Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T23:57:36.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Importance of Stability in the Midst of Change: The Benefits of Consistent Values to Strategic Implementation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2017

Simon A. Moss ,
Ivan Butar Butar ,
Charmine E. J. Hartel ,
Giles Hirst  and
Michael Craner
Simon A. Moss*
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia School of Psychological and Clinical Sciences, Charles Darwin University, Casuarina, Australia
Ivan Butar Butar
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Charmine E. J. Hartel
Affiliation:
School of Business, Queensland University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Giles Hirst
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Michael Craner
Affiliation:
The Palladium Group Asia-Pacific, Sydney, NSW, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Dr Simon Moss, Charles Darwin University, School of Psychological and Clinical Sciences, Casuarina Campus, Ellengowan Drive, Casuarina 0909, Australia. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Many hurdles, such as inadequate resources, impede the execution of strategies in organizations. These problems could partly be ascribed to the tendency of individuals to feel, in the midst of change, their identity could shift dramatically. Their activities now, therefore, may not seem meaningful to their future. In this state, people become more concerned about their immediate needs, withholding the effort needed to affect future change. Leaders who promote stable, consistent values over time might redress this concern. To assess this possibility, 208 senior managers completed a questionnaire that assesses consistency of values over time, a sense of meaning at work, hurdles that impede the execution of strategy, and firm performance. Consistent with the hypotheses, consistent values over time were positively associated with firm performance, and these relationships were mediated by meaning at work and hurdles that impede strategy. A qualitative study showed that managers utilize many approaches to foster this consistency of values. Specifically, they communicate their strategic plan regularly, redress misalignments between values and practice, encourage the participation of all departments equally, and seek the active support of senior management-all intended to show how perturbations in the organization align to an overarching, enduring vision.

Keywords

changemeaning at workperformancestrategy executionvision
Type
Articles
Information
The Australasian Journal of Organisational Psychology , Volume 10 , 2017 , e1
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bartels, D.M., & Rips, L.J. (2010). Psychological connectedness and intertemporal choice. Journal of Experimental Psychology-General, 139, 49–69.Google Scholar
Bartels, D.M., & Urminsky, O. (2011). On intertemporal selfishness: How the perceived instability of identity underlies impatient consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 38, 182–198. doi: 10.1086/658339 Google Scholar
Bass, B.M., & Avolio, B.J. (1997). Full range leadership development: Manual for the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Palo Alto, CA: Mindgarden.Google Scholar
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101. doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L. (1993). Motivation for social contact across the life span: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. In Jacobs, J. E. (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation: 1992, Developmental perspectives on motivation (Vol. 40, pp. 209–254). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L. (1995). Evidence for a life-span theory of socioemotional selectivity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 151–156.Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L. (2006). The influence of a sense of time on human development. Science, 312, 1913–1915.Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L., & Fredrickson, B.L. (1998). Influence of HIV status and age on cognitive representations of others. Health Psychology, 17, 494–503.Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L., & Mikels, J.A. (2005). At the intersection of emotion and cognition: Aging and the positivity effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 117–121.Google Scholar
Carstensen, L.L., Isaacowitz, D.M., & Charles, S.T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54, 165–181.Google Scholar
Charles, S.T., Mather, M., & Carstensen, L.L. (2003). Aging and emotional memory: The forgettable nature of negative images for older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 310–324.Google Scholar
Cocks, G. (2010). Emerging concepts for implementing strategy. The TQM Journal, 22, 260–266.Google Scholar
DeWall, C.N., Visser, P.S., & Levitan, L.C. (2006). Openness to attitude change as a function of temporal perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1010–1023.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 327–339.Google Scholar
Ersner-Hershfield, H., Garton, M.T., Ballard, K., Samanez-Larkin, G.R., & Knutson, B. (2009a). Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 280–286.Google Scholar
Ersner-Hershfield, H., Wimmer, G.E., & Knutson, B. (2009b). Saving for the future self: Neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4, 85–92.Google Scholar
Forster, J., Friedman, R.S., & Liberman, N. (2004). Temporal construal effects on abstract and concrete thinking: Consequences for insight and creative cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 177–189.Google Scholar
Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing strategic change: Understanding the critical management elements that lead to success. California Management Review, 51, 49–73.Google Scholar
Fung, H.H., & Carstensen, L.L. (2003). Sending memorable messages to the old: Age differences in preferences and memory for advertisements. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85, 163–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fung, H.H., & Carstensen, L.L. (2004). Motivational changes in response to blocked goals and foreshortened Time: Testing alternatives for socioemotional selectivity theory. Psychology and Aging, 19, 68–78.Google Scholar
Galinsky, A.D., Magee, J.C., Inesi, M.E., & Gruenfeld, D.H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17, 1068–1074.Google Scholar
Haudan, J.A., & MacLean, D. (2002). E is for engagement: Transforming your business by transforming your people. Journal of Change Management, 2, 255–265.Google Scholar
Heine, S.J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K.D. (2006). Meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of human motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88–110.Google Scholar
Hershfield, H.E., Cohen, T.R., & Thompson, L. (2012). Short horizons and tempting situations: Lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical decision making and behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117, 298–310. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.11.00.Google Scholar
Hrebiniak, L.G. (2006). Obstacles to effective strategy implementation. Organizational Dynamics, 35, 12–31.Google Scholar
Hrebiniak, L.G. (2008). Making strategy work: Overcoming the obstacles to effective execution. Ivey Business Journal, 72, 1–6.Google Scholar
Jetten, J., & Wohl, M.J.A. (2012).The past as a determinant of the present: Historical continuity, collective angst, and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 442–450. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.865 Google Scholar
Keller, J., & Bless, H. (2008). Flow and regulatory compatibility: An experimental approach to the flow model of intrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 196–209.Google Scholar
Kruglanski, A.W., & Webster, D.M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘freezing.’ Psychological Review, 103, 263–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mather, M., & Carstensen, L.L. (2003). Aging and attentional biases for emotional faces. Psychological Science, 14, 409–415.Google Scholar
Mather, M., & Carstensen, L.L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 496–502.Google Scholar
May, D.R., Gilson, R.L., & Harter, L.M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77, 11–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordhielm, C.L. (2002). The influence of level of processing on advertising repetition effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 29, 371–382.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. (1971). Personal identity. Philosophical Review, 80, 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podsakoff, P.M., MacKenzie, S.B., & Bommer, W.H. (1996). Transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership as determinants of employee satisfaction, commitment, trust, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Journal of Management, 22, 259–298.Google Scholar
Posner, B.Z., & Kouzes, J.M. (1988). Development and validation of the leadership practices inventory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 48, 483–496.Google Scholar
Preacher, K.J., & Hayes, A.F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling procedures for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behaviour Research Methods, 40, 879–891. doi: 10.3758/BRM.40.3.879 Google Scholar
Proulx, T., & Heine, S.J. (2006). Death and black diamonds: Meaning, mortality, and the meaning maintenance model. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 309–318.Google Scholar
Proulx, T., & Heine, S.J. (2008). The case of the transmogrifying experimenter: Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19, 1294–1300.Google Scholar
Proulx, T., & Heine, S.J. (2009). Connections from Kafka: Exposure to meaning threats improves implicit learning of an artificial grammar. Psychological Science, 20, 1125–1131.Google Scholar
Pruzan, K., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). An attentional application of socioemotional selectivity theory in college students. Social Development, 15, 326–338.Google Scholar
Rafferty, A.E., & Griffin, M.A. (2004). Dimensions of transformational leadership: Conceptual and empirical extensions. Leadership Quarterly, 15, 329–354.Google Scholar
Randles, D., Proulx, T., & Heine, S.J. (2010). Turn-frogs and careful-sweaters: Non-conscious perception of incongruous word pairings provokes fluid compensation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 246–249.Google Scholar
Raps, A. (2004). Implementing strategy: Tap into the power of four key factors to deliver success. Strategic Finance, 85, 48–53 Google Scholar
Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of perceptual fluency on judgments of truth. Consciousness & Cognition: An International Journal, 8, 338–342.Google Scholar
Rich, B.L., Lepine, J.A., & Crawford, E.R. (2010). Job engagement: Antecedents and effects on job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 617–635.Google Scholar
Salanova, M., Bakker, A.B., & Llorens, S. (2006). Flow at work: Evidence for an upward spiral of personal and organizational resources. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 1–22.Google Scholar
Sani, F., Bowe, M., & Herrera, M. (2008). Perceived collective continuity and social well-being: Exploring the connections. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 365–374.Google Scholar
Shea, T., Cooper, B., De Cieri, H., & Sheehan, C. (2012). Evaluation of a perceived organisational performance scale using rasch model analysis. Australian Journal of Management, 37, 507–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torelli, C., & Kaikati, A. (2009). Values as predictors of judgments and behaviors: The role of abstract and concrete mindsets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 231–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Tongreen, D., & Green, J.D. (2010). Combating meaninglessness: On the automatic defense of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1372–1384.Google Scholar
Wang, X., & Howell, J.M. (2010). Exploring the dual-level effects of transformational leadership on followers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 1134–1144.Google Scholar
Williams, J., & Mackinnon, D.P. (2008). Resampling and distribution of the product methods for testing indirect effects in complex models. Structural Equation Modeling, 15, 23–51. doi: 10.1080/10705510701758166 Google Scholar