Employee Alignment: A Process for Understanding Individual Changeability
Abstract
Despite the fact that employee alignment with an initiative is often considered a critical process of organizational change, few studies have examined processes where organizations change the individual to bring about alignment. This research aims to fill this gap by examining how employees change following the introduction of a new change initiative. Specifically, I investigate how employee knowledge of (1) a change objective (i.e., line of sight objectives) and (2) how to best affect the objective (i.e., line of sight actions) changes following the introduction of a change initiative. To better understand potential attributes that may affect the trajectory of the line of sight constructs, I take a social cognitive approach to suggest five potential moderators (i.e., locus of control, interaction quality, valence, learning goal orientation, self-efficacy) based on the five core concepts of social cognitive theory (i.e., agency, observational learning, valued outcomes, goals, self-efficacy). Additionally, I propose a potential trajectory for behavioral alignment, based on a theory of change momentum; and, I examine the potential moderating effects of learning on the behavioral alignment trajectory. I also examine a potential pathway in which line of sight actions mediate the relationship between line of sight objectives and behavioral alignment with the same five social cognitive facets as proposed moderators. In a sample of 189 fast food employees, partial support is found for the alignment model. Line of sight objectives influences both line of sight actions and behavioral alignment. Line of sight actions also predicted performance. When looking at the trajectories, the time period encompassing the intervention saw significant gains in line of sight objectives, but not line of sight actions. The change in line of sight objectives and line of sight actions also predicted the change in behavioral alignment. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.
Subject
alignment changeCitation
Thundiyil, Tomas (2015). Employee Alignment: A Process for Understanding Individual Changeability. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /155407.