OPEN FORUM Employees’ witnessed presence in changing organisations John Mendy Received: 20 May 2010 / Accepted: 15 June 2011 / Published online: 30 June 2011 Ó Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011 Abstract In recent years, governments, businesses and other organisations have increasingly been forced to attempt to survive by reorganising themselves fundamen- tally. Although this happens at present on a large scale, it is not unprecedented. In fact, most organisations have had to change their working practises at some time for some reason—for example, when the competition catches up or when technology threatens to make production obsolete. The usual strategy is to fire part of the staff and to redis- tribute tasks. This tends to put a heavy burden on staff. They have to search for other jobs or attempt re-skilling. Those remaining may face substantial changes in their relations to their managers, who will require changes … ‘or else’. The study reported in the paper focuses on people’s reactions to this approach. Some employees accept and leave. Others become aware of an opportunity to damage their company. Others again see a way to resist and change the way the managers behave and thereby turn around the company and maintain or increase the number of jobs. The study focuses on two questions. The first is how one should model or describe the behaviour of people in the third category, i.e. those wishing to contribute. It does not seem useful to follow one’s first hunch, i.e. to search for quan- tifiable patterns. People’s behaviour will always be con- textualised as a reaction to what managers do. This suggests the use of qualitative methods. The second ques- tion is whether the concept of presence may clarify the behaviour and identify ways for employees to contribute positively to changes in their organisations. An obstacle to answering the second question is that qualitative methods focus on people’s experiences in some context, and on the emergence of their behaviour, but do not necessarily lead to suggestions on how to behave with what effect. It is attempted to answer the second question and thereby the first question with the aim of identifying what people may do who are not immediately fired or made redundant when fundamental organisational changes are introduced. Data have been collected from four companies that decided to initiate such changes in 2003–2004. Keywords Presence Á Actor-presence Á Increasing presence Á Witnessing 1 Introduction The study reported in the paper concerns the experiences of employees whose company aims to change its working conditions in some fundamental way. The need for doing so may stem from changes in the market, in technology or otherwise. Companies may wish to respond by reducing their activities or expanding them. This means that employees may no longer be able to do the work they once were contracted for. They leave the company or face changes in the organisational structure. The focus of this paper is on the way employees react to such changes, in particular when still employed, whether temporarily or in the long term. Of particular interest is the possibility that they attempt to change the way their managers behave, for example to resist uncalled for impositions or to increase their contribution to the advancement of their company. The interest in this aspect of planned change is relatively unusual. Most studies on organisational change concentrate on the overall behaviour of companies and their strategies J. Mendy (&) University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool Campus, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK e-mail: jmendy@lincoln.ac.uk 123 AI & Soc (2012) 27:149–156 DOI 10.1007/s00146-011-0324-8