Condicionamiento operante o instrumental: autoadministración

Participants revealed that, as the organisational change progresses, their excitement thins out and uncertainty about the change builds up. They, then, become anxious and stressed. This stress subsequently becomes change fatigue as the duration, number and pace of organisational changes increase. The vignettes below are just some examples that participants face a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity during organisational changes. An analysis of these findings is provided in the next three sub-sections on uncertainty and stress; anxiety; and self-efficacy and change fatigue.

Stress and Change Fatigue

“Like, we all know that this kind of change is stressful and we figure, yeah, we can go through this over and over and over. But I just went through some personal stress and, and, it hits me that it’s like managing the work stress is one thing but if you have other stuff going on, it is a lot harder… is it worth doing this? You know, there is a price. Even a positive change has stress with that. And, you know, maybe we should just let things be the same for a while and give people a breather.”

MGR8: Female, > 20 years as a public servant

“We have had too many experiences in the government to say … that this will not happen. That it will last too long and that we will lose our objective … I call it a corporate fatigue. Hum, because not only is it us personally but the whole team will feel it too… is it still a good thing to do? If it is not, it is better to stop. There is a tremendous amount of difficulty for the government to do that…You’re not going to have a quality product and you’re going to burn a lot of people too. Why don’t we stop and reposition ourselves?”

DIR7: Female, > 20 years as a public servant

“Wait, there’s too much change. There’s way too much change... You can’t nail anything down because every time that you start to nail it down there’s going to be a change. And, I very seldom am told why anything is changing. So, I don’t know whether it is for a good reason or a bad reason. All, I know is that I say to myself, oh god, here we go again!”

114 Continuous Changes

“So, I have been here for three years, more than three years, and I saw few changes from, like the, organisation changes and now they are saying we are changing again. But each time when they say changes and like EMP4 mentioned it, it takes a long time and they stay in the same stage. If the change takes a long time, I don’t think that we need to change. Because you are probably thinking about another change again.”

EMP5: Female, 16-20 years as a public servant

4.3.3.1 Uncertainty and Stress

Folkman (2010) argues that uncertainty, which can be classified into the four categories of temporal uncertainty, event uncertainty, efficacy uncertainty and outcome uncertainty, is accompanied by psychological stress. Temporal uncertainty occurs when the person is uncertain when something will happen; event uncertainty occurs when the person is uncertain what will happen; efficacy uncertainty occurs when the person is uncertain what can be done about the situation; and finally, outcome uncertainty occurs when the person is uncertain about the final result of something (Folkman, 2010).

From the accounts of the current study, participants face all four types of uncertainty at various periods during organisational changes. To illustrate, from the accounts of participants, public servants may not know when a particular step in the change process will be done (temporal uncertainty) and what the change will consist of (event uncertainty) because the change recipients are not part of the decision-making group who is planning or implementing the change. Hence, these public servants do not have any control about when and what will happen. Also, as revealed by participants, when they get information about certain aspects of the change process, they more likely do not know what they can do (efficacy uncertainty) because they do not have the proper support mechanisms and, thus, they do not know what would be the outcome of the process (outcome uncertainty). Public servants, hence, experience the four types of

115 uncertainty along the organisational change process at multiple periods and they are constantly working under psychological stress.

4.3.3.2 Anxiety

During organisational changes, participants disclosed that they feel anxious on account of the threat of adverse working conditions impacting their roles and of the possibility of losing their jobs. They fear that their existence will no longer be what it is and they feel anxious due to this uncertain existential threat (Lazarus, 2005). The anxiety of public servants is further pronounced because they lack the information to enable them to perform a primary appraisal of the perceived threat for themselves and a secondary appraisal about their available options to allow them to cope based upon these analyses (Carver et al., 1989). Furthermore, Lazarus & Folkman (1987) suggest that, without the ability to do a secondary appraisal, individuals feel that that they do not have control over the threat outcomes and, consequently, their self-esteem may decrease. Thus, the self- esteem of public servants may decrease as a result of their anxiety.

4.3.3.3 Self-Efficacy and Change Fatigue

According to Bandura (1982), while repeated personal successes increase one’s perceived self-efficacy, i.e. the control over unpleasant stimuli and experiences, repeated failures or limited personal accomplishments decrease one’s self-efficacy. Thus, public servants need to have successes with organisational change to increase their perceived self- efficacy.

Moreover, Wanberg & Banas (2000) argue that individuals need to also have change- related self-efficacy during organisational changes. The authors define change-related self-efficacy as “individual's perceived ability to handle change in a given situation and to function well on the job despite demands of the change” (Wanberg & Banas, 2000, pp.

116 134). Hence, since public servants have limited control over the threats during organisational changes, their self-efficacy decrease so that they feel that they cannot mobilise the necessary resources to adapt and to deliver their tasks effectively and to control the events in their lives. Consequently, public servants constantly feel exhausted and they burnout over time, with repeated organisational changes, due to the disparity in the work environment and the coping resources available to them (Schaufeli & Peeters, 2000). This is also supported by Bernerth et al. (2011) who argue that change fatigue, or the feeling that too much change is happening, enhances the feeling of emotional exhaustion since employees are no longer able to align their energy with what the organisation is expecting from them. These arguments are, thus, consistent with the findings of the current study as the syndrome of change fatigue is prevalent across the public service as revealed by the participants.

Furthermore, the current study also uncovers that, in addition to the number of changes, the speed of the changes as well as the number of failed changes over time increase the feeling of change fatigue. By the same token, both pace of changes and failed changes deplete the energy and resources level of employees and prevent them from coping with current and future changes. Participants disclosed that when changes are not completed successfully, more changes are initiated but that these do not get completed either. As a result, public servants’ energy and resource levels continue to deplete over time. Moreover, according to Swindle et al. (2001), work productivity increases greatly when energy level is improved for depressed individuals and, thus, public servants who are depressed may not also be able to increase productivity because their energy levels are not being restored with the ongoing changes.

In addition, the capacity to work, or the cognitive and psychological capabilities of employees to perform their tasks effectively, depends on the energy level as well as on

117 the knowledge, skills, intelligence, age, level of education, stamina, motor skills and health of the individuals (Blumberg & Pringle, 1982). As a result, public servants do not look forward to long organisational changes even though these changes may be beneficial and invigorating at the start because they have to put a lot of efforts but with trivial result. Equally important, they do not look forward to an organisational environment with repeated changes if they, themselves, are undergoing changes in their lives. Thus, this implies that change leaders should take into account the speed and impact of the change on employees when deciding to undertake an organisational change.

To summarise, public servants experience temporal uncertainty, event uncertainty, efficacy uncertainty and outcome uncertainty with stress during organisational changes. They are also anxious due to the changes becoming a threat of to their existence. Their anxiety becomes more pronounced when they lack proper information about the change and their self-esteem declines as a result. Furthermore, their self-efficacy also declines because of the limited control over the threat and they no longer have the resources to cope with the changes. Consequently, public servants are exhausted and burn out with the pace of changes and change fatigue.