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The purpose of this paper is to compare different employee perceptions of the success of one change: a move to new offices and an open-plan design.

In sum, 25 interviews were carried out in a New Zealand law firm that six months earlier had moved to new premises.

Contrary to academic and practitioner reports that open-plan offices are disliked, participants appreciated the new office space. A well-planned and highly participative program of change management led to positive perceptions of aesthetic design, open communication, collegiality, egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

Given the small sample used in one organization, the study highlights the need for more research into the processes and outcomes of office space changes.

The roles of communication and culture, in particular, collegiality and egalitarianism, were salient factors in a complex web of causes and consequences in this context of change.

This paper aims to explore the experiences of church ministers who played the role of transitional leaders in congregational situations involving conflict.

Grounded theory was chosen as a suitable approach to investigate phenomena that occasionally penetrate religious publications and even less frequently scholarly management journals. Accordingly, in-depth interviews were conducted with six church ministers who had been transitional leaders in one Christian denomination in New Zealand.

Participants indicated that the drivers of transitional ministry were conflict, dysfunction and loss of direction; the goals were to heal the damage caused by conflict and restore functionality and well-being; the process, underpinned by a leadership philosophy of affirmation, trust-building, engagement and communication, involved working with church members to instil hope, establish operational structures, identify and resolve dysfunction, envision a future and ultimately recruit a permanent minister.

The limitations of a small sample size in one Christian denomination could be addressed by using wider samples in other contexts. It is suggested that insights into transitional leadership after conflict will be of interest to researchers as well as practitioners in other religious organizations, the wider non-profit sector and the private sector. Future research into the impact of transitional leadership, against a background of conflict and organizational change, will add to this empirical foundation.

The model of transitional ministry is a unique contribution to religious literature and practice. It also offers insight into how other types of organization could deal with the exit of its permanent leader, in circumstances of conflict, and manage the transition phase of a temporary replacement, so that the organization returns to a state of well-being with a renewed sense of purpose.

The purpose of this paper is to address assumptions about the prevalence of change in human resource management (HRM) and organizational change literature, providing evidence from employee perceptions across three countries. The results indicate change was commonplace even before the pandemic disruptions of 2020.

Given this study's exploratory, employee perspective, a cross-sectional self-report survey was used. Three survey panel samples were collected in 2017: US (n = 718), Australia (n = 501) and New Zealand (n = 516). Analysis of variance was used to test whether the prevalence of change differed significantly between countries or specific groups of employees. An analysis of comments on change types and emotional response provides further insights.

The paper provides evidence of the ubiquity of change: 73% of employees are experiencing change at work and 42% perceived it as moderate to massive, with little variation between countries. Employees commonly experience more than one change, with those experiencing large amounts of change reporting predominantly negative emotional impacts.

The research provides a snapshot across three countries during a prosperous and relatively stable period, providing a point of comparison for the turbulent times we have faced in 2020. Since change can be arduous, the authors recommend that HRM researchers consider change prevalence as a contextual factor, and practitioners heed employee reactions to change, particularly during periods of significant change.

In providing foundational evidence of change ubiquity in contemporary workplaces, this paper enables more accurate discussions regarding change.

Purpose: The emotions that accompany failure, in and of organizations, and their consequences have been researched in multiple domains of management, but comparative approaches have seldom been attempted. The failure of organizations to survive has been a common occurrence over centuries, particularly in the modern era of start-ups, innovation, and political, economic, and environmental turbulence. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, failure at many levels of society, including the organizational and individual, has increased significantly and produced even more intense emotions. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: For this conceptual chapter, literature from many disciplines was consulted on failure in organizations, and the emotions it elicit, including studies on the process of failure as well as its outcomes. Findings: Failing and failure are likely to evoke negative emotions, with negative consequences for the actor. However, positive emotions can also occur, and a matrix of emotional valence and consequences presents an intriguing set of possibilities. The dimensions of emotions (valence, intensity, duration, and frequency) interact with a wide range of contributing factors (salience, personality, identity, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, prior experience of failure, and context) in producing the emotions of failure and their consequences. Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the literature by explicating the types of emotions that emanate during and after failure across many domains of management research, their dimensions and contributing factors, and the consequences for the individual actor. The model of the emotions of failure that is presented here assembles a wider variety of elements than prior research has offered. We indicate avenues for further research as we approach an era of even more demanding challenges.

Since prior empirical research has seldom compared causes of stress before, during and after organizational change the purpose of this paper is to identify stressors as change unfolded over time and to identify what led to variations in stress levels.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2012 with 31 staff in clinical and non-clinical positions in a New Zealand public health organization that had experienced considerable change.

For most respondents the transition phase was the most stressful as it created job insecurity and was handled with insufficient information, consultation and support. For the balance stress increased after the change, which created additional demands that usually needed to be met with fewer resources. The stress of others emerged as a new category of stressor during the transition stage.

Memories fade and the lines between stages of change are often blurred with one change sometimes occurring simultaneously with another or following it. Further studies could explore stressors at different points in time, in different national contexts and in private and public organizations.

Leaders of public sector organizations need to be mindful of the deleterious effects of stress from organizational change and create cultures, strategies and practices that mitigate the stress.

This is apparently the first qualitative study that traces the causes of stress as organizational change moves through various phases.

Staff facing organizational change often experience negative emotions when they anticipate or encounter injustice and these can lead to turnover, absenteeism, decreased productivity and resistance to change. The aims of this study were to identify the nature of the emotions reported by respondents and explore how they were triggered by perceptions of different forms of injustice: distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational. A series of interviews with those playing different roles in change initiatives, at various hierarchical levels and in a range of organizations, demonstrates the corrosive effects of perceived injustice and the attendant negative emotions such as anger, frustration, anxiety and guilt. These emotions tended to be more intense for those experiencing change and somewhat subdued for those leading and managing it. The findings contribute to research into organizational change by presenting insights into the affective elements of four types of injustice that have seldom been explored in previous qualitative studies.

Purpose: This introduction sets the stage for the book theme, “Emotions and Negativity,” by reviewing the early work on negative emotions and by discussing the impact of the COVID pandemic on people’s moods and emotions. It discusses how most of the chapters in this book were first presented as conference papers at the Twelfth International Conference on Emotions and Worklife (“Emonet XII”). It then highlights the key contributions from each of the chapters. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: This gives an overview of the organizational structure of the book and explains the four major parts of the book. It then relates each chapter to the theme of each part and discusses the key contributions of each chapter. Findings: The introduction concludes by observing that the chapters offer a variety of practical solutions to negative emotions that should be of use to both practitioners and academicians. Originality/Value: The chapters investigate underresearched topics, and thus make original and important new contributions. Although underresearched, the topics they explore have a major impact on people’s lives. Thus, these chapters add considerable value to the field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what meanings organizational actors and researchers invest in the term trust, to provide insights from a qualitative perspective of employees' trust in their supervisors and in organizational management when change occurs, and to highlight the affective components of trust in this context.

A social constructionist platform is used to explore how organizational actors form perceptions of the trustworthiness of managers of change and what emotions result. In total, 24 participants from different organizations and hierarchical positions were interviewed on a variety of change experiences.

Positive and negative emotions were related to trust in the ability, benevolence and integrity of immediate supervisors and more senior change managers. The emotions were more intense for distrust than for trust. Some participants referred to challenges to their own integrity. Perceptions of organizational justice during change were important contributors to the creation and erosion of trust in management.

The relevance of propensity to trust and pre‐existing levels of trust were not investigated and researching these factors, particularly in longitudinal studies, will provide a clearer picture of emotional responses to the perceived trustworthiness of change managers. Exploring cross‐cultural issues in the trustworthiness of change leaders would add depth to the field.

Developing trust in management though transparency, other fair practices and a positive organizational culture will help to gain commitment to organizational change.

This study adds to the scant literature on qualitative investigations of trust, emotions and organizational change by presenting insights from an analysis of employees' trust in the ability, benevolence and integrity of their own supervisors and those of more senior management in a range of organizations and types of change.

There is a lack of qualitative longitudinal studies in the literature exploring the complexity and dynamism of affective experience during phases of organizational change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and intensity of emotional reactions to change and the contextual triggers that made them vary.

In total, 11 nurses in a Norwegian public hospital were interviewed at three points in time about a change in technology, one month prior to implementation, three months after implementation and one year after implementation. They were asked to reflect “forwards” and “backwards” about their emotional experiences to the technical change in particular and to other changes occurring at work.

The informants reported mixed emotional experiences to change at all three interviews. Emotion terms such as “uncertainty”, “joy” and “resignation” were reported at all times, “anxiety and “excitement” were only reported at Times 1 and 2 whereas “frustration” and “cynicism” were only reported at Times 2 and 3.

A larger group of informants would have produced greater insight into the evolving emotional change experiences. Further research could explore other contexts and a wider range of data collection methods.

This is a rare qualitative study of emotional change experiences where the informants were interviewed three times.

Participants in organizational change use metaphors in discourse as a means of sense making, since they provide insight into ways of thinking and feeling about organizational change that are not as easily or as graphically captured by more conventional language. Although change is often emotional the affective elements of metaphors of change have been under-studied. Thus the purpose of this paper is to examine the emotional content of metaphors that participants use to describe their experiences in various change contexts.

In total, 24 people in different industries, organizations, functional departments and hierarchical levels were interviewed on their experiences of change and their affective reactions. Evidence was sought of the use of metaphors to portray emotional responses.

Participants used many metaphors of which the most prevalent were those relating to the rollercoaster and grief cycle. Other categories emerged from the meanings that underlay the metaphors and revealed a spectrum of emotions experienced during change.

As figures of speech it is axiomatic that metaphors cannot be taken literally. Further research needs to discover what actors believe their metaphors mean and to take account of cultural differences.

Exploring the emotional meanings embedded in metaphors used by change actors will enable managers to create effective messages and to understand others’ responses to change.

Since most empirical articles on affective metaphors of change investigate single organizations or industries, this paper contributes to the literature by reporting on change experiences in different organizational contexts and by identifying categories of metaphorical expressions.