Employees' perceptions of planned change communication during top-down initiated organisational changes

Abstract: Continuous organisational changes worldwide have led to a considerable amount of research on this topic within various fields. Managers have generally been acknowledged as the most crucial stakeholders in organisational changes, leading to a majority of studies being from their perspective. This has led to an unbalanced view on organisational changes. This study therefore aims to explore the employees’ aspects during change processes. More specifically, the study focuses on planned change communication during a top-down initiated change process, how employees perceive their role during change processes and how they are able to voice their opinions and thoughts during change processes. The empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 employees from a municipality in Sweden. The interviews were conducted from a social constructionist perspective, and analysis of the findings resulted in various conclusions. Despite the discussion in recent literature on how employees should be seen as participants in change processes rather than recipients of continuous changes, they seem to some degree perceive themselves as recipients. Moreover, the findings from the analysis suggest that only a positive employee voice is noted by their managers. This study contributes to research and practice with the understudied employee perspective in organisational changes, as well as by providing insights into the importance of employee voice.