The Decision-making Process Of Organizational Change Under Green Entrepreneurship Context

The relationship between human and natural environment has long been a central theme of human inquiry. Organizational change under green entrepreneurship context, which constructs a sustainable economic pattern, is becoming a major path for companies in coping with dynamic competitive environment. Organizational change under green entrepreneurship context achieves firm’s economic value through proactive initiatives as well as providing welfare for the society and reducing pollution to the natural environment. Compared with traditional type of organizational change, Organizational change under green entrepreneurship context has its own characteristics of change tasks:goal multiplicity, value contradiction, and innovation risk derived from the triple-bottom-line, which brings great challenges for change decision-making process and effectiveness. Although the 13th Five-Year Plan and heated social concerns have put forward clear direction and requirement of firms’ CSR-based transformation and upgrading, most enterprisers still uphold economic profits as the only pursuit of enterprise, that CSR-based organizational greening costs much higher than the benefits it brings; so their participation in green change is mostly driven by policy or public concerns. The limited cognition and value of CSR and organizational greening from corporate executives have seriously affected the decision-making process and effectiveness of organizational change under green entrepreneurship context.Based on the practical importance of the organizational change under green entrepreneurship context and the absence of related research on this topic, the present dissertation focused on developing an integrated model of organizational change decision-making process and effectiveness, from a perspective of CSR. This dissertation contained four interrelated studies which primarily discussed the following research questions:What is the cognition and evaluation process of organizational decision-maker’s decision-making under the organizational change, and the effectiveness of the decision-making?The present dissertation developed a decision-making model to depict the interactions of decision reference system and cognitive frames of decision makers, which contained two stages named "signal frame interacting" stage and "cognitive reference processing" stage, through three serial experimental studies; as well as an change effectiveness model to depict the cognitive matching process of employees and organizational change strategy, which contained two stages named "strategy value matching" stage and "multilevel efficiency outputting" stage, though a questionnaire study.Study 1 examined the priming effect of natural environmental information, which was the individual level factor of decision reference system, on organizational change decision-making. The study was participated by 118 graduates and MBA students, and used a classic research paradigm of priming to explore the dynamic matching process of natural environmental information and decision maker’s cognitive frame. Natural environmental information was found to promote decision maker’s cognitive frame to reframe to CSR-oriented decision frame; and the CSR-oriented decision frame mediated the relationship of natural environmental information priming and CSR-oriented organizational change strategies resulting from the decision-making process.Study 2 explored the effect of organizational goal, which was the organizational level factor of decision reference system, in organizational change decision-making. Through the experimental simulation of organizational TMT group decision-making, this study manipulated organizational goal and constructed different decision situations of "organizational goal-cognitive frame" matches to examine the influence of different matches on organizational change strategy. The study contained 95 MBA and EMBA students as subjects and found that:when organizational goal and decision maker’s cognitive frame were of a consistent orientation (i.e., both were CSR-oriented or business-oriented), decision maker would choose the change strategy according to the consistent orientation, reflecting higher (CSR-oriented) or lower (business-oriented) CSR preference than the inconsistent orientation situations; and the consistent orientation of organizational goal and cognitive frame would not help to induce reframing. However, when organizational goal and cognitive frame were of inconsistent orientations (i.e., one was CSR-oriented and the other was business-oriented), decision maker with a high moral identity would follow his/her own cognitive frame; while decision maker with a low moral identity were more likely to reframe according to the manipulated organizational goal during the decision process, and followed the organizational goal to choose organizational change strategy.Study 3 introduced contextual factors of decision reference system:sanctioning systems and degree of industrial green change, into the organizational change decision-making process and examined their effects on decision maker’s cognitive process and the change strategy. This study invited 120 managers for paper pencil test. Results showed that the type (business vs. social) and strength (high vs. low) of sanctioning systems could interact to influence decision maker’s decision frame and choice of change strategy, and the degree of industrial green change could promote the CSR preference of change strategy. Moreover, study 3 expanded our knowledge about the matched output of decision frame and change strategy. Although sanctioning systems and degree of industrial greening induced business-oriented reframing of decision makers, the change strategies were still with high CSR preference because of passive contextual dependency, indicating the regulatory focus in cognitive process between decision frame and the formation of change strategies.Study 4 demonstrated the mechanism of organizational change strategy on employees’outcomes through a cognitive process model. Results of the questionnaire survey from 340 employee-supervisor dyads showed that the perceived CSR from organizational change strategy would interact with individual employee’s moral value. And according to social identity theory, the match between perceived CSR and moral identity, which was the "strategy value matching" stage, promoted employees’ organizational identification. Moreover, employees would feel obligated to exchange with their organization after benefiting from the CSR-based organizational change strategy through organizational identification. Study 4 constructed an individual-level organizational greening decision-making effectiveness system including three indicators:turnover intention, in-role job performance, and helping behavior, revealing the "multilevel efficiency outputting" stage of the organizational change decision effectiveness.The present dissertation clarifies the specific cognitive mechanisms of organizational change decision-making process and effectiveness under green entrepreneurship context through an integrated cognitive process model, and helps bridge the much lamented micro-macro divide in the field of CSR-based organizational change, especially contributes to the micro-level studies. This dissertation makes some value-added theoretical contribution to the fields of CSR and organizational change, as well as providing significant managerial implications for practitioners to implement successful CSR-based organizational change.