Jin Liang

Date of Award

11-2022

Advisor(s)

Hong Ying

Abstract

With the rapid development of emerging technologies, representative by *ABCDMIX, disruption brought by the innovation is rampant across industries: competition boundaries have become blurred, cross-border penetration between industries is ubiquitous, and many established enterprises’ business models have been shaken. Despite the adaptive adjustments made by organizations, most corporations are still struggling to get out of this predicament.

The failure of a mature enterprise’s adjustments is often attributed to the belief that the corporation's strategy was wrongly formulated, or that the strategy’s positive direction was undermined due to the rigid nature of the organization. It is important to consider what exactly led to strategic misjudgment and what caused the organization to be too inflexible to achieve effective change in capability. This dissertation studies the hidden constraints lingering behind the formulation and execution of the firm’s strategy. The aforementioned problems usually stem from the inertia of the corporation worsened by the ambivalence among middle-level management or the employees, which, unfortunately and ultimately, force the compromise of top leaders.

Nevertheless, organizational change is the only way for organizations to break through the shackles of inherent inertia, disintegrate obsolete conventions, create new practices, and achieve organizational upgrade of their business models. If we regard organizational change in capability as an essential element in the process of enterprise growth, it warrants further research what factors attribute to the evolution and exertion of this capability, ensure the maintenance of rapid development, and contribute to the timing of the organizational change.

This study focuses on the process and the impact of organizational change in capability on organizational engagement - an important indicator of the effectiveness of organizational change. It also explores the influencing factors of organizational engagement by analyzing the mediation effects of organizational trust and different types of leadership styles in this process. The results of this dissertation will help decision makers of well-established corporations to understand how to choose executives with good calibre and match leadership styles with the needs of corporate change. Our results also provide a theoretical framework for leaders to adopt an effective leadership style in accordance to different situations and conditions.

This study firstly proposes a series of hypotheses through literature reviews, with analyses drawn from multiple years of personal and practical experience and a theoretical model. To measure the impact of organizational change in capability on organizational engagement, a special-designed questionnaire survey is carried out among dozens of domestic enterprises. The systematic quantitative analysis method is used to empirically verify the mediation role of organizational trust and leadership style on the process of transformation in matured enterprises. Finally, through case studies and comparative analyses of the strategic transformation of two global well-known multinational enterprises, this study further verifies the hypothetical model in a qualitative way.

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