Chapter 4. Research Methodology
4.4 Change Method
4.4.1
The Industry Partner
The industry partner in this study, Uniting Communities (UC), is one of the largest non-profit organisations in South Australia providing social services and has a strong reputation for public policy advocacy both state-wide and nationally. Each year UC provides services to approximately 30,000 clients and is supported by over 790 paid staff, almost 600 dedicated volunteers; and 120 contractors.
Uniting Communities was previously known as Uniting Care Wesley Adelaide and, prior to that, as Adelaide Central Mission. The organisation has been established in South Australia since 1901 and was part of the Uniting Care Wesley (UCW) South Australian group which consisted of Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Bowden and Port Pirie. Although they share the same name, each organisation is a separate entity. During the 2012/2013 reporting year UCW Adelaide broke away from this group and became Uniting Communities. UC is predominantly reliant on government funding to deliver social services to the community. UC’s annual financial reports itemise the organisation’s income over the period from 2010 as illustrated in Table 4-1. Government Subsidies as a source of revenue have increased from around 63% in 2010 and 2011 to just over 70% for 2013: for UC this represents a significant reliance on government funding.
Table 4-1: UCW Income Sources (UC Annual Reports 2010-2013)
Income Source Consolidated 2013 $’000 Consolidated 2012 $’000 Consolidated 2011 $’000 Consolidated 2010 $’000 Government Subsidies 35,814 34,582 32,320 28,716 Sale of Goods 3,164 3,714 4,417 4,456 Fees Received 5,353 5,862 4,847 3,891 Donations 507 504 848 1,038
Investments & Other 6,299 6,138 8,838 7,763
Total Income 51,137 50,800 51,270 45,864
As mentioned both in Chapter 2. and above, securing Government funding has become a more competitive process for all NPOs and this is particularly true for UC which runs 104 community service programs across 55 sites in metropolitan and regional South Australia. These demands were further complicated by the introduction of Consumer Directed Care (CDC) from July 1, 2015: individualised client funding packages under which clients receive funding directly and choose their preferred provider for individual social services (see Abramovitz and Zelnick, 2015).
The Partner Organisation, although a large organisation, is representative of NPOs more generally in that it is significantly reliant on government funding and is thus a suitable partner for this study. With the introduction of NPM principles UC is also experiencing change in terms of a shift in accountability from government to itself via the NPM funding agreements and reporting requirements – resulting in a loss of worker control and integrity (refer to Chapter 2. ).
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These changes are, in turn, affecting both the way services are provided and the motivation of staff (see Chapter 2. for a fuller explanation) and, since the motivation of staff is particularly important in NPOs which are more intrinsically motivated (Benz, 2005; Mirvis and Hackett, 1983; Ridder and McCandless, 2010), it is important that barriers to change and ICT acceptance be dealt with in such a way that the intrinsic motivation of staff, clients, volunteers and other stakeholders is preserved.4.4.2
The Pilot Project
The importance of worker motivation and its preservation during an ICT-induced organisational change was evident during a pilot project undertaken with UC. The project was conducted over a six-month period during 2008 under the oversight of Professor Paul Swatman within the Youth Services department of Uniting Communities as summarised in Howard and Swatman (2009a).
Based on one of the underlying principles outlined in the project service agreement:
The nature of the UC workforce was a core concern. UC made it clear they seek to retain an empowered workforce – solutions must NOT be seen as being imposed upon, but rather should be embraced by the workforce.
The investigation and design method was strongly influenced by the foundations of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) – which explicitly acknowledges that actors within an organisational situation validly see that situation from differing perspectives. The focus of the project was on the mutual interaction of an organisational initiative and the motivation of the workforce.
The pilot study was undertaken to define an effective uniform electronic document tracking and management system leading to:
The definition of a file system for electronic documents;
The development of a migration strategy for the organisational context; and
A demonstration, in the context of the project and the existing workforce, of the effectiveness of the pilot system and migration strategy.
The original initiative was undertaken following the successful completion of a pilot implementation, within a single department, of a “whole of organisation” policy-level/conception change project conducted by myself. The extensive pilot project was documented in a Masters student project report (Howard, 2008) which was awarded the BAE Systems prize for the most outstanding CIS project at UniSA in 2008; and reported in both an internationally published research paper (Howard and Swatman, 2009a) and in Lazic (2008)1. The research proposal for this thesis was presented at the 20th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2009) Doctoral Consortium where it was awarded 3rd place in the Speed Thesis Competition held by the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems (ACPHIS). Howard and Swatman (2009b) was published as a direct result of the first draft of the research proposal and Howard, Marshall and Swatman (2010) was published as result of the final version of the research proposal.
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Using change management techniques and other business practices from the private and public sectors may not be sufficient for NPOs (Alexander, 2000; Cunningham et al. 2013; Dolnicar et al. 2008; Productivity Commission, 2010), not merely because of the differences between the sectors, but because of the high intrinsic motivation of staff typically found in NPOs as outlined in Section 2.3. According to Word and Park (2009, p. 108) “substantial differences can also be observed in the characteristics of employees among the public, non-profit and private sectors”. They argue that non-profit workers are more service oriented, find their jobs less boring, and demonstrate greater work effort than public and private sector workers; and discovered that non-profit and public service workers, who serve a public interest, of community, state, nation, regardless of what sector they work in (Word and Park, 2009) and therefore, were more likely to volunteer than public sector employees, which they attribute to differences in motivational factors and to the culture and structure of NPOs (Word and Park, 2009). These authors also found that non-profit managers have a higher level of job involvement than public sector managers and that “red tape, hierarchical job authority and hierarchical culture all have a negative relationship to job involvement…(suggesting) that public organisations need to be mindful about transferring bureaucratic constraints to the non-profit sector” (Word and Park, 2009, p. 126).As with Hindle et al. (1995), who used a health services management framework in their multidisciplinary action research study, the present study has identified the differences (to other sectors) and changes (brought about by NPM) occurring in the non-profit sector as a suitable framework to influence the research method. By considering the effects of imposed changes in NPOs bought about by NPM and the motivational differences displayed by non-profit workers it was possible to study the effects of these changes on the intrinsic motivation of non-profit workers.
Throughout the pilot project with UC a participatory action research approach (drawing on for example Puri and Sahay (2007); Wagner and Piccoli (2007)) was taken. In particular, I paid special attention to the social context within which the electronic document management system was being implemented. The intervention in the pilot project took a form very similar to that of a conventional consultancy project, which provided freedom to work within the organisation and study the area of concern, (i.e. the effects and relationships between ICT acceptance, organisational change and intrinsic motivation).
Data collection in the pilot study mainly consisted of informal group and individual conversations and semi- structured interviews. Trust was built between myself and staff through one-on-one and group conversations, allowing participants to speak freely and confidentially to me, not just about the problem situation but also about the organisation and its culture as a whole, which enabled me to gain a rich and multi-perspective appreciation of the problem situation. This gave the participants a greater perception of influence – in addition to actually having a substantial influence – on this aspect of their job, and I saw a strengthening of an apparently intrinsic motivation to participate in the project.
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The data gathered during the analysis phase of the pilot project described above was analysed and used to identify the main areas of concern and their current processes. Following the SSM approach, a Rich Picture was drawn to express the problem situation from multiple perspectives and was presented in the Interview Findings Report produced in May 2008; it was also used as a focus of facilitated discussions during several group meetings where it appeared to be perceived as supporting non-threatening, non-blaming discussion. Wagner and Piccoli (2007) argue that despite every effort to use participatory design, focusing on who to involve in a project rather than when to involve them, can be detrimental. They argue that users will only become truly committed to the project when the change will have an impact on their work and the reality that new work practices will be implemented is imminent. An example of this from the pilot project is demonstrated below.Through the analysis and design phases of the pilot, I had gained the clear impression that the project was being well received by every member of Youth Services whereas, in fact, many staff were (as Wagner and Piccoli (2007) put it) only “acting as if they were engaged” in the project. During the training stage, for example, there was clear evidence that some staff, recognising the imminent transition, “lost” confidence in the effectiveness/workability of the intended change. All parties involved within the change process – management, affected staff and the change team – participated in an intensive review. It quickly became apparent during this review that:
the system itself was not the problem but, rather, that the changes to informal organisational power structures (arising from acknowledged expertise in areas where importance/impact would be reduced) were having a negative effect on (were crowding-out) the intrinsic motivation of some experienced staff members;
there was also a danger of cognitive overload amongst staff as realisation of the system’s full impact on work practices became apparent.
While at first sight the difficulties encountered during the implementation phase might seem entirely negative, it is important to reflect on the way in which – and the speed with which – these difficulties were resolved. The resolution process was based on consultation, education and participation. It was of fundamental importance that the organisational, departmental management and I – as well as the staff – participated together in the change process; and that trust had been built between the change agents and those affected by the change.
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It is particularly interesting to note that the issues which arose during the implementation phase did not adversely affect enthusiasm, which existed throughout the organisation, to be part of the next phase of the project – nor did their impact in the immediate context persist beyond the review process. We hypothesised that, irrespective of the level of participation existing within the organisational change process, moments of crisis – which might best be described as crises of confidence – can be expected. We drew the conclusion that, in the pilot study, the issues which arose during the implementation phase were not “swept under the carpet” but were, in fact, fully and satisfactorily resolved by the additional participative action undertaken; and further hypothesise the general effectiveness of this strategy.In the approach outlined above the actors directly affected were encouraged to take ownership of the design, resulting in less resistance to change (Ali et al. 2016); greater commitment to the project; and increased job satisfaction (Wagner and Piccoli, 2007). The study had a particular focus on whether tension between the introduction of more formalised systems and intrinsic motivation of the workforce in NPOs (highlighted in Benz (2005)) is characteristic – or whether organisational change can lead to increased intrinsic workforce motivation.