A study of the work role in the context of change management practices in Catholic schools

The following paper provides insights into managing educational change through studying how wider educational change can affect individual roles, and reciprocally how role change can have an effect on wider organisational change. Specifically the results of this thesis describe what role characteristics lead to a positive work role identity, within the Catholic educational setting. This paper also provides insight on how multiple roles within a single work position can interact, thereby influencing one's overall negative or positive perceptions of this work position. This thesis used an ex-post facto research design, implementing a single questionnaire to 1250 teachers across 141 schools within the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane. Of the surveys distributed there were a total of 204 respondents, with 41.1% being male and 58.5% being female. The distributed questionnaire tested how the role dimensions of Role Ambiguity, Role Salience, and Role Overload lead to Role Conflict and also Inter-role Conflict (conflict between two roles). These various role dimensions were tested for both the respondent's primary role, and a secondary role. These roles were self determined by the respondent as the more and less important roles to them respectively. The results showed for the primary role, that Role Ambiguity, Role Overload and Role Salience is correlated to Role Conflict. This result was applicable to both the primary and secondary work role. When looking at the interaction between a primary role and a secondary role, the results indicated that a high level of Role Salience in the primary role was more likely to moderate the levels of Inter role Conflict. These results were in contradiction to previous studies that state high Role Salience in one role is more likely to lead to Inter-role Conflict in other roles. This result however was not bi-directional.;A high Secondary Role Salience did not have an effect on the conflict experienced between secondary role and other higher order roles. Future Human Resource (HR) practices within the Catholic Education settings should carefully consider how individual roles change, (particularly in the context of social outcomes for the role holder), as a result of a wider organisational change. Further considerations include ensuring clear definitions of the role change both to the role holder and the interacting social / work groups. Ensuring adequate time resources for the role is also a major consideration. The most notable outcome of this study suggests that when introducing or changing new additional roles to a work position, HR practitioners should primarily consider the salience of the primary role, before adding or changing additional work roles.