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As illustrated by the thick description vignette below, participants revealed that they all experienced various emotions during organisational changes. Excitement and hope, fear and a mix of emotions are their common initial feelings upon hearing that an organisational change is going to happen. Public servants are excited and hopeful about the possibilities that the change will bring but, simultaneously, they fear that the organisational change will bring job loss or that the change will negatively modify their job or role in the organisation.

Excitement, hope and fear

“A whole bunch of things all at once. One word that you can use and everybody identifies with is fear. Oh, what’s that going to be? Or excitement. Oh, yeah, that looks great… I have been through a bunch of organisational changes in the past and I have never seen one that has been so lousy, poorly communicated, hum, just an abominable, hum, failure, this one. Like I said before, it’s just never ends. It’s going to be probably as long as I am an employee at this department. Hum, [sigh], but when somebody tells me that there is going to be a major change that will directly affect me, there, it’s, it’s a whole engine of motion because some, one of those may be hum, hope, maybe I can think of better place to be, or maybe I can meet new people as, as I move in and out of the reorganisation. So, there is no single answer.”

106 Excitement, hope and fear

“It’s also excitement and hope… Because we are kind of going through a reorg with a bit confusion right now. It is colouring the thing. But I usually like change quite a bit. Even when I saw the first announcement, my first thought was awesome. I thought it was awesome. So, I think that it becomes negative, it can become negative, I think it is not always a fearful thing. It is exciting.”

EMP3: Male, 11-15 years as a public servant

“So, that’s exciting but at the same time the employees are afraid that these services will be outsourced and (they will) be repatriated and managed by DEPT1 but outsourced to the private sector.”

MGR3: Female, > 20 years as a public servant

As soon as you talk change and you talk economies, people, their natural tendency was ok, we are trying to do more with less, am I going to be affected by that less? Hum, [pause] and I think that [pause] but in all, [pause] things tend to look after themselves. You know, there were a couple of employees that chose that point in time to find an assignment opportunity outside of the organisation. That’s, that’s how some people deal with change. If the organisation changes, I am going to go for six months and let the change happen and then come back.”

DIR3: Male, 11-15 years as a public servant

“My first thought is will I keep my job? Will I, will I work in another place that I do not like? Will I be forced to do something I do not like?”

EMP16: Male, 6-10 years as a public servant

An analysis of this finding, on hope, fear and ambivalence of simultaneous emotions during change, is provided in the next three sub-sections respectively.

4.3.1.1 Hope and Excitement

Snyder (2002), in his article about hope theory, defines hope as “the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways” (pp. 249). Furthermore, Lazarus (1999) argues that hope stems from the inadequacy of the current condition in life making one to either desire a better

107 outcome for oneself or to making one to desire that an adverse condition will not happen to worsen the existing condition. This implies that cognitively one has to appraise the existing condition or well-being and the relationship of self with respect to the environment. This study finding, hence, suggests three things about public servants and organisational change. First, public servants appraise their current condition in the organisation and infer meaning about what is happening; second, they derive desired goals of what organisational changes can be based upon the inferred meaning; and third they perceive how they can put energy and thinking towards reaching these desired goals to improve their current conditions. Therefore, public servants have already a perception of their potential benefits from the change and a perception of how to enable those benefits to be reaped even before the change is implemented. The feeling of excitement seems to be merely a joyful anticipation of the potential benefits from organisational changes.

4.3.1.2 Fear

Participants also revealed that they simultaneously experience fear with hope and excitement on hearing that an organisational change will occur. This fear being due to the threat of losing their jobs and/or to the threat of not liking their redefined jobs or roles as part of the organisational change. In sum, their feeling of fearfulness is linked to job insecurity and the actual or potential loss of their jobs or roles. According to Bailey and Raelin (2015), change undeniably implies loss and that loss can be either positive, as in the case of unburdening employees from past obligations, or negative as in a layoff when it generates uncertainty and anxiety. Positive loss, hence, is desired and it seems similar to how hope works since it allows public servants to perceive ways to improve their existing condition. While both types of loss involve letting go of something, negative loss is painful and is not desired. The degree of job insecurity, due to the potential of losing one’s job or to forsaking some valued features of one’s job, depends on the severity

108 of the threat and on one’s sense of powerlessness or ability to overcome the situation (Greenhalgh & Rosenblatt, 1984). In this case, the severity of the threat being the perceived probability that the threat will materialise times the perceived consequence if the threat materialises. Thus, if the organisation does not provide clear communication, public servants will use their senses to make sense of the situation and they may believe that the threat is more severe than it actually is.

In addition to job insecurity, which results in economic loss, the fear of job loss or the fear of not liking the job or role are associated to the losses of personal, professional and social identities. Personal identity or what defines one as an individual, has a direct impact on self-esteem and is central to how one interacts with the social environment. Self- esteem which is based upon the four corners of acceptance, evaluation, comparison and efficacy and negative comparison with peers damages it (Hewitt, 2011). Hence, because of the potential loss compared to others, self-esteem of public servants declines.

Moreover, face (Goffman, 1967), or the social image that the other group members share about the public servant, would be impacted by the potential loss and the lowered self- esteem. Moreover, one has multiple social identities when one becomes we within inclusive social units (Brewer, 1991) with similar group values and practices. These social identities provide one with prestige associated with identification to these groups as opposed to the out-groups (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Public servants have various social and professional identities because of organisational structure and because the public service encompasses various professions. Identities within the profession and with other social groups are altered as a result of job loss or when the job is redefined within the organisation. To illustrate, a particular public servant could be working as a project manager in the information technology branch and he would identify himself with the information technology group broadly but also with the project management group in the

109 public service and in the project management community where he may have a professional membership. Losing his job would mean that he would lose his identity as information technologist and his identity as project manager internally and within the community. This public servant may also be a visible minority belonging to the visible minority network and the loss of his job would also mean that his relational self or self- concept with significant members (Brewer & Gardner, 1996) of his community will be altered as a result. The alteration or loss of identities and face add to the pain of job loss and/or redefined job or role in the public service.

4.3.1.3 Ambivalence of Simultaneous Emotions

Participants revealed that they have ambivalent responses about change. Piderit (2000) maintains that employees can exhibit ambivalence of responses about organisational change since their responses are along the three dimensions of emotion, cognition and intention. This means that their responses can differ and be in conflict across the three dimensions over time. However, the finding of the current study shows that ambivalence can also exist simultaneously across only one dimension, namely emotion since hope and fear can exist simultaneously. Hence, this suggests that the public service needs to acknowledge and factor in ambivalence of simultaneous emotions in developing the strategy to enhance readiness for change for public servants.

Moreover, even though that organisational change is a process with multiple steps that can be iterative, the readiness for change literature implicitly and explicitly suggests that readiness for change has to be built at the start of organisational changes and then the change is managed through change management practices (e.g. Armenakis et al., 1993). However, as seen from the current study, the emotions of public servants, including hope and fear, may be altered at any moment during an organisational change based upon their perceptions and realities of the ongoing change process. The current study findings

110 indicate that in reality readiness for change is not a situation about whether to either adopt or to resist organisational change. Instead, readiness for change is an indicator along the spectrum of adoption and resistance and that the readiness indicator fluctuates along this spectrum throughout organisational changes. This means that readiness for change needs to be constantly monitored and managed in an iterative way and that various strategies have to be used depending on the degree of readiness. This even more so since readiness for change may vary from public servant to public servant at any given point in time.

In sum, public servants are hopeful and excited about organisational changes because they perceive that they can potentially obtain benefits from the change and they think about ways to obtain those benefits. However, they are fearful of organisational changes at the same time in case the changes impact their jobs and their roles in the organisation negatively. Thus, they are anxious and stressed about potential job losses and roles minimisation that could impact them financially or make them lose their identities and faces. The findings suggest that ambivalence of responses can exist within the sole dimension of emotions and that readiness for change can fluctuate throughout the period of organisational change for the same individual.