Supervisors as recipients and implementers of organizational change: evidence from an Indian chain hospital
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-07-2020-0275 |
| Published date | 08 February 2021 |
| Date | 08 February 2021 |
| Pages | 503-522 |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,International business |
| Author | Arash Mashhady |
Supervisors as recipients and
implementers of organizational change:
evidence from an Indian chain hospital
Arash Mashhady
Abstract
Purpose –Supervisors play an important role in the implementation of organizational policies and
practices.This study aims to examine the role of supervisors as both recipientsand main implementers of
organizational changeby investigating how supervisors’ relationshipwith organization would affect their
attitude toward change(ATC) and how employees–supervisor relationship,as perceived by employees,
would influencetheir reaction to change.
Design/methodology/approach –The influence of participation, perceived organizational support
(POS) and mutual expectationclarity (MEC) on supervisors’ ATC was examined,along with the influence
of leader–member exchange, perception of supervisor’s expressed ATC and also supervisors’
organizationalstatus on employees’ ATC. Two studieswere conducted in a chain hospital in India.
Findings –The findingssuggest that supervisors’ ATC improvedby higher participation, POS and MEC.
Also, while employees’ changeattitude was predicted by how they perceived their supervisors’ status,
expressed reaction towardchange and perception of employee–supervisor relationship,for employees
who either perceived highly negative change attitude of their supervisors or believed that their
supervisors had low organizationalstatus, the employee–supervisor relationshiphad almost no effect on
improvingemployees’ attitude.
Originality/value –Considering that supervisorsoften tend to engage in professional relationshipswith
their subordinate employees, little is investigated on how,through the lens of relationships, supervisors
may affect employees’ ATC. This paper attempts to make a difference by conducting two connected
studies in a chainhospital to examine how supervisors –as recipientsand implementers of organizational
policies and practices –couldinfluence employees’ ATC. The findings suggestmanagerial implications
that couldinform practitioners toward improvementof employee buy-ins for change programs.
Keywords Attitude toward change, Social exchange, Perceived organizational support,
Organizational change management, Supervisors, Leadershiptheories,
Leader–member exchange theory, Organizational relationship, Implementation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Supervisors and line managers are commonly seen as one of the main actors in the
management of the workforce, who play an important role in the implementation of
management’s strategies in terms of policies and practices concerning the human
resources (HR) in organizations (Bos-Nehles and Meijerink, 2018). Supervisors and line
managers often work directly with, and along with employees, which would place them in a
unique position in the organizational hierarchy to enact human resource management
(HRM) policies and decisions, form relationship with employees and set the “tone” in the
workplace (Neves et al.,2018), which enables them to influence employees’ perception of
their employment experience, as well as their attitudes and behaviors (Conway and Monks,
2008;Plaskoff, 2017).
Arash Mashhady is
Graduate of the
Department of Humanities
and Social Science,
Jawaharlal Nehru
Technological University
Hyderabad, Hyderabad,
India.
Received 10 July 2020
Revised 21 October 2020
Accepted 6 December 2020
DOI 10.1108/JABS-07-2020-0275 VOL. 15 NO. 3 2021, pp. 503-522, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1558-7894 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jPAGE 503
The Indian Government contributes to less than 30% of health-care expenditures and the
private sector accounts for a large percent of hospitalization and out-patient visits (Padma
et al., 2010). Considering the extensive reliance on the privately funded health-care
services, paying for the health-care costs in India is generally perceived as challenging for
the people which, according to Malik et al. (2017), has pushed many Indian hospitals to
embrace change and become innovative in their services, to be able to meet caring
requirements of people at different income levels. While this would signify the importance
and cruciality of innovation and change in the Indian health sector fueled by strong
competition (from both local and foreign players) and also high demand (Hou et al., 2019;
Malik et al.,2017;Padma et al.,2010), the presence of high resistance to change as a trait
of Indian work culture, high rate of failure in change programs along with high costs
associated with these programs would definitely add to the challenge of managing change
in the Indian hospitals (Bhatnagar et al.,2010;Malik, 2016). Thus, in a world of high
competition where organizations, including hospitals, need to plan and implement frequent
changes to survive, the matter of gaining the cooperation of employees poses as a serious
challenge to management as failing to obtain employees’ buy-in, could lead to their
resistance and possibly to failure of change programs (Neves et al.,2018). While the past
research has largely focused on employees and resistance to change (Burnes, 2015;Ford
et al., 2008), provided an abundance ofevidence and discussion on and around the role of
managers and leaders in organizational change (Groves, 2006;Kavanagh and Ashkanasy,
2006;Oreg and Berson, 2011), examined various modes of change leadership and change
agency (Caldwell, 2003;Ford et al., 2014) and their features and competencies and effects
on the change outcome (Battilana et al., 2010;Caldwell, 2003;Crawford and Nahmias,
2010), it could be seen that the research about the role of supervisors and, particularly, the
unique aspect of their role as both recipient and implementer of decisions and strategies in
the context of change management is quite scarce. The reason for this, as mentioned by
Neves et al. (2018), could be perhapsthe tendency of the change management literature to
have an “agent-centric” perspectivewhere a change agent is generally assumed to be right
and take the right course of action whileemployees are merely seen as a force of resistance
and hence, the relationship between the change agent and change recipient is often
ignored. Even though the importance and influence of the employee–supervisor relationship
have been mentioned and examined in some previous works related to change
management (Furst and Cable, 2008;Van Dam et al.,2008), it could be observed that there
is a gap in the change managementliterature, concerning supervisors’ role, their reactionto
change and how the behavioral aspect of their reaction (as perceived by employees) could
reflect on and influence the attitude of employees toward change. Taking a step to study
this gap makes the main motive of conductingthe current research.
This research aims to first examine how the relationship between supervisors and their
organization, on the one hand, would influence their attitude toward organizational change
and second, investigate how the relationship of employees with their supervisor would, in
turn, affect their attitude toward change (ATC). To fulfill the objectives above, this study
builds on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964;Bos-Nehles and Meijerink, 2018) and intends
to examine the link between supervisors’ ATC and their relationship with organization, their
participation level and also the clarity of mutual expectation and the link between
employee’s ATC and the relationship they have with their supervisors, while testing for the
possible moderating effects of employee’s perception of supervisor’s organizational status
and supervisor’s expressed ATC on this link. Two studies were conducted to test the
research hypotheses.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: The next section discusses the role of
supervisors by drawing from HRM and change management literature and develops
hypotheses based on the social exchangetheory and previous relevant work. Following that
is the method section where two studies are described to test the hypotheses and the
PAGE 504 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jVOL. 15 NO. 3 2021
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