Abstract
Existing studies provide limited perspectives on consequences of corporate attempts to co-opt employees' identities and gain their commitment to management-espoused, values-based culture change, especially when employees perceive that managers are not living the required values. We conducted a grounded, empirical study within the Australian financial sector and explored employees' narrated experiences of living through a strategic cultural change programme, one which fostered strong social identification with the organization. Employees' informal folkloric activities privately validated (or otherwise) the corporate values through management's enactment of them: a derived and interpretative process we describe as employee ‘received practice’. When employees negatively experienced critical incidents, they had no legitimate avenue for contested meaning-making activities to resolve their concern; there was no available ‘negotiated practice’. Employee disengagement, diminished commitment and loss of discretionary energy resulted. Contributing to theory building, this paper presents ‘commitment through contestation’ as a sustainable, co-created corporate culture process. We propose that design of a conducive and situated environment, which validates folkloric discourse and includes employees in controversial dialogue within a relationship of mutuality, may foster sustainable cultural change by the addressing of value-threatening events and by allowing reaffirmation of both employee identification and their conditional commitment to the organization.
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Acknowledgements
The authors express sincere appreciation for the insightful and constructive contributions of the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Change Management which helped facilitate invaluable improvements to the paper. Additionally they extend thanks to co-researcher, Rod Palmer, for his involvement and contributions to the project.