Title: Better results in services: obstacles in transforming service organisations

Authors: Vincent Sabourin; Alpha Ayande

Addresses: ESG School of Management, University of Québec in Montreal (UQAM), 315 east St-Catherine Montreal Qc., H3C 4P2, Canada ' ESG School of Management, University of Québec in Montreal (UQAM), 315 east St-Catherine Montreal Qc., H3C 4P2, Canada

Abstract: In this research, we studied managers transforming their service organisation and looked into the role played by obstacles in the execution of their objectives. Using principal component analysis (PCA), we categorised the obstacles on the basis of our review of the literature referring to our framework of obstacles faced by managers in the context of a service change. Our research suggests four contributions to the domain of organisational change. Our main finding, based on the conceptual framework of Kolb (1984), suggest the existence of five different categories of obstacles in the strategy execution faced by managers in the context of a service change. Our hypothesis was supported and suggests that the main obstacles faced by managers in a service context would be related to the dimension of convergence with emotions with factors such as lack of commitment and resistance to change of employees.

Keywords: strategy; transformation barriers; organisational change; service management; services; principal component analysis; PCA; service change; change management; emotions; commitment; resistance to change.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCM.2015.075886

International Journal of Strategic Change Management, 2015 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.213 - 237

Received: 09 Jul 2014
Accepted: 08 Apr 2015
Published online: 12 Apr 2016 *

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