Abstract:The aim of this paper is to understand why some ethical behaviours fail to embed, and importantly what can be done about it. We address this by looking at an example where ethical behaviour has not become the norm, i.e. the widespread, habitual, use of 'bags for life'. This is an interesting case because whilst a consistent message of 'saving the environment' has been the basis of the promotion of 'bags for life' in the United Kingdom for many years, their uptake has only recently become more widespread and still remains at low levels. Through an exploratory study, we unpack some of the contextual barriers which may influence ethical consumerism. We do this by examining the attitudes which influenced people to start using 'bags for life', and how people persuade others to use 'bags for life'. We use a case study analysis to try and understand why ethical behaviour change has stalled and not become sustained. We find that both individuals and institutions play a significant interaction role in encouraging a sustained behavioural change towards ethical consumerism.

One way to improve trust in management during large-scale organization changes is with effective communications. This article looks at three types of social accounts (causal, ideological, and referential accounts) to see which are effective at improving trust during major organizational changes. A field study method explored two organizations and found that ideological accounts were best at improving trust in management. The relationship between ideological accounts and trust was mediated by the success of the social account (i.e., the perceived understanding of the change decision). These findings indicate the benefits of highlighting long-term motives for large-scale organizational change.

Purpose – As management innovations become more complex, infrastructure needs to change in order to accommodate new work practices. Different challenges are associated with work practice redesign and infrastructure change however; combining these presents a dual challenge and additional challenges associated with this interaction. The purpose of this paper is to ask: what are the challenges which arise from work practice redesign, infrastructure change and simultaneously attempting both in a single transformation? Design/methodology/approach – The authors present a longitudinal study of three hospitals in three different countries (UK, USA and Canada) transforming both their infrastructure and work practices. Data consists of 155 ethnographic interviews complemented by 205 documents and 36 hours of observations collected over two phases for each case study. Findings – This paper identifies that work practice redesign challenges the cognitive load of organizational members whilst infrastructure change challenges the project management and structure of the organization. Simultaneous transformation represents a disconnect between the two aspects of change resulting in a failure to understand the relationship between work and design. Practical implications – These challenges suggest that organizations need to make a distinction between the two aspects of transformation and understand the unique tensions of simultaneously tackling these dual challenges. They must ensure that they have adequate skills and resources with which to build this distinction into their change planning. Originality/value – This paper unpacks two different aspects of complex change and considers the neglected challenges associated with modern change management objectives.

Policies can fail when frontline staff feel they have limited influence on policy implementation (powerlessness), or that policy has little or no personal meaning (meaninglessness) – they become alienated from the policy. But, how does this alienation develop? In this paper we ask whether policy alienation might be viewed as a process that develops over time: a process that ebbs and flows, interacting with the policy landscape as it shifts, rather than a psychological state. Feelings of alienation can be shared across groups of actors, as they collectively shift and initiate change. This study uses participant observation and interviews with front-line employees as they navigate a UK Government Policy introducing telehealthcare to improve health management of patients with chronic conditions. We find: i) cumulative misalignment between different policy implementation contexts allows policy alienation to develop over time, ii) the shared experience of alienation in co-worker groups contributes to further misalignment, iii) front-line staff use their discretion to respond to policy alienation, which has the power to enhance or destroy policy implementation. We offer an alternative perspective for understanding how policy alienation can be prevented and policy implementation can be enhanced.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate what happens when a lack of role-sending results in ambiguous change agent roles during a large scale organisational reconfiguration. The authors consider the role of sensemaking in resolving role ambiguity of middle manager change agents and the consequences of this for organisational restructuring. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a case study analysis of significant organisational reconfiguration across a local National Health Service Trust in the UK. Data consists of 82 interviews, complemented by analysis of over 100 documents and field notes from 51 hours of observations collected over five phases covering a three year period before, during and after the reconfiguration. An inductive qualitative analysis revealed the sensemaking processes by which ambiguity in role definition was resolved. Findings – The data explains how change agents collectively make sense of a role in their own way, drawing on their own experiences and views as well as cues from other organisational members. The authors also identified the organisational outcomes which resulted from this freedom in sensemaking. This study demonstrates that by leaving too much flexibility in the definition of the role, agents developed their own sensemaking which was subsequently very difficult to manipulate. Practical implications – In creating new roles, management first needs to have a realistic vision of the task and roles that their agents will perform, and second, to communicate these expectations to both those responsible for recruiting these roles and to the agents themselves. Originality/value – Much of the focus in sensemaking research has been on the importance of change agents’ sensemaking of the change but there has been little focus on how change agents sensemake their own role in the change.