Employee alignment with strategic change: a study of strategy-supportive behavior among blue-collar employees.

It may not be surprising that poor organizational strategies often fail, but research in strategy implementation demonstrates that even good strategies fail during implementation (Bonoma, 1984; Huff and Reger, 1987; Wooldridge and Floyd, 1989). Failure of a new strategy or a strategic innovation is often due to the inability or resistance of individual employees to commit to a strategy and adopt the necessary behaviors for accomplishment of strategic objectives (e.g., Heracleous and Barrett, 2001). Failures in this process of strategic commitment lead to strategic misalignment, or individuals failing to engage in behavior that supports the organization's strategic goals (Boswell and Boudreau, 2001). Because strategy implementation is predominantly goal-directed (Barney, 1998) and teleological in nature (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995), strategic misalignment reflects the absence of goal-directed behavior.

The problem of strategic misalignment has a considerable history in the management discipline and has been described under numerous labels such as the problem of achieving coordinated action, goal incongruence and non-alignment (Barnard, 1938; Boswell et al., 2006; Labovitz and Rosansky, 1997; March and Simon, 1958). This body of research has provided considerable insight into the challenges that impede collective alignment with strategies. However, little is understood about the mechanisms by which individuals come to be aligned with strategies.

The purpose of this study is to understand the antecedents of alignment by examining the role an individual's strategic knowledge and commitment play in subsequent engagement in strategy-supportive behavior. Strategic knowledge represents an individual's global understanding of a strategy being pursued by his or her organization; individuals who agree with statements such as "I understand what strategy X is all about" are demonstrating strategic knowledge as we define it. We propose that strategic knowledge and several individual characteristics influence strategic commitment, which we define as an individual's willingness to support a strategy. Three questions guided our research: (1) how does individual knowledge of the organization's strategy influence commitment to the strategy, (2) what additional antecedents contribute to strategic commitment, and (3) does strategic commitment predict strategy-supportive behavior? For this research we adopt a definition of strategy that reflects what many multi-unit manufacturing firms would call an operating strategy. For example, this definition would include strategic initiatives that are somewhat narrow in scope and yet help to guide the operating units within an organization.

We believe our research contributes to management scholarship in several ways. First, we explore a subcomponent of generalized commitment, namely commitment to a particular strategic initiative (cf. Jansen, 2004; Neubert and Cady, 2001). Such a focus seems especially relevant today, given the increasingly short-term bonds between individuals and organizations (Rousseau, 1997). Second, the framework proposed broadens the strategic perspective to include individual actors rather than focus on the organizational level and associated outcomes. Similar strategy-individual linkages have led to breakthroughs in strategic human resource management (Barney and Wright, 1998; Schuler and Jackson, 1987; Wright and Snell, 1998) and the upper echelons perspective (Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996; Hambrick and Mason, 1984). Third, we test the theory in a lean transformation setting, providing greater contextual insight into how commitment to a strategy may be facilitated and its ability to predict strategy-specific behavior. We chose to study an organization that was adopting a strategy built on lean manufacturing in large part because a successful lean strategy necessitates both understanding and involvement from production employees (e.g., Mehta and Shah, 2005). Finally, results provide important managerial implications regarding design, training and communication issues associated with strategic change processes.

Achieving Strategic Alignment

Individuals are strategically aligned when their behaviors correspond with their organization's strategy. For example, an organization may require its members to support an intensive customer service strategy by engaging in what we term "strategic supportive behaviors." In this instance, an employee who is strategically aligned will engage in behaviors that proactively reach out to customers (e.g., courtesy calling, promptly responding to requests, detecting/ preventing future problems). Similar to management by objective (Drucker, 1954), strategic alignment requires individuals within an organization to behave in a contributory manner in order to support the strategic goals of the organization.

The term strategic alignment has recently been used to describe individual strategic contributory behavior in both academic (e.g., Wooldridge and Floyd, 1989; Boswell and Boudreau, 2001) and practitioner (Labovitz and Rosansky, 1997) contexts. However, the problem of individuals being misaligned with organizational strategies (i.e., not behaving to support a strategy or objective) has an extensive history in management science. Barnard (1938) highlighted the need for organizational member contribution to higher-order organizational goals. In their classic text Organizations, March and Simon (1958) discuss the need for employees to contribute to the goals of the firm. Drucker (1954) augmented these works by developing management by objective. Management by objective established a hierarchy of objectives for employees within an organization with the ultimate purpose being the strategic goals of the organization. The balanced scorecard approach (Kaplan and Norton, 1992) is perhaps the most recent conceptualization of management by objective and involves more metrics. A common theme to all these approaches is the need for employees to behaviorally contribute in order to support organizational strategies. Overall, these works highlight the challenge of ensuring that employees engage in strategically supportive behaviors.

Commitment within Organizations

Commitment research provides insight into the challenge of aligning people with organizational strategies. The commitment literature offers an extensive inventory of studies that demonstrate relationships between organizational commitment, work attitudes and behavioral outcomes (Meyer et al., 2002). Mowday, Porter and Steers (1982) define organizational commitment as an individual's attachment and willingness to support his or her organization. Although the concept of organizational commitment has demonstrated its utility for explaining organizational phenomena, several researchers have unpacked the concept of commitment to include additional dimensions such as intensity and focus.

O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) drew upon Kelman's (1958) work to explain the varying levels of commitment intensity within individuals. Becker and colleagues advanced the argument by asserting that unpacking commitment involves two major dimensions, the basis of commitment and the foci of commitment. Basis represented the individual intensity of affiliation and foci represented the object to which individuals commit (Becker, 1992; Becker and Billings, 1993). Our review is limited to foci of commitment since our work focuses on application of the commitment to organizational strategy. However, we see a need for future research that investigates the intensity to which individuals commit to various objects.

Several authors have argued that individuals within an organizational context suffer from competing commitments, which has implications for overall organizational commitment (Becker, 1992; Reichers, 1985). For example, if organizational commitment is a multifaceted phenomena, then facets (e.g., peer group commitment, role commitment) that compose organizational commitment could interact in certain ways to alter overall organizational commitment depending on certain contexts. A considerable number of commitment types based on varying foci have been identified in the organizational literature (Becker and Billings, 1993; Bridges and Harrison, 2003; Neubert and Cady, 2001; Reichers, 1985).

Exploring more specific forms of commitment such as goal and program commitment provides additional understanding into the problem of strategic misalignment. Locke, Latham and Erez (1988) defined goal commitment as an individual's attachment and determination to reach a goal. Goal commitment research in organizations has been conducted primarily on work group and unit level goals (Locke and Latham, 1990). Goal commitment has been identified as a necessary component of goal achievement (Locke et al., 1988), which presumes goal supportive behavior. Since strategy is primarily goal directed, it is likely that the concept of goal commitment can be extended to encompass strategic goals.

A concept similar to goal commitment is program commitment. Program commitment is an individual's attachment to an organizational program (Neubert and Cady, 2001). Program commitment is focused on the specific scope for an organizational program that may, or may not, be strategic in nature. For example, a program could be non-strategic such as a "keep your work area clean" program or strategic such as meeting ISO 9000 quality standards. Program commitment has been linked to program supportive behavior and attitudes (Neubert and Cady, 2001). Drawing from the logics of goal and program commitment, one can argue that the focus of commitment can be applied to an organizational strategy.

Wooldridge and Floyd (1989) and Noble and Mokwa (1999) have introduced the concept of strategic commitment. Wooldridge and Floyd (1989) mention the need for managers to be strategically committed, but go no further than highlighting the need for strategic commitment. Noble and Mokwa (1999) operationalized the concept of strategic commitment by examining middle managers' commitment to a marketing strategy and found that managers' self-reported commitment to their organization's marketing strategies was correlated with role performance. Noble and Mokwa's (1999) work is indeed helpful, as it appears to be the first work to empirically examine employee commitment to a strategy and associated outcomes. In summary, the studies above reveal opportunities to focus the concept of commitment on strategic phenomena and evaluate the impact of potential antecedents and outcomes in additional contexts.

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