Organisational Change in Service Multinationals: From Radical Change to Destabilisation

Despite the importance of services in the world economy and the present trend toward internationalisation, the amount of research on the internationalisation of services is relatively small. Nevertheless, many service enterprises are currently trying to expand their activities at a world level. Many examples in services could be described through the strategic policies oriented toward this internationalisation. One of the means of internationalisation for any service enterprise is to take advantage of the world privatisation process, and to acquire a given company in a foreign market. In this case, the literature has been clear on the difficulties in incorporating any targeted enterprise within a multinational. In the process of internationalisation through external opportunities, one major element of success is clearly to be able to achieve radical organisational change in the acquired enterprise. This is specifically true in countries facing rapid transformation, such as transition economies. The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of various change factors on positive perception of change, in taking the example employees' perception in services companies. The methodology of this research is quantitative, with the use of 369 questionnaires received from employees of 2 multinationals in Hungary (the survey was carried out in November and December 1999). One of the innovations of the research is to access the perception of organisational change in service enterprises from the point a view of employees, at all hierarchical levels.