means for creating awareness of progress toward achieving new business
strategy goals.

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Table 30
Example Dashboard Representation of Culture Score
METRIC STATUS
Employee awareness of program and
resources
Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

Perception of leadership team in support of
organizational readiness
Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

Perception of Leadership team in support of
organizational
Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

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Manager perceptions of Global Strategy
Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

Efficacy in implementing knowledge gained
in leadership topics
Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

Efficacy in implementing knowledge gained
in business topics

Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

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Employee retention rates

Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

# of Surveys -- when/how often they are
distributed (Quarterly, annually, etc.)

Up from last quarter

Same as last quarter

Down from last quarter

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Discussion
The recommendations are in response to potential barriers as well as to the managers
identifying gaps in their knowledge and preparation for successfully deploying the Global
Strategy. As such, the recommendations are a collective effort by the managers and the
organization. During interviews, the managers stated that they understand their capability limits
in business and leadership knowledge and would like to receive more training to feel more
competent in their positions. Due to managers wanting training and leadership not providing
professional development training and preparation opportunities before the Global Strategy was
deployed, it is not seen by the managers as a top-down effort by leadership.
The recommendations are based on barriers identified by the participants. However,
because the manager group is very motivated to gain knowledge in business and leadership
training and because the organization has developed a culture of learning that encourages
employees to develop skills they feel they need to be successful, the recommendations leverage
the motivation assets in the development of the professional development workshop content. As
such, the curriculum focuses on more than just the barriers and adds training in all influences
identified in the study to provide a well-rounded and holistic professional development
curriculum. By taking advantage of the managers’ and organization’s motivation in developing
knowledge, the professional development workshops can develop knowledge in the needed area
identified but also reinforce influences identified as assets to fortify manager knowledge.
The organization has a very supportive leadership team and is seen in a positive light by
the managers in the study. While the managers identified gaps and at times, the quotes seem to
call out leadership in their lack of developing readiness for the Global Strategy initiative, provide
professional training, or affording managers trust to make decisions, the managers stated
multiple times during the interviews that they have respect and see the leadership team as
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supportive, accessible, and knowledgeable. Some of the participants share offices with
leadership team members and consider them mentors and friends and feel that they can share
ideas and critique with the leadership team without fear of reprisal. While the leadership team
has complete trust in their management team and handpicked them to lead their respective units,
most of the managers lack training and experience to be more knowledgeable and effective as
people and business managers, which is why leadership has not let go of all of their
responsibilities. This was observed during the meetings where the leadership team provided
coaching to the managers and was expressed in the interviews by the participants. During the
study, the leadership team was working with an organization to develop an internal leadership
training curriculum for the managers to develop leadership knowledge and skills, creating
opportunities for the managers to develop gaps in their leadership training. As such, the
recommendations in this study should provide additional leadership training as well as business
knowledge to the managers and provide leadership training on better preparing the organization
for changes.
The organization lacks diversity in terms of gender and race. There is not a lot of
diversity in the organization either, but the leadership team is aware and actively trying to
increase diversity. In one of the meetings I observed, leadership discussed an issue with a client
telling one of the directors that the engineers on site or present during meetings did not reflect
their customer base, so they are unrelatable to the client. PNW culture is that of a typical high-
tech firm (Harris & Alter, n.d.) and is made up of mostly white males with technical background,
dress casually, and speak as they would say like the “nerds of the class.” On the other hand, the
clients usually are more ethnically and gender-wise diverse who have conformed to a more
business culture, dress business-casual, and speak in more of a business-language. As such,
there is a disconnect with how the organization connects and interacts with the client. Because
ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

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of this, the organization is actively trying to recruit a more diverse group of engineers that reflect
the client and also bring different backgrounds and perspectives into the organization. It is a
difficult task due to nature of the work and most candidates being white males, but the
organization is currently working to adapt their hiring practices to bring in more diverse
candidates.

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Summary
The evaluation of the data and recommended solutions have been presented using the
New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). The recommendations are
aimed towards achieving managers implementing effective leadership practices in implementing
organizational change. Prior to designing and developing the integrated training and evaluation
plan, the knowledge, motivation, and organizational gaps had to be determined. Interviews and
observations completed revealed knowledge and organizational barriers to adopting and
sustaining of the Global Strategy. In order to address the gaps, managers would be offered job
aids and documents that contained steps and critical information about business and leadership
topics and organizational readiness. To further reinforce manager competencies, job aids would
also be offered to provide strategies for employee motivation such as creating employee
alignment and employee engagement as well as improving managers’ sense of self-efficacy
using tools like reflection. Following identification of the recommendations, the next step is to
apply the New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
The successful implementation of this plan will require internal organizational support
from leadership. The plan will be presented to the CEO, who will present the leadership team
and staff. The CEO and leadership team will take recommendations presented from this study
and should leadership decide to support the initiative, the professional development workshops
will be developed and put in place to train managers. Managers and leadership will have the
opportunity to provide feedback on the development plan and play a role in its execution.
Building stakeholder support through input and feedback is vital for adoption and sustainment of
the Global Strategy. As outlined in the New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016), the leadership team will review summative and formative data to adjust
future programming.
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APPENDIX A
Interview Protocol
Introduction (Appreciation, Purpose, Line of Inquiry, Plan, Confidentiality, Reciprocity,
Consent to Participate, Permission to Record):

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to participate in this study. As a reminder, your
participation is completely voluntary. This interview will take approximately forty-five minutes,
but we have allocated an hour.

I am currently enrolled in a doctoral program at USC and am conducting a study on
organizational change initiatives and certain factors to make them more successful. The purpose
of this interview is to understand your perceptions about the new strategic direction for the
company. Specifically, the interview seeks to understand your own and the company’s
preparedness to implement the new strategic direction, the diversified business model, adopted
by this company.

I want to reassure you that I am only here as a researcher collecting data. This interview is
completely confidential. Your name and responses will not be disclosed to anyone or anywhere
outside the scope of this study, and the specifics will only be known to me. I may use direct
quotes, but I will take great care to not reveal any identifying information, so your identity will
be protected. Participating in this interview will not have an effect on your employment. Do
you have any questions so far?

As we talk, I will be recording your responses on a voice recorder and an iPad as a backup
device to accurately and completely transcribe our conversation later. The recording will be
stored in a locked electronic file. It will be deleted from the recording device immediately after
transferring the file. Is this ok with you?

Do you have any questions before we begin?

1. Describe your background and role in at PNW?

The next two questions are general questions about the new business strategy, the Global
Strategy (establish a baseline of what the Global Strategy is).
2. (KNOWLEDGE – Declarative) Describe in detail what you know about the Global
Strategy adopted by the company.
3. (MOTIVATION –Value) How do you feel about the new strategy?
What organizational benefits do you see in it, if any?
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A new strategic direction such as the Global Strategy requires buy-in from the
employees. So, the next set of questions probe specifically about how you see yourself
and the company in creating that buy-in.
4. (MOTIVATION – Self-Efficacy) How do you feel about your ability to motivate the
employees to embrace and implement the new Global Strategy?
5. (KNOWLEDGE - Metacognitive) Please tell me how you would go about motivating
employees to engage with the Global Strategy?
Can you describe some steps necessary towards building staff motivation regarding
the new business processes?
How would you connect the overarching business goals with the individual employee
goals?
6. (KNOWLEDGE – Metacognitive) Describe what you see as challenges in rolling out the
Global Strategy?
Are there areas in which you would like to receive more training or gain more
knowledge in supporting the Global Strategy?
The next set of questions focus on the organizations culture in deploying the Global
Strategy.
7. (ORGANIZATIONAL – Model) Are there aspects of the company’s culture that you see
in support of the change to a new consulting model?
Do you believe anything might hinder the ability to implement the Global
Strategy?
8. (ORGANIZATIONAL – Model) Describe the organizational efforts in its ability to learn
and adapt to change?
9. (ORGANIZATIONAL – Model) How would you generally describe the organizational
environment in deploying new strategies or changes?
10. (ORGANIZATIONAL – Setting) How would you describe any preparation efforts in
anticipation of the Global Strategy?
11. (ORGANIZATION - Setting) Let’s focus specifically on the relationship between the
organizational leadership and managers.
How would you describe the relationship between the organization and
leadership?
Does the relationship play a role in the implementation of new strategy?
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Returning to your role as a manager in the company in the context of the Global
Strategy initiative,
12. (MOTIVATION – Goal Orientation) what opportunities for professional growth do you
see for yourself, if any?
How about for the employees you lead, what opportunities for growth do you see
for them, if any?

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APPENDIX B
Observation Protocol: Meeting Notes
Date______________Observation #_______
Location___________________________Start Time___________End Time__________
# Managers present_____________ Present via speakerphone______________________
Others present____________________________________________________________

Description of Setting/Context Retention KMO-Related Inferences

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Diagram of Activity
Time Stamp Observation of Activity Retention KMO-Related Inferences

ORGANIZAITONAL CHANGE ALIGNMENT

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Related Documents Collected Retention KMO-Related Inferences

Post-Observation Reflections/Impressions Related to Retention KMO Influences

Emerging Questions/Initial Analysis

Future Action/Focus for Future Observations

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Samayoa, Javier (author)

Core Title Manager leadership skills in the context of a new business strategy initiative: an evaluative study

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 02/14/2019

Defense Date 12/07/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag alignment,business strategy,leadership skills,managers,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational change

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seli, Helena (committee chair), Canny, Eric (committee member), Stowe, Kathy (committee member)

Creator Email jsamayoa@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-119992

Unique identifier UC11676781

Identifier etd-SamayoaJav-7070.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-119992 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SamayoaJav-7070.pdf

Dmrecord 119992

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Samayoa, Javier

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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