Change risk culture: Insights from employees at a South African chemical manufacturer

Abstract

Improving risk culture has been acknowledged by academics and practitioners as a means to effectively manage uncertainty and risk, thereby achieving a company's strategic objectives. Organisations adopt change initiatives as strategies for business improvement and sustainability. A conducive company culture is commonly cited in the academic literature as a prerequisite for a successful change initiative. Such change introduces uncertainty and risks too, that need to be handled appropriately. The South African chemical manufacturer in this study recently adopted lean manufacturing as an improvement strategy. Past failure with a similar change initiative highlighted the need to determine if the risk culture is amenable to changes in the organisation. The objectives of this study were to ascertain the perceptions of change risk culture as well as perceived level of comfort with change risk roles among the management and front-line employee groups. To this end, an online-based survey was administered to 653 employees, generating a response rate of 34% (n = 220). Tests for significance between the management and front-line groups were performed, with the risk culture perceptions of management indicating more optimism to welcome change than the front-line employees. Management were found to be more comfortable with their own change risk roles than the front-line employees. Recommendations to improve the change risk culture were also made by the participants, with the understanding of change risk, communication, risk role, leadership, accountability and reward constituting 80% of suggestions. A plan to improve the change risk culture at the company using change management principles was proposed. Despite the study's limitations, this research provides a baseline for other academics and practitioners to build onto the body of knowledge on the scarcely researched topic of change risk culture.