Perceptions and Understandings on the Need of Change: Viewpoints across Management Levels - New Contributions in Information Systems and Technologies - page 231

In this context, to gather perceptions and understandings concerning this issue,
semi-structured interviews to management' levels, namely top, middle and first level,
of two textile companies were conducted. Some of the findings are presented and
discussed in this paper.
This paper is organized in four sections. After the introduction, it is presented the
methodology and method in the second section. Findings analysis and discussion are
presented in the third section. Fourth section presents the understandings of the
change by both companies, followed by the final remarks in the fifth section.

2 Methodology and Method

Two TCI companies localized in Vale do Ave in North of Portugal were selected to
serve as case studies, designated in this paper as Company A and Company B. One of
the companies (Company A) was already the subject of a previous study where some
interviews were made and published elsewhere [8], [9] with the intention to
understand the need of change. The company B was selected since it is able to
embrace to the challenges of change. So, the company accepted a Master Student of
Industrial Engineering in order to develop his dissertation there regarding Lean
project.
In both companies, keys interviewees were selected to whom the authors
conducted the semi-structured interviews: six in Company A and five in Company B.
All interviews were performed in a stress-free environment and with complete
freedom of expression. An interview guide was developed and used to avoid large
deviations to the main objectives of the interviews and to provide reliable, comparable
qualitative data. The steps followed in this research are those followed by the authors
for company A [8], [9].

2.1 Research Questions

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand and to obtain the answers to
three main research questions presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Research questions

Research questions

Q.1 “What is the need for change?”

Q.2 “What are the expected results of change?”

Q.3 “What are the suggestions for implementing change?”

This set of research questions leads to others, namely: “Is it the first time that
participate or is involved, in a change process?”; “Which is the experience of previous
changes?” and “How you will participate on this change?”.