Organizational change and job satisfaction
among voluntary and paid workers
Paper for the 27th International Labour Process Conference, 6-8th April 2009, Edinburgh
Tanja van der VleutenRoel Schouteten
Capgemini Consulting the NetherlandsRadboud University Nijmegen
P.O. Box 2575P.O. Box 9108
NL-3500 GN UtrechtNL-6500 HK Nijmegen
The NetherlandsThe Netherlands
T: +31 30 689 3229T: +31 24 361 1267
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Abstract
In this paper we report on the effects of organizational change on voluntary and paid workers’ job satisfaction in an organization in the voluntary sector: a regional department of the Dutch Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. About 570 voluntary and 70 paid workers in this department address the needs and rights of refugees and immigrants in 25 Municipalities in the central-eastern part of the Netherlands by facilitating and providing direct professional services (e.g. help with asylum procedures), and promoting the full participation of migrants in community life.
Due to changing market conditions (e.g. changes in government’s policy towards refugees and funding of the Committee), organizational change was necessary in order to become an effective, efficient and flexible market party. The changes that took place consisted of organizational growth (by merging with other regional departments), organizational downsizing (by closing some of the local offices), and organizational redesign (new job structure).
These changes affect the work characteristics that determine job satisfaction (Griffin, 1991; Mack et al., 1998; Svensen et al., 2007). Job satisfaction is also affected by individual and personal differences. Being a voluntary or paid worker can influence job satisfaction, because of different expectations and work motivations (Hwang et al., 2005; Field and Johnson, 1993).
In this research we test whether the organizational changes had different effects on voluntary and paid workers’ job satisfaction. Using validated scales from existing Dutch questionnaires we measured work characteristics (e.g. job demands, job decision latitude, social support) and dependent variables (e.g. job satisfaction, commitment, need for recovery) among the voluntary and paid workers in 2004 (prior to the changes) and 2007 (after the changes). Response rates were 46.7% in 2005 and 24,7% in 2007. Due to the changes in staffing we were unable to relate the two measures at the individual level, but we were able to compare at the job level. We also conducted additional interviews for background information on the quantitative results.
Our results show that the work characteristics, and as a result job satisfaction, deteriorated significantly for voluntary as well as paid workers. The focus on more commercial activities (more profit driven) and the resulting job structure resulted in a stronger focus on accountability. For voluntary workers this resulted in increased role ambiguity, especially since feedback and social support from superiors decreased as a result of the new structure. For paid workers, being involved in planning and management, the changes resulted in additional workload. Being responsible for a team’s performance, the paid workers have to spend more effort in acquiring new projects and funding. For most volunteers the job content did not change; they are still mostly involved in advising and helping refuges and immigrants. They are also mostly intrinsically motivated by this aspect of the work. The paid workers are also mostly motivated by offering help to people in need, but their responsibilities require them to spend more time on commercial activities. They find it especially difficult to get access to the funding authorities in the Municipalities. The questionnaire results show, and all workers agreed, that the changes affected the work of paid workers more than the volunteers’ work. Especially in the two newly created paid jobs to meet the commercial requirements, there is an imbalance between job demands and decision latitude resulting in higher job dissatisfaction.
As a result, our study shows that the organizational change in this organization has different effects on the voluntary and paid workers. Most important explanation is that the work responsibilities and work expectations are different for voluntary and paid workers. Therefore, organizational changes affect paid workers more than they affect voluntary workers.
Introduction
Modern societies rely to an important extent on voluntarism and voluntary associations to serve communities in tangible ways (Li and Ferraro, 2006). Especially in North European countries volunteers contribute to a more civil society (Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006). According to Statistics Netherlands (van Herten, 2008) 5.6 million Dutch (44% of the Dutch adults)were involved in voluntary work in 2007. Dutch volunteers’contributionto the GDP was 4.7% in 2002. The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project reports that this is the relatively largest contribution in their comparative study among 35 countries.
As voluntary associations and nonprofit organizations, but also some profit organizations, rely heavily on the effort of volunteers, it is important to monitor and increase volunteers’ job satisfaction. Based on an extensive literature review Borzaga and Tortia (2006) reportgenerally higher levels of job satisfaction and motivation in non-profit organizations, including voluntary associations, than in profit organizations, despite lower salaries, personnel shortages and high levels of workload. However, voluntary associations are increasingly being faced with organizational changes as a result of a stronger focus on the quality of their services. There is a trend that non-profit organizations are being asked and required to be more business-like in their operations and attitude (Dart, 2004), for instance as a result of changes in legislation and funding. Non-profit organizations are exhorted to pay more attention on fund raising, the competition, (social) innovations, efficiency, and cost reduction. Shoham et al. (2006) show that voluntary associations increasingly use business-like strategies to improve their performance.
These developments cause non-profit organizations (hence, also voluntary associations) to change their strategy, organization, attitude and way of working. As a result the determinants of job satisfaction change. Noblet et al. (2006) studied the effects of using more results-oriented private sector strategies, also referred to as New Public Management strategies, in public sector organizations. They conclude that these strategies caused structural, procedural and cultural changes that resulted in decreased job satisfaction. In addition, Field and Johnson (1993) found that commercialization of voluntary associations results in conflicting feelings among volunteers: being more responsible for and focused on fund raising conflicts with the intrinsic motivation of voluntary workers to serve community in general, or especially people in need.
There is an abundance of literature on the effects of organizational change on job satisfaction of paid workers in profit organizations (e.g. Mack et al., 1998; Svensen et al., 2007). There are also studies focusing on job satisfaction of paid workers in non-profit organizations, such as municipalities or health care institutions (e.g. Field and Johnson, 1993; Korunka et al., 2007), however there is little research about the effects of organizational change on job satisfaction of volunteers in a voluntary association. According to Dart (2004) there is evidence that non-profit organizations do change, but that there is a lack of research on the effects of these changes.
In this paper, we study the effects of organizational change on voluntary and paid workers’ job satisfaction in an organization in the voluntary sector (as a specific kind of non-profit organization): a regional department of the Dutch Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (SVMG).Due to changing market conditions (e.g. changes in government’s policy towards refugees and funding of the Committee), organizational change was necessary in order to become an effective, efficient and flexible market party. The changes that took place consisted of organizational growth (by merging with other regional departments), organizational downsizing (by closing some of the local offices), and organizational redesign (new job structure).
This paper will proceed as follows. First, we present the case study. Then we present a literature overview to formulate a hypothesis for the relationship between organizational change and job satisfaction for voluntary and paid workers. This will be followed by the methodology of this study, its results and, finally the discussion and conclusions.
Case: a regional department of the Dutch Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
The regional department of the Dutch Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (SVMG) employs about 570 voluntary and 70 paid workers to address the needs and rights of refugees and immigrants in 25 Municipalities in the central-eastern part of the Netherlands by facilitating and providing direct professional services (e.g. help with asylum procedures), and promoting the full participation of migrants in community life. Due to changes in legislation and funding, SVMG had to change its strategy in order to stay profitable. Formerly, municipalities were the main sponsors. They agreed on yearly contracts forall services regarding all refugees and immigrants. However, the number of immigrants dropped significantly over the last couple of years, and the funding changed. In the new situation, SVMG needs to compete with other providers of certain specific services, because municipalities can ask smaller and special services aimed at individuals or small groups. These environmental changes resulted in a decrease in income for SVMG. Therefore they decided on a reorganization.
First, by mergers with other regional departments of the Dutch Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, SVMG increased its geographical service area. This resulted in additional local offices. These were reorganized into four regions reporting to the central office, rather thanall individual offices. Besides, some offices – old and newly acquired – were closed.Regarding the staffing of these offices, the employees per region were expected to be employable in every office in that region. As result, although the number of offices and the number of voluntary workers in SVMG increased, the number of managers and support staff (mainly paid workers) decreased (see also Table 1). Therefore, organizational growth and downsizing were realized simultaneously.
A second feature of the reorganization was the changed focus on accountability, efficiency and more business-like attitude of the employees. Due to market developments, SVMG had to compete with other suppliers and actively acquire assignments and funding. Moreover, services needed to be customized for specific assignments, rather than supplying standard services to large groups of immigrants. In order to create specialized jobs aimed at acquiring assignments and product development, and to manage the growing number of offices and voluntary workers, SVMG decided to change its job structure, particularly for the paid workers. Paid workers are responsible for most of the managerial and supporting positions in SVMG. The previously eleven local managers were replaced by fourregional managers with a larger span of control and more responsibilities. Next to this, the integrated tasks of the previous job of ‘work supervisor’ were divided over two new jobs: ‘supervisor of volunteers’ and ‘integration consultant’. These jobs are more specialized than the old job, because of the increased responsibilities regarding supervision, funding and product development.
Organizational change and job satisfaction
Being one of the most frequently studied concepts, there is an abundance of literature about job satisfaction (Locke, 1976, Judge et al., 2001). There is general consensus that job satisfaction is influenced by a combination of job characteristics (role ambiguity, skill variety), individual (age, work values) and organizational characteristics (leadership, organizational age) (e.g. Glisson and Durick, 1988; Kalleberg 1977).Organizational change and reorganizations may influence job and organizational characteristics and, as a result, job satisfaction. According to Mack et al. (1998), organizational change causes employees to alter their ways of working. Based on their research Mack et al. conclude that, in general, organizational changes result in increasing levels of job dissatisfaction, mainly as a result of increased uncertainty during the process of change. However, many scholars present different relationships between organizational change and job satisfaction. Main reason for this is the wide variety of organizational changes being studied. Organizational change can take different forms: reorganizing the work practices, job redesign, organizational growth, organizational downsizing. Moreover, while some changes affect the entire organization, other changes affect only specific divisions, teams or jobs.
The organizational change in our study is very complex as it involves organizational downsizing, growth, job redesign and a change in organizational strategy, focusing on more business-like behaviour. These different changes may affect job satisfaction differently.
The effect of organizational downsizing depends on workers’ previous experiences with similar changes. According to Svensen et al. (2007) job satisfaction will decrease if previous experiences with downsizingare negative. On the other hand, if previous experiences are positive this decrease in job satisfaction will not occur. Cross and Travaglione (2004) argue that organizational downsizing will result in higher levels of job satisfaction as the remaining employees will be happier than those who left. An important assumption here is that the least satisfied employees will (have to) leave the organization, which is not necessarily true in all organizational downsizing processes.
With regard to work characteristics, organizational downsizing results in increasing levels of work load when the same work has to be carried out by less employees. Following Karasek’s model (1979), increasing work loads (job demands) with the same amount of decision latitude will result in lower levels of job satisfaction.
Organizational growth (resulting in growing numbers of employees) in general results in decreasing levels of job satisfaction (Beer, 1964). Organizational growth often results in many other (organizational) changes in, for example leadership styles, organizational structure and employees’ attitudes that have negative effects on job satisfaction. Based on an extensive literature review Beer (1964) concludes that larger organizations report lower levels of job satisfaction.Based on Karasek’s model, more formalization and a larger distance towards colleagues and superiors decrease the levels of decision latitude, resulting in decreasingjob satisfaction.Field and Johnson (1993) studied the effects of organizational growth in a voluntary association, mainly employing volunteers, that grew from a single location small firm to a large organization operating from several different locations. The growth process involved incorporating more bureaucratic processes to manage the work processes and employees (including the volunteers), resulting in demotivation and lower levels of commitment. These concepts correlate with job satisfaction (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990). Another important finding in Field and Johnson’s case was that the changes heavily affected the volunteers’ work, but the volunteers were not involved in any decision making resulting in reduced commitment among thevolunteers.
Job design is one of the main determinants of job satisfaction (Humphrey et al., 2007). Important models indicating this relationship include the Job demand – Decision latitude model (Karasek, 1979), the Job Characteristics Model (Hackman and Oldham, 1980), and the Job Demands Resources model (Demerouti et al., 2001).Salancik and Pfeffer (1978) and Griffin (1991) show that job redesign results in improved job satisfaction when the job redesign results in an improved fit between job characteristics and employee needs or expectations. According to Karasek (1979) job redesign results in increased job satisfaction when decision latitude increases. Increased levels of job satisfaction occur directly after the redesign process after which it stabilizes or declines to previous levels (Griffin, 1991). In an experiment by Hackman et al. (described in Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978) job satisfaction was measured before and after job redesign. Three kinds of job ‘redesign’ were conducted: job enrichment, no change, and reduction of job variety. The results were positive for all three kinds of changes: after the redesign process job satisfaction was higher than before. Salancik and Pfeffer conclude that the workers’ expectations were already focussed towards the changing work characteristics and, therefore, influenced the workers’ expectations. They suggest that focussing on the dissatisfying work characteristics may have a positive effect on the experience of changing these characteristics. This is also known as the Hawthorne effect (see e.g. Blumberg, 1968: 14-46). Based on these theories, we conclude that job redesign positively influences job satisfaction when it meets at least one of two characteristics: first job satisfaction increases if the job characteristics fit, second job satisfaction increases if the redesign process is aimed at changing dissatisfying work characteristics. The first characteristic results in the most sustainable increase in job satisfaction.
An organizational change aimed at a more business-like attitude requires a major transformation of the organizational culture (Gebhart et al., 2006). This will affect worker motivation and cooperation between workers. Noblet et al. (2006) showed that introducing private sector management strategies in public sector organizations resulted in structural, cultural and procedural changes that had negative effects on job satisfaction. Especially the focus on fund raising and accountability results in mixed feelings among volunteers as they are mostly intrinsically motivated to help people in need, not by efficiency (Field and Johnson, 1993).
In conclusion, the relation between organizational change and job satisfaction is miscellaneous. Different kinds of organizational change have different effects on job satisfaction. However, it is clear that work characteristics and the perception of these characteristics or the change mediate the relationship between organizational change and job satisfaction.
Voluntary and paid workers
As mentioned before, workers’ perception of organizational changes of work characteristics differ with the worker’s attitudes and work motivation. There is evidence that voluntary and paid workers have different motivations for working (Hwang et al., 2005). Voluntary workers are driven by a diversity of benefits to be achieved: “making a contribution, a sense of achievement, spending time in a constructive way, getting out of the house, and seeing things from another perspective” (Field and Johnson, 1993: 1626). Paid workers are dependent on the organization they work for for their income. Therefore, salary is a means to affect a paid worker’s motivation. As a result, voluntary workers can leave the organization without any financial consequence. Being less motivated by financial arguments also means that voluntary workers are less keen to adhere to efficiency improvements when they are not necessary to reach the goal of contributing to society (as perceived by the voluntary workers).Wilson and Musick (1999) show that job dissatisfaction of volunteers does not affect their intention to leave the organization. Their altruistic behaviour prevails the importance of the work characteristics; helping people in need is more important than a proper work organization or good terms of employment.