Trust and justice in the formation of joint consultative committees

The paper identifies six phases in the creation of new joint staff-management consultative arrangements such as works councils or staff forums. Trust and justice theories are used to analyse the processes involved in initiating, designing, setting up and maintaining such a forum. The resulting framework considers both institutional and interpersonal aspects, and is intended to present researchers with a structure and an agenda for investigating the nature and consequences of the processes involved. The framework also provides initial guidelines to practitioners involved with establishing new consultative arrangements

Building a climate of trust during organizational change: The mediating role of justice perceptions and emotion

Over the years, research has shown that, although there are various factors which contribute to failed change, one of the key reasons people resist change is due to the inability of leaders to convince employees to support change and to commit the energy and effort necessary to implement it. Senior management can ensure an organization is change-ready by developing and maintaining a supportive culture and climate that positively influence the emotional health and welfare of employees. Despite the obvious importance of leadership to change efforts, little previous research has investigated, holistically and in the context of major change, the relationship between senior management actions and employee responses. Furthermore, the change literature largely ignores the role that emotions play in employee responses to change initiatives. This chapter addresses both areas, and develops a model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective, which depicts employees’ justice perceptions related to senior executives as affecting trust directly and indirectly, through associated emotional responses

The Financial Impact of Organisational Downsizing Practices—The New Zealand Experience

Partly in response to the Asian economic crisis, many organisations in the Asia Pacific rim reduced staff numbers. This research examines the New Zealand experience of this change intervention from 1997 to 1999. This includes an examination of the impact on financial performance, and how the process followed may moderate such an impact. A questionnaire instrument was designed to measure this, to which responses were received from 155 New Zealand for-profit organisations employing fifty or more people. There is some evidence to suggest that those respondents who had downsized over the period of the study reported lower measures of profitability than those who did not (p > .05). Also, ensuring the procedure was perceived as just by the employees, and offering outplacement help to those who lost their jobs, went some way to improving the financial performance of downsized firms (p > .05). This may suggest that if downsizing is necessary then attention needs to be given to how the process is implemented in order to maximise the financial return. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005organizational downsizing, effective downsizing practices,