The Psychology of Organizational Change : Viewing Change from the Employee's Perspective 9781107347885, 9781107020092

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The Psychology of Organizational Change

In a rapidly changing world, with constantly shifting dynamics, organizational change may prove essential if businesses are to continue to succeed. The majority of research on organizational change adopts a macro outlook, focusing on strategic issues from the perspective of the organization and its management. In this volume we undertake a micro perspective, focusing on the individual and, more specifically, the importance of the employees and their reactions to organizational change. This focus expands our understanding of why change initiatives frequently fail. The Psychology of Organizational Change constitutes an essential resource for scholars, students, and practitioners in the field of organizational change and development who strive to understand how to make change work not only for the organization, but also for its members. shaul oreg is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior at the Jerusalem School of Business Administration of The Hebrew University. alexandra michel is an assistant professor in Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. rune todnem by is Academic Group Leader (Organizational Behaviour, Leadership and Change) at Staffordshire University Business School.

The Psychology of Organizational Change Viewing Change from the Employee’s Perspective Edited by

Shaul Oreg, Alexandra Michel and

Rune Todnem By

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107020092 © Cambridge University Press 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data The psychology of organizational change : viewing change from the employee’s perspective / edited by Shaul Oreg, Alexandra Michel and Rune Todnem By. pages cm. ISBN 978-1-107-02009-2 1. Organizational change – Psychological aspects. 2. Employees – Psychology. I. Oreg, Shaul, 1970– II. Michel, Alexandra, 1967– III. By, Rune Todnem. HD58.8.P79 2013 302.34–dc23 2012042706 ISBN 978-1-107-02009-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of figures and tables Notes on contributors Acknowledgments Part I 1

2

Part II 3

Introduction Introduction shaul oreg, rune todnem by, and alexandra michel Capturing the positive experience of change: antecedents, processes, and consequences mel fugate The nature of employees’ reactions to change

page viii x xvii 1

3

15 41

Commitment to organizational change: theory, research, principles, and practice john p. meyer and leah k. hamilton

43

Reactions to organizational change: an integrated model of health predictors, intervening variables, and outcomes alexandra michel and m. gloria gonzÆlez-morales

65

Part III Predicting employees’ reactions to change: individual factors

93

4

5

Reactions to organizational change from an individual differences perspective: a review of empirical research maria vakola, achilles armenakis, and shaul oreg

95

v

vi

Contents

6

Employee adaptability to change at work: a multidimensional, resource-based framework karen van dam

Part IV Predicting employees’ reactions to change: organizational factors 7

8

Part V 9

10

12

143

When leadership meets organizational change: the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes, and adjustment to change alannah e. rafferty, nerina l. jimmieson, and simon lloyd d. restubog

145

Anticipatory (in)justice and organizational change: understanding employee reactions to change rashpal k. dhensa-kahlon and jacqueline a. m. coyle-shapiro

173

The role of communication within the process of change

195

Quality change communication and employee responses to change: an investigation of the moderating effects of individual differences in an experimental setting nerina l. jimmieson, alannah e. rafferty, and james e. allen

197

Rumors during organizational change: a motivational analysis prashant bordia and nicholas difonzo

232

Part VI The interplay between change and the organization 11

123

253

Change and fit, fit and change steven caldwell

255

Organizational identification and organizational change frank drzensky and rolf van dick

275

Contents

Part VII Conclusion and commentary 13

vii

299

Commentary: change processes and action implications richard w. woodman and jean m. bartunek

301

Index

324

Figures and tables

Figures 1.1 Increase in number of publications with a title including the term “organizational change” page 4 2.1 Antecedents, processes, and outcomes of organizational change 16 3.1 Antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment to change 56 4.1 The healthy organizational change (HOC) model that describes promoting and hindering factors for employees’ health-related outcomes in the organizational change context 71 5.1 Antecedents, explicit reactions, and change consequences of organizational change (adapted from Oreg et al., 2011, figure 1) 97 6.1 A multidimensional, resource-based framework for individual adaptability 128 7.1 Theoretical model of relationships among leadership and change attitudes 146 7.2 Significant relationships in the saturated structural model 161 8.1 Conceptual model. Anticipatory (in)justice and organizational change: understanding employee reactions to change 175 9.1 Proposed relationships among the focal variables 207 9.2 Two-way interaction of quality change communication and tolerance of ambiguity on deviance behavior 218 9.3 Two-way interaction of quality change communication and internal–external locus of control on deviance behavior 219 viii

List of figures and tables

9.4 Two-way interaction of quality change communication and desire for control (others) on proactive behavior 10.1 Motivational framework for rumors during organizational change 11.1 Lewin’s three stages of change 11.2 Perceived levels of PO and PJ fit across three years of a change affecting job requirements of 51 registered nurses employed by a large hospital undergoing a major change initiative 11.3 The moderating effects of general change self-efficacy on the progression of PJ fit across three years of a major change initiative (reprinted from Steven D. Caldwell, “Bidirectional relationships between employee fit and organizational change,” Journal of Change Management, 11(4) 2001 by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd) 12.1 A social identity model of post-merger identification (modified version of van Knippenberg and van Leeuwen, 2001, 256) 12.2 The intergroup merger model (modified version of Gaertner et al., 2001, 275)

ix

221 233 257

262

262

285 287

Tables 2.1 Proposed relationships between antecedents, processes, and outcomes of organizational change page 19 5.1 Research context descriptors 98 5.2 Antecedents variables considered in articles reviewed 107 7.1 Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations 157 7.2 Correlations among the latent factors in the 8-factor measurement model 160 7.3 Relationships among the latent factors in the saturated structural model 162 9.1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations among the focal variables 213 9.2 One-way analysis of variance depicting main effects of quality change communication on appraisals and behaviors 214 9.3 Summary of significant two-way interactions involving quality change communication and the individual difference variables 217 13.1 Linkages to change processes 304 13.2 Implications for practice in the chapters 313

Notes on contributors

is the James T. Pursell, Sr., Eminent Scholar in Management Ethics and Director of the Auburn University Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures at Auburn University. Achilles has been on the faculty at Auburn since 1973 serving in administrative as well as professorial capacities. Achilles is a fellow in the Southern Management Association and the International Academy of Management. His research efforts have concentrated on organizational change and management ethics.

ACHILLES ARMENAKIS

JAMES E. ALLEN

completed his Ph.D. at the University of Queensland, Australia in 2008. His primary research area is organizational change and he has presented his research at both international and domestic conferences. Since completing his Ph.D., James has worked in organizational development roles across both the private and public sector. Currently James is responsible for the organizational development function within a medium-sized enterprise, focusing on the delivery of OD initiatives and the program management of organizational change activities.

JEAN M. BARTUNEK

is the Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris Chair and Professor of Organization Studies in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Her Ph.D. in social and organizational psychology is from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a fellow and past president of the Academy of Management, from which she won a career distinguished service award in 2009. She has published five books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. Her research focuses on organizational change and academic–practitioner relationships.

is a Professor of Management at the Australian National University. His current research interests are in two main areas: the study of the employer–employee relationship using the theoretical framework of the psychological contract and the role of rumors in an organizational context. His research has been published

PRASHANT BORDIA

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Notes on contributors

xi

in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Journal of Management among others. He is also the co-author (with Nicholas DiFonzo) of Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches (2006). His research has been funded by grants from the Australian Research Council and the US National Science Foundation. Three of his papers have won best paper awards at the US Academy of Management conference (and a fourth was a runner-up). T O D N E M B Y is Academic Group Leader (Organisational Behaviour, Leadership and Change) at Staffordshire University Business School. He is an internationally acknowledged change management expert and is the editor of Routledge’s Journal of Change Management. Rune’s work on organizational change is widely referred to in international peer-reviewed publications, and his article “Organisational Change Management: A Critical Review” (2005) has been reprinted in several books. His research interests span organizational behavior; organizational change; leadership; ethics; and public services management. Recent publications include the co-edited book Managing Organizational Change in Public Services (2009), book chapters, and articles in international peer-reviewed journals. Before joining Staffordshire University Business School, Rune worked at University of Wolverhampton and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. In 2009, Rune was a participant of the Scottish Crucible, an academic leadership–development program sponsored by NESTA, the Scottish Funding Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Scottish universities. Previously to joining academia, Rune worked in the Norwegian army. First as a corporal in His Majesty the King’s Royal Guard, and then as a NATO paramedic in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RUNE

STEVEN D. CALDWELL

received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has twenty-eight years’ experience in various management roles in business organizations and is currently an associate professor in the Johnson College of Business Administration and Economics at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He is published in his field in the main journals, including Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Journal of Organizational Behavior, with research interests in multilevel research involving organizational change, leadership, justice, person–environment fit, and individual differences.

JACQUELINE COYLE-SHAPIRO

is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is

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Notes on contributors

currently Senior editor at the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Her research interests include employment relationship, psychological contracts, social exchange theory, organizational justice, and organizational citizenship behavior. K . D H E N S A is a Ph.D. candidate in the Employment Relations & Organisational Behaviour Group at the London School of Economics & Political Science. Her research interests focus on organizational justice and social and personality dimensions of behavior.

RASHPAL

is Professor of Psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has published over forty articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and technical reports on rumor. His books include Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches (2006, written with Prashant Bordia), and The Watercooler Effect: A Psychologist Explores the Extraordinary Power of Rumors (2008). He has been interviewed on national public radio on numerous occasions. In 2005 he received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate how rumors self-organize in networks. He has also received funding from the Institute for Public Relations to study corporate rumors, their effects, and how top corporate public relations officers handle them. Dr. DiFonzo has served as expert trial witness for corporations and government entities on topics involving derogatory workplace rumors, malicious product rumors, and slanderous conspiracy rumors.

NICHOLAS DIFONZO

studied psychology at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany. Currently he is doing his Ph.D. in economics. He works as a research assistant in the Department of Management and Microeconomics at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Frank’s research interests focus on organizational development from an economic and psychological perspective.

FRANK DRZENSKY

is an associate professor of management and organizations in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. Prior to his current position he was a faculty member in the Organizational Behavior Department at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, which is the position he assumed after completing his Ph.D. in business administration with an emphasis in organizational behavior at Arizona State University. His primary research interests involve employee reactions to organizational change and transitions at work. This includes downsizings, M&A, restructurings, and plant closings. He investigates employees’ change-related cognitive

MEL FUGATE

Notes on contributors

xiii

appraisals, emotions, coping efforts, and withdrawal. Another research stream involves the development of a dispositional perspective of employability and its implications for employee careers and behavior. Other research interests include the influence of leadership and organizational culture on performance and the influence of emotions on behavior at work. He has published in and reviewed for a number of management and applied psychology journals, such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology. GLORIA GONZÁLEZ-MORALES

is currently an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology at University of Guelph (Canada). After obtaining her Ph.D. in work and organizational psychology from University of Valencia (Spain), she developed her postdoctoral research in the USA as a Fulbright visiting scholar at George Mason University and a postdoctoral fellow at University of Delaware. Her research, published in, for example, the Journal of Applied Psychology and the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, aims to provide empirical evidence guiding the effective management of occupational health issues in organizations.

LEAH K. HAMILTON

is a doctoral candidate in industrial/organizational psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Her research and professional interests include: workplace discrimination, the discounting of immigrants’ skills and credentials in the labor market, and commitment to organizational change initiatives.

L . J I M M I E S O N is an associate professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. She teaches undergraduate, honors, and postgraduate courses in organizational behavior, recruitment and selection, and organizational change management. Employing a range of methodologies in both laboratory and field settings, her research examines theoretical and methodological issues that account for the equivocal findings concerning the stress-buffering role of job control in the prediction of employee adjustment. In addition, her research on organizational change management examines employee adaptation to the experience of change in the workplace. She has studied organizations undergoing mergers, downsizing, restructuring, relocations, rebrands, and IT implementations. Her research focuses on the organizational and psychological resources that employees seek in order to develop a sense of change readiness, adjustment to change events, and subsequent change implementation success. Her research is well supported by national

NERINA

xiv

Notes on contributors

competitive grants and industry partners, with sixty publications appearing in journals and books in the areas of management and organizational psychology. received his Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1978. After spending three years at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB, he returned to Western where he is now a professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Director of the Research Unit for Work and Productivity. His research interests include employee commitment, work motivation, leadership, and organizational change. His work has been published in leading journals in the field of industrial–organizational psychology (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology) and management (e.g., Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management), and has been cited more than 4,000 times according to the Web of Science. He is also co-author of Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research, and Application (1997) and Best Practices: Employee Retention (2000), and co-editor of Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions (2009). He has consulted with private and public organizations in Canada on issues related to his research, and has been invited to conduct seminars and workshops in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Dr. Meyer is a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and a member of the Academy of Management. He is a former chair of the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and co-editor of the OB/HRM section of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences. In 2007 he was recognized by the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology for his “distinguished contributions to Industrial–Organizational Psychology in Canada.”

JOHN MEYER

M I C H E L received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Currently, she is an assistant professor in work and organizational psychology at the same university. Her research focuses on organizational change and innovation, human resource development, coaching, and occupational health. Besides being an academic, Alexandra is also a practitioner. After graduating in psychology, she worked in a managing position in the HR department of a large German health insurance company. At the time, she started to work as an academic in work and organizational psychology, she also worked as a change manager in higher education. Alexandra is the author of several book chapters and journal articles and presents her work at national and international conferences.

ALEXANDRA

Notes on contributors

xv

is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior at the Jerusalem School of Business Administration of The Hebrew University. He earned his Ph.D. at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, where he later served as a visiting professor. In his research he focuses on individual differences in social and organizational contexts, with a particular focus on employees’ reactions to organizational change. He established the concept of dispositional resistance to change and developed and validated the resistance-tochange scale, which to date has been translated and used by researchers in more than twenty countries. His work has been published in the field’s leading journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology. He is also co-author of the forthcoming book entitled Resistance to Innovation.

SHAUL OREG

is a senior lecturer in organizational behavior at the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include organizational change, stress and coping, and constructive and destructive leadership. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, and Work & Stress. She has extensive experience in applied research to inform leadership development and strategic change in organizations.

ALANNAH RAFFERTY

SIMON LLOYD D. RESTUBOG

is Professor of Management and Research Convenor in the School of Management, Marketing, and International Business at the Australian National University. He earned his Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Queensland. His research interests include antecedents and maintenance of psychological contracts; measurement and prediction of destructive leadership and workplace deviance; and the role of support and barriers in career development. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and many others. Currently, he serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Journal of Management and Organization. is an organizational psychologist and is currently working as an assistant professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece. Maria received her M.Sc. in organizational psychology from UMIST, UK and her Ph.D. from Salford University, UK. She has published in a number of journals, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Communications of the ACM, and

MARIA VAKOLA

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Notes on contributors

Journal of Change Management. Her research interests in change management and organizational behavior are in the areas of employees’ reactions to change, individual differences and work attitudes, and employee voice and silence. She teaches organizational behavior and change management at an undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive level and she has received awards for teaching excellence. is a professor in work, organizational, and personnel psychology at the Open University, the Netherlands. In her research, she focuses on how employees adapt to changes in the work situation, including employability, employee learning, job mobility, reemployment, and resistance to change. Additionally, she is the editor of a Dutch journal of work and organizational psychology, and is involved in certifying career counselors.

KAREN VAN DAM

is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. After his Ph.D. in social psychology (Philipps-University, Marburg), he worked at Aston Business School (Aston University, Birmingham) and was visiting professor in Tuscaloosa (USA, 2001), Rhodes (Greece, 2002), and Kathmandu (Nepal, 2009). He has been editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Management and is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personnel Psychology. Rolf’s research interests focus on social identity processes in organizations and he has published more than 120 books, chapters, and papers in academic journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Marketing.

ROLF VAN DICK

RICHARD W. WOODMAN

(Ph.D., Purdue University) is the Fouraker Professor of Business and Professor of Management at Texas A & M University where he teaches organizational behavior, organizational change, organizational creativity and innovation, and research methodology. His research and writing focus on organizational change and organizational creativity. Dr. Woodman served as Head of the Department of Management (1993–7). He is editor of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and co-editor of the annual series Research in Organizational Change and Development. He has been Division Chair and Program Chair of the Organization Development and Change division of the Academy of Management. In a previous life, Dr. Woodman was a military intelligence officer in the US Army, worked in both the petroleum and banking industries, and served for several years as vice-president of a financial institution.

Acknowledgments

We thank everyone who made this book possible. In particular, we owe much thanks to the contributing authors and the team at Cambridge University Press. We also thank our families, friends, colleagues, and students for being part of our lives. On a more personal note, Shaul thanks his wife, Ayelet, and their children, Yonatan, Daniel, and Avigail, for filling his life with meaning and much happiness; Alexandra thanks Martin for all his love and inspiration and for sharing a wonderful life; and Rune thanks his son Oliver for being the joy of his life.

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Part I

Introduction

1

Introduction Shaul Oreg, Rune Todnem By, and Alexandra Michel

The subject of organizational change is attracting more attention than ever, with a rising tide of research aimed at understanding this complex topic, which has ramifications for academic fields such as leadership, strategy, human resource management and development, and more broadly, organizational behavior and psychology as a whole. A quick examination in Google Scholar of the number of publications with the term “organizational change” in their title reveals this rapidly increasing interest over the years (see Figure 1.1). From a meager 38 publications in 1962, there are more than 8,000 today, with almost 50 percent of these being published in the last decade. The majority of studies, and almost all of the books on the subject, take on a macro perspective, focusing on the strategic process of managing organizational change. Most books are dedicated to describing what change looks like, what instigates it, how it develops over time, and most notably, how it can and should be managed. The perspective in these books is almost exclusively that of management, with little more than a passing notice to what change looks and feels like from the perspective of the change recipient. In recipients we include all organization members who are at the receiving end of change, including both employees and those managers who typically have little control and influence over whether, or what types of change, will be implemented. Nevertheless, awareness of the importance of considering recipients’ perspective is gradually increasing. Researchers are more frequently acknowledging the key role that organization members have in determining the change’s potential to succeed (Bartunek et al., 2006; Fugate, Prussia, and Kinicki, 2012; Oreg, Vakola, and Armenakis, 2011). As these scholars indicate, all too often the introduction of a change in the organization elicits, frequently quite justifiably, negative responses. These often include active demonstrations of resistance to the extent that the organization ends up no better off after the change than it was prior to it. A better understanding of the nature and reasons for these negative reactions could therefore help change agents improve the change and facilitate its implementation, to ultimately yield improved outcomes for the organization. 3

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Shaul Oreg, Rune Todnem By, Alexandra Michel

Cumulative # of publications

9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1962

1972

1982

1992

2002

2012

Year

Figure 1.1 Increase in number of publications with a title including the term “organizational change”

But an even more essential point, typically overlooked, is the importance of considering the recipients’ perspective should be acknowledged even if it were not consequential for the change’s and the organization’s success. Change recipients are those who are most substantially influenced by the change and its consequences. Be it a merger, downsizing (also known as firing lots of people), or the introduction of new technology in the organization, organizational change has a tremendous impact on organization members’ lives. Among other things, it affects their livelihood, their sense of belonging and competence, and their overall well-being. For this reason alone, when studying organizational change it is the change recipient’s outlook we should seek to understand, first and foremost. If a better understanding of this outlook could also benefit the organization, all the better. In organizational change we are referring to any adjustment or alteration in the organization that has the potential to influence the organization’s stakeholders’ physical or psychological experience. Such alterations include changes to the organizational structure, the implementation of new organizational practices, changes in employees’ job descriptions, or even geographical relocations of the organization or its branches. They also include longer-term cultural changes, which are often harder to design and implement. Each of these changes clearly has the potential to influence not only the organization’s performance, but most notably its employees. Employees will surely hold their own opinions about the change and

Introduction

5

experience a range of emotional responses to it, which in turn will likely be manifested in how they cope with the change and in their attitudes toward the organization at large. These reactions have received little attention in previous books on organizational change, and constitute the focus of the present book. Rather than describing what change looks like, we shift the perspective in this book to describing how change is received, and instead of providing characterizations of changes, such as first-order versus secondorder, planned versus emergent, continuous versus discontinuous, or incremental versus radical, the focus here will be on characterizing and explaining the experience of change. Scholars of reactions to change come together in this book to lay out their various perspectives on the topic. They each take on their own approach to understanding how organizational change affects change recipients, and to explain differences in recipients’ reactions. Typically embedded in a micro-organizational perspective, the conceptual frameworks employed in research on reactions to change tend to be psychological. To date, only very few books on organizational change have undertaken a micro perspective, with a focus on the perspective of the individual. Moreover, none that we are aware of have focused specifically on the change recipients’ reactions to organizational change. Although the explicit interest in recipients’ reactions to change is fairly recent, findings on the topic have nevertheless been rapidly accumulating. A variety of approaches has been used, with a broad range of propositions for how to conceptualize employees’ reactions, and numerous changerelated variables being employed for assessing these reactions and their consequences. Little integration, however, has been provided and each approach tends to be considered independently of other available approaches. The amalgamation of approaches in this book presents a form of dialog among scholars in the field and brings together, in a single corpus, a broad range of outlooks on the subject. Contrary to other books on organizational change, the authors in this book do not offer explicit prescriptions for managing organizational change. Rather, their focus is on reviewing and expanding theory in this field, and in a number of cases also providing new empirical findings in support of these theories. Accordingly, our intended audience comprises scholars and practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of the recipients’ response to change and of the psychological underpinnings of this response. Certainly, such a deeper understanding can in turn be translated into practical action in the design and implementation of organizational change. Indeed, most of the chapters in the book include a discussion of the practical implications of the authors’ theoretical perspective and empirical findings.

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Shaul Oreg, Rune Todnem By, Alexandra Michel

Structure of the book The book comprises seven parts, together covering manifestations of change recipients’ responses to organizational change and predictors and outcomes of these manifestations. Following this introduction, Mel Fugate offers in Chapter 2 an overarching framework for understanding change recipients’ reactions to organizational change, with a particular focus on the construct of change appraisal. Specifically, he employs this construct to link aspects of recipients’ personality and characteristics of the change context, with change-related outcomes, such as employees’ emotions or their voluntary turnover. In change appraisal, a concept that will also be used in some of the chapters that follow Chapter 2, Fugate refers to “an evaluation of a person–situation transaction in terms of its meaning for personal well-being,” which includes the three core types of appraisal: harm, threat, and challenge. After laying out his perspective of change-related appraisal, Fugate moves to discuss person and situation antecedents of employees’ change appraisals. The person antecedents on which he focuses are positive change orientation, positive psychological capital, and employability. The situation antecedents are change-related fairness, trust in management, and perceived organizational support. Following the antecedent–appraisal links, Fugate discusses the relationship between change appraisals and outcomes, including employee emotions and employee withdrawal. Fugate’s chapter offers an inclusive framework, integrating many of the disparate findings in this field. Through his research propositions he lays down an elaborate and viable research plan for advancing our knowledge of the subject even further. In Part II we introduce two particular conceptualizations of recipients’ reactions to change, with each of the two chapters in this section focusing on a different manifestation of the reaction to change. In Chapter 3, John Meyer and Leah Hamilton develop an evidence-based framework of commitment to change. They draw on the extensive work on commitment of Meyer and his colleagues and extrapolate from what is known about commitment to organizations to the notion of commitment to change. They begin with defining commitment and commitment to change, and their three components of affective, continuance, and normative commitment. They then move on to discuss the implications of commitment to change, which include job satisfaction, retention, compliance, and discretionary behavior. Meyer and Hamilton then review findings relating to how commitment can be developed. Specifically, they discuss individual differences, as well as the roles of the change context, process, and perceived impact on employees’ commitment to change. After a discussion of the limitations of previous studies they devote their last section to

Introduction

7

providing a guiding framework for future research. In their framework they also highlight important issues that managers of change may wish to consider. As in Fugate’s chapter, Meyer and Hamilton propose a mediating mechanism that links both person- and situation-based antecedents with employees’ work-related outcomes. Their focus on commitment to change, drawing from the well-established body of knowledge on commitment to organizations, provides a well-rounded view of employees’ response to change. In Chapter 4 Alexandra Michel and Gloria González-Morales focus on the health-related outcomes that result from change. The authors provide an integrative review of the literature from which they propose the model of healthy organizational change (HOC) for explaining the health-related outcomes. Specifically, characteristics of the change (e.g., type of change) of the job (e.g., workload), and of the social exchange employees have with their organizations (e.g., trust in management) interact with individual differences variables (e.g., cynicism about change) in their effect on health-related outcomes. Health-related outcomes include aspects of employees’ physical and mental health. As their review shows, and related to the concepts discussed in Chapter 2, these relationships are often mediated by employees’ appraisal of the change situation. The authors open their chapter by discussing the stress-related implications of change, and the consequences of these implications to change recipients’ health. They then turn to systematically summarize conceptual propositions and empirical findings which establish the relationships they include in their model. Each of the following two parts focuses on a different category of predictors of recipients’ reactions to change; the first on person-related factors and the second on situation-related factors. Specifically, Part III covers internal factors that antecede reactions to change, namely individual differences in recipients’ propensity to accept or resist change. In Chapter 5, Maria Vakola, Achilles Armenakis, and Shaul Oreg review fifty-seven empirical articles about employees’ reactions to change, published between 1975 and 2010. In an integrative model they draw links between individuals’ characteristics, their explicit and immediate reactions to the change and longer-term implications that change has for employees. They begin by addressing how reactions to change have been conceptualized and defined in previous research. As a means of categorizing studies they use the tri-dimensional definition of change attitudes, comprising affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. In the main part of their chapter they review findings involving four categories of individual differences variables that have been used to predict reactions to change: personality dispositions, motivational needs, coping styles, and demographics.

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Shaul Oreg, Rune Todnem By, Alexandra Michel

In the next section of Chapter 5 Vakola and her colleagues discuss the longer-term consequences of change for employees. In the final section they highlight the implications for theory, research and practice of the knowledge that has accumulated in the studies reviewed. In Chapter 6 Karen van Dam introduces the concept of adaptability at work. By integrating conceptual frameworks and empirical findings she presents a general model of adaptability aimed at enhancing our understanding of employees’ reactions to change. She first discusses the deficiencies of previous definitions of the construct before presenting her own definition, highlighting the resources that comprise employees’ potential to effectively adjust to work-related, vocational, and environmental demands. She then elaborates on these cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources that help employees adapt. In the next section she ties her former discussion of general adaptability to the particular context of organizational change. In doing so she demonstrates the various roles adaptability may have in the change process. For example, along the lines highlighted in Chapter 3, adaptability can be seen as an antecedent of employees’ reactions to change with more adaptable employees exhibiting more favorable responses to change. Contrarily, adaptability could also be seen as an outcome of various factors, including leadership and past history of change. As such, adaptability can be seen as a mediating mechanism between various change-related antecedents and outcomes, such as between employees’ personality and job satisfaction, or even between personality and their health. Van Dam concludes with a discussion of the challenges researchers and practitioners face for further understanding and enhancing employee adaptability. Part IV shifts the spotlight from intrinsic characteristics of the individual to factors within the organization that explain reactions to change. In Chapter 7, Alannah Rafferty, Nerina Jimmieson, and Simon Restubog focus on the role that leadership has in shaping change recipients’ response to change. They present and empirically test a model in which the transformational leadership of supervisors and the organization’s topmanagement team are indirectly linked with employees’ affective commitment to the change, and the degree to which employees perceive the organization as violating its psychological contract with them. Resonating with the general model proposed in Chapter 2, the process through which these factors are linked includes employees’ change appraisal, operationalized through their job-related and strategic uncertainty. In turn, change appraisal antecedes recipients’ openness versus cynicism toward the change. In other words, transformational leadership predicts perceptions of uncertainty, which then predicts the attitude (openness versus cynicism) toward the change, which ultimately predicts affective change commitment

Introduction

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and psychological contract violation. They tested their model in a manufacturing organization in the Philippines, undergoing an organizational restructuring review conducted for the purpose of adopting innovative work practices. These new work practices aimed at decentralizing decisionmaking processes and empowering middle managers toward improving the company’s competitiveness. With data collected at two points in time, from 273 company employees, the researchers confirmed most of their hypotheses. Among their findings, top-management team transformational leadership was indirectly related to perceived contract violation through its impact on openness toward change. Supervisory transformational leadership was indirectly related to contract violation through its impact on employees’ cynicism about change. In Chapter 8, Rashpal Dhensa-Kahlon and Jacqueline Coyle-Shapiro focus on the construct of anticipatory justice as a means of understanding employees’ reactions to organizational change. Following their introduction they present the construct of anticipatory justice and explain its particular relevance for the context of change, in which levels of uncertainty are high. They systematically establish a set of testable propositions that comprise an overarching model describing the change process through a justicefocused lens. Specifically, they suggest that given the announcement of a change initiative, anticipatory justice perceptions will arise as a function of recipients’ trait anxiety. The anticipatory justice that emerges in turn yields several emotional and health-related outcomes. Corresponding with the rationale presented in Chapter 7, leaders’ influence on the change process is acknowledged through the moderating effect of managers’ interactional justice and of offering employees voice during the change. In the latter part of their model, Dhensa-Kahlon and Coyle-Shapiro propose that emotional and health-related outcomes will, in turn, determine the degree to which recipients become engaged in the organizational change. The authors conclude the chapter by discussing the value of future studies of anticipatory justice for both research and practice. Part V includes two chapters that address communication as a key factor in the development of change and the formation of recipients’ reactions to it. Chapter 9 focuses on the formal communication about the change that the organization provides. Nerina Jimmieson, Alannah Rafferty, and James Allen describe in this chapter a laboratory experiment in which they test the impact of management’s change communication on employees’ behavioral support for change. They begin by highlighting the importance of effective change communication as a means of gaining more positive affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses from change recipients. They hypothesize that the link between change communication and employees’ ultimate reaction to the change is mediated by

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employees’ appraisal of the change, as is reflected in the level of uncertainty they perceive and in the amount of anxiety they experience. They then suggest that the personal dispositions of tolerance of ambiguity, locus of control, and desire for control moderate the relationship between communication and support for change such that the relationship will be stronger among those with an external locus of control, a low tolerance for ambiguity, and a high desire for control. To test their model, they sampled 134 psychology undergraduates and used a set of vignettes to manipulate the quality of change communications. With some exceptions, their findings supported their hypothesized model. Specifically, change communication of higher quality reduced participants’ anxiety and uncertainty, which in turn reduced participants’ intentions to undertake deviant organizational behavior. Perceived uncertainty also mediated the relationship between change communication and participants’ intentions to support the change. The moderation analyses yielded interesting findings, only some of which were hypothesized. The authors discuss these findings and provide valuable insights, along with promising directions for future research. Departing from this focus on formal communication, Prashant Bordia and Nicholas DiFonzo write in Chapter 10 about the role that informal communication has during the change process, by focusing on the concept of rumors. To this aim, they review the psychological research on rumors and employ a motivational framework to explain why rumors spread during organizational change. Following their definition of rumors, as “information statements that circulate among people, are instrumentally relevant, and are unverified,” they discuss the factors that characterize change, including uncertainty and the threat of loss, which constitute fertile grounds for the spread of rumors. These, viewed by the authors as a form of sense-making activity, help employees interpret the changing work environment and cope with the threats that accompany change. In the next section, Bordia and DiFonzo outline the psychological motivations that drive the spread of rumors. The authors then describe types of rumors, and their implications for employees and their organizations. In addition to the factors that bring about rumors to begin with, the authors also describe two contextual variables that can influence the rumor-spreading process: the organization’s network structure and the degree of trust between employees and management. They conclude their chapter with the practical implications of their motivational framework for the management of rumors during change. Part VI includes two chapters that describe the dynamic interplay between employees’ orientation toward the organization and the organizational change. Both chapters describe a reciprocal process in which

Introduction

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employees’ standing toward the organization influences whether and how change evolves, and, in turn, change itself influences employees’ standing vis-à-vis the organization. In Chapter 11, Steven Caldwell discusses the interplay between the notion of person–environment fit and the notion of change. He begins by describing what one may call a pro-fit bias in the organizational literature, whereby person–environment fit is typically viewed as a positive and desirable outcome that organizations strive to achieve. Yet Caldwell then asks what happens to this fit once an organization undergoes change. And, at the same time, how does fit influence employees’ readiness and ability to endure change? After discussing several forms of fit, including person–job, person–group, and person– organization, Caldwell proceeds to describe and review research on the impact that organizational change may have on achieved levels of person– environment fit. Following this review he discusses the reciprocal effect that fit may have on change recipients’ readiness for, and willingness to embrace, changes proposed by the organization. Within this discussion a particular focus is given to the role of organizational culture in the link between fit and responses to change. In Chapter 12, Frank Drzensky and Rolf van Dick write about organizational identification in the context of organizational change, emphasizing mergers and acquisitions. They conceptualize identification on the basis of the theories of social identity and social categorization. They then raise an interesting puzzle concerning the relationship between employees’ identification and their response to change. On the one hand, one could presume that, given the emotional ties that employees with a high level of identification have to their organization, initiatives to change the organization will be faced with resistance. On the other hand, when the benefits of the change to the organization are clear, those who identify with the organization will be more willing to cooperate with and even proactively promote the change. The authors review empirical evidence for both perspectives and bring forward the concept of continuity as a moderator of the identification–change reaction relationship. A main part of the chapter focuses on the case of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), which they view as an exemplary type of change, involving intergroup processes. The authors begin their discussion of M&A by reviewing several factors that influence employees’ reactions to M&A, including issues of dominance and status, an “us-versus-them” orientation, and in-group biases. These, and other factors, are presented in two models that explain employees’ responses to M&A. Drzensky and van Dick then briefly discuss the role of extrinsic versus intrinsic motives in explaining employees’ reactions to M&A and changes in general. Finally, they discuss several managerial implications of the model they present.

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Shaul Oreg, Rune Todnem By, Alexandra Michel

In Chapter 13, in the concluding part of the book (Part VII), Richard Woodman and Jean Bartunek provide an integrative discussion of the chapters in the book. They use two dimensions for analyzing the book’s chapters. First, they consider the manner in which the various chapters enhance our understanding of the process of organizational change. They do so by classifying the types of explanatory and outcome variables considered in each chapter into categories of individual versus organizational orientation. Second, they consider the practical implications that can be derived from the analyses presented in each of the chapters. They examine both the explicit recommendations and implicit allusions made in the chapters as to how organizational change should be managed. In their analysis they refer to the audiences to whom recommendations are addressed, those expected to be impacted by suggested actions, the content of the recommendations, and the expected outcomes of these recommendations. Nearing the end of their chapter they discuss links in the chapters between theory and practice, connections with other bodies of literature in the social sciences, and possible next steps for research of organizational change. Finally, they discuss the chapters’ contribution to theory development in the domains of change–process theory and implementation theory and reflect on the improvement of knowledge in the field of organizational change. Several of the chapters consist of integrative reviews of the literature within a given subfield. Some of the authors develop conceptual models for understanding recipients’ reactions to change, and include testable research propositions. Still others conduct empirical tests of such research models. Together, the chapters in this book provide a rich and inclusive outlook on the process of organizational change, as it is viewed and experienced by change recipients. Researchers from a wide array of conceptual underpinnings have come together in an effort to lay out the defining characteristics of recipients’ reactions to change, as well as to predict these reactions and describe their consequences. As could be expected, there is some overlap among the chapters, with similar constructs (e.g., cognitive appraisal) and frameworks (e.g., person–situation models) appearing throughout the book. Each chapter, however, provides its unique lens through which the experience of change can be viewed. As such, we believe the book constitutes an essential resource for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of organizational change and development, who strive to understand not only how to make change work for the organization, but also for its members. From our reading of these chapters, we identify a number of common themes that emerged throughout the book, and a number of trends in the research in this field. First, the resolution and complexity of

Introduction

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researchers’ conceptualizations of reactions to change has steadily increased over the years. Whereas past research has tended to treat reactions to change as monolithic, it is now becoming the norm to treat reactions to change as multidimensional constructs. In most of the contributions to this book, authors give attention to distinct aspects of employees’ reactions, whether these are affective, cognitive, or behavioral aspects of one’s attitude toward change (see, for example, Chapters 5 and 6), dimensions of commitment to change (Chapter 3), or dimensions of recipients’ cognitive appraisal of the change (Chapters 2, 7, 8, and 9). Related to this point, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of considering complex relationships among variables in predicting reactions to change. Beyond the consideration of a large variety of factors in each of the models presented in this book, many of the authors consider effects that are either mediated, moderated, or both. Almost by definition, the process models proposed in this book involve mediation models, many of which discuss the role of change appraisal as a key mechanism. Yet beyond this, authors acknowledge that even these mediated links are contingent on other, moderating, factors. These include both characteristics of the recipient and contextual conditions, which moderate relationships between other antecedents and recipients’ reactions to change (e.g., Chapters 4, 8, and 9). Granted, with the exception of the study presented in Chapter 9, these more complex relationships are included within conceptual models. It is becoming clear that to further advance our field, the next step requires researchers to translate such conceptual frameworks into elaborate empirical research programs. Third, much more attention than in the past is given to the dynamic nature of change, along with the dynamic nature of employees’ reactions to it. Although temporal changes in employees’ reactions to change have been studied before (e.g., Fugate, Kinicki, and Scheck, 2002), most studies, often due to logistic difficulties in collecting data over time, offer a relatively static depiction of employees’ reactions. Contrarily, most of the contributions in this book explicitly incorporate the notion of time into their models. Part VI in this book is devoted to describing some of the phenomena that result from the developing nature of change, with discussion of the tension between change and stability (Chapters 11 and 12). This dynamic nature is also acknowledged by describing the psychological process through which reactions to change evolve (Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10) or by distinguishing between immediate reactions and longer-term consequences or outcomes (Chapters 4 and 5). Methodologically, this dynamic nature is taken into account by collecting data over time (Chapters 7 and 9). Beyond these points, we identify some confusion that can arise when trying to compare or integrate insights from the different chapters.

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At times, different authors ascribe different meanings to the terms they use. One noteworthy example is the key term “reaction to change,” which takes on different meanings throughout the book. Whereas in some chapters it refers to change recipients’ attitude toward the change (e.g., Chapter 2), others refer to the longer-term consequences that change could have, as represented in the employee’s attitude toward the organization (e.g., Chapter 3) or in the employee’s well-being (e.g., Chapter 4). Still on other occasions the term is used to refer to the particular content of the change and its potential benefit or harm for the individual (e.g., Chapter 7). Such confusion in the use of terminology is referred to by Vakola, Armenakis, and Oreg in Chapter 5 and accurately reflects the situation in extant literature in this field, at large. Certainly, if the field is to advance at a faster pace, with greater integration across findings and conceptual formulations, scholars should aim for greater accord in the meanings they assign to the terms they use. Greater consistency in terminology is also essential if we are to convey a clear message about the importance of incorporating the recipient’s perspective into existing analyses of organizational change. As we noted in our opening arguments, too much of the existing literature on organizational change is written from management’s point of view. The somewhat simplistic view offered in this literature, and the disregard of recipients’ feelings, motivations and influence (and sometimes existence) is not assisting the continuous improvement of organizations and their role in society, nor does it allow us to improve organization members’ well-being. With this book we aim at addressing this current imbalance by focusing on change recipients, and by providing thoughtful analyses of recipients’ experiences of change, as well as prescriptions for future research that could further advance our understanding of their experiences. References Bartunek, J. M., D. M. Rousseau, J. W. Rudolph, and J. A. DePalma (2006), “On the receiving end: Sensemaking, emotion, and assessments of an organizational change initiated by others,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 42(2), 182–206. Fugate, M., A. J. Kinicki, and L. C. Scheck (2002), “Coping with an organizational merger over four stages,” Personnel Psychology, 55(4), 905–928. Fugate, M., G. E. Prussia, and A. J. Kinicki (2012), “Managing employee withdrawal during organizational change: The role of threat appraisal,” Journal of Management, 38(3), 890–914. Oreg, S., M. Vakola, and A. A. Armenakis (2011), “Change recipients’ reactions to organizational change: A sixty-year review of quantitative studies,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461–524.

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Capturing the positive experience of change: antecedents, processes, and consequences Mel Fugate

Capturing the positive experience of change: antecedents, processes, and consequences New ownership, downsizing, restructuring, mergers, virtual relationships, and outsourcing are just a few common types of organizational change employees now experience throughout their careers. The impact on employees is often extreme, as many of these changes result in job loss and career dislocations. And whatever the source of change, the situation has been seriously exacerbated by the Great Recession that began in late 2007. For instance, in the US more than 8 million jobs were eliminated, and as of May 2011 more than 11 million people 25 years and older were unemployed (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). Unofficial estimates put this number over 14 million (Zuckerman, 2011)! While the situational (e.g., competitive and economic) sources of change greatly vary, the differences in individual reactions to change exhibit even greater diversity. For any given change in a particular organization, some employees react negatively and suffer tremendous stress and negative health consequences (e.g., upset stomach and trouble sleeping – Begley and Czajka, 1993; and Chapter 4 in this volume), while others react positively and view change as an opportunity for development and advancement (Oreg, 2003). The overarching focus of this chapter, and a major theme of this book, is to explain the causes of differences in individual’s reactions to change. This is done by exploring positive person and situation antecedents of change, and explaining how these are then linked to specific outcomes via employees’ cognitive appraisals of organizational change (see Figure 2.1). The antecedent→process→outcome perspective utilized in this chapter is in part based on classic notions of systems theory and management (e.g., Kast and Rosenzweig, 1972). The premise is that control over inputs (and processes) is a means for managing outcomes. Considering these factors collectively also provides a comprehensive and practical understanding of employees’ experience of organizational change. 15

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INPUTS Person Factors

PROCESSES Cognitive Appraisals of Change

OUTPUTS Employee Reactions

Positive change orientation

Harm

Employee emotions

Positive psychological capital

Threat

Employability

Challenge

(retrospective and prospective) Employee withdrawal

Situation Factors Change-related fairness

(absenteeism, intentions to quit, voluntary turnover)

Trust in management Perceived organizational support

Figure 2.1 Antecedents, processes, and outcomes of organizational change

To this end, appraisal of change is presented as a fundamental underlying cognitive process that links change-related antecedents, both person and situation, and change-related outcomes (see Fugate, Prussia, and Kinicki, 2012). A person’s cognitive appraisal of organizational change is important because it represents an evaluation of a person–situation transaction in terms of its meaning for personal well-being (see Dewe, 1991). Such transactions and associated appraisals represent the intersection of a person’s unique characteristics and situational demands that must be “predicted and interpreted” (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984, 24). This cognitive interface of person and situation factors is a means by which individuals assess their goals and commitments in relation to the demands and opportunities of a situation. Appraisals thus give meaning to experiences and are powerful predictors of affective, behavioral, and physiological responses to organizational change (e.g., Cooper, Dewe, and O’Driscoll, 2001; Fugate, Kinicki, and Scheck, 2002; Fugate et al., 2012). Rafferty and her colleagues, in Chapter 7 in this volume, also utilize the transactional model. They describe appraisals of uncertainty as key mediators between leadership and employee adjustment to change.

A transactional perspective of change-related appraisals: contributions to research and practice Numerous research streams utilize the transactional perspective to illuminate the critical roles of person and situation factors. In the coping literature, for example, Moos, Holahan, and Beutler (2003) posit that characteristics of both the person (e.g., self-efficacy and attitudes) and the situation (e.g., sources of support, resources, and relationships) influence appraisals and ultimately coping behaviors and outcomes. This conceptualization of appraisal also is consistent with the seminal transactional theory of stress and coping presented by Lazarus (e.g., Lazarus

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and Folkman, 1984), which underscores the importance of contextual elements and the central role of appraisal. Lazarus and Folkman state: “only when we can specify the person and environment antecedent factors determining the nature of the appraisal process . . . can cognitive appraisal theory go beyond pure description” (1984, 48). The transactional approach to appraisal is evident in the organizational stress literature as well, where theory and research contend that person–situation transactions produce stress appraisals when something valuable is at stake and an individual perceives an inability to meet necessary demands. Accordingly, stress does not reside purely within the individual or the situation, but rather it is generated by the interplay of the two (Cooper et al., 2001) such that appraisal cognitively integrates individual and situational factors to shape one’s experiences and guide adaptation. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) presented three core types of appraisals: harm, threat, and challenge. These forms of appraisal provide different and very important details about employees’ experiences of change. Harm appraisals are assessments of retrospective or past losses. Threat appraisals are anticipatory of possible loss, while challenge appraisals represent assessments of anticipatory or possible gain. As such, both threat and challenge appraisals provide insights into employees’ expectations or concerns for potential consequences. And the intensity of all forms of cognitive appraisal is a function of the importance of what is at stake and the probability of its occurrence (see Donovan et al., 2002). More generally, appraisals inform the valence, temporal nature, and intensity of employee experience, and are fundamental determinants of employees’ reactions to organizational change. A focus on cognitive appraisals as a linking mechanism between antecedents and outcomes provides several contributions to the organizational change literature. First, knowledge of employee appraisals fills a void in that existing organizational change research is scarce regarding cognitive appraisals. This is notable given the important implications explained above and shown in the limited research that does exist (e.g., Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia, 2008). Second, appraisals represent a fundamental underlying cognitive process that connects antecedents and outcomes of employees’ reactions to change. The vast majority of organizational change research examines bivariate antecedents and outcomes but is relatively silent on underlying linking processes (e.g., Fugate et al., 2012). Third, understanding the temporal aspects of appraisals in the organizational context has great practical significance. On the one hand, knowledge of harm appraisals allows researchers to more precisely identify the negative aspects (e.g., outcomes and processes) of changes that have already occurred. This enables managers to take appropriate and precisely directed

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remedial actions to attenuate employees’ negative reactions. On the other hand, knowledge of threat and challenge appraisals informs employees’ forward-looking or future concerns and hopes. Such insights provide managers of change the ability to proactively ameliorate perceived threats (i.e., manage employee reactions to change) and/or realize perceived opportunities. Fourth, and as illustrated in Figure 2.1, the antecedents of change appraisals included in this chapter – person (positive change orientation, positive psychological capital, and employability) and situation (trust in management, change-related justice, and perceived organizational support) – are malleable, amenable to managerial influence, and thus may serve as levers to affect change-related appraisals and outcomes. Finally, this chapter presents a decidedly positive perspective on employee reactions to change. The valence and implications of each element of employees’ experience included in this chapter – antecedents, appraisals, and outcomes – are either overtly optimistic or at least constructive. This perspective starkly contrasts with the vast majority of change research that focuses on undesirable behaviors and consequences (e.g., burnout and disengagement; De Cuyper et al., 2010). The next section describes each antecedent and presents propositions for relationships with three types of change appraisals (see Figure 2.1 and Table 2.1). This is followed by an explication of proposed relationships between appraisals and important change-related outcomes – positive and negative emotions and various forms of employee withdrawal. Person and situation antecedents of employee appraisals of organizational change Before presenting specific antecedents, the theoretical rationale for their selection is provided, along with a brief review of literature related to the three forms of cognitive appraisal in the context of organizational change. This review is intended to frame and give meaning to the discussion of antecedents, highlight the importance of context, and serve as a guide for future research. Systems theory explains how inputs influence outcomes via intervening processes (see Figure 2.1). When applied to organizational change the implication is that flexible antecedents of change-related appraisal processes are fundamental means for guiding change outcomes. This rationale supports the selection of antecedents of change-related appraisals in this chapter. Specifically, malleable person and situation antecedents allow managers to affect employee appraisals of change and thus their reactions and change-related outcomes (Fugate et al., 2012). Beyond this theoretical justification, antecedents of change-related appraisals were selected based

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Table 2.1 Proposed relationships between antecedents, processes, and outcomes of organizational change

Person factors Positive change orientation Positive psychological capital Employability

Harm appraisal

Threat appraisal

Challenge appraisal

P1a(−) P2a(−) P3a(−)

P1b(−) P2b(−) P3b(−)

P1c(+) P2c(+) P3c(+)

P4a(−) P5a(−) P6a(−)

P4b(−) P5b(−) P6b(−)

P4c(+) P5c(+) P6c(+)

Situation factors Change-related fairness Trust in management Perceived organizational support Outcomes Negative retrospective emotions: guilt, anger, frustration, disappointment, depression, and sadness Negative prospective emotions: worry, fear, anxiety, and helplessness Positive prospective emotions: confidence, exhilaration, eagerness, and hopefulness Withdrawal: absenteeism, intentions to quit, and voluntary turnover

P7a(+)

P7b(+) P7c(+) P8a(+)

P8b(+)

P8c(−)

on existing organizational change literature that shows positive effects for each, although few to none have been explicitly linked to change-related appraisals. Selection also was guided by the relevance of a given antecedent (and consequence) to the organizational change context. Context is important when selecting antecedents (of appraisal) because it provides constraints and opportunities for behavior and powerfully influences relationships and outcomes (see Griffin, 2007). This argument is consistent with the interactional psychology literature which states that person and situation elements combine to define contexts (see Schneider, 1987), and it is the relationships within a particular constellation of these elements that powerfully affect outcomes (Chatman, 1989). Given this rationale, each form of appraisal is defined and reviewed. The existing organizational change research involving harm appraisal typically combines harm appraisals with other forms, such as threat appraisal, to create a negative appraisal construct (e.g., Fugate et al., 2002; Fugate et al., 2008), or with threat and challenge to create a stress appraisal construct (Scheck and Kinicki, 2000). Fugate and his colleagues (2002) found that negative appraisals during organizational restructurings changed over time, and that employees’ negative appraisals were negatively

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related to control coping and positively related to escape coping. Scheck and Kinicki (2000) found perceived control, coping self-efficacy, and environmental conditions predicted stress appraisal, which was associated with subsequent negative emotions, confrontive coping, and planful problem solving for employees of an acquired company. This research helps illuminate employees’ experience of change, but it is limited with regard to the role of harm appraisals specifically. A preliminary attempt to close this gap is provided later in this chapter. A rare study of threat appraisals of an organizational change (a restructuring) showed that both individual differences and contextual factors influenced employees’ threat appraisals (e.g., Fugate et al., 2012). Mishra and Spreitzer (1998) provided a conceptual explication of the deleterious effects of management trust and justice on employees’ threat appraisals during downsizing. The only study found of organizational change that included challenge appraisals showed that five sources of change – job role, work relationships, job context, facility, and career – were all positively related to employees’ challenge appraisals at five Veterans Association medical centers (Kohler et al., 2006). These results demonstrated that a host of situational factors influence employees’ perceptions of threat. Also helpful is non-organizationally based appraisal research that distinguished challenge from threat appraisals. Schneider, Rivers, and Lyons (2009) argued that the principal difference is that people feel challenged instead of threatened if they perceive adequate efficacy to meet the pertinent demands. This review clearly shows that organizational change research is very sparse with regard to cognitive appraisals. To overcome this shortcoming, proposed relationships between particular person and situation antecedents and change-related appraisals are explicated next (see also Table 2.1). Person antecedents of change appraisals Person antecedents of change – positive change orientation (Fugate et al., 2012), psychological capital (Avey, Wernsing, and Luthans, 2008), and employability (Fugate and Kinicki, 2008) – were selected. Each was chosen for its clear relevance for the change context and support in earlier research, albeit limited. These particular antecedents also represent a distinctively positive perspective of change. Positive change orientation Orientations are typically conceived as situation-specific and malleable personal characteristics that predict behavior (see Frese, Garst, and Fay, 2007). Surprisingly little research

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exists regarding change orientation. Fay and Frese (2001) provided a rare example and found positive change orientation to be positively related to personal initiative. Fugate et al. (2012) extended their work and defined positive change orientation as a constellation of malleable individual characteristics that affects how individuals perceive and respond to change. Those who possess a high level of positive change orientation view changes optimistically, are confident in their abilities to meet the demands presented by changes, and take a more confident and active approach toward changes (see Jones, Jimmieson, and Griffiths, 2005). Defined in such a way, they argued, makes positive change orientation a “state-like” construct, one that is situation specific and amenable to development and change (see Avey et al., 2008). This means a positive change orientation is more malleable than “traits” (e.g., gender) and “trait-like” characteristics (e.g., analytical skills), but less malleable than “states” (e.g., emotions). This therefore suggests that an individual’s change orientation has important implications for employees’ appraisals of and reactions to organizational change. Positive change orientation is composed of three component dimensions – positive change self-efficacy, positive attitudes toward change, and perceived control of change (Fugate et al., 2012). As Fugate and his colleagues reasoned, given their “state-like” (i.e., malleable) nature, such characteristics make positive change orientation a practical lever for managers implementing change. Specifically, change-related selfefficacy represents the belief that one has the ability to effectively deal with change-related demands (Jimmieson, Terry, and Callan, 2004). Efficacy is likely to prompt individuals to actively engage change processes and influence their course, resulting in better change outcomes for employees. Positive attitudes toward change, like positive attitudes more generally, have been associated with desirable affect, cognitions, and behaviors (Jimmieson, White, and Zajdlewicz, 2009). Positive attitudes toward change were related to higher job satisfaction and lower intentions to quit (Wanberg and Banas, 2000). Employees with positive attitudes toward change therefore are likely to frame changes more favorably, which in turn may influence their appraisals of and reactions to changes. Finally, perceived control of change pertains to an individual’s belief that s/he can assert influence over the change process. This differs from efficacy, which speaks to one’s perceived ability to achieve desirable outcomes. For example, a manager may have the ability to determine which employees are terminated in a downsizing (high control), however the manager may feel that regardless of who is cut and how it is done that the morale of the department will suffer irreparably (low efficacy). Perceived control of change thereby reduces the negative effects of uncertainty inherent in most

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change contexts and has been associated with numerous beneficial employee reactions, such as openness to change (Wanberg and Banas, 2000) and effective coping (Terry, Callan, and Sartori, 1996). Perceived control is thus an important aspect of one’s positive change orientation. Considered together, these concepts represent the underlying dimensions of a higher-order positive change orientation construct. In this way it is akin to an organizational change-specific form of core self-evaluations (e.g., Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). Because employees with a positive change orientation are likely to frame changes more positively (positive attitudes), believe they can influence changes (perceived control), and be effective doing so (efficacy), they are likely to experience fewer or muted negative appraisals. Specifically, even if significant change-related losses occur (e.g., expected promotion is delayed) these employees’ harm appraisals should be attenuated, as they perceive the ability to create and realize new opportunities in the changed environment. Similar benefits are likely for threat appraisals, given that such individuals feel they have the ability to influence change to align with their own interests (see Ozer and Bandura, 1990). These same individuals are expected to perceive and seek opportunities due to the changes, and thus appraise them as challenging instead of threatening. Combined, these arguments lead to the following propositions: Proposition 1a: Positive change orientation is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 1b: Positive change orientation is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 1c: Positive change orientation is positively related to challenge appraisal. Positive psychological capital Positive psychological capital (PCAP) is defined as a “state-like construct that has a positive performance impact. . . can be measured, developed, and effectively managed” (Avey et al., 2008, 52–53). It is a higher-order construct composed of hope, optimism, efficacy, and resiliency. Avey and his colleagues explain that each of these component factors is associated with positive framing (i.e., cognitive appraisals) of change and productive actions (e.g., cooperation and support). Hopeful individuals, for instance, believe not only that changes will produce positive outcomes for them personally, but also that they have the means to affect such outcomes. This aspect clearly reinforces one’s efficacy, or belief that he or she is capable of realizing the goals that are hoped for. This form of efficacy is more general than the situation-specific change self-efficacy that is a component of positive

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change orientation (see Avey et al., 2008). Resilience further enhances employee positive psychological capital by fostering hardiness in the face of adversity. Those with high resiliency are likely to “bounce back” from disappointments experienced during organizational change (Luthans, 2002). Avey et al. (2008) found that PCAP was associated with increased positive emotions, attitudes, and behaviors in a sample of employees experiencing a variety of changes across multiple organizations. This supports the following propositions: Proposition 2a: Psychological capital is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 2b: Psychological capital is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 2c: Psychological capital is positively related to challenge appraisal. Employability Numerous perspectives of employability exist in the literature (e.g., Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden, 2006; Rothwell and Arnold, 2007), but only one has been tested in the context of organizational change, Fugate and Kinicki (2008). They defined employability as a constellation of individual differences that foster (pro)active adaptability toward work and careers. Individuals with high levels of employability are more likely to realize job and career opportunities both within and between organizations (see also Fugate, 2006; Fugate, Kinicki, and Ashforth, 2004). Employability is a higher-order construct comprising several component dimensions: openness to changes at work, work and career resilience, work and career proactivity, career motivation, and work identity (for a detailed explanation, see Fugate and Kinicki, 2008). As such, employability is likely to mitigate the uncertainty inherent in organizational change in many potential ways. For one, employees with high levels of employability are more likely to define themselves in terms of their work (work identity) and proactively pursue identity-consistent interests. In the context of change this means that such individuals often will be tuned into or anticipate changes and then do what is necessary to position themselves to benefit from the change. For another, those with high employability likely have other opportunities outside of their current employer (e.g., social capital, see Fugate et al., 2004), and thus may leave if the changes negatively affect them or are less desirable than external opportunities. In short, employability fosters adaptability, and such individuals are well suited for effectively managing change at work. They likely see themselves as more valuable in the marketplace and are likely seen as more valuable. Therefore those with high levels of employability should react to change more positively. This argument was supported by research that showed employability predicted increased positive

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change-related emotions and greater affective commitment (Fugate and Kinicki, 2008). The above discussion leads to the following: Proposition 3a: Employability is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 3b: Employability is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 3c: Employability is positively related to challenge appraisal. Situation antecedents of change appraisals Selection of situation antecedents considered the criticism noted by Chatman (1989) regarding interactional organizational research. She claimed that “situation characteristics have not been as accurately conceptualized as they, perhaps, could be” (334), and this shortcoming limits the precision of both person- and situation-focused research. Based on this claim, the situation antecedents discussed in this chapter are descriptive of the relationship between individual employees and their employers: change-related fairness (e.g., Fugate et al., 2012), trust in management (e.g., Mishra and Spreitzer, 1998), and perceived organizational support (Self, Armenakis, and Schraeder, 2007). By tapping the relational characteristics between employees and their employers, the conceptual basis for these relationships closely parallels social learning and interactional perspectives on person–situation relationships. These particular variables also capture the dynamism and complexity inherent in organizational change, and they are amenable to influence by managers actually enacting changes. This notable practical utility differs from situational characteristics that are beyond influence and control of employers and their managers, such as employees’ job alternatives (e.g., Feldman and Bolino, 1998) and more general economic conditions. These specific antecedents also represent important means for encouraging positive employee reactions to change. Change-related fairness When employers and their managers are perceived as considerate and just in their planning and implementation of change then employees are likely to experience change-related fairness. Employees commonly assess fairness heuristically, using observations of their own and others’ experiences. Change-related fairness reduces uncertainty related to both current and future changes (see Colquitt et al., 2006), and thus is an important tool for managers of change (Fugate et al., 2012). Judgments of change-related fairness are based on the combination of distributive, procedural, and interactional fairness perceptions. More specifically, change commonly involves both winners and losers, and distributive justice is determined in part by “who wins” and “who loses”

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(e.g., Fugate et al., 2012). How these decisions and outcomes are determined consequently affects perceptions of procedural fairness. Moreover, how managers and others who influence the change process and outcomes communicate with and treat employees (i.e., interactional justice) can meaningfully impact their reactions to change. Conceived in this way fairness is an important antecedent of employees’ appraisals of organizational change. For instance, research showed that change-related fairness reduced employees’ appraisals of threat during an organizational restructuring (Fugate et al., 2012). Spreitzer and Mishra (2002) also argued that procedural fairness reduces employees’ threat appraisals and increases their change-related engagement and commitment, interactional fairness was positively related to downsizing survivors’ attachment to the organization and support for change. Fairness therefore is likely to reduce the sense of and actual loss felt by employees experiencing change (harm appraisals), while at the same time it is likely to cause employees less appraisals of threat and more of challenge. These arguments are evident in the following propositions: Proposition 4a: Change-related fairness is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 4b: Change-related fairness is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 4c: Change-related fairness is positively related to challenge appraisal. Trust in management Trust describes an individual’s willingness to be vulnerable to others (Lewis and Weigert, 1985). In the context of organizational change, trust in management represents the belief that managers will act in employees’ best interests. This construct is composed of four dimensions: concern for employees’ interests, management’s strategic competence, management reliability, and openness and honesty (Mishra and Spreitzer, 1998). Management trustworthiness in each dimension reduces employee uncertainty related to change. In particular, a belief that management is concerned for employee well-being implies that management actions will consider implications for employees. Trust in management competence fosters the belief that change-related decisions and outcomes will be of high quality and in the organization’s and employees’ best interests. Management’s reliability gives employees confidence that what is said will be done (e.g., promises kept). Finally, openness and honesty in communication helps employees feel in control so that they can better plan their own futures. Conceived this way, trust in management is an important determinant of employees’ appraisals of change. Specifically: Proposition 5a: Trust in management is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 5b: Trust in management is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 5c: Trust in management is positively related to challenge appraisal.

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Perceived organizational support Perceived organizational support (POS) is an employee’s belief that his/her employer is concerned and committed to his/her well-being (for a review, see Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002). A positive perception of support is important during organizational change as it gives employees confidence they are valued and that management will implement change in a just fashion. Positive expectations are likely to make employees more receptive and supportive of change-related goals (Self et al., 2007). POS is positively related to a host of outcomes, such as job satisfaction, positive mood, affective commitment, and performance (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002). Conceptually, these relationships are supported by social exchange theory (e.g., Bateman and Organ, 1983) wherein positive attitudes and behaviors are exchanged for demonstrations and perceptions of organizational support. POS also is a cognitive precursor to employee evaluations of their well-being – harm, threat, and challenge appraisals. It contributes to the peace of mind that changes will not cause unnecessary disruptions in one’s daily work life, and in the extreme case, mitigates employee concerns of job loss (see Rosenblatt and Ruvio, 1996). As such, POS acts as an antecedent that reduces uncertainty and thereby decreases concerns of future losses and bolsters perceptions of potential gains. These arguments suggest the following relationships: Proposition 6a: Perceived organizational support is negatively related to harm appraisal. Proposition 6b: Perceived organizational support is negatively related to threat appraisal. Proposition 6c: Perceived organizational support is positively related to challenge appraisal. It is important to make one additional and more general point before moving to a discussion of outcomes associated with change-related appraisals. That is, the patterns of the proposed relationships are consistent, particularly for harm and threat appraisals (Table 2.1). The important difference, however, is found in the temporal distinction rather than the pattern. To elaborate, if employee appraisals of harm are more prevalent or stronger than those of threat, then managers can conclude that employees are more concerned with what already happened instead of what might happen. Managers of change can then determine and implement the appropriate interventions, such as explanations and acts of compensation (to remedy past losses) instead of greater communication and assurances of job security to mitigate potential threats. The implications are similar for the converse.

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Outcomes of employee appraisals of change While change-related appraisals undoubtedly predict a multitude of subsequent outcomes relevant to both employees and employers, two particular categories are explored in this chapter – employee emotions and withdrawal. Emotions provide greater detail of an individual’s experiences of change than more molar appraisals. Put another way, and described below, multiple emotions are associated with each form of appraisal. Emotions thereby provide the affective color of employees’ experiences of organizational change (e.g., Fugate et al., 2008). They also have been found to predict employee engagement with change (e.g., Smollan and Sayer, 2009). Employee withdrawal is another important outcome, because it is often a clandestine cost of change, such as the voluntary turnover of key employees or the decreased engagement and commitment of downsizing survivors (Fugate et al., 2012). Relationships between change appraisals and these outcomes are described next and included in Table 2.1. Change appraisals and emotions Emotions are episodic states with a particular focus or target and provide very useful, granular details about individuals’ experiences (Watson and Clark, 1994). Organizational researchers in the past several years have substantiated the importance of emotions in the context of organizational change, particularly negative emotions. Kiefer (2005) found that perceptions of future insecurity, perceptions of inadequate working conditions, and perceptions of inadequate treatment were associated with negative emotions for employees of merged companies. Scheck and Kinicki (2000) also found negative appraisals of an acquired company’s employees generated both anger and sadness. Negative appraisals of change were associated with negative emotions during a restructuring (Fugate, Harrison, and Kinicki, 2011). While rare, other organizational research shows that change often generates both positive and negative emotional reactions for affected individuals (e.g., Fugate et al., 2002). This is consistent with other emotions research. Larsen, McGraw et al. (2004) showed that people experience both positive and negative (i.e., mixed) emotions when they “win” and when they “lose.” They convincingly show that even wins often have a measure of disappointment or negativity, and losses commonly include some amount of relief. These findings have especially important implications for employees’ change-related emotions. For example, employees whose jobs are restructured such that they must collaborate with different people may simultaneously be sad

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about no longer working with their former colleagues, but excited about the new relationships. Moreover, considering both negative and positive emotional reactions provides a more comprehensive account of the “affective color” of individual experiences of change (see Fugate and Kinicki, 2008). It therefore is useful in both theory and practice to consider the relationships between change appraisals and negative and positive emotions. Consistent with the research reviewed in the previous paragraph, negative appraisals (harm and threat) of change are likely positively related to negative emotions and negatively related to positive emotions (see also Fugate et al., 2008). Although not substantiated by organizational change research, with the exception of Kohler et al. (2006), it is reasonable to expect that challenge appraisals of change are negatively related to negative employee reactions, such as negative emotions, and positively related to positive emotions (see Folkman and Lazarus, 1985). These concurrent relationships are well established in multiple literatures, and while they are informative, a significant gap in research and practice still exists. Notably, emotions not only have valence (positive and negative), but they also have a temporal aspect (Giaever, 2009). Negatively and positively valenced emotions are either retrospectively or prospectively focused. Folkman and Lazarus (1985) describe this in some detail in their study of students taking exams, but no organizational scholars to my knowledge have explored this distinction conceptually or empirically. For example, fear and anger are both negatively valenced. However, people are fearful of potential future events (prospective focus) and are angry about past (non) events (retrospective focus). These negative emotions therefore represent very different experiences beyond their negative valence. This parallels the retrospective and anticipatory nature of appraisals of change noted earlier – harm is retrospective while threat and challenge are prospective. Such temporal aspects are especially important in the context of organizational change, as change is a process that unfolds over time (Giaever, 2009). And research shows that as the process unfolds employees’ experiences and reactions also unfold or change. It was shown that in the context of a merger employees’ changerelated appraisals, coping, and emotions all changed significantly over a ten-month time period (e.g., Fugate et al., 2002). This chapter therefore lays the conceptual groundwork for future research and practice regarding the temporal focus of change-related appraisals and emotions. A broad survey of the literature revealed eighteen commonly studied discrete emotions (e.g., Carver and Scheier, 1994; Folkman and Lazarus, 1985). Positive retrospective emotions are: pleasure, happiness, and relief. Positive prospective emotions are: confidence,

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exhilaration, eagerness, and hopefulness. Negative retrospective emotions are: guilt, anger, frustration, disappointment, depression, and sadness. Negative prospective emotions are: worry, fear, anxiety, and helplessness. Drawing on the above research and the work of Folkman and Lazarus (1985) and Carver and Scheier (1994), the following relationships are expected between change appraisals and emotions: Proposition 7a: Harm appraisals of change are positively related to guilt, anger, frustration, disappointment, depression, and sadness. Proposition 7b: Threat appraisals of change are positively related to worry, fear, anxiety, and helplessness. Proposition 7c: Challenge appraisals of change are positively related to confidence, exhilaration, eagerness, and hopefulness. These proposed relationships are especially important for both research and practice. For research, adding this temporal aspect provides more precision to the appraisal theory of emotions. Whether emotions precede, are caused by, or are reciprocally related to appraisals, the prospective– retrospective nature allows researchers to make more specific predictions between particular appraisals and discrete emotions. Including these temporal characteristics enables future researchers to refine and extend theory. Doing so also will better inform practice. As noted previously, anticipatory or prospective emotions provide managers of change insights into employees’ concerns about the future, and retrospective emotions can guide remedies for past change-related losses. In both cases, emotions provide greater fidelity and richness regarding employees’ experience of change (see Fugate et al., 2011, 2012). Change appraisals and employee withdrawal Cognitive and behavioral forms of employee withdrawal (Hanisch and Hulin, 1991) are important organizational change-related outcomes. Since appraisals are cognitive precursors of behavior, it is valuable to address the relationships between employee change-related appraisals and different forms of withdrawal, such as absenteeism (behavioral), intentions to quit (cognitive), and voluntary turnover (behavioral). Understanding these relationships is important because withdrawal (e.g., voluntary turnover) is a common and potentially very costly negative consequence of organizational change (e.g., Kiefer, 2005; Probst, 2003). The theory of reasoned action (TRA; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) is the conceptual basis for the relationship between change-related appraisals and employee withdrawal (cognitive and behavioral). TRA is a motivational theory based on expectancy theory and posits that behavior is a

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function of one’s intentions which are determined by individual differences and situation factors (Miller and Grush, 1988). Applied to employee withdrawal, individuals are motivated to avoid or mitigate harm or threats due to changes at work, or conversely motivated to pursue or realize benefits and challenges. In either case, avoidance or approach motivations related to organizational change often manifest as intentions and actual behaviors (see Jimmieson et al., 2009). Supporting research in the context of a restructuring showed employees’ threat appraisals were positively related to absenteeism and intentions to quit (Fugate et al., 2012). Fugate and his colleagues (2012) describe various forms of employee withdrawal from change “as a matter of degree, with voluntary turnover the most extreme and absenteeism less dramatic or complete” (898). Applying the approach/avoidance motivation perspective (e.g., Park and Hinsz, 2006) leads to the following propositions: Proposition 8a: Harm appraisals of change are positively related to employee withdrawal (absenteeism, disengagement, intentions to quit, and voluntary turnover). Proposition 8b: Threat appraisals of change are positively related to employee withdrawal (absenteeism, disengagement, intentions to quit, and voluntary turnover). Proposition 8c: Challenge appraisals of change are negatively related to employee withdrawal (absenteeism, disengagement, intentions to quit, and voluntary turnover).

The nature of change-related antecedents and outcome relationships The discussion to this point includes only direct and fully mediated relationships between antecedents, processes, and outcomes. While space precludes a detailed explication of other feasible relationships and structures (e.g., partially mediated structural models), it is important to acknowledge at least a couple of possibilities for researchers to consider in the future. Specifically, assume that the person and situation antecedents are higher-order latent constructs, which may be dubious to construct validity purists but reasonable given their clear positive nature (see Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). Then, both antecedents are expected to have beneficial relationships with employees’ changerelated emotions and withdrawal. Alternatively, many or even most of the antecedents are likely to have individual relationships with the particular outcomes. Existing research helps inform such predictions. For instance, Fugate et al. (2008) showed that both positive and negative change-related emotions were directly related to employee withdrawal

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(absenteeism and intentions to quit), but the relationship with voluntary turnover was fully mediated via intentions to quit. They also showed that the relationship between negative appraisals of change and voluntary turnover was fully mediated through coping, emotions, and intentions to quit. Discussion This chapter presents a conceptual explication of key components that represent employees’ experience of organizational change. The intent is to highlight important person and situation antecedents, explain their effect on the cognitive appraisal process of change, and describe subsequent relationships with affective (emotions), cognitive (intentions to quit), and behavioral (absenteeism and voluntary turnover) outcomes. The antecedents include only those that are positive, malleable or amenable to change, and thereby provide greater practical utility for managers of change than relatively uncontrollable variables often studied in previous research, such as personality traits and economic conditions. In so doing, this chapter presents a decidedly positive perspective on organizational change research and practice. Central to the systems approach to change explained herein are changerelated appraisals. As described, appraisals are critical underlying cognitive processes that capture the intersection of person and situation factors, ascribe meaning to changes, and predict subsequent outcomes. The outcomes selected inform well known but largely ignored (for exceptions see Fugate et al., 2012; Kiefer 2005) implications of change – emotions and withdrawal. Emotions not only represent very telling manifestations of underlying appraisals, but they also provide keen insights into the variability and affective color of employees’ experience of change (Fugate et al., 2011; Fugate et al., 2008). As for withdrawal, this chapter explores several forms that separately or together are critical determinants of the success of organizational change. The best laid plans for change are executed by employees. Thus any degree of withdrawal can impede change success. In the following sections, some of the key implications of the proposed relationships are described, as well as some important considerations for future organizational change research and practice. Relative strength of person and situation antecedents of change appraisals If individual behavior is a function of both the person and the situation, then it is of practical utility to determine which more strongly predicts change appraisals. Why? Because the distinction enables employers to

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more effectively allocate resources and manage employee reactions. (To the author’s knowledge, no previous research addresses this question in any setting.) To elaborate, if person factors are more important (i.e., stronger) than situation factors in predicting appraisals of organizational change, then employers might focus on employee attributes and conventional human resource management tools (e.g., selection, placement, and training) to manage employee reactions to change. For instance, selecting employees that possess a positive change orientation, positive psychological capital, and high employability may be an effective long-term strategy to simultaneously boost employees’ challenge appraisals and reduce negative appraisals (harm and threat) of change. Conversely, if situation factors such as change-related fairness, trust in management, and perceived organizational support account for more variance in harm, threat, and challenge appraisals then management might instead focus on how it relates to employees and tend to other factors, such as management styles, change-related communication, and supportive employee policies. Taking the above assertion a step further, it is likely that situation factors will have a greater impact on appraisals than person factors. This supposition is justified using the threat–rigidity perspective (Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton, 1981), attributes of work transitions (Ashforth and Fugate, 2001), and the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). The threat–rigidity thesis is based on the notion that organizations often respond to demanding or crisis situations by constraining communications and asserting more control and becoming less flexible (Staw et al., 1981). Organizations do this to reduce environmental uncertainty (e.g., employee and competitor reactions), control what they can (e.g., information), and to serve their own interests more generally (e.g., prevent blocking coalitions). Organizational rigidity, however, in turn causes employees to feel threatened as a lack of communication increases their own uncertainty, and organizational constraints limit their own control and options for responding to demands. For example, a common change scenario is one in which a small group of senior leaders reacts to an undesirable piece of information (e.g., decreased profits); the leaders then decide change is needed to remedy the situation; formulates a high-level, less-than-detailed plan (e.g., reduce headcount by 20 percent to manage costs); and then hands ‘marching orders’ to lower-level managers who must execute the prescribed change. Information flows and employee involvement are minimal, employees feel they have little influence or control, and challenge appraisals are muted and negative appraisals amplified (see Brockner et al., 2004). This scenario represents very powerful situational influences on change appraisals (largely) independent of any person effects.

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Above and beyond the threat rigidity effects imposed by the situation, organizational changes often include a number of transition attributes noted by Ashforth and Fugate (2001). Many attributes either facilitate or impede change effectiveness, such as change magnitude (large differences between old and new states), (in)voluntariness (amount of personal discretion or influence), and (ir)reversibility (permanent or not and to what degree). Obviously any change that results in involuntary turnover represents the highest magnitude and likely the most harm appraisal inducing change scenario, while those that provide new and desirable opportunities have the potential to support challenge appraisals. In a similar vein, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) described several situational determinants of appraisal, such as novelty, imminence, and duration. Novel situational demands are those with which employees have no prior experience. They thus require more effort and generate greater threat for some employees and challenge for others. The difference is the extent to which individual employees value new experiences and their perceptions of their ability to meet the novel demands (secondary appraisal; Skinner and Brewer, 2002). Imminence refers to the urgency of the demand or the time between the initial announcement and subsequent implementation of changes. Imminence is exacerbated when employees have little or no involvement in the change formulation. Finally, duration describes the amount of time that employees are exposed to the demands of change. Undesirable consequences that are short-lived are likely to be less harm (and threat) inducing. It is much easier for employees to cope with unpleasant changes if they know they are finite. Again, these characteristics are embedded in the situation, are beyond employee influence, offer little or no choice to employees, and thus are likely to intensify threat appraisals regardless of individual differences (see Mischel, 1999). Collectively, threat rigidity behaviors, change transition attributes, and relevant situation characteristics constitute potentially powerful determinants of change appraisals. That said, both person and situation factors are expected to influence appraisals of organizational change, and understanding the various malleable antecedents can provide practical levers for influencing employee reactions and outcomes. Future research needs to empirically validate these assertions. It also is important to determine whether any particular variable moderates, mediates, or directly affects change-related appraisals and/or outcomes. Causality, timing, and consequences Empirical research is needed to determine the appropriate structure of the relationships between the antecedents, processes, and outcomes included

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in this chapter. Such evidence is necessary to establish both the research and practical relevance of the propositions presented. To guide such future efforts, some notable considerations are highlighted here. Methodological details aside (e.g., experimental designs and structural relationships), it first is crucial to consider the context of a particular study and the sequence of change events. The timing of change-related communications, actual changes, and measurement of study variables are essential determinants of the appropriate causal sequence of the antecedents, processes, and outcomes noted in this chapter. For instance, emotions may be predictors of subsequent withdrawal behaviors but concurrent with intentions to quit (withdrawal cognitions). Emotion– outcome relationships may be moderated by individual and/or situation factors. Researchers also have long debated the sequence of the appraisal– emotions relationship – some arguing that appraisal precedes emotions (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984) and others that emotions generate appraisal (Zajonc, 1980). More recent research, in both neuroscience (Schulkin, Thompson, and Rosen, 2003) and organizations (Fugate et al., 2011), however shows that appraisals and emotions are reciprocally related. Therefore researchers are urged to carefully consider the context and timing of measurement in their hypotheses and tests of variables relevant to employees’ experience of change. Collectively, these elements determine the structure and nature of relationships between focal variables. Applying research to practice The plastic or changeable nature of the state-like antecedents discussed in this chapter provides practical levers for managers of change. Positive change orientation, for example, consists of change self-efficacy, which research has shown can be increased via interventions in the workplace (Bandura, 1977). Managers of change can involve employees in the change process, planning, and implementation (see Korsgaard et al., 2002), which research shows fosters more positive employee reactions. Building efficacy builds control and helps mitigate the pervasive uncertainty that afflicts many change initiatives. Developing and communicating a vision for change, and articulating individual employees’ roles during and after the change process, can enhance positive reactions. This includes communicating potential consequences (positive and negative) for compliance and resistance (e.g., Jimmieson et al., 2004). Positive psychological capital and employability are both opportunities for employers to develop employees and positively affect change reactions and outcomes. Multiple avenues are available. Employers, for instance, may choose to select individuals with high levels of employability

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(see Fugate and Kinicki, 2008), as they are proactive and adaptable. Or, they may choose to develop employability competencies once onboard and build employees’ occupational expertise (e.g., relevant job and industry knowledge) and job optimization (e.g., making the most of one’s skills and opportunities in a given job) (Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden, 2006). Doing so serves to build employee efficacy and reduce change-related uncertainty. Additionally, optimism and resilience – facets of positive psychological capital – can be fostered by framing and communicating change initiatives in a positive manner. Articulating clear roles and responsibilities for individual employees in the new, changed organization should promote optimism. Similar actions are likely to help employees cope effectively and bounce back from adversity, especially when changes are drastic and many employees are terminated (Avey et al., 2008). More generally, employability and positive psychological capital are modern forms of human capital in the new employee–employer contract. And like more typical forms of capital, investment in human capital is likely to pay dividends to employers in the form of higher engagement, productivity, and retention.

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Cooper, C., P. Dewe, and M. O’Driscoll (2001), Organizational Stress: A Review and Critique of Theory, Research, and Application (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Colquitt, J. A., B. A. Scott, T. A. Judge, and J. C. Shaw (2006), “Justice and personality: Using integrative theories to derive moderators of justice effects,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100, 110–127. De Cuyper, N., H. Witte, T. Van der Elst, and Y. Handaja (2010), “Objective threat of unemployment and situational uncertainty during a restructuring: Associations with perceived job insecurity and strain,” Journal of Business and Psychology, 25, 75–85. Dewe, P. (1991), “Primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, and coping: Their role in stressful work encounters,” Journal of Occupational Psychology, 64, 331–351. Donovan, R. J., G. Egger, V. Kapernick, and J. Mendoza (2002), “A conceptual framework for achieving performance enhancing drug compliance in sport,” Sports Medicine, 32, 269–284. Fay, D. and M. Frese (2001), “The concept of personal initiative: An overview of validity studies,” Human Performance, 14, 97–124. Feldman, D. C. and M. C. Bolino (1998), “Moving on out: When are employees willing to follow their organization during corporate relocation?,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 19, 275–289. Folkman, S. and R. S. Lazarus (1985), “If it changes it must be a process: Study of emotion and coping during three stages of a college examination,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 150–170. Frese, M., H. Garst, and D. Fay (2007), “Making things happen: Reciprocal relationships between work characteristics and personal initiative in a fourwave longitudinal structural equation model,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1084–1102. Fugate, M. (2006), “New perspectives on employability,” in J. Greenhaus and G. Callanan (eds.), Encyclopedia of Career Development (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 267–270. Fugate, M., S. Harrison, and A. J. Kinicki (2011), “Thoughts and feelings about organizational change: A field test of synchronous reciprocal relationships in appraisal theory,” Journal of Organizational and Leadership Studies, 18, 421–437. Fugate, M., and A. J. Kinicki (2008), “A dispositional approach to employability: Development of a measure and test of its implications for employee reactions to organizational change,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 81, 503–527. Fugate, M., A. J. Kinicki, and B. E. Ashforth (2004), “Employability: A psychosocial construct, its dimensions, and applications,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, 14–38. Fugate, M., A. J. Kinicki, and G. P. Prussia (2008), “Employee coping with organizational change: An examination of alternative theoretical perspectives and models,” Personnel Psychology, 61, 1–36. Fugate, M., A. Kinicki, and C. Scheck (2002), “Coping with an organizational merger over four stages,” Personnel Psychology, 55, 905–928. Fugate, M., G. E. Prussia, and A. J. Kinicki (2012), “Managing employee withdrawal during organizational change: The role of threat appraisal,” Journal of Management, 38, 890–914.

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Giaever, F. (2009), “Looking forwards and back: Exploring anticipative versus retrospective emotional change-experiences,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 419–434. Griffin, M. A. (2007), “Specifying organizational contexts: Systematic links between contexts and processes in organizational behavior,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28, 859–863. Hanisch, K. A. and C. L. Hulin (1991), “General attitudes and organizational withdrawal: An evaluation of a causal model,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 39, 110–128. Jimmieson, N. L., D. Terry, and V. J. Callan (2004), “A longitudinal study of employee adaptation to organizational change: The role of change-related information and change-related self-efficacy,” Journal of Occupational Health and Psychology, 9, 11–27. Jimmieson, N. L., K. White, and L. Zagadlewicz (2009), “Psychosocial predictors of intentions to engage in changed supportive behaviors in an organizational context,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 233–250. Jones, R. A., N. L. Jimmieson, and A. Griffiths (2005), “The impact of organizational culture and reshaping capabilities on change implementation success: The mediating role of readiness for change,” Journal of Management Studies, 42, 361–386. Judge, T. A. and J. D. Kammeyer-Mueller (2012), “General and specific measures in organizational behavior research: Considerations, examples, and recommendations for research,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33, 161–174. Kast, F. E. and J. E. Rosenzweig (1972), “General system theory: applications for organization and management,” Academy of Management Journal, 14, 447–465. Kiefer, T. (2005), “Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative emotions in ongoing change,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 875–897. Kohler, J. M., D. C. Munz, and M. J. Grawitch (2006), “Test of the dynamic stress model for organizational change: Do males and females require different models?,” Journal of Applied Psychology: An International Review, 55, 168–191. Korsgaard, M. A., S. E. Brodt, and E. M. Whitener (2002), “Trust in the face of conflict: The role of managerial trustworthy behavior in organizational contexts,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 312–319. Larsen, J. T., A. P. McGraw, B. A. Mellers, and J. T. Cacioppo (2004), “The agony of victory and thrill of defeat,” Psychological Science, 15, 325–330. Lazarus, R. and S. Folkman (1984), Stress, Appraisal, and Coping (New York: Springer). Lewis, J. and A. Weigert (1985), “Trust as a social reality,” Social Forces, 63, 967–986. Luthans, F. (2002), “The need for and meaning of positive organizational behavior,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 695–706. Miller, L. and J. Grush (1988), “Improving predictions in expectancy theory research: Effects of personality, expectations, and norms,” Academy of Management Journal, 31, 107–122. Mischel, W. (1999), “Implications of person–situation interaction: Getting over the field’s borderline personality disorder,” European Journal of Personality, 13, 455–461.

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Mishra, A. and G. Spreitzer (1998), “Explaining how survivors respond to downsizing: The roles of trust, empowerment, justice, and work redesign,” Academy of Management Review, 23, 567–588. Moos, R., C. Holahan, and L. Beutler (2003), “Dispositional and contextual perspectives on coping: Introduction to the special issue,” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59, 1257–1259. Oreg, S. (2003), “Resistance to change: Developing an individual differences measure,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 680–693. Ozer, E. and A. Bandura (1990), “Mechanisms governing empowerment effects: A self-efficacy analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 472–486. Park, E. S. and V. B. Hinsz (2006), “‘Strength and safety in numbers’: A theoretical perspective on group influences on approach and avoidance motivation,” Motivation and Emotion, 30, 135–142. Probst, T. M. (2003), “Exploring employee outcomes of an organizational restructuring,” Group and Organization Management, 28, 416–439. Rhoades, L. and R. Eisenberger (2002), “Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 698–714. Rosenblatt, Z. and A. Ruvio (1996), “A test of a multidimensional model of job insecurity: The case of Israeli teachers,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17, 587–605. Rothwell, A. and J. Arnold (2007), “Self-perceived employability: Development and validation of the scale,” Personnel Review, 36, 23–41. Scheck, C. and A. Kinicki (2000), “Identifying antecedents of coping with an organizational acquisition: A structural assessment,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 627–648. Schneider, B. (1987), “The people make the place,” Personnel Psychology, 40, 437–453. Schneider, T. R., S. E. Rivers, and J. B. Lyons (2009), “The biobehavioral model of persuasion: Generating challenge appraisals to promote health,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39, 1928–1952. Schulkin, J., B. L. Thompson, and J. B. Rosen (2003), “Demythologizing the emotions: Adaptation, cognition, and visceral representations of emotion in the nervous system,” Brain and Cognition, 52, 15–23. Self, D. R., A. A. Armenakis, and M. Schraeder (2007), “Organizational change content, process, and context: A simultaneous analysis of employee reactions,” Journal of Change Management, 2, 211–229. Skinner, N. and N. Brewer (2002), “The dynamics of threat and challenge appraisals prior to stressful achievement events,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 678–692. Smollan, R. K. and J. G. Sayers (2009), “Organizational culture, change, and emotions: A qualitative study,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 435–457. Spreitzer, G. and A. Mishra (2002), “To stay or to go: Voluntary survivor turnover following an organizational downsizing,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 707–729. Staw, B., L. Sandelands, and J. Dutton (1981), “Threat–rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 26, 501–524.

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Terry, D. J., V. J. Callan, and G. Sartori (1996), “Employee adjustment to an organizational merger: Stress, coping, and intergroup differences,” Stress Medicine, 12, 105–122. Van der Heijde, C. M. and B. I. J. M. Van der Heijden (2006), “A competence-based and multidimensional operationalization and measurement of employability,” Human Resource Management, 45, 449–476. Wanberg, C. and J. Banas (2000), “Predictors and outcomes of openness to changes in a reorganizing workplace,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 132–142. Watson, D. and L. A. Clark (1994), “Emotions, moods, traits, and temperaments: Conceptual distinctions and empirical findings,” in P. Ekman and R. J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (New York: Oxford University Press), 89–93. Zajonc, R. B. (1980), “Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences,” American Psychologist, 35, 151–175. Zuckerman, M. B. (2011), “Why the jobs situation is worse than it looks,” US News and World Report, June 20 (downloaded August 27, 2011 from: www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2011/06/20/why-the-jobssituation-is-worse-than-it-looks).

Part II

The nature of employees’ reactions to change

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Commitment to organizational change: theory, research, principles, and practice John P. Meyer and Leah K. Hamilton

In this chapter, we address the paradox of commitment and change in organizations today (Meyer, 2009). On the one hand, it has been argued that the ubiquity and magnitude of change taking place in organizations undermines their ability and desire to establish committed relationships with employees (e.g., Baruch, 1998; Cappelli, 1999). On the other hand, change experts (e.g., Bennis, 2000; Connor, 1993) note that the success of any organizational change, large or small, requires the commitment of those responsible for its implementation – employees. Is this an insurmountable problem, or can organizations have it both ways (see Chapter 11 in this volume, for a comparable discussion of the compatibility of “fit” and change)? To address this question, we begin by examining what we mean by commitment. In particular, we draw on a large body of evidence demonstrating that employee commitment is a multifaceted concept that can be experienced in different ways and be directed at different entities. Although much of the early theory and research focused on commitment to organizations and its implications for employee retention and job performance, it is now becoming clear that employees develop other commitments such as to their units, customers, and projects – including change initiatives. Although these commitments tend to be interconnected, each can have its own unique implications and may vary in importance, depending on circumstances. In the remainder of this chapter, we focus attention on commitment to organizational change initiatives and its implications for successful implementation. Following a discussion of the theory of commitment, we provide a summary of research findings with the objective of developing an evidence-based framework to guide the management of organizational change.

Preparation of this chapter was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the first author.

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What is commitment? Like many of the important terms we use in daily conversations without need for explanation, commitment has been difficult to define for purposes of scientific investigation. Early investigators agreed that employee commitment was important from the standpoint of retention, but did not always agree on what commitment was or how it developed. In their analysis of this early theory and research, Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997) observed that there were three themes inherent in the way commitment was defined, one reflecting an affective attachment to the organization (e.g., Mowday, Porter, and Steers, 1982), another reflecting the perceived cost of discontinuing membership in the organization (e.g., Becker, 1960), and the third reflecting a sense of obligation to remain (e.g., Weiner, 1982). Rather than choose among them, Meyer and Allen noted that they all reflected legitimate ways in which commitment to organizations might be experienced. Consequently, they developed what has come to be known as the three-component model of commitment, with each component reflecting a different psychological state, or mindset. In their pure forms, they were referred to as affective commitment (desire to remain), continuance commitment (perceived costs of leaving), and normative commitment (felt obligation to remain). However, Meyer and Allen also noted that these mindsets were not mutually exclusive and that each could be experienced to varying degrees. Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) expanded on this last point by describing how the components combine to create a commitment profile. One of the most important findings to emerge from research pertaining to the three-component model was that, although they all tie an employee to the organization and reduce the likelihood of turnover, the implications of the three mindsets for on-the-job behavior can be quite different. This difference becomes most apparent for discretionary forms of behavior. For example, employees with a strong affective commitment are more likely to go beyond the minimum performance requirements than are employees whose link to the organization is based primarily on continuance commitment. This difference becomes particularly important as jobs become more complex and employees are given greater discretion on how and when things get done. In the decade leading up to the turn of the millennium, organizations came under increasing pressure to improve efficiency and cut costs to remain competitive (Baruch, 1998). Many of these efficiencies were achieved through staff reductions, and this created considerable uncertainty in the workforce. Consequently, as noted above, some analysts began to question the relevance of employee commitment in an era of

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change. This posed a dilemma for organizations for at least two reasons. First, many of the benefits derived from a committed workforce – most notably the willingness to go beyond minimum performance requirements – continued to be important. Second, change experts invariably argued for the importance of buy-in – or commitment – from those responsible for implementing it. Meyer and Herscovitch (2001; Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002) argued that the three-component model could be applied to understand the nature, development, and consequences of any commitment, including commitment to change initiatives. They defined commitment as a force (mindset) that binds an individual to a target and/or a course of action of relevance to that target. In the case of commitment to change, the change initiative is the target and the course of action refers to behaviors required to make that change successful. As was the case for commitment to organizations, Meyer and Herscovitch argued that the nature of the mindset accompanying the commitment will have important implications for how it is enacted. We elaborate on this proposition and provide supporting evidence in the next section.

Why is commitment to change important? Over the last decade, the body of research investigating the consequences of commitment to change has grown considerably. Among the most commonly studied outcomes are compliance with the change, discretionary support for the change, employee retention, and job satisfaction. Compliance refers to doing what is asked by the organization in terms of behavior change. Although potentially important, compliance may not be sufficient to achieve success. For example, in the case of complex change, it might be difficult to specify all of the behavior changes that are required. Similarly, as the change unfolds, it may become apparent that some of the initial recommendations for change are not effective; consequently it would be best for employees to “learn as they go” and adapt their behavior to achieve the desired objectives of the change. “Mere compliance” with the requirements for change (i.e., doing exactly what is asked and no more: Meyer et al., 2007) could undermine the effectiveness of the change. Discretionary support for the change involves going beyond what is required, with the objective of doing what is needed to make the change work. Retention has been examined as a potential outcome of commitment to a change because unanticipated employee turnover in response to a change could seriously undermine its success, especially if those who leave are key employees. Finally, job satisfaction has been the focus of

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attention because it is linked to retention (Tett and Meyer, 1993) and is important to employees themselves. In a preliminary test of the three-component model of commitment to change, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) compared the level of support for ongoing changes encountered by nurses in a variety of settings. They found that nurses with strong affective commitment to a change reported high levels of both compliance and discretionary support for the change (e.g., making extra effort concerning the change; encouraging others to support the change). Similar findings were obtained in subsequent studies (e.g., Baraldi et al., 2010; Meyer et al., 2007; Michaelis, Stegmaier, and Sonntag, 2009). Interestingly, Meyer et al. found that affective commitment to the change was positively associated with general compliance behavior, but negatively associated with mere compliance. Note that, while general compliance does not preclude further discretionary support, mere compliance does. The positive outcomes associated with affective commitment to a change extend beyond compliance and discretionary support for the change. Indeed, researchers have found that affective commitment has a positive association with job satisfaction (Hinduan et al., 2009; Rafferty and Restubog, 2010; Sverke et al., 2008) and a negative association with turnover intentions (Cunningham, 2006; Hinduan et al., 2009; Neves, 2009; Neves and Caetano, 2009; Rafferty and Restubog, 2010; Sverke et al., 2008). Rafferty and Restubog’s findings are particularly interesting because they used a longitudinal design to examine reactions to a merger in a Philippine property and development firm. They found that affective commitment to the change at the time of the merger announcement was positively correlated with job satisfaction and negatively correlated with turnover intentions seven months later during implementation. Moreover, job satisfaction and turnover intentions during implementation predicted voluntary turnover behavior after the merger was complete. Parish et al. (2008) found that affective commitment to change was positively associated with employee ratings of individual learning, improved performance, and the success of the implementation. Other studies using measures similar in content to Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) affective commitment to change scale have provided evidence linking commitment to additional outcomes. For example, in a study of employees in a volunteer political action and service-based organization, Neubert and Cady (2001) demonstrated that commitment to a new program initiative was positively related to level of participation in the program and program-relevant performance, both within and across time. Similarly, in a study of eleven police departments moving toward a community-policing strategy, Ford, Weissbein, and Plamondon

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(2003) found that officers’ commitment to the new strategy was positively related to the frequency of their community-policing-type behavior (e.g., attending youth programs; making presentations to the community). Although it has received less attention, the findings regarding normative commitment to change have been somewhat similar to those for affective commitment. Specifically, normative commitment was found to be positively related to compliance with change and discretionary support for change (Baraldi et al., 2010; Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002; Meyer et al., 2007; Michaelis, Stegmaier, and Sonntag, 2010), and negatively associated with mere compliance with change requirements (Meyer et al., 2007) and turnover intentions (Cunningham, 2006; Hinduan et al., 2009). Parish et al. (2008) found that normative commitment to change was positively related to individual learning during the change process. The findings regarding continuance commitment to change have been less positive. Consistent with research on organizational commitment (see Meyer et al., 2002), continuance commitment to change is unrelated, or even negatively related, to desired outcomes. For example, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) found that continuance commitment related positively to compliance behavior, but was unrelated to discretionary support for the change, while Baraldi et al. (2010) found that continuance commitment was negatively related to discretionary support among Pakistani public service employees. In a longitudinal study conducted with employees in a Canadian utility company, Meyer et al. (2007) found that continuance commitment related negatively to discretionary support on two separate occasions, and that continuance commitment very early in the change process was associated with a reduction of support eight months into the initiative. In a second study with managers undergoing a large-scale restructuring in India, they found that continuance commitment to the change was negatively related to discretionary support and positively related to mere compliance. Although less attention has been paid to the broader implications of continuance commitment to change, there is evidence to suggest that it is positively correlated with turnover intentions (Cunningham, 2006). In sum, regardless of its form, commitment typically leads to compliance with explicit requirements for change. However, the extent to which employees go beyond what is minimally required of them and engage in discretionary behaviors that support the change effort depends on the nature of their commitment to the change. High levels of affective and normative commitment to a change are associated with a willingness to engage in discretionary behaviors and intention to remain with the organization – continuance commitment to change relates negatively to these outcomes.

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Development of commitment Efforts to identify factors contributing to the development of commitment to change are increasing but still somewhat unsystematic. In this section, we review research findings as they pertain to four key questions: Are some individuals more likely to commit to a change than others? How does the context surrounding the change influence the nature and strength of employees’ commitment? What features of the change process are instrumental in fostering commitment? How does the perceived impact of the change affect employees’ commitment to its success? Individual differences Individual employees are likely to differ in the way they react to change (Armenakis and Harris, 2009; Judge et al., 1999), and therefore some investigators have tried to identify individual differences linked to commitment. Chen and Wang (2007) conducted one of the first of these investigations, using a sample of Chinese customer service staff experiencing change in their performance appraisal system. They found that internal locus of control was positively associated with affective and normative commitment to a change and negatively associated with continuance commitment. Thus, a generalized belief that one has control over one’s actions and outcomes may contribute to a more positive orientation to change, whereas the tendency to feel controlled by external forces might lead one to focus attention on the potential costs of failing to comply. Bernerth et al. (2007) reasoned that employees who are cynical about organizational change in general are likely to have doubts about the success of any particular initiative and are therefore unlikely to develop a positive commitment. Indeed, in their investigation of the spin-off of a durable goods manufacturer from its parent company, they found that cynicism was negatively correlated with affective commitment to the change. Walker, Armenakis, and Bernerth (2007) posited that individuals who are more tolerant of ambiguity should react better to the uncertainty inherent in organizational change efforts. As expected, they found a positive correlation between tolerance for ambiguity and affective commitment. Moreover, they found that tolerance for ambiguity was negatively related to cynicism, and that the relation between cynicism and affective commitment was mediated by beliefs about the potential effectiveness of the specific change initiative. It has also been proposed that employees who feel more capable of meeting the demands of a change – those with higher self-efficacy – will develop

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greater willingness to work toward its success. Herold, Fedor, and Caldwell (2007) tested this hypothesis in a sample of employees from twenty-five different organizations undergoing a variety of changes. They found that self-efficacy beliefs were positively related to commitment to the change (operationalized as effort or intention to support the change).1 Interestingly, they found that the relation between self-efficacy and commitment was strongest when employees were experiencing a number of overlapping changes – what they described as “change turbulence.” It is possible that turbulence increases the demand on employees and makes differences in self-efficacy beliefs more relevant. The role of self-efficacy in commitment to change was also examined by Hornung and Rousseau (2007) in a US hospital implementing a structural change. In both within-time and longitudinal analyses, Hornung and Rousseau found support for their proposition that job autonomy contributes to higher self-efficacy regarding one’s role, which subsequently leads to commitment to change. Finally, although one might expect dispositional resistance (Oreg, 2003) to relate negatively to commitment to change, particularly affective commitment, Foster (2010) found that it did not relate significantly to any of the three components for employees in three US-based companies. Although this is only one study, it suggests that even a general predisposition to resist change might be overcome through effective management practices.

Change context Change happens in a context and some contexts are likely to be more conducive than others to the development of commitment. We focus here on four context features that have been investigated as potential antecedents of commitment to change: change history, organizational leadership, trust in management, and employee commitment to the organization. Commitment to change can be affected by both an organization’s change history (e.g., frequency and success of earlier change initiatives) and the individuals’ personal history (i.e., personal experiences with change in the current or a former organization). Cook, Horner, and Payne (2008) examined individuals’ perceptions of how frequently 1

Although behavioural intentions are typically considered consequences of commitment rather than commitment per se, we included this and other studies (e.g., Fedor, Caldwell, and Herold, 2006) that used this measure because of their methodological sophistication, and because of the strong empirical link between commitment, particularly affective commitment, and such intentions.

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change occurs in their organization. Among 142 food services employees, perceptions of change frequency were positively related to both normative and continuance commitment to the change (but not to affective commitment). Moreover, feelings of uncertainty about the changes mediated the relation between frequency of change and both normative and continuance commitment. In the study by Herold et al. (2007), change turbulence was not associated with commitment (i.e., intention to support the change) across all employees; however, it was negatively associated with commitment for employees with low self-efficacy (i.e., those who had doubts about their ability to cope). With regard to personal change history, Rafferty and Restubog (2010) found that, among employees undergoing a merger, those who reported having a poor change history in the organization had lower affective commitment to the change than those reporting a more positive history. Organizational leadership provides another potentially important context for change. Several studies have examined the relations between various leadership styles (as perceived by employees) and the three components of commitment to change. Taken together, findings suggest that transactional leadership is negatively correlated with affective commitment to a change (Conway and Monks, 2008), while transformational (Herold et al., 2008) and charismatic (Michaelis, Stegmaier, and Sonntag, 2009) leadership are positively correlated with affective commitment to a change. Unlike transactional leadership which is based on the principle of exchange, transformational and charismatic leadership involve communicating a vision, shifting values, encouraging innovation, and promoting self-efficacy. While transactional leadership can be effective (e.g., Judge and Piccolo, 2004), it may be most effective during times of stability when the conditions of exchange can be clearly established and maintained. In contrast, transformational and charismatic leadership styles are by their very nature better suited to conditions of change. Interestingly, when it comes to the effects of leadership on commitment to change, there may be cultural differences. For instance, Hinduan et al. (2009) found that, among Indonesian bank employees, both transactional and transformational leadership correlated significantly with normative commitment to a change, but not with affective commitment. The uncertainty that inevitably surrounds large-scale change makes trust another important context factor. Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995, 712) define trust as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party . . . irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.” It stands to reason, therefore, that employees will be more willing to commit to a change initiated by a management team they trust than by one they do not (Dirks and Ferrin, 2004).

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Indeed, Neves and Caetano (2006) found that affective commitment to the change was positively related to trust in supervisor for a sample of Portuguese employees during the introduction of a new Quality Management System. Similarly, Michaelis and his colleagues (2009, 2010) found that trust in top management correlated positively with both affective and normative commitment to the change. Moreover, they found that affective and normative commitment mediated the relation between employees’ perceptions of trust and support for the change. Finally, employees’ overall commitment to the organization might be another condition that has a bearing on their willingness to commit to a change initiative. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) and Meyer et al. (2007) found a positive correlation between affective commitment to the organization and affective commitment to change. Similar evidence for a positive relation between affective organizational commitment and affective commitment to change (or similar measures) has been provided by Falvo et al. (2006), Herold et al. (2008), and Neubert and Cady (2001). In addition, evidence suggests that affective organizational commitment is positively correlated with normative commitment to change (Falvo et al., 2006; Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002; Meyer et al., 2007), and that continuance organizational commitment is negatively correlated with affective commitment to change (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002; Meyer et al., 2007). Thus, it appears that employees who have a strong desire to belong to the organization are more likely to want to support change initiatives (but see discussion below). Those who feel trapped in the organization may be more reluctant to do so. Change process Process refers to “actions taken by change agents during the introduction and implementation of the proposed change” (Walker et al., 2007, 762). Among the process factors examined in research to date are justice, employee input, and communication. Results have consistently demonstrated that employees’ perceptions of the fairness of an organizational change are related to their general reactions to the change (see Oreg and van Dam [2009] for a review). Indeed, employees are responsive to three forms of justice: distributive – the perceived fairness of outcomes or resources; procedural – the perceived fairness of the policies and procedures by which an allocation decision is made; and interactional – the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received when procedures are communicated and implemented. To date, three studies have directly examined the relation between perceptions of justice and commitment to change. All three forms of justice were found to have strong,

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positive relations with affective commitment (Bernerth et al., 2007; Foster, 2010; Michel, Stegmaier, and Sonntag, 2010). For example, Bernerth et al. found that, among employees in a newly spun-off manufacturing organization, affective commitment was highest when both interactional and procedural justice were high or when both interactional and distributive justice were high. Foster (2010) found that, in addition to being positively related to affective commitment, perceived justice related positively to normative commitment and negatively to continuance commitment among employees in three US-based companies. Communication and opportunities for employee input are two additional process issues likely to affect employee reactions to change. Indeed, they may be visible signs that employees use in their assessment of fairness. Sverke et al. (2008) found a positive relation between participation in decision making and affective commitment to the change among Swedish hospital employees during a merger. Similarly, Cook et al. (2008) found that the extent to which employees felt that they were able to provide input into the change was positively correlated with affective commitment and negatively correlated with continuance commitment to the change. With regard to communication, Conway and Monks (2008) found that employees’ satisfaction with HR practices relating to communication (e.g., satisfaction with the information provided regarding the change) was positively related to affective commitment. Likewise, Rafferty and Restubog (2010) found a strong, positive correlation between perceptions of the quality of merger-related information and affective commitment to the change among employees of the low-status partner in a merger.

Impact of the change Perhaps not surprisingly, the impact of the change for the organization, unit, and employees themselves relates to their commitment. In a study of employees in thirty-two public and private organizations undergoing various changes, Fedor, Caldwell, and Herold (2006) found employees’ commitment (intention to support the change) varied as a function of the amount of change, its favorableness for the work unit and the impact on their own jobs. More specifically, employees were most committed when there was a considerable amount of change happening at the work unit level, the change was seen as having benefits for the unit, and the implications for individuals’ own jobs were low. Commitment to change was relatively weak when the change was viewed as unfavorable for work group members, regardless of the amount of change or its implication for the employee’s job.

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As mentioned earlier, another potential impact of change in an organization, particularly large-scale change, is uncertainty. Sverke et al. (2008) found that affective commitment to change among Swedish hospital workers experiencing a merger was negatively related to several indices of uncertainty, including job insecurity, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Baraldi et al. (2010) found that job insecurity and role ambiguity correlated negatively with affective and normative commitment, and positively with continuance commitment, for employees involved in a restructuring effort. They also found that commitment to change mediated the relation between role ambiguity–job security and behavioral support for the change. Thus, under conditions of uncertainty, employees may feel that they have little option but to comply with the requirements for change, but are unlikely to embrace it and exert discretionary effort to make it succeed. Interestingly, Kalyal et al. (2010) found a similar pattern of correlations between job insecurity and the three components of commitment, but showed that the negative relation with affective commitment was buffered by perceptions of employability. That is, the negative correlation between insecurity in the current job and affective commitment was weaker for employees who believed they could easily find employment elsewhere.

Limitations and future directions for research Before we discuss implications for the management of change, it is important to identify the limitations of existing research and priorities for the future. Clearly, research on commitment to change is still in its infancy, and there is much more work to do. Nevertheless, existing research pertaining to the consequences of commitment suggests that some forms of commitment are better than others. In particular, employees appear to be more willing to exert discretionary effort in support of a change when they have a strong affective commitment. In contrast, employees whose commitment is based primarily on concerns about the consequences of failure to comply (i.e., continuance commitment) are unlikely to do more than is required. In fact, they may comply with the requirements of change even if these requirements are not in the best interests of its success. However, most research to date has been cross-sectional and involved measures of behavioral intentions or selfreports of behavior. Only a few longitudinal studies (e.g., Meyer et al., 2007; Neubert and Cady, 2001; Rafferty and Restubog, 2010) have been conducted in an effort to capture the dynamic nature of change and it implications over time. Other studies attempted to identify mediators as a means of uncovering causal processes (e.g., Cook, Horner, and

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Payne, 2008; Michaelis, Stegmaier, and Sonntag 2009, 2010; Walker, Armenakis, and Bernerth, 2007). More such research is needed. Similarly, researchers have just begun to explore the many factors that might contribute to the development of commitment to change. Findings to date suggest that individual difference, context, process, and impact factors might all play a role. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that these factors interact in fairly complex ways to influence commitment (see Fedor, Caldwell, and Herold, 2006; Herold, Fedor, and Caldwell, 2007, 2008). In the future, research should explore other potential interactions, possibly involving factors across the categories identified above. For example, individual differences may play an important role in moderating the effects of context, process, or impact factors. In addition, given that organizational change initiatives can have an impact at multiple levels within an organization (Goodman and Rousseau, 2004), it may be fruitful to conduct more multilevel studies. In one such study, Fedor, Caldwell, and Herold (2006) found that employees’ intentions to support a change depended on a three-way interaction between two group-level variables – members’ shared perceptions of the favorableness of the change and the extent of the change for the work unit – and one individual-level variable – employees’ perceptions of the impact on their own jobs. Finally, it is important to conduct more longitudinal research to examine dynamic processes and, where possible, to conduct experimental or quasi-experimental studies to establish causality. The latter are admittedly difficult to coordinate, but the payoff can be great. Illustrative examples of quasi-experimental studies within a change context are Greenberg (1990) and Schweiger and DeNisi (1991). Most of the research discussed above focused on theoretical antecedents or consequences of individual components of commitment within the three-component model. Some exceptions were the studies by Albion (2006), Herscovitch and Meyer (2002), and Meyer et al. (2007). These studies, in conjunction with a growing body of research on organizational commitment (e.g., Gellatly, Meyer, and Luchak, 2006; Meyer, Stanley, and Parfyonova, 2012; Somers, 2009; Wasti, 2005), demonstrate that the way an individual component is experienced and relates to other variables can vary depending on the strength of the other components (i.e., the commitment profile). For example, Gellatly et al. argued that normative commitment can be experienced as a moral imperative (i.e., desire to do the right thing) when combined with strong affective commitment, but as an indebted obligation (i.e., a need to do what is expected) when combined with weak affective commitment and strong continuance commitment. Similarly, Meyer et al. (2012) argued that continuance commitment can reflect a sense of being trapped

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(e.g., due to economic costs) when affective and normative commitment are weak, but can reflect awareness of the many benefits of the current situation when combined with strong affective and normative commitment in a fully committed profile. The latter finding suggests that high levels of continuance commitment might only be of concern when the other components are weak. An employee whose basis for commitment to a change initiative is the threat of reprimand or loss of employment might exert only minimal effort. However, an employee whose commitment is based on concern about the cost of failure of a valued change is likely to exert considerable effort to achieve its success. Indeed, Albion (2006), Herscovitch and Meyer (2002), and Meyer et al. (2007) all found the highest levels of discretionary support among employees with a fully committed profile (including a high level of continuance commitment to change). Therefore, future research should continue to look beyond the individual components and consider how they combine to influence change-relevant behavior. Finally, the research reviewed here was conducted in a variety of countries with quite different cultures. Although there was some suggestion that cultural differences could be operating, the findings were remarkably consistent. Nevertheless, another important direction for future research is to conduct more systematic cross-cultural comparisons of the nature, development, and consequences of commitment to change initiatives. As has been found in research on organizational commitment (see Wasti and Önder, 2009), it may be the case that some components of commitment, particularly normative commitment, will vary in importance across cultures.

Toward a guiding framework Given the limitations noted above, it may be premature to offer firm evidence-based recommendations for the management of employee commitment to change. Nevertheless, it is important to consider what we have learned from the existing body of research. Therefore, our objective here is to offer a general framework to organize this knowledge and serve as a guide for future research. It should also help identify important issues to be considered by change managers. To address the gaps and limitations in existing research, we draw on established principles from related theory and research where relevant. According to the framework depicted in Figure 3.1, employee commitment to a change initiative will depend on the four interconnected sets of factors described above. We identified specific examples of each in our

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John P. Meyer and Leah K. Hamilton Individual Differences • Locus of control • Tolerance for ambiguity

Context Factors • Change history

• Cynicism about change • Change self-efficacy

• Leadership • Trust in management • Organizational commitment

Commitment to Change

Attitudes & Behavior

• Affective

• Job satisfaction

• Normative

• Retention

• Continuance

• Compliance • Discretionary support

Process Factors • Justice • Employee input • Communication

Impact Factors • Implications for unit • Role clarity/ambiguity • Personal workload • Job security

Figure 3.1 Antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment to change

earlier review and therefore focus here on basic principles that might help to explain the findings and clarify their implications. Individual differences Existing evidence generally supports the common-sense notion that individuals differ in their level of comfort with change. More importantly, however, it suggests that when confronted with changes, these individual differences might affect the nature and strength of their commitment and, ultimately, support for the change. For example, individuals who have low tolerance for change, an external locus of control, and/or are cynical about change are not likely to embrace the change, develop a strong affective commitment to the change, or exert extra effort to ensure its success. To the contrary, they are likely to find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to “adapt or leave” – but leaving also constitutes a change. These individuals may therefore feel trapped, develop continuance commitment, and comply with only the basic requirements for change, which is not an ideal recipe for success. Some individual differences (e.g., locus of control) are likely to be stable dispositions and not easily changed. Therefore, they are best addressed through selection or placement. Other differences (e.g., cynicism) might

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be managed through the implementation of policies and practices designed to undermine existing beliefs and build trust (Stanley, Meyer, and Topolnytsky, 2005). As we discuss below, the processes used during the implementation of change can play an important role in shaping such beliefs. Research to date has examined only a small number of the many individual differences that might play a role in shaping commitment to change. Other personality characteristics (e.g., Big Five), abilities and values are also likely to play a role. In some cases, the effect might be indirect. For example, rather than affecting commitment directly, the implications of employee values might depend on how well they fit with the organization’s values as reflected in the change initiative (see Chapter 11 in this volume). An employee with strong environmental values is more likely to embrace a change that is environmentally friendly than one that puts profit ahead of environmental concerns. The link between person–organization fit and employees’ commitment to, and intentions to remain with, an organization are well established (KristofBrown, Zimmerman, and Johnson, 2005; see Meyer et al. [2010] for evidence in a change context). It follows therefore that fit also plays a role in shaping employees’ commitment to a change and their willingness to work toward its success.

Context factors By their nature, context factors are more distal determinants of commitment to a change initiative. That is, they set the stage for, and interact with, the more proximal influences (process, impact) to be discussed below. This does not make them less important. To the contrary, they can be crucial to the success of direct efforts to introduce and promote a change initiative. Unfortunately, however, they tend to develop relatively slowly and their influence is more subtle. Consequently, they are not easily modified and do not serve as effective short-term levers for change. For example, trust in management can be crucial for employee commitment to a change under conditions of risk. However, trust is earned over the long term and cannot simply be “switched on” when the need arises. The same applies to perceptions of leadership, culture and/or climate for change, and employee commitment to the organization. Because these context factors are not easily modified in the short term, they must be managed carefully even in times of stability – they may well determine how effective more direct interventions will work when the need for change arises.

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One particularly interesting finding to emerge in several studies was the positive relation between affective organizational commitment and affective commitment to change. Although organizational change has been attributed with undermining commitment, evidence suggests that a strong affective commitment to the organization can serve as a base for the establishment of affective commitment to the change. However, the relation is modest, suggesting that the connection is not automatic. Indeed, it is likely that affective commitment to the organization will interact with other factors, including the process factors (e.g., justice) and impact factors (e.g., benefits of the change) described below, to influence employees’ willingness to buy into and support change. It is also possible that commitment to the organization will work against the establishment of affective commitment to a change when the change radically alters the nature of the organization and its goals and values, or is perceived to violate the employee’s psychological contract with the organization (Meyer, Allen, and Topolnytsky, 1998). Another important context factor to consider is change history. Again, this can be viewed from two perspectives – the amount of current and recent change in the organization, and the employees’ own experience with change. The amount of ongoing change (turbulence) appears to have a complex relation with commitment to the change. Evidence suggests it can moderate the effects of other factors such as self-efficacy beliefs. That self-efficacy beliefs are more strongly related to affective commitment in the context of turbulence suggests that multiple back-to-back or simultaneous changes are stressful. Therefore, organizations need to consider how much change employees can handle, particularly when facilitating factors are absent. The personal change history of individual employees might have either positive or negative effects on their willingness to commit to a new initiative. Those who have experienced success might be more likely to commit, whereas those who have experienced failure might become cynical about management’s motives and/or skeptical about their ability to manage it effectively (Stanley, Meyer, and Topolnytsky, 2005). Under these conditions, extra effort will be required to explain the benefits of the change and instill a belief in the likelihood of success. Process factors Several process factors were identified as correlates of commitment to change in the foregoing review: justice, communication, and employee input. These factors are clearly interrelated as communication and employee input (voice) are recognized as essential contributors to

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perceptions of justice (Bies and Moag, 1986; Thibaut and Walker, 1975). Despite the limitations noted above, and the fact that relatively few studies have addressed commitment to change per se as an outcome, there is a large body of literature demonstrating the positive effects of just treatment on employee reactions to change initiatives (see Oreg and van Dam, 2009). This includes a number of quasi-experimental field studies that establish causal links between fair management practices and employees’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions (e.g., Greenberg, 1990; Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991). Impact factors Employees confronted with change will naturally be inclined to consider how the change will affect them and their work units. Employees with a strong affective organizational commitment may also be concerned with whether the change is in the best interests of the organization. The challenge for management, therefore, is to convince employees that the change will indeed have benefits for the employee’s work unit and the organization without creating undue changes to the individual’s own job or job security. This might be a tall order, particularly in the case of large-scale changes (e.g., mergers). For the most part, research on impact factors has been conducted in isolation. However, they are very likely to interact with some of the individual difference factors noted above. For example, even change with relatively low impact might be met with resistance rather than commitment by employees with low tolerance of ambiguity. Perhaps more importantly, the impact factors are likely to interact with process factors. Under conditions where the impact is perceived to be negative (e.g., increased workload; disruption of relationships), reactions might be understandably negative. However, there is a substantial body of justice research demonstrating that when the decision-making and implementation processes are fair (i.e., procedural justice is high) and individuals are treated with dignity and respect (i.e., interactional justice is high), people are more accepting of undesirable outcomes (e.g., Brockner and Wiesenfeld, 1996). The same may apply to their willingness to commit to changes that create some hardship. Conclusions There is a great deal that goes into making an organizational change successful. Our focus here was on the human factor – specifically the commitment of those responsible for the implementation of change.

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This is not to deny the importance of strategy, economics, technology and other non-people factors. However, these factors are often considered to the exclusion of the human factor. Shum, Bove, and Auh (2008) performed a qualitative analysis of three New Zealand banks that achieved varying degrees of success in the implementation of customer relations management systems. The bank that had the greatest success was the one that paid the greatest attention to, and spent the most money on, building a strong affective commitment to the change among employees. Shum and colleagues’ description of the implementation strategy used in this bank provides an excellent demonstration of how the principles and research findings discussed here can be applied in practice. Admittedly, we are only beginning to gain an understanding of commitment to organizational change, how it develops and how it relates to behavioral support. However, there is evidence to suggest that commitment can take different forms, and that some forms are associated with more desirable outcomes than others. Affective commitment to the change, alone or in combination with the other components, appears to be the optimal form; continuance commitment on its own can have detrimental implications. Our objective in this chapter was to describe the three-component model of commitment to change, summarize the results of existing research, and use this research in conjunction with a larger body of theory and research (e.g., justice) to develop a broader theoretical framework. We hope that this framework will help stimulate further research and serve as a guide to the management of commitment to change.

References Albion, M. J. (2006), “The impact of person and environment variables on behavioral support for workplace change,” paper presented at the 26th Annual Congress of Applied Psychology, Athens, Greece (July). Armenakis, A. A. and S. G. Harris (2009), “Reflections: Our journey in organizational change research,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 127–142. Baraldi, S., H. J. Kalyal, E. Berntson, K. Näswall, and M. Sverke (2010), “The importance of commitment to change in public reform: An example from Pakistan,” Journal of Change Management, 10, 347–368. Baruch, Y. (1998), “The rise and fall of organizational commitment,” Human Systems Management, 17, 135–143. Becker, H. S. (1960), “Notes on the concept of commitment,” American Journal of Sociology, 66, 32–42. Bennis, W. (2000), “Leadership of change,” in M. Beer and N. Nohria (eds.), Breaking the Code of Change (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press), 113–121.

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Bernerth, J. B., A. A. Armenakis, H. S. Feild, and H. J. Walker (2007), “Justice, cynicism, and commitment: A study of important organizational change variables,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43, 303–326. Bies, R. J. and J. S. Moag (1986), “Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness,” in R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard, and M. H. Bazerman (eds.), Research on Negotiation in Organizations (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press), 43–55. Brockner, J. and B. M. Wiesenfeld (1996), “An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures,” Psychological Bulletin, 120, 189–208. Cappelli, P. (1999), “Career jobs are dead,” California Management Review, 42, 146–167. Chen, J. and L. Wang (2007), “Locus of control and the three components of commitment to change,” Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 503–512. Connor, D. R. (1993), Managing at the Speed of Change: How Resilient Managers Succeed and Prosper Where Others Fail (New York: Villard Books). Conway, E. and K. Monks (2008), “HR practices and commitment to change: An employee-level analysis,” Human Resource Management Journal, 18, 72–89. Cook, A. L., M. T. Horner, and S. C. Payne (2008), “In search of the antecedents of commitment to organizational change,” paper presented at the 23rd annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Francisco, CA (April). Cunningham, G. B. (2006), “The relationships among commitment to change, coping with change, and turnover intentions,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 15, 29–45. Dirks, K. T. and D. L. Ferrin (2004), “Trust in leadership: Meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 611–628. Falvo, R., E. Trifiletti, L. Andrighetto, and D. Capozza (2006), “Organizational commitment, commitment to change and burnout,” Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 13, 225–236. Fedor, D. B., S. Caldwell, and D. M. Herold (2006), “The effects of organizational changes on employee commitment: A multilevel investigation,” Personnel Psychology, 59, 1–29. Ford, J. K., D. A. Weissbein, and K. E. Plamondon (2003), “Distinguishing organizational from strategy commitment: Linking officers’ commitment to community policing to job behaviors and satisfaction,” Justice Quarterly, 20, 159–185. Foster, R. D. (2010), “Resistance, justice, and commitment to change,” Human Resource Development Quarterly, 21, 3–39. Gellatly, I. R., J. P. Meyer, and A. A. Luchak (2006), “Combined effects of the three commitment components on focal and discretionary behaviors: A test of Meyer and Herscovitch’s propositions,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 331−345. Goodman, P. S. and D. M. Rousseau (2004), “Organizational change that produces results: The linkage approach,” Academy of Management Executive, 18, 7–19. Greenberg, J. (1990), “Employee theft as a reaction to underpayment equity: The hidden cost of pay cuts,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 561–568.

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Herold, D. M., D. B. Fedor, and S. D. Caldwell (2007), “Beyond change management: A multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees’ commitment to change,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 942–951. Herold, D. M., D. B. Fedor, S. Caldwell, and Y. Liu (2008), “The effects of transformational and change leadership on employees’ commitment to a change: A multilevel study,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 346–357. Herscovitch. L. and J. P. Meyer (2002), “Commitment to organizational change: Extension of a three-component model,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 474–487. Hinduan, Z. R., E. Wilson-Evered, S. Moss, and E. Scannell (2009), “Leadership, work outcomes and openness to change following an Indonesian bank merger,” Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 47, 59–78. Hornung, S. and D. M. Rousseau (2007), “Active on the job – proactive in change: How autonomy at work contributes to employee support for organizational change,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43, 401–426. Judge, T. A. and R. F. Piccolo (2004), “Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 755–768. Judge, T. A., C. J. Thoresen, V. Pucik, and T. M. Welbourne (1999), “Managerial coping with organizational change: A dispositional perspective,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 107–122. Kalyal, H. J., E. Berntson, S. Baraldi, K. Näswall, and M. Sverke (2010), “The moderating role of employability on the relationship between job insecurity and commitment to change,” Economic and Industrial Democracy, 31, 327–344. Kristof-Brown, A. L., R. D. Zimmerman, and E. C. Johnson (2005), “Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person–job, person–organization, person–group, and person–supervisor fit,” Personnel Psychology, 58, 281–342. Mayer, R. C., J. H. Davis, and F. D. Schoorman (1995), “An integrative model of organizational trust,” Academy of Management Review, 20, 709–734. Meyer, J. P. (2009), “Commitment in a changing world of work,” in H. J. Klein, T. E. Becker, and J. P. Meyer (eds.), Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions (Florence, KY: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group), 37–68. Meyer, J. P. and N. Allen (1991), “A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment,” Human Resource Management Review, 1, 61–89. (1997), Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research, and Application (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Meyer, J. P., N. J. Allen, and L. Topolnytsky (1998), “Commitment in a changing world of work,” Canadian Psychology, 39, 83–93. Meyer, J. P., T. D. Hecht, H. Gill, and L. Topolnytsky (2010), “Person– organization (culture) fit and employee commitment under conditions of organizational change: A longitudinal study,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 458–473. Meyer, J. P. and L. Herscovitch (2001), “Commitment in the workplace: Toward a general model,” Human Resource Management Review, 11, 299–326. Meyer, J. P., E. S. Srinivas, J. B. Lal, and L. Topolnytsky (2007), “Employee commitment and support for an organizational change: Test of the three-

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component model in two cultures,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80, 185–211. Meyer, J. P., D. J. Stanley, L. Herscovitch, and L. Topolnytsky (2002), “Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: A metaanalysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61, 20–52. Meyer, J. P., L. J. Stanley, and N. M. Parfyonova (2012), “Employee commitment in context: The nature and implication of commitment profiles,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 1–16. Michaelis, B., R. Stegmaier, and K. Sonntag (2009), “Affective commitment to change and innovation implementation behavior: The role of charismatic leadership and employees’ trust in top management,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 399–417. (2010), “Shedding light on followers’ innovation implementation behavior: The role of transformational leadership, commitment to change, and climate for initiative,” Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25, 408–429. Michel, A., R. Stegmaier, and K. Sonntag (2010), “I scratch your back – you scratch mine. Do procedural justice and organizational identification matter for employees’ cooperation during change?,” Journal of Change Management, 10, 41–59. Mowday, R. T., L. W. Porter, and R. Steers (1982), Organizational Linkages: The Psychology of Commitment, Absenteeism, and Turnover (San Diego, CA: Academic Press). Neubert, M. J. and S. H. Cady (2001), “Program commitment: A multi-study longitudinal field investigation of its impact and antecedents,” Personnel Psychology, 54, 421–448. Neves, P. (2009), “Readiness for change: Contributions for employee’s level of individual change and turnover intentions,” Journal of Change Management, 9, 215–231. Neves, P. and A. Caetano (2006), “Social exchange processes in organizational change: The roles of trust and control,” Journal of Change Management, 6, 351–364. (2009), “Commitment to change: Contributions to trust in the supervisor and work outcomes,” Group and Organization Management, 34, 623–644. Oreg, S. (2003), “Resistance to change: Developing an Individual differences measure,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 680–693. Oreg, S. and K. van Dam (2009), “Organisational justice in the context of organisational change,” Netherlands Journal of Psychology, 65, 127–135. Parish, J. T., S. Cadwallader, and P. Busch (2008), “Want to, need to, ought to: Employee commitment to organizational change,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21, 32–52. Rafferty, A. E. and S. L. D. Restubog (2010), “The impact of change process and context on change reactions and turnover during a merger,” Journal of Management, 36, 1309–1338. Schweiger, D. M. and A. S. DeNisi (1991), “Communication with employees following a merger: A longitudinal field experiment,” Academy of Management Journal, 34, 110–135.

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Shum, P., L. Bove, and S. Auh (2008), “Employees’ affective commitment to change: The key to successful CRM implementation,” European Journal of Marketing, 42, 1346–1371. Somers, M. J. (2009), “The combined influence of affective, continuance, and normative commitment on employee withdrawal,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74, 75–81. Stanley, D. J., J. P. Meyer, and L. Topolnytsky (2005), “Employee cynicism and resistance to organizational change,” Journal of Business and Psychology, 19, 429–459. Sverke, M., J. Hellgren, K. Näswall, S. Göransson, and J. Öhrming (2008), “Employee participation in organizational change: Investigating the effects of proactive vs. reactive implementation of downsizing in Swedish hospitals,” Zeitschrift für Personalforschung, 22, 111–129. Tett, R. P. and J. P. Meyer (1993), “Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and turnover: Path analyses based on meta-analytic findings,” Personnel Psychology, 46, 259–293. Thibaut, J. and L. Walker (1975), Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). Walker, H. J., A. A. Armenakis, and J. B. Bernerth (2007), “Factors influencing organizational change efforts: An integrative investigation of change content, context, process and individual differences,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, 20, 761–773. Wasti, S. A. (2005), “Commitment profiles: Combinations of organizational commitment forms and job outcomes,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67, 290–308. Wasti, S. A. and C. Önder (2009), “Commitment across cultures: Progress, pitfalls and propositions,” in H. J. Klein, T. E. Becker, and J. P. Meyer (eds.), Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions (Florence, KY: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group), 309–343. Weiner, Y. (1982), “Commitment in organizations: A normative view,” Academy of Management Review, 7, 418–428.

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Reactions to organizational change: an integrated model of health predictors, intervening variables, and outcomes Alexandra Michel and M. Gloria González-Morales

Introduction The quality of employees’ working life is an important issue for organizations. Beyond the moral imperative for organizations to promote and maintain employee health and well-being, such actions also yield positive economic outcomes for the organization. Healthy employees are more likely to attend work regularly (i.e., less absenteeism) as compared to unhealthy employees (Hanebuth, Meinel, and Fischer, 2006). Darr and Johns (2008) meta-analyzed 153 studies, across public and private sector organizations, and found positive correlations between work stress, psychological illness, physical illness, and absenteeism. Moreover, employees are less likely to perform at optimal levels when they attend work while ill (i.e., more presenteeism, Johns, 2010). For instance, Fried et al. (2008) conducted a meta-analysis of 113 samples representing over 22,000 individuals and found role stress to be associated with lower supervisory ratings of employee performance. Therefore, the quality of employees’ working life is not only the right thing for organizations to prioritize, it is also the smart thing to do from a business perspective. The World Health Organization (1948) defines health as: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (100). We have chosen this definition for this chapter because of its simplicity and comprehensiveness. Our interest here is in the impact of organizational changes on the outcomes of physical health (e.g., physiological indicators, psychosomatic complaints), mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance abuse), and work-related well-being (e.g., work distress, burnout, job absenteeism, sick leaves).

We gratefully acknowledge the reviewers of this chapter for their constructive comments. We want to thank Dr. Peter Hausdorf whose detailed review greatly improved the manuscript.

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We first review the research literature demonstrating that organizational change can be stressful, and demonstrating the negative impact such stress has on employees’ mental and physical health. We then introduce a conceptual model with its theoretical underpinnings and empirical foundations. Finally, we discuss the model’s implications for future research and practice with respect to organizational change and employee health. Our search for relevant literature was based on the following two clusters of keywords: Cluster 1: organizational change, downsizing, restructuring, acquisition, and merger; Cluster 2: stressor, stress, strain, health, eustress, distress, resources, demands, burnout, emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and job insecurity. We combined keywords from each cluster and searched for all possible combinations (e.g., “organizational change and stressor” or “merger and emotional exhaustion”) in the PsycInfo, PsycARTICLES, ABI/INFORM Global, EconLit, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, and Health & Safety Science Abstracts databases. The earliest empirical study we found was published in 1975. Therefore, the studies reported in this chapter consist of articles and doctoral dissertations published between 1975 and 2011. We first classified the 194 articles in the initial pool1 into empirical (quantitative or qualitative) or theoretical, and then considered the content of each article. We found seventy empirical articles that linked organizational change with health and issues relating to employees’ well-being. Many of these articles focused on stress. Although the everyday usage of the term stress does not distinguish between the source of stress and the response to it, we feel that such a distinction is necessary. We therefore follow Sonnentag and Frese’s (2003) terminology, and use stressors to refer to sources of pressure, strain/distress to refer to stress reactions, and stress to talk about the entire process of perceiving stressors and responding to them.

Change is stressful Organizational changes (mergers, downsizing, new technology implementation, etc.) can be stressful because they are often accompanied by conditions such as job insecurity, overtime and conflicts that increase the pressure on employees (Sonnentag and Frese, 2003). Our review suggests that organizational change can create pressure for employees both directly 1

The initial pool of 194 articles was a result of an automatic search within the title and abstract fields of the cited databases and a subsequent manual search. The manual search was performed to discard those studies in which the keyword did not correspond with the intended meaning of the word (e.g., “stress” did not refer to the concept of stress but the verb “to highlight,” or “acquisition” referred to acquisition of skills but not companies).

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(i.e., aspects of the change itself) and indirectly (i.e., by impacting other aspects of work). Several cross-sectional studies support this relationship for employees across a wide range of industries. With respect to direct pressure, in one study, merger climate (e.g., availability of merger information, planning of merger activities, organizational uncertainty, and role ambiguity related to the merger process) accounted for 44 percent of merger stress variance with acquired bank employees (Abdel-Kawi, 1991). In addition, Jalajas and Bomme (1999) found that research and development engineers’ past experiences and future threats associated with downsizing significantly predicted their turnover intentions, commitment, morale, and satisfaction. Moreover, using simulated mergers and acquisitions scenarios, Astrachan (1995, 2004) showed that the mere announcement that people were going to leave the organization led to an increase in separation anxiety. Evidence of indirect pressure has also been demonstrated with public utility employees. Swanson and Power (2001) found higher levels of role conflict, ambiguity, workload and negative feedback after organizational restructuring when compared to retrospective pre-restructuring levels. Moreover, Robblee (1998) found a significant influence of the appraisal of downsizing-related stressors (job insecurity, role conflict, ambiguity, and overload) on job satisfaction and affective commitment to the organization among federal government employees. Longitudinal evidence points in the same direction. Armstrong-Stassen (2001) evaluated reactions of federal government employees at the beginning of a downsizing process and twenty months later: between the two phases, employees’ organizational commitment decreased and their perceived threat of job loss and sense of powerlessness about future-oriented job decisions increased. Therefore, both cross-sectional and longitudinal research link organizational change with direct and indirect pressure, which has the potential to negatively impact employee health outcomes. Stressful change is related to health-related outcomes Organizational change can have a negative impact on mental health For example, both downsizing events and anticipated future downsizing correlate with burnout (Hu and Schaufeli, 2011), psychological strain, cynicism, and absenteeism (Kalimo, Taris, and Schaufeli, 2003). In another study, hospital restructuring and downsizing initiatives were positively correlated with nurses’ depression, anxiety, and burnout (Greenglass and Burke, 2000) and psychosomatic symptoms (Burke and Greenglass, 2000). In another study, Greenglass and Burke (2001) reported that “bumping” (i.e., one nurse replaces another due to greater

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seniority) and workload during hospital restructuring were related to depression and anxiety. Panchal and Cartwright (2001) compared post-merger stress in two groups of employees in a recently merged organization. Findings revealed that people employed in the pre-merger company reported higher stress levels and more negative work attitudes than new employees. Similarly, using a Solomon four-group design, Probst (2003) showed that the merger of two companies negatively affected employees’ psychological well-being, after controlling for effects of pretesting, history, and interactions between pretesting and the organizational restructuring. The research reviewed above thus demonstrates that employee experiences with organizational change can have negative implications on their mental health, and that these implications may be prolonged. Idel et al. (2003) evaluated the impact of a merger of two medical centers on nurses’ emotional well-being. Prior to the merger, transferring nurses had higher levels of threat perceptions than nurses remaining in the medical center. In addition, threat perception correlated positively with emotional reactivity and emotional distress. Six months after the merger took place, transferring nurses showed more emotional distress than nurses who did not transfer. Similarly, Kivimäki et al. (2003) measured municipal employees’ health indicators prior to downsizing and three years later. Results revealed that after the downsizing, in comparison with terminated employees who found a new job, impaired health was most likely not only for those who did not find a new job, but also for downsizing survivors. Over a sevenyear period, from 1997 to 2003, with three phases of data collection, Moore, Grunberg, and Greenberg (2006) found the largest increases in job insecurity, depression and turnover intentions for employees who experienced layoffs indirectly (i.e., had coworkers or close friends who were laid off) followed by those who directly experienced either a personal warning, being laid off and rehired, or being “bumped” by a coworker. Along with such an impact on mental health it is not surprising that increases in drug use occur concomitantly with downsizing. Kivimäki et al. (2007) used Finland’s nationwide register of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and hypnotics prescriptions to assess the relationship between experiences of organizational downsizing and employee drug use. Results revealed that municipal employees who were affected by downsizing were at higher risk of psychotropic drug use than employees with no downsizing experiences. Downsizing not only has effects on mental health but on physical health as well Dragano, Verde, and Siegrist (2005) used a large sample of German employees (22,559 participants) to show that the experience of

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organizational downsizing in combination with work-related stress is more strongly related to psychosomatic symptoms (e.g., musculoskeletal pain, sleep disorders, or depressed mood) than the sole exposure of either downsizing or work-related stress. Moreover, Gustafsson and Saksvik (2005) reported that six out of twenty-seven workers, who had survived the downsizing of a Swedish waste disposal company, had been diagnosed with health problems such as heart problems, and musculoskeletal pains, and reported more sick leaves during the first year following the organizational change. In another study, Hertting and Theorell (2002) collected blood samples from nurses and medical secretaries at Time 1 (the last completed round of personnel redundancies) and Time 2 (one year later). Significant reductions in serum/plasma concentrations of IgG, apolipoprotein AI and estradiol indicated that participants’ protective and anabolic functions had suffered over time. This suggests a flattened circadian cortisol rhythm, which could indicate that long-lasting change might be the cause of deterioration in employees’ physical health. One could argue that the negative implications of downsizing may be unique to the particular nature of this specific kind of change, yet downsizing is not the only type of change that affects physical health. For example, Leroyer et al. (2006) examined employees’ health in the context of the introduction of a Total Quality Management System in a French automobile manufacturing plant. Longitudinal findings showed that the rate of infirmary visits increased significantly four and twelve months after the change, along with psychological and physical demands. Similarly, Medin et al. (2008) showed that the experience of organizational change (not only downsizing, but change in working conditions, demands, personnel, and management) increased the likelihood of first-ever strokes in a diverse sample of working adults aged 30–65. In yet another study, Hansson et al. (2008) conducted a controlled longitudinal study in an elder-care division in Sweden, in which employees who experienced organizational changes related to the reorganization and restructuring of the division (e.g., changes in working conditions, demands, and structure of work units) were matched with a reference group of employees who did not experience change. Results revealed a significant change across time and between groups for the recovery hormone DHEA-S (study group showed less recovery) and sick leaves (study group showed 7 percent sick leaves vs. 2 percent sick leaves of the reference group). Organizational change can negatively affect all layers of the organization, including managers and professionals Callan, Terry, and Schweitzer (1994) found positive relationships between the appraisal of organizational change, anxiety, and depression in a sample of lawyers. In other

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studies, change was negatively related to managers’ health in terms of the physical and psychological symptoms exhibited (e.g., Armstrong-Stassen, 1997; Lindorff, Worrall, and Cooper, 2011). Cartwright and Cooper (1993) found that six months after a merger of two building societies, middle managers obtained mental health scores that were lower than the average score in the normal population. In a study conducted during the pre-acquisition stage of a corporate merger, regional-level managers reported high levels of insecurity, uncertainty, threat, and loss of control during organizational transformation along with negative emotions such as rejection, disappointment, and anger (Burlew, Pederson, and Bradley, 1994). In addition, ArmstrongStassen (2005) compared the reactions of executive-level and middle managers prior and during the initial and final phases of downsizing, and following the downsizing process. Middle managers reported greater job insecurity, lower job performance, and higher levels of health symptoms than executives. Nevertheless, although executives reported fewer health symptoms than middle managers, they too were significantly affected by the change. In sum, organizational change can have negative effects on mental and physical health, across organizational levels and positions.

Developing a conceptual framework for understanding change-related health outcomes As we have elaborated in the previous section, change can be stressful, and this stress relates to negative health outcomes. This leads us to ask what are the factors within the change context that affect employees’ health? To answer this question we offer the healthy organizational change model (HOC), which integrates theoretical propositions and empirical findings. The HOC model, depicted in Figure 4.1, includes antecedents, moderators, and mediating factors that contribute to employees’ mental health, physical health, and work-related well-being. We first detail the six relationships that describe the links between the identified factors in the model. Following this, we discuss each relationship with respect to the stress and organizational theories that support them and the corresponding empirical research. In Figure 4.1 the flow of the proposed framework, from left to right, follows a sequence of three relationships based on stress theories: (1) Organizational change can be appraised by the individual as a stressor and can influence health-related outcomes. (2) Individual characteristics and resources can moderate the links among these basic elements. (3) Job/

Organizational change and health-related outcomes Organizational Change Event Characteristics Type of change Benefit of change Impact of change Frequency of change Change climate

Process Characteristics Leadership Communication Participation

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Individual Characteristics & Resources Sense of coherence Employability Cynicism about change

Primary Appraisal

Psychological capital Resistance to change Ambiguity tolerance

Secondary Appraisal

Job insecurity Coping and perceived control Psychological uncertainty Change self-efficacy Other threats

HEALTH-RELATED OUTCOMES Mental health Physical health Work-related well-being

Job/Organization Demands & Resources Workload Control (Autonomy)

Social Exchange Characteristics Fairness Organizational support Trust in management Organizational commitment Values congruence fit

Legend: Individual factors are marked by rectangles with solid lines Organizational factors are marked by rectangles with dotted lines

Figure 4.1 The healthy organizational change (HOC) model that describes promoting and hindering factors for employees’ health-related outcomes in the organizational change context

organization demands and resources can moderate and mediate the link between organizational change and its appraisal. In addition, given that organizational change is an organizational event, we use organizational theories to identify three additional relationships to highlight the social aspects of organizational change: (4) the manner in which organizational change is appraised by organization members depends on event characteristics such as the type or impact of the change, and (5) the manner in which organizational change is appraised by organization members depends on process characteristics such as communication or participation. Finally, we propose that (6) social exchange characteristics can mediate the relationship between the change event and its appraisal. The HOC model should be helpful in guiding future research and in assisting managers to promote employee health, prior, during and after organizational change. We now explain the model in detail by discussing the theory and reporting empirical findings. Relationship 1: Organizational change can be appraised by the individual as a stressor that can influence health-related outcomes In the transactional stress model (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984) psychological stress is defined as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being” (10). Cognitive

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appraisals play a central role because individuals use this cognitive process to determine if the source of pressure is a challenge, threat, or non-threat (primary appraisal) and evaluate the course of action for coping with the stressor (secondary appraisal). The appraisal process depends on the individual’s perceptions, expectations, interpretations, and coping responses. When applied to organizational change, we can study the degree to which employees appraise change events as threatening and how individual differences in perceptions, expectations, and coping responses relate to this health impairment process. Primary appraisal Translated into the change context, the primary appraisal of organizational change can involve the appraisal of job insecurity, psychological uncertainty, and other change-related threats that mediate the relationship between knowledge of an organizational change on the one side, and employees’ health on the other (Amiot et al., 2006; Armstrong-Stassen, 1997; Ashford, 1988; Kivimäki et al., 2001). For instance, Maurier and Northcott (2000) studied the health of nurses in the context of health care restructuring with a cross-sectional survey: high levels of primary appraisal of threat (being placed on a recall list for shifts, having a coworker bumped or laid off, and perceived job insecurity) was associated with high levels of depression and poor physical health. Ashford (1988) provided early evidence that during organizational transitions (new work location and new job descriptions) employees were likely to perceive uncertainty in anticipation of the change and also six months later, after the change was implemented. This uncertainty was in turn related to an increase in stress levels. The appraisal of job insecurity has been linked with burnout (Westman, Etzion, and Danon, 2001), mental health (Størseth, 2006), and physical complaints (Heaney, Israel, and House, 1994; van Dick, Ullrich, and Tissington, 2006) in cross-sectional studies. Longitudinal research supports these findings. For example, Hellgren, Sverke, and Isaksson (1999) studied employees’ well-being in the context of workforce reductions in Sweden and showed that, after controlling for positive and negative affectivity and prior well-being, both quantitative (i.e., continued existence of one’s job) and qualitative (i.e., continued existence of important job features) aspects of job insecurity had negative effects on well-being. Beyond downsizing, other types of organizational changes have also been examined with respect to the job insecurity they arouse. For example, perceived job insecurity associated with a merger predicted stress for university employees (Cartwright, Tytherleigh, and Robertson, 2007). Employees reported their experiences at two points in time between the

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announcement and the actual merger of two universities. Results revealed higher levels of stress-related job insecurity at Time 1, when individuals experienced uncertainty about the change. At Time 2, when it was confirmed that the merger would be implemented without compulsory redundancies, employees’ stress levels declined. In addition, employees who were more involved in the merger process (thus reducing job insecurity) reported significantly less stress than employees who were less involved and informed. Secondary appraisal Secondary appraisals constitute an evaluation of the course of action for coping with the stressor. Primary appraisals of change-related threats and health-related outcomes are therefore mediated by such secondary appraisal variables, which include perceived control (Bordia et al., 2004; Paulsen et al., 2005), coping styles (Amiot et al., 2006; Armstrong-Stassen, 2004; Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia, 2008), and change-related self-efficacy (Idel et al., 2003; Terry, Callan, and Sartori, 1996; Terry and Jimmieson, 2003). With regard to appraisal of perceived control over the stressor, Bordia et al. (2004) surveyed employees of a state government department during a merger process and showed that control (in terms of perceived ability to control the impact of organizational change) mediated the impact of jobrelated uncertainty on psychological strain. Likewise, following Paulsen et al.’s (2005) longitudinal study the authors reported mediating effects of personal control in the relationship between job uncertainty and emotional exhaustion among public hospital employees experiencing downsizing. If employees perceive that they have limited control, then coping becomes more important to them. Coping is defined as “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984, 141). Coping can be classified into two types: problem-focused coping is aimed directly to solve the problem by changing the stressor, the environment, or one’s behavior. This type of coping can also be labeled as direct action, active, or control coping. The second type, emotion-focused coping, is aimed at managing discomforting cognitions or emotions triggered by the stressful situation. This category involves coping strategies such as avoidance or escape. However, less passive coping mechanisms such as problem reappraisal or social support seeking have been included in the broad category of palliative coping (Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004). In a study of a merger of two airline companies, Amiot et al. (2006) found that problem-focused coping positively predicted job satisfaction

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and identification with the merged organization two years after the merger took place, whereas avoidance coping was related to lower identification. Furthermore, studies of organizational change among healthcare personnel showed that control coping resulted in a more adaptive strategy than avoidance coping (Kohler, Munz, and Grawitch, 2006). In the Burke and Greenglass (2000) study mentioned above, psychosomatic complaints were positively related to escape coping and negatively related to control coping. In a study of a hospital’s closure, Bouthillette, Havlovic, and van der Wal (2001) found that positive coping activities prior to the closure were positively related to coping effectiveness, perceptions of justice, and reduced sick days during the closure. Finally, in Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia (2008), reduced control and increased escape coping mediated the relationship between appraised threat and negative emotions for public service employees. Focusing on the mediating role of coping, Armstrong-Stassen (2004) asked civil service managers to report their reactions prior (Time 1), during (Time 2), and following a downsizing process (Time 3). Findings showed that avoidance coping at Time 2 was a significant mediator of the relationship between continuance commitment and perceived organizational support at Time 1, and job alienation, health symptoms, and burnout at Time 3. Control-oriented coping mediated the negative relationship between affective commitment and job alienation, but was also positively associated with health symptoms and burnout at Time 3. These mixed findings suggest that control coping may be effective in the short term but with costs for employees’ health in the long run (Armstrong-Stassen, 2004). Similarly, in the context of healthcare restructuring, Maurier and Northcott (2000) found avoidance coping and problem-solving coping to be positively related to nurses’ depression and physical symptoms, whereas positive reappraisal (another emotion-focused strategy) was negatively related to them. In the case of repeated experiences of job insecurity and powerlessness with ineffective problem-solving efforts, positive reappraisal could be an adaptive way of dealing with changerelated stressors which people do not have control over. In sum, employee’s choices of coping strategies may depend on the type of stressors with which they are dealing. For instance, in the context of transformational change of a civil sector organization (i.e., radical shifts in business strategy, and reorganization of systems and structures), Robinson and Griffiths (2005) analyzed twenty-eight employee interviews about the change and identified five different types of appraised stressors: workload, uncertainty, unfairness, interpersonal conflict, and perceived loss. They found that whereas cognitive strategies were used to cope with all

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stressors, task-focused coping was only used in response to increased workload. The transactional model highlights potentially competing hypotheses in relation to repeated downsizing (Moore, Grunberg, and Greenberg, 2004) On one hand, given a stress–vulnerability or accumulation model we would expect that repeated stressful conditions weaken and tax employees’ resources over time, making threat appraisal more likely (Zapf, Dormann, and Frese, 1996). On the other hand, given a resilience or adjustment model we would expect fortifying effects when experiencing a stressful situation that prepare employees to better cope with the same situation over time (Dougall et al., 2000) because they become desensitized and their appraisal is more likely to indicate non-threat (Carver, 1998). Overall, research has supported the stress–vulnerability (or accumulation) model over the resilience (or adjustment) model. For example, Moore et al. (2004) found that repeated exposure to downsizing was significantly related to job insecurity, role ambiguity, intent to quit, depression, and health problems. Their findings did not support the idea that workers become more resilient as they encounter repeated layoff events. Similarly, Armstrong-Stassen (1997) found negative effects of a series of organizational downsizings (i.e., reduction in management levels) on thirty-eight managers of a major corporation. Managers who had been designated as surplus but survived the downsizing reported higher levels of job-related strain and burnout than managers who had not been designated as surplus. Qualitative studies explain that survivors have to deal with the fear of future downsizing or restructuring and their feelings of reduced organizational commitment (Kaiser, 2004). Given these experiences, future research should investigate the possibility that survivors may become better equipped for dealing with such threats in the future and develop resiliency over time. For example, support for the resilience or adjustment model would require taking into account additional individual resources such as perceived control. In this vein, Devine et al. (2003) found that victims of downsizing who secured new employment perceived more control, less stress and job-related strains than those employees who witnessed the downsizing but remained in the organization (survivors). Similarly, Ostry et al. (2002) found that working conditions and health reports of workers who had left the sawmill industry, and found other jobs in a different sector, were better off than those who remained in the sawmills. These findings on the importance of individual resources as buffers lead us to highlight our second relationship.

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Relationship 2: Individual characteristics and resources moderate the links between organizational change, appraisal processes, and health-related outcomes We propose that individual characteristics and individual resources moderate the relationship between the change event and the stress appraisal, and between the stress appraisal and health outcomes. For example, employees’ sense of coherence has been found to buffer the relationship between organizational changes and psychiatric events (Pahkin et al., 2011). However, not all the identified factors have been studied as moderators in previous empirical literature. In our proposed model we include a variety of resources that we have identified in the organizational psychology literature as being related to organizational change or health. These include: positive psychological capital (Luthans and Youssef, 2004), employability (Fugate, Kinicki, and Ashforth, 2004, tolerance of ambiguity (Budner, 1962), dispositional resistance to change (Oreg, 2003), and cynicism about change (Bernerth et al., 2007). Empirical evidence exists to suggest that each of these may serve as a moderator of the relationships discussed above. For example, positive psychological capital is defined as the positive and developmental state of an individual as characterized by high self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency (Luthans and Youssef, 2004), and has been found to facilitate employees’ positive emotions, attitudes, and behavior relevant to organizational change (Avey, Luthans, and Wernsing, 2008). In other studies, as described above, victims of downsizing reported better health than survivors (Devine et al., 2003; Ostry et al., 2002). This suggests that employability is also a potential buffer of the impact that change can have on employees’ health. Similarly, in a number of studies, role ambiguity has been found to increase following an organizational change (e.g., Moore, Grunberg, and Greenberg, 2004; Swanson and Power, 2001). As such, one could expect tolerance for ambiguity to be a valuable resource that can buffer the impact of change on employees’ wellbeing. Oreg (2003) and Oreg et al. (2008) highlighted the importance of dispositional resistance to change, defined as the “individual’s tendency to resist or avoid making changes, to devalue change generally, and to find change aversive across diverse contexts and types of change” (Oreg, 2003, 680). In addition, Bernerth et al. (2007) highlighted the role of cynicism about change as a moderator of the relationship between perceived justice and commitment to change. Drawing on these findings, it is likely that both dispositional resistance to change and cynicism about change would enhance the negative relationship between change and health symptoms.

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Relationship 3: Job/organization demands and resources moderate and mediate the link between organizational change and its appraisal In the job demands–control model (JDC, Karasek, 1979; Karasek and Theorell, 1990), and its extension, the job demands–control–support model (JDC(S), Johnson and Hall, 1988) it is proposed that three situational aspects of the job – demands, control, and social support – interact in determining the effects of work on well-being. Demands are task requirements, including role overload and time pressure, which are hypothesized to create work overload. Control, or decision latitude, is a composite of task autonomy and skill discretion or variety. Karasek and Theorell (1990) define social support as: “overall levels of helpful social interaction available on the job from both co-workers and supervisors” (69). The “iso-strain” hypothesis suggests that high demands combined with low job control and low social support result in the lowest levels of well-being. In addition, along with control, social support can “buffer” or attenuate the relationship between demands and well-being. This model can be linked to organizational change through job demands: changes at the organizational level are usually associated with higher workloads due to the restructuring of roles, tasks, and job positions. Accordingly, the amount of control, in terms of autonomy and skills, and the social support available on the job can play important roles in the prediction of health outcomes when facing organizational change. For example, Noblet, Rodwell, and McWilliams (2006) studied an augmented version of the JDC(S) and found significant effects of situation-specific demands, related to the implementation of new management practices, and coping resources on psychological health, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. More recently, the JDC(S) model inspired the job demands–resources model (JD–R, Demerouti et al., 2001) that reflects a broader category of job resources. The JD–R postulates a dual-process model, initiated by two types of job characteristics: demands and resources. Demands require sustained physical or mental effort that results in psychological and physiological costs (e.g., work pressure, emotionally demanding interactions with customers, inadequate physical environment); they are the initial point of a health-impairing process that leads to strain. Contrarily, job resources can reduce demands, facilitate task accomplishment, and stimulate personal development (e.g., support, role clarity, performance feedback); therefore, resources initiate a motivational process that leads to engagement. In addition to the dual process, the JD–R posits interactive effects of demands and resources in the prediction of strain-related and motivational outcomes (for a review of

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the JD–R model and its relation to earlier theories, see Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). Similar to the JDC(S), the JD–R can be used to study organizational change by studying the demands associated with the change situation, and exploring the role of various job and personal resources in the prediction of employees’ health outcomes. Drawing on the JDC and JD–R models, research has revealed effects of job/organizational demands and resources on employees’ health (e.g., Lavoie-Tremblay et al., 2010). The effect of decreased control and/or increased workload can mediate the relationship between change and appraisal (e.g., Kivimäki et al., 2001). Work demands, such as workload, are likely to increase in the context of change. For example, Østhus (2007) found that whereas downsizing-related changes were associated with job insecurity, other types of change, such as internal reorganization, were strongly related to increased work demands, low job satisfaction and work-related health problems. This finding shows how a change event (i.e., internal reorganization) can negatively affect employees’ work experience, even if not because of the threat of job loss. Lavoie-Tremblay et al. (2010) found that, among healthcare professionals, high psychological demands, and low decision latitude (measured before a major reorganization process at Time 1) were significant predictors of psychological distress (measured during the reorganization at Time 2). Moyle (1998) studied managers of a food retailing company at three points in time during a restructuring process: current and prior work demands were negative predictors of subsequent mental health, whereas managerial support was a positive predictor. Väänänen et al. (2004) examined pre-merger social support in 1996 and experienced changes in job position after the merger in 2000: negative changes in job positions and lack of upper-level social support were negatively related to subjective health. In another study, Kivimäki et al. (2001) showed that decreased job control, high job insecurity and increased physical demands mediated the negative relationship between downsizing and municipal employees’ health (data were collected before, immediately after, and four years after the downsizing process). Petterson et al. (2005) used archival data, with repeated self-reports from Swedish hospitals staff over an eight-year period, to evaluate the effects of staff redundancies and restructuring processes. Results revealed that decrements in mental health were most strongly associated with higher job demands, and that long-term sick leave increased in relation to job latitude decrements. But not only job demands and resources influence employees’ appraisal of change. We suggest it is also important to consider event characteristics and integrate them into our HOC model.

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Relationship 4: The appraisal of organizational change depends on employees’ perceptions of event characteristics The affective events theory (AET, Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996) provides a framework for the study of emotions, attitudes, and behaviors at work. According to the AET, work events that are appraised by employees as relevant and meaningful, promote affective reactions (e.g., emotions), which in turn drive employees’ attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction), and behaviors (e.g., turnover, days of sick leave, drug use) (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996).2 In addition, because of personality differences across employees (e.g., traits such as positive and negative affectivity, Watson and Clark, 1984), employees can and will perceive and evaluate work events in different ways. This evaluation and interpretation component is substantially related to the appraisal construct in the transactional model (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In line with the AET (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996), organizational change can be described as a work event influencing employees’ appraisal and influencing employees’ affective reactions, and work-related attitudes and behaviors. Along these lines, research has shown that change event characteristics predict employees’ appraisal, which in turn affect their health: changes with less benefits for employees (e.g., downsizing, Hellgren et al., 1999), and greater negative impact on their work (e.g., increased workload, Greenglass and Burke, 2001) can negatively predict health. Similarly, Michel et al. (2009a) studied academic staff members during organizational change at a German university and found that changes, which benefited the work unit produced less change-specific job insecurity than changes that did not benefit the work unit. Other studies found that the frequency and experience of previous change (Jalajas and Bomme, 1999; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006) as well as change climate (e.g. merger climate, Abdel-Kawi, 1991) also impacted employees’ health. Thus, the research above demonstrates how particular characteristics of the organizational change at hand can influence employees’ reactions, and ultimate health-related outcomes. Future research should address such relationships more systematically and explicitly to demonstrate how particular aspects of change are linked with change recipients’ health.

2

Contrary to some conceptualizations of attitudes, which include affective, cognitive, and behavioral components (e.g., Ajzen, 1984), AET seems to exclude the affective and behavioral component, and thus distinguishes between affective reactions that drive attitudes and behaviors.

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Relationship 5: The appraisal of organizational change depends on employees’ perceptions of the characteristics of the change process Providing further support for the AET (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996), existing research highlights communication, participation and leadership as characteristics of the change process that lead to less stress appraisal and better health in the change context. Amiot et al. (2006) showed that positive characteristics of a merger, including participation, effective communication, and positive leadership, were associated with increased self-efficacy and decreased stress. Terry, Callan, and Sartori (1996) examined both situational appraisals (stress, situational control, selfefficacy) and coping responses (emotion-focused and problem-focused coping) as mediators between merger characteristics and coping resources and well-being in the context of a newly merged airline. Employees who perceived the merger’s implementation in a positive light, as involving consultation, and effective communication and leadership, appraised less stress and reported more control and self-efficacy, used more problem-focused coping, and reported higher levels of well-being (for a discussion of the effects of leadership on change appraisal, change attitudes, and adjustment to change, see Chapter 7 in this volume). In another study, positive organizational information during restructuring processes enhanced employees’ efficacy to deal with the change, which in turn predicted better psychological well-being (Terry and Jimmieson, 2003). Contrarily, negative rumors communicated during restructuring were related to higher stress appraisals (Bordia et al., 2006; see also Chapter 10 in this volume). In sum, integrating these findings with social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Gouldner, 1960), we conclude that the positive effects of participation, communication, and leadership behaviors facilitate the formation of organizational fairness and support perceptions during the change process. Relationship 6: Social exchange characteristics mediate the relationship between organizational change and its appraisal Social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Cropanzano, Prehar, and Chen, 2002; Gouldner, 1960) explains, in terms of reciprocity, why neighbors help each other or why colleagues support each other at work. Social exchange in organizations can take many forms. For example, work engagement and effort is exchanged for acknowledgment by one’s supervisor. Thus, organizations can be described as forums of transaction. Taken together, social exchange describes the voluntary action of an individual in favor of

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another person or an organization. This action is motivated by individuals’ expectations of reciprocity. Therefore, it is important that the exchange between the parties is reciprocal in terms of a balanced outcome of efforts invested (i.e., costs) and rewards received (i.e., benefits). Related to this theory, the effort–reward imbalance model (ERI, Siegrist, 1996) is based on the exchange relationship and social reciprocity between employee and employer. This model predicts that employees will suffer from strain if the employer does not reward their efforts when facing work demands. Stressors are thus conceptualized as the lack of reciprocity between efforts (e.g., time pressure, responsibility or interruptions) and rewards (e.g., money, esteem, career opportunities), which is associated with negative emotions and sustained stress responses (e.g., subjective health, cardiovascular risk, depression). The ERI model has been studied with a standardized self-report measure (Rödel et al., 2004; Siegrist et al., 2004) that measures effort, reward, and overcommitment. One of the measured reward factors – gratification of job security – makes this model suitable for studying organizational change, particularly when change is associated with experiences of job insecurity. For example, Niedhammer et al. (2006) found significant relationships between imbalance and low reward (especially job instability) and psychiatric symptoms among male workers exposed to major organizational changes. We suggest that social exchange theories provide the theoretical foundation to explain why the fair implementation of change is related to favorable employees’ reactions. For example, sufficient participation in planned changes and fair decision-making processes are perceived by employees as signs of management’s appreciation and support. In turn, it is likely that employees reciprocate fair treatment by behaving in favor of the organization (Michel et al., 2009b). Empirical studies exemplify the role of social exchange in the change context in terms of organizational fairness and justice (see also Chapter 8 in this volume). Below we elaborate on several factors that reflect the relationship between employees and the organization, and how these factors are related to employees’ healthrelated responses. Fairness A pivotal characteristic of the exchange process is organizational justice, which yields employees’ perception of fairness. In Kalimo et al.’s (2003) study, the relationship between downsizing and mental health indicators was partially mediated by perceived inequity. Riolli and Savicki (2006) studied a nationwide engineering firm during, and six months after, a company-wide computer system change. Results

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revealed that low levels of procedural justice predicted higher levels of burnout, strain, and turnover. Organizational support Perceived organizational support (POS; Eisenberger et al., 1986) is another indicator of the social exchange process that has been considered empirically. Armstrong-Stassen (2004) studied the merger of four Canadian hospitals in two points in time (at the beginning of the initiative, and prior to the actual closing of two of the hospitals). Self-reports from nurses revealed that POS at Time 1 was positively related to control-oriented coping strategies, job satisfaction and intention to remain, and negatively related to job insecurity and burnout, at Time 2. Moreover, hospital support was negatively related to nurses’ burnout and psychosomatic symptoms during hospital restructuring (Burke and Greenglass, 2001). Given that the exchange process involves two parties, it is necessary to also consider the employees’ contribution to the exchange. Empirical research suggests that employees’ organizational commitment (Isaksson and Johannson, 2003) and values congruence fit (Zajack, 2005) mediate the relationship between organizational change and health. Organizational commitment is an exchange indicator that has been found to mediate the relationship between the experience of downsizing and distress. For example, Isaksson and Johannson (2003) evaluated, in a twowave panel study, the implementation of a downsizing program based on an early retirement scheme. The study involved employees whose request for early retirement was rejected, and therefore remained in the organization. The researchers found that organizational commitment was associated with lower levels of distress. Another way of conceptualizing the quality of the exchange between employee and employer is the perceived congruence between their values (i.e., values congruence fit). Zajack (2005) showed how employees’ perceived congruence between personal and organizational values was positively related to reduced role stressors and strain at two points of time during a corporate takeover. In yet another study, trust in management has been shown to mediate the relationship between participation and employees’ responses toward the organization (Farndale et al., 2011). In numerous other studies it has been shown to predict employees’ responses to organizational change (e.g., Eby et al., 2000). It is therefore plausible that trust would also be a relevant covariate of employees’ health-related responses to change. In summary, the quality of the social exchange between employers and employees during change can be critical for workers’ health (Crown, 2007). Important factors to take into account from the organizational perspective are organizational justice and perceived organizational

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support. Furthermore, employees’ contributions to the exchange, in the form of their organizational commitment, values congruence, and trust, are also likely to be meaningful in explaining the link between organizational change and employees’ health. Conclusions Change can affect employees’ and managers’ mental health, physical health, and work-related well-being. Findings from empirical research on the subject can guide managers in designing and implementing change, to minimize the negative health-related consequences of organizational change. It is therefore critical to examine the specific change characteristics, both event and process, as they relate to employees’ appraisal processes. In addition, it is important to assess the job/organization demands and resources prior to, during, and after the change, as these relate to employees’ health-related responses. For instance, managers should consider communicating the benefits of the change specifically when it involves improvement of working conditions or the security of the organization’s competitive position. This way, transitory changes in workload or autonomy can be managed and the appraisals of these changes are more likely to be challenges instead of threats. With respect to social exchange, findings suggest that change managers should monitor the event characteristics and manage the change process by informing employees frequently and comprehensively, providing participation and voice opportunities and enacting effective leadership behaviors. Such actions positively influence employees’ perception of fairness and organizational support, trust in management, commitment and increase employee–organization value congruence. In turn, these responses are also likely to positively influence employees’ health in the context of organizational change. Beyond organizational factors, it is also important to take into account individual-related elements. In line with the JD–R model (Demerouti et al., 2001), employees’ resources are likely to buffer against the negative health-related consequences of change. We should therefore promote employees’ psychological capital, sense of coherence, employability, coping skills, and tolerance for ambiguity, and aim to reduce cynicism and resistance toward change. Employee health is as important for humanity, the economy, and society, at least as it is for organizations. The need to care for their health may be particularly important in times of change. Thus, in this chapter we put forward the healthy organizational change model to integrate findings about health in the context of organizational change,

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and to guide scholars in devising future research and managers in promoting employees’ health and well-being during organizational change.

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Herold, D. M., D. B. Fedor, and S. D. Caldwell (2007), “Beyond change management: A multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees’ commitment to change,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 942–951. Hertting, A. and T. Theorell (2002), “Physiological changes associated with downsizing of personnel and reorganisation in the health care sector,” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 71(2), 117–122. Hu, Q. and W. B. Schaufeli (2011), “Job insecurity and remuneration in Chinese family-owned business workers,” Career Development International, 16(1), 6–19. Idel, M., S. Melamed, P. Merlob, J. Yahav, T. Hendel, and B. Kaplan (2003), “Influence of a merger on nurses’ emotional well-being: The importance of self-efficacy and emotional reactivity,” Journal of Nursing Management, 11(1), 59–63. Isaksson, K. and G. Johannson (2003), “Managing older employees after downsizing,” Scandinavian Journal of Management, 19(1), 1–15. Jalajas, D. S. and M. Bommer (1999), “A comparison of the impact of past and the threat of future downsizings on workers,” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 14(1), 89–100. Johns, G. (2010), “Presenteeism in the workplace: A review and research agenda,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(4), 519–542. Johnson, J. V. and E. M. Hall (1988), “Job strain, work place social support and cardiovascular disease: A cross-sectional study of a random sample of the Swedish working population,” American Journal of Public Health, 78, 1336–1342. Kaiser, G. M. (2004), “The effects of downsizing on employee stress and organizational loyalty in the healthcare industry,” ProQuest Information & Learning, US. Kalimo, R., T. W. Taris, and W. B. Schaufeli (2003), “The effects of past and anticipated future downsizing on survivor well-being: An equity perspective,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 8(2), 91–109. Karasek, R. (1979), “Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: Implications for job redesign,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 285–307. Karasek, R. and T. Theorell (1990), Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of Working Life (New York: Basic Books), 1–381. Kivimäki, M., T. Honkonen, K. Wahlbeck, M. Elovainio, J. Pentti, T. Klaukka, M. Virtanen, and J. Vahtera (2007), “Organisational downsizing and increased use of psychotropic drugs among employees who remain in employment,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(2), 154–158. Kivimäki, M., J. Vahtera, M. Elovainio, J. Pentti, and M. Virtanen (2003), “Human costs of organizational downsizing: Comparing health trends between leavers and stayers,” American Journal of Community Psychology, 32(1–2), 57–67. Kivimäki, M., J. Vahtera, J. Pentti, L. Thomson, A. Griffiths, and T. Cox (2001), “Downsizing, changes in work, and self-rated health of employees: A 7-year 3wave panel study,” Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal, 14(1), 59–73. Kohler, J. M., D. C. Munz, and M. J. Grawitch (2006), “Test of a dynamic stress model for organisational change: Do males and females require different models?,” Applied Psychology, 55(2), 168–191.

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Lavoie-Tremblay, M., J.-P. Bonin, A. D. Lesage, A. Bonneville-Roussy, G. L. Lavigne, and D. Laroche (2010), “Contribution of the psychosocial work environment to psychological distress among health care professionals before and during a major organizational change,” Health Care Manager, 29 (4), 293–304. Lazarus, R. S. and S. Folkman (1984), Stress, Appraisal, and Coping (New York: Springer). Leroyer, A. A., H. H. Kraemer-Heriaud, L. L. Marescaux, and P. P. Frimat (2006), “Prospective evaluation of the impact of organizational change on perceived stress and health in assembly-line workers in an automobile plant,” Revue d 0épidémiologie et de santé publique, 54(1), 15–25. Lindorff, M., L. Worrall, and C. Cooper (2011), “Managers’ well-being and perceptions of organizational change in the UK and Australia,” Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 49(2), 233. Luthans, F. and C. M. Youssef (2004), “Human, social, and now positive psychological capital management: Investing in people for competitive advantage,” Organizational Dynamics, 33(2), 143–160. Maurier, W. L. and H. C. Northcott (2000), “Job uncertainty and health status for nurses during restructuring of health care in Alberta,” Western Journal of Nursing Research, 22(5), 623–641. Medin, J., K. Ekberg, A. Nordlund, and J. Eklund (2008), “Organisational change, job strain and increased risk of stroke? A pilot study,” Work, 31 (4), 443. Michel, A., R. Stegmaier, D. Meiser, and K. H. Sonntag (2009a), “Ausgebrannt und unzufrieden? Wie Change-Charakteristika und veränderungsspezifische Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit mit emotionaler Erschöpfung, Arbeitszufriedenheit und Kündigungsabsicht zusammenhängen [Burnt out and unsatisfied? How change characteristics and work-context variables are related to the well-being of academics],” Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie [Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology], 53, 11–21. (2009b), “Der Elfenbeinturm öffnet sich–Veränderungsprozesse im Hochschulbereich: Werden Commitment to Change und PersonOrganisations-Passung durch Prozessmerkmale bestimmt? [The ivory tower is opened – change processes in higher education: Are commitment to change and person-organization fit determined by process variables?],” Zeitschrift für Personalpsychologie [Journal of Personnel Psychology], 8, 1–13. Moore, S., L. Grunberg, and E. Greenberg (2004), “Repeated downsizing contact: The effects of similar and dissimilar layoff experiences on work and well-being outcomes,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 9(3), 247–257. (2006), “Surviving repeated waves of organizational downsizing: The recency, duration, and order effects associated with different forms of layoff contact,” Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal, 19(3), 309–329. Moyle, P. (1998), “Longitudinal influences of managerial support on employee well-being,” Work and Stress, 12(1), 29–49. Ness, J. and T. Cucuzza (1995), “Tapping the full potential of ABC,” Harvard Business Review, 73(4), 130–138.

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Part III

Predicting employees’ reactions to change: individual factors

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Reactions to organizational change from an individual differences perspective: a review of empirical research Maria Vakola, Achilles Armenakis, and Shaul Oreg

Introduction Previous reviews of the organizational change and development literature have focused on how organizations plan and implement changes in order to increase organizational effectiveness (see Alderfer, 1977; Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999; Faucheux, Amado, and Laurent, 1982; Friedlander and Brown, 1974; Pasmore and Fagans, 1992; Porras and Silvers, 1991; Sashkin and Burke, 1987; Weick and Quinn, 1999; Woodman, 1989). Recently Oreg, Vakola, and Armenakis (2011) pointed out the importance of understanding how individuals within organizations (i.e., change recipients) react to organizational changes. Their logic is based on the fundamental premise that the extent to which change recipients embrace an organizational change determines their explicit reactions and organizational consequences. Recent research (see Bartunek et al., 2006; Caldwell, Herold, and Fedor, 2004; Judge et al., 1999; Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia, 2008; Oreg, 2006; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006) provides support for this premise and the growing interest in investigating change recipients’ reactions by organizational scientists. Oreg et al. (2011) surveyed the quantitative research (which investigated the role of change recipients in organizational change) for the sixty-year period between 1948 and 2007 and inductively developed a model depicting the relationships between antecedents, explicit reactions, and change consequences. In this chapter, we present and expand on part of Oreg et al.’s comprehensive analysis of quantitative research. Through this review we unravel a model of: (a) explicit reactions to change, in which these reactions are conceptualized as tridimensional attitudes;1 (b) reaction antecedents 1

Throughout this chapter, our primary focus will be on these explicit reactions, which are in contrast to individuals’ longer-term and less direct reactions to change (which we term change consequences). We therefore use the terms explicit reactions and reactions interchangeably.

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that comprise change recipients’ characteristics; and (c) change consequences which include work-related and personal consequences. Our chapter is organized in four sections. In the first section, we present an overarching view of the quantitative research conducted on the topic of reactions to organizational change. In the second section, we describe the change recipients’ characteristics that we identified. We group them into four categories, namely personality dispositions (e.g., traits, chronic attitudes, personal orientations), coping styles, motivational needs, and demographics. In the third section, we explain how each recipient category is related to change recipients’ reactions to change. In the final section, we discuss the findings and implications for both change researchers and practitioners. A model of change recipient reactions to organizational change The literature search process We combined an electronic search process with a manual search of the available literature in identifying studies. For the electronic search, using the PsychInfo and Proquest databases, we reviewed abstracts for the terms reactions to change, resistance to change, openness to change, attitudes toward change, willingness to change, readiness to change, and receptivity to change. We then manually searched ten journals that publish empirical articles on organizational change for the period 1980 through 2010. The journals were Academy of Management Journal, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Organization Science, and Personnel Psychology. The total number of studies we considered for our analysis exceeded 700. Many of the articles did not meet our criteria and were quickly discarded (e.g., experiments with animals in a laboratory environment). However, we identified fifty-seven empirical studies published between 1975 and 2010, which met three criteria. First, the published study had to describe an actual organizational change. Second, the study had to assess change recipients’ reactions to the change. And, third, the study had to employ a quantitative methodology. Our coding scheme was inductive in nature and evolved as we progressed through the coding process. For example, we developed a preliminary coding form based on previous research (e.g., Armenakis, Harris, and Mossholder, 1993; Oreg, 2006; Piderit, 2000; Vakola, Tsaousis, and

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Antecedents

Change Consequences Change Recipient Characteristics Dispositions e.g., locus of control, self-esteem

Motivational needs e.g., learning orientation, personal initiative

Explicit Reactions Affective reaction Negative, e.g., Stress Positive, e.g., Pleasantness Cognitive reaction Change evaluation Change beliefs

Work-related Consequences Job satisfaction Org. commitment Performance

Personal Consequences Coping styles e.g., problem-focused coping style

Behavioral reaction Change recipient involvement Behavioral intentions Coping behaviors

Well-being Health Withdrawal

Demographics e.g., age, gender, tenure

Figure 5.1 Antecedents, explicit reactions, and change consequences of organizational change

Nikolaou, 2004), but as we coded each article we modified the scheme to include the relevant variables assessed in each article. We then backtracked and recoded earlier articles in accordance with the modified coding scheme. One of the three authors read and coded each article and submitted the coded form to the other two authors for verification. If there was any disagreement with a coded article, we discussed the issue(s) until agreement was reached. After we completed coding the fifty-seven articles, we then developed the model depicted in Figure 5.1. As indicated in the figure, each of the change recipient characteristics has been linked with either individuals’ explicit reactions (namely, affective, cognitive, and behavioral reaction components) to an organizational change, or in some cases with the longer-term, indirect, response to the change, which consists of either work-related or personal consequences. Table 5.1 provides the research context descriptors of the fifty-seven studies we reviewed. These include type of organization, type of change implemented, research design, sample composition, and sample size. As can be seen, many different types of organizations have been studied. Some researchers described them in general terms, such as, private or public sector organization and some offer specific descriptions, such as, airlines, telecommunications, hospitals, and automobile parts manufacturer. The types of change described in the studies were also quite varied. Many were in organizations engaged in a merger or divestiture, downsizing, technological change, and work redesign.

Table 5.1 Research context descriptors1 Article

Type of organization

Type of change

Ahearne et al., 2010

pharmaceutical company

Amiot et al., 2006

airlines

adoption of sales technology cross-sectional and archival data merger longitudinal

Armenakis et al., 2007

Study 2 = medical division; Study 3 = durable goods manufacturer; Study 4 = public service organization Fortune 100 company

S2 = team-based culture; S3 = company spin-off; S4 = merger

cross-sectional

downsizing

cross-sectional

telecommunications company hospital

company divestiture

cross-sectional & longitudinal longitudinal

Armstrong-Stassen, 1998 Ashford, 1988 Begley & Czajka, 1993 Bhagat & Chassie, 1980 Bordia et al., 2004 Bovey & Hede, 2001

Caldwell et al., 2004

Cartwright & Cooper, 1993

aircraft manufacturing company hospital 9 different public/private sector organizations

34 work units in 21 organizations, e.g., transportation, technology, consumer products, govt. UK building societies

divisional consolidation transition to 4-day work week restructuring & relocation restructuring; reorganization of systems; technological change extent of change, consequences of change, individual job impact

merger

Research design

longitudinal

Sample composition

Sample size

sales people

N = 400

pilots & flight engineers S2 = admin., technical, & scientific employees

T-1 = 662; T-2 = 465 S2 = 117; S3 = 117; S4 = 247

clerical; technicians; supervisors employees

N = 236 T-1 = 180; T-2 = 83 N = 82 N = 65

cross-sectional cross-sectional

managers and nonmanagers staff members employees

cross-sectional

employees

N = 282–299

cross-sectional

middle managers

N = 157

N = 222 N = 615

Coyle-Shapiro & Morrow, 2003 Coyle-Shapiro, 1999 Coyle-Shapiro, 2002

UK supplier of electrical components UK supplier of electrical components UK supplier of electrical components

TQM program

longitudinal

employees

TQM program

longitudinal

employees

T-1 = TQM; T-2 = profit sharing

longitudinal

Cunningham et al., 2002 Eby et al., 2000

Canadian hospital

longitudinal

Fried et al., 1996

Fortune 500 service company aerospace company

Re-engineering, work redesign organizational change; segmented sales teams merger including downsizing, relocation merger – downsizing, restructuring, etc.

Study 1: operators, craftsmen, engineers, purchase controllers; administrators hospital employees

Fugate et al., 2002

Fugate & Kinicki, 2008

Gaertner, 1989

Gagnon et al., 2008

national sales organization

cross-sectional

T-1 = 186; T-2 = 166; T-3 = 118 T-1 = 186; T-2 = 166; T-3 = 118 Study 1: T-1 = 166; T-2 = 118 Study 2: T-1 = 186; T-2 = 141 N = 654 N = 117

longitudinal

employees & managers middle managers

longitudinal

employees

T-1 = 216; T-2 = 138; T-3 = 119; T-4 = 81 T1+T1 = 101

public services organization the department’s top longitudinal administrator was replaced and many structural, procedural, and job changes followed information services change in business strategy longitudinal – reorganization with downsizing, technological change, change in product line manufacturing the implementation of an longitudinal – selforganization organizational-wide lean report and manufacturing strategy supervisory ratings

employees

N = 91

employees

T-1 = 147; T-2 = 789

employees

T1 = 90 T2 = 55

Table 5.1 (cont.) Article

Type of organization

Type of change

Research design

Sample composition

Sample size

Gardner et al., 1987

insurance company

23 job improvement teams used to identify technostructural job changes

clerical personnel

exp group = 300; control group = 160

Giacquinta, 1975

elementary schools

sex education curriculum

randomized experimental/ control group design and archival data cross-sectional

N = 66

Gopinath & Becker, 2000

chemical company

sale of division downsizing, longitudinal layoffs

educators/board member, administrators, teachers survivors

Herold et al., 2007

25 organizations in finance, work unit changes cross-sectional manufacturing, technology, education, consumer reorganization, strategy, products, & technology relocation, outsourcing, leadership, & downsizing government organization & change in organizational cross-sectional private sector structure organization hospital shared leadership & longitudinal decentralization of decision making

Holt et al., 2007

Hornung & Rousseau, 2007

Iverson, 1996

Australian hospital

Johnson et al., 1996

insurance company

restructuring jobs, technological change, increasing efficiency downsizing

cross-sectional

modified time series design

employees

employees

T-1 = 314; T-2 = 318; matched pairs = 144 individual change surveys = 287; organizational change surveys = 266 Study 1 = 264; Study 2 = 228

healthcare personnel, technical personnel, & administrators hospital employees

T-1 = 166; T-2 = 207

employees

T-1 = 64; T-2 = 44; T-3 = 37

N = 761

Jones et al., 2005

Australian state government dept.

technological change

longitudinal

employees

Jimmieson et al., 2008 Judge et al., 1999

local government

relocation

cross-sectional

employees

shipping company, banks, university, manufacturing company

Kiefer, 2005

company offering HR online (Germany, Switzerland, & Austria) Hong Kong bank

reorganization, downsizing, cross-sectional mergers & acquisitions, business divestments, changes in top management merger longitudinal

Lam & Schaubroeck, 2000

service quality initiative

longitudinal – supervisors’ and customers’ ratings cross-sectional

Lau & Woodman, 1995

public university

change in university tradition

Logan & Ganster, 2007

trucking company

empowerment intervention

longitudinal

Madsen et al., 2005

3 private sector & 1 nonprofit organizations public sector organization & public sector hospital automotive company

continuous change

cross-sectional

relocation, job changes, downsizing, multidisciplinary teams introduction of new technology open architecture

cross-sectional

Martin et al., 2005

Michaelis et al., 2009 Miller & Monge, 1985

state department of education

cross-sectional cross-sectional

T-1 = 156; T-2 = 98; T-1 = T-2 = 67 N = 147

middle & upper-level management

N = 514

employees

T-1 = 155; T-2 = 76

bank tellers

T-1 = 159; T-2 = 159; T-3 = 159; N = 159

undergraduate students; university staff project managers

N = 346; undergrads = 331; staff = 15 Experimental group = 38; comparison group = 30 N = 454

employees & managers employees; hospital staff employees in R&D teams employees

PSO = 779; H = 877 N = 194 N = 146

Table 5.1 (cont.) Article

Type of organization

Type of change

Research design

Sample composition

Sample size

Miller et al., 1994

insurance company

cross-sectional

managers, analysts, tele-counselors

N = 168

Morgeson et al., 2006 Naswell et al., 2005

printing company

restructuring including interdependent teams, involving new roles & status levels semi-autonomous teams

longitudinal

employees

cost reduction & productivity increase higher education institution implementation of performance appraisal system university student schedule change, technological change, relocation

cross-sectional

nurses

T-1 = 914; T-2 = 1030 N = 512

cross-sectional

university employees

N = 88

cross-sectional

undergrad./grad. students, faculty, & staff

Oreg, 2006

defense organization

cross-sectional

Parsons et al., 1991

insurance trade association technological change

longitudinal

managers & nonmanagers employees

3 samples: N1 = 44, N2 = 47, N3 = 48 & 43 (T1 & T2) N = 177

Paulsen et al., 2005

Australian hospital

longitudinal

employees

Peach et al., 2005

Australian governmental organizations Australian public sector organizations

relocation, restructuring to teams, & downsizing relocation

cross-sectional

change in top leader; restructuring; downsizing, changes in the HR function downsizing

longitudinal

managers & nonmanagers employees

cross-sectional and archival data

engineers, sales, admin.

Neves, 2009

Oreg, 2003

Rafferty & Griffin, 2006

Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002

hospital

aerospace company

merger & restructuring

T-1 = 105; T-2 = 82; T-3 = 62 T-1 = 222; T-2 = 189; T-3 = 117 N = 149 T-1 = 207; T-2 = 168

N = 350

Stanley et al., 2005

van Dam et al., 2008

Walker et al., 2007 Wanberg & Banas, 2000 Weber & Weber, 2001 Zalesny & Farace, 1987

1

S-1 = various organizations; S-2 = energy company housing corporation

auto-parts manufacturer US government agency fire department governmental agency

Adapted from table 5 in Oreg et al. (2011)

organizational changes including restructuring and culture change several organizational changes such as changes in working procedures and management practices following a merger spin-off radical reorganization organizational change under a new chief open architecture office

S-1 = crosssectional; S-2 = longitudinal cross-sectional

employees

cross-sectional longitudinal & cross-sectional longitudinal

operative employees employees

longitudinal

employees

employees and supervisors from various organizational units

employees

S-1 = 65; S-2 T-1 = 712; S-2 T-2 = 637 N = 235

N = 117 T-1 = 173; T-2 = 133 T-1 = 86; T-2 = 78; T-1 + T-2 = 56 T-1 = 426; T-2 = 372; T-1+ T-2 = 247

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The job classifications of the research samples were also quite varied and included operative-level workers, managers, pilots, nurses, police and military personnel, and schoolteachers. Sample sizes ranged from a low of 30 to a high of 1,030. Nearly 50 percent of the research designs in the fifty-seven studies were longitudinal, three studies were based on a combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional design and one of these used a randomized experimental/control group design. The vast majority of studies relied solely on self-reports, for all variables. We identified only three studies that supplemented self-report with archival data, such as absenteeism, turnover, and performance (see Ahearne et al., 2010; Gardner et al., 1987; Spreitzer and Mishra, 2002). Three additional studies reported independent ratings, namely customer satisfaction and supervisor ratings of subordinates (see Gagnon, Jansen, and Michael, 2008; Judge et al., 1999; Lam and Schaubroeck, 2000). Defining reactions to change Early in our review process, we realized that researchers varied in their conceptualizations of change recipients’ reactions. Researchers sometimes used different terms for identical variables (labeled the jangle fallacy by Block, 1995) while at other times the same terms were used for different variables (referred to as the jingle fallacy by Block, 1995). We found Piderit’s (2000) tridimensional categorization of resistance to change into affective, cognitive, and behavioral components helpful in resolving the jingle–jangle issues. Our solution was to label the more immediate change recipient reactions to an organizational change as either affective (i.e., how they feel), cognitive (i.e., what they think), or behavioral (i.e., what they intend to do) explicit reactions to an organizational change. Explicit reactions to change Starting with the affective reactions, a number of scholars focused on either positive or negative reactions to change. More specifically, researchers considered positive reactions to change, such as change-related satisfaction (Jones, Jimmieson, and Griffiths, 2005; Parsons et al., 1991), positive emotions (Fugate and Kinicki, 2008), and affective aspects of change commitment (Walker, Armenakis, and Bernerth, 2007).Contrarily, a number of studies explored negative affective reactions as a result of the change, such as stress (Amiot et al., 2006; Ashford, 1988; Begley and Czajka, 1993; Cartwright and Cooper, 1993; Martin, Jones, and Callan, 2005), anxiety (e.g., Miller and Monge, 1985; Miller, Johnson, and Grau, 1994; Oreg, 2006), and negative emotions (Kiefer, 2005).

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The cognitive aspects of change recipients’ explicit reactions to change were related to the recipients’ assessments of the change’s value and appropriateness for themselves, for the organization, or both (“Overall, the proposed changes are for the better”; Wanberg and Banas, 2000). In our close examination of the scales used to measure recipients’ reactions we found several additional terms which appear to involve a cognitive conceptualization, such as decision satisfaction (Parsons et al., 1991), strategic commitment (Gagnon et al., 2008), attitudes toward carrying out activities during the next months to support the change (Jimmieson, Peach, and White, 2008), support for the business strategy (Gaertner, 1989), openness to the change (Wanberg and Banas, 2000), and readiness for change (Cunningham et al., 2002). In addition, in three studies, a scale labeled as “affective commitment” was used to measure change recipients’ (cognitive) views and thoughts about the change (“I think that management is making a mistake by introducing these changes”; Fugate and Kinicki, 2008; Michaelis, Stegmaier, and Sonntag, 2009; Neves, 2009).2 The studies which focused on behavioral reactions to change can be divided into three main categories. The first includes studies that conceptualized behavioral reactions as explicit behaviors, taking the form either of the active involvement in the change (Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Cunningham et al., 2002; Jones et al., 2005; Lam and Schaubroeck, 2000; Oreg, 2003) or withdrawal behaviors, such as intentions to quit due to the change (Martin et al., 2005). The second category focused on behavioral intentions to resist or support the change (Bovey and Hede, 2001; Madsen, Miller, and John, 2005; Miller et al., 1994; Oreg, 2006; Peach, Jimmieson, and White, 2005; Stanley, Meyer, and Topolnytsky, 2005). One of the measures of the behavioral intentions to resist or support change, for example, took the form of a scale including twenty items, such as “undermine,” “oppose,” or “support,” in response to which change recipients were asked to rate their intentions (Bovey and Hede, 2001). In other studies, researchers used a change commitment scale comprising items such as “I am doing whatever I can to help this change be successful” or “I have tried (or intend to try) to convince others to support this change” (Herold, Fedor, and Caldwell, 2007, 946), all of which explicitly pertain to individuals’ behaviors or intentions in response to the change (Hornung and Rousseau, 2007). The third set of studies considered coping as a behavioral outcome that represents explicit behavioral reactions to change (Amiot et al., 2006; Cunningham, 2006; Judge et al., 1999) taking the form of either individuals’ stress-related coping

2

We expand on this incongruence in the Discussion section at the end of the chapter.

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strategies or individuals’ reported functioning given the conditions of change (Cunningham, 2006; Judge et al., 1999). We identified several studies that we could not classify into a single reaction component. We group these into two categories, namely multiple reactions and confounded reactions. The multiple reactions category consists of studies that assessed more than one component. For example, Martin et al. (2005) assessed both affective (i.e., change-related stress) and behavioral (i.e., absenteeism and intentions to quit in direct response to the change). In a few cases, all three explicit reaction components were included as distinct constructs (Ashford, 1988; Oreg, 2003, Study 7), and in only one case was this done explicitly with the purpose of separately measuring each of the three change explicit reaction components (Oreg, 2006). The confounded reactions category includes several types of studies in which we were not able to classify the explicit reaction to any of the three categories. In one type, the measure of the reaction to change consisted of items that tapped more than one component (Cunningham et al., 2002; Eby et al., 2000; Fugate, Kinicki, and Scheck, 2002; Lau and Woodman, 1995). In a second type, questions about the reaction to change were very general (e.g., “Employees here are resistant to change”; Eby et al., 2000) and did not address any particular explicit reaction component (i.e., affect, cognition, behavior). In the third type, items were aggregated to provide a composite score, such that no specific component could be determined (van Dam, Oreg, and Schyns, 2008). Change recipients’ characteristics as antecedents of reactions to change Among the key factors to have been considered as a predictor of employees’ reactions to change are the employees’ characteristics. Studies that have considered such factors are based on the premise that different people respond differently to any given situation, and that such differences in reactions stem from factors within the individual that predispose her/him to react in a given manner. Overall, as shown in Table 5.2 we can divide these characteristics into four categories: (a) dispositions; (b) motivational needs; (c) coping styles; and (d) demographics. Obviously these categories are not mutually exclusive, and many relationships among them have been previously established. Yet each highlights a different aspect within the individual. Both dispositions and needs are relatively stable factors that comprise one’s personality. Whereas the dispositions we reviewed (most of which are traits), however,

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Table 5.2 Antecedents variables considered in articles reviewed1 Individual factors Personality dispositions (1) Locus of control (2) personal control (3) perceived behavioral control

References

(1) Fried et al., 1996; Holt et al., 2007; Judge et al., 1999; Lau & Woodman, 1995; Näswall et al., 2005; (2) Ashford, 1988; Fugate et al., 2002; Martin et al., 2005; Paulsen et al., 2005; Wanberg & Banas, 2000; (3) Jimmieson, Peach, & White, 2008 Self-efficacy Amiot et al., 2006; Armenakis et al., 2007; Ashford, 1988; Cunningham et al., 2002; Eby et al., 2000; Herold et al., 2007; Holt et al., 2007; Hornung & Rousseau, 2007; Judge et al., 1999; Logan & Ganster, 2007; Martin et al., 2005; Neves, 2009; Peach et al., 2005; van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008; Wanberg & Banas, 2000 Positive & negative affectivity Begley & Czajka, 1993; Fugate et al., 2002; Holt et al., 2007; Iverson, 1996; Judge et al., 1999; Näswall et al., 2005 Tolerance for ambiguity Ashford, 1988; Judge et al., 1999; Walker et al., 2007 Dispositional resistance to change Oreg, 2003; Oreg, 2006 Self-esteem Ashford, 1988; Giacquinta, 1975; Judge et al., 1999; Wanberg & Banas, 2000 Openness to experience Ahearne et al., 2010; Judge et al., 1999; van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008 (1) Stanley et al., 2005; (2) Wanberg & Other predispositions: (1) cynicism; Banas, 2000; (3) Rafferty & Griffin, 2006; (2) optimism; (3) neuroticism; (4) Rafferty & Griffin, 2006; (5) Lau & (4) conscientiousness; (5) dogmatism; Woodman, 1995; (6) Bordia et al., 2004; (6) uncertainty; (7) helplessness; (7) Fried et al., 1996; (8) Holt et al., 2007; (8) rebelliousness; (9) initiative; (10) risk (9) Hornung & Rousseau, 2007; aversion; (11) depression; (12) freedom (10) Judge et al., 1999; (11) Cunningham from self-denigration; (13) dispositional et al., 2002; (12) Ashford, 1988; impression management; (14) orientation (13) Gopinath & Becker, 2000; toward teacher–pupil relationship; (14) Giacquinta, 1975; (15) Giacquinta, (15) attitude toward education; 1975; (16) Caldwell et al., 2004; (16) mastery of motivational orientation; (17) Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; (18) Eby et al., (17) ability to contribute; (18) preference 2000; (19) Ahearne et al., 2010; for working in teams; (19) goal orientation; (20) Fugate, Kinicki, & Prussia, 2008; (20) dispositional employability; (21) Ahearne et al., 2010 (21) learning and performance orientation Coping styles Bovey & Hede, 2001; Cartwright & Cooper, 1993; Fugate et al., 2002

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Table 5.2 (cont.) Individual factors Motivational needs Higher-order needs Need for feedback Need for privacy Need for interdependence Need for affiliation Demographics Age

References

Bhagat & Chassie, 1980; Coyle-Shapiro & Morrow, 2003; Miller et al., 1994 Johnson et al., 1996 Miller & Monge, 1985 Miller & Monge, 1985 Miller et al., 1994

Begley & Czajka, 1993; Bordia et al., 2004; Caldwell et al., 2004; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Coyle-Shapiro, 2002; Giacquinta, 1975; Hornung & Rousseau, 2007; Iverson, 1996; Jones et al., 2005; Kiefer, 2005; Madsen et al., 2005; Martin et al., 2005; Parsons et al., 1991; Michaelis, Stegmaier, & Sonntag, 2009; Peach et al., 2005; Rafferty & Griffin, 2006; Spritzer & Mishra, 2002; van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008; Weber & Weber, 2001 Gender Armstrong-Stassen, 1998; Begley and Czajka, 1993; Bordia et al., 2004; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Giacquinta, 1975; Hornung & Rousseau, 2007; Iverson, 1996; Jones et al., 2005; Kiefer, 2005; Madsen et al., 2005; Martin et al., 2005; Michaelis, Stegmaier, & Sonntag, 2009; Morgeson et al., 2006; Parsons et al., 1991; Peach et al., 2005; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; van Dam et al., 2008 Tenure Ahearne et al., 2010; Begley & Czajka, 1993; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Coyle-Shapiro, 2002; Gagnon, Jansen, & Michael, 2008; Hornung & Rousseau, 2007; Iverson, 1996; Kiefer, 2005; Madsen, 2005; Martin et al., 2005; Morgeson et al., 2006; Peach, 2005; Rafferty & Griffin, 2006; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; van Dam et al., 2008; Weber & Weber, 2001 Organizational status Armstrong-Stassen, 1998; Giacquinta, 1975; Iverson, 1996; Martin et al., 2005; Parsons et al., 1991; Michaelis, Stegmaier, & Sonntag, 2009; Zalesny & Farace, 1987 Other demographics: (1) education; (1) Begley & Czajka, 1993; Hornung & (2) marital status; (3) number of children; Rousseau, 2007; Madsen et al., 2005; (4) employment status; (5) computer Parsons et al., 1991; Spreitzer & Mishra,

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Table 5.2 (cont.) Individual factors

References

experience; (6) survivor/victim; (7) income; (8) elderly dependents; (9) job type; (10) care of family members; (11) job centrality; (12) career opportunity; (13) personal conditions; (14) empowerment; (15) religion; (16) emotional exhaustion

1

2002; van Dam et al., 2008; Weber & Weber, 2001; (2) Begley & Czajka, 1993; Cunningham et al., 2002; Madsen et al., 2005; (3) Cunningham et al., 2002; Giacquinta, 1975; Madsen et al., 2005; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; (4) Martin et al., 2005; (5) Ahearne et al., 2010; Parsons et al., 1991; (6) Fried et al., 1996; Paulsen et al., 2005; (7) Cunningham et al., 2002; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; (8) Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; (9) Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; (10) Cunningham et al., 2002; Iverson, 1996; (11) Gaertner, 1989; (12) Gaertner, 1989; (13) Kiefer, 2005; (14) Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002; (15) Giacquinta, 1975; (16) Cunningham et al., 2002

Adapted from table 3 in Oreg et al. (2011).

are primarily descriptive, and portray the typical manner in which an individual behaves, needs are more explanatory and pertain to why an individual behaves as he/she does. Coping styles are more context-specific behavioral tendencies that have to do specifically with how an individual responds to stressful situations. Finally, demographics are factors that signify an individual’s classification within society or within their place of employment. Common factors to be considered are gender, age, and in the organizational context, tenure and organizational status.

Personality characteristics From our review of the literature we identified that a majority of the dispositions that have been included in studies of reactions to organizational change have to do with how individuals perceive themselves and their ability to cope with their environment. Specifically, several studies incorporated at least one of the four components of individuals’ core selfevaluations (Judge, Locke, and Durham, 1997; Judge et al., 1998). These components are locus of control, generalized self efficacy, self-esteem, and neuroticism. Although the four components are distinct, and each includes unique content, they all relate to the individual’s perception of the self.

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The disposition which has been most frequently considered an antecedent of employees’ response to change is locus of control (Rotter, 1966). This trait has to do with the explanations individuals give to the events that occur in their lives. Individuals with an internal locus of control tend to perceive themselves as responsible for what happens to them, whereas those with an external locus of control attribute what happens to them as resulting from outside forces. As noted, relationships have been tested, and frequently found, between locus of control and employees’ reactions to change (e.g., Fried et al., 1996; Holt et al., 2007; Lau and Woodman, 1995; Näswall et al., 2005). Overall, an internal locus of control tends to correspond with positive reactions to organizational change. For example, an internal locus of control was positively associated with employees’ emotional adjustment, and negatively associated with several indexes of psychological distress, including mental health complaints, job-induced tension, and job dissatisfaction (Näswall et al., 2005). Other studies focused on employees’ self-efficacy, which is conceptualized as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (Bandura, 1995, 2). In some studies a context-specific form of self-efficacy was considered, whereby the focus was on individuals’ judgments of their ability to manage situations of organizational change. In other studies, a more generalized form of self-efficacy was considered, relating to individuals’ beliefs of their overall capability to manage prospective situations (Ashford, 1988; Herold et al., 2007; Hornung and Rousseau, 2007; van Dam, Oreg, and Schyns, 2008; Wanberg and Banas, 2000). Overall, higher levels of self-efficacy were related to greater change acceptance (Wanberg and Banas, 2000), readiness to change and engagement in the change (Cunningham et al., 2002), commitment to the change (Herold et al., 2007), and likelihood of using problemfocused coping strategies, with improved coping and adjustment to the change (Amiot et al., 2006; Ashford, 1988; Judge et al., 1999; Martin et al., 2005). Correspondingly, higher self-efficacy was also associated with reduced turnover intentions (Neves, 2009), and lower resistance to change (van Dam, Oreg, and Schyns, 2008). Similarly, those employees who feel capable, successful, and worthy can cope with organizational change more successfully (Judge et al., 1999). Other studies, however, report only weak correlations between self-esteem, change acceptance (Wanberg and Banas, 2000), coping with change (Ashford, 1988), and innovation receptivity (Giacquinta, 1975). In another set of studies, researchers looked at dispositions that involve employees’ psychological adjustment. These dispositions are

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also related to core self-evaluations in that they too have to do with how individuals view themselves. Overall, lower levels of adjustment were associated with more negative reactions to organizational changes. For example, a tendency to experience negative emotions (i.e., negative affectivity) was positively and strongly associated with negative appraisals of a merger (Fugate et al., 2002), and greater likelihood of suffering from job-induced tension, mental health-related symptoms, and job dissatisfaction (Begley and Czajka, 1993; Näswall et al., 2005), following an organizational change. Similarly, symptoms of depression and emotional exhaustion were linked with lower readiness for, and willingness to participate in an organizational re-engineering program (although when both exhaustion and depressive symptoms were included in the same analysis, only depressive symptoms remained significant; Cunningham et al., 2002). Correspondingly, a tendency to experience positive emotions (i.e., positive affectivity) was positively related to coping with change (Judge et al., 1999), acceptance of organizational change (Iverson 1996), and readiness for organizational change (Holt et al., 2007). In fact, in one study, positive affectivity was found to be one of the strongest and most consistent dispositional variables related to coping with change (Judge et al., 1999). Although less consistently, dispositions other than those related to individuals’ core self-evaluations have also been linked with reactions to organizational change. In addition to neuroticism (which is related to core self-evaluations), Rafferty and Griffin (2006) also included conscientiousness as a control variable in their study, and found it to be positively associated with employees’ job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The change consisted of a large-scale organizational change in the Australian public sector, involving a change in the organization’s top leadership, large-scale downsizing, and restructuring of the human resources function. In another study, openness to experience had a positive relationship with coping with change (Judge et al., 1999). Somewhat narrower and more specific dispositions linked with reactions to change include tolerance for ambiguity (Ashford, 1988; Walker et al., 2007), dispositional resistance to change (Oreg, 2003, 2006), dispositional cynicism (Stanley et al., 2005), and dispositional employability (Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia, 2008). As might be expected, positive reactions to organizational change were associated with higher levels of tolerance for ambiguity and dispositional employability, and lower levels of dispositional resistance to change and dispositional cynicism.

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Motivational needs Whereas most of the dispositions we referred to pertain to how people typically behave, needs pertain to why people behave as they do. Researchers linking needs to reactions to change have focused on needs at the top end of Maslow’s (1935) hierarchy, having to do with the desire to increase stimulation and maximize the fulfillment of one’s potential. Specifically, higher-order needs of achievement and growth, were positively associated with individuals’ engagement in continuous organizational improvement in the context of implementing a total quality management (TQM) program (Coyle-Shapiro and Morrow, 2003), participation in organizational restructuring (Miller et al., 1994), and the experience of positive affective reactions to their job during changes to their work schedules (Bhagat and Chassie, 1980). In other studies, needs that have not been met in the post-change situation (e.g., for privacy, interdependence, or affiliation) have been shown to elicit anxiety among change recipients (Miller and Monge, 1985; Miller et al., 1994; Johnson et al., 1996). Related to such needs, the dispositional construct of personal initiative, which has to do with individuals’ drive to satisfy long-term personal and organizational goals (Frese et al., 1997), was associated with more positive evaluations of the outcomes of an organizational change (Hornung and Rousseau, 2007). In other studies, researchers considered employees’ goal orientations, which have to do with the type of goals toward which employees typically aim. In one study, a mastery motivational trait, reflecting a learning (rather than performance) orientation, moderated the relationship between change process and the degree to which individuals’ person–job fit was perceived as being altered in the context of a variety of organizational changes (Caldwell, Herold, and Fedor, 2004). Specifically, a mastery orientation served as a buffer against the negative effects of poor change management processes, such that the association between poor change management and reduced perceived fit to their environment was weaker among those with a high mastery orientations. Different types of goal orientation were also considered in a recent study, in which each goal orientation had both advantages and disadvantages for handling change (Ahearne et al., 2010). Whereas individuals with a learning orientation showed larger initial declines in performance following an organizational change, they also presented steeper recovery slopes, and higher levels of re-stabilization. Contrarily, a performance orientation was associated with smaller initial declines, yet shallower recovery slopes, and lower levels of re-stabilization following the change (Ahearne et al., 2010).

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Coping styles In a number of studies, differences in the manner in which individuals typically cope with stressful situations were considered to explain differences in how employees react to organizational changes (e.g., Cartwright and Cooper, 1993; Fugate et al., 2002). The two central coping styles to have been considered in the literature are problem-focused and emotionfocused coping. Whereas problem-focused coping involves attempts to remove the source of stress by directly addressing the problem, emotionfocused coping is aimed at alleviating the discomforting stress symptoms, rather than their actual source (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In the context of organizational change, a problem-focused coping style has typically shown a more positive reaction to the change. In one study, change recipients with a problem-focused coping style reported greater readiness for the organizational change, increased participation in the change process, and a greater contribution to it (Cunningham et al., 2002). In another study, problem-focused coping was positively related to identification with the newly merged organization and increased job satisfaction (Amiot et al., 2006). Contrarily, emotion-based coping styles, involving the use of maladaptive defense mechanisms, such as denial, dissociation, and isolation, yielded greater behavioral resistance to an organizational change in comparison with the use of adaptive mechanisms, such as humor and anticipation (Bovey and Hede, 2001).3

Demographics Demographic variables have seldom been the focus of change researchers’ interest. In many studies, however, researchers have included demographics as statistical controls in their analyses. Findings have been relatively inconsistent across studies. In one study, for example, employees’ tenure, level of education, and union membership were linked with acceptance of organizational change (Iverson, 1996), such that, shorter tenure, higher levels of education, and not being union members corresponded with greater acceptance of the change. Although this is consistent with some findings, such as a negative relationship between education and turnover following an organizational change (Spreitzer and Mishra, 2002) and a positive relationship between 3

In coping styles we are referring to individuals’ typical strategies for coping with stressful situations. They are distinct from what we refer to as coping as an explicit behavioral reaction to change (e.g., Amiot et al., 2006), which is part of the behavioral component of change recipients’ attitudes toward the organizational change.

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organizational tenure and resistance to change (van Dam et al., 2008), it is inconsistent with other findings, such as the negative relationship between education and organizational commitment following the change, the non-significant effects for education (e.g., Madsen et al., 2005), or several non-significant effects for tenure (e.g., Ahearne et al., 2010; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999, 2002; Gagnon et al., 2008; Morgeson et al., 2006). Inconsistencies are prevalent also in the rationales proposed for the relationships tested. For example, whereas Iverson (1996) and van Dam et al. (2008) expected more tenured employees to exhibit negative reactions to the organizational change, Gagnon et al. (2008) expected them to exhibit a more positive response to the change, given that more tenured employees will be more committed to the organization’s strategic plans. The relationship between tenure and reactions to change may therefore be highly contingent on the particular nature of the organizational change at hand. Similar inconsistencies are also seen for the variable of organizational status. In a study of teachers’ receptivity to a new teaching curriculum, teachers with higher-status positions tended to be more receptive to the curriculum than those with lower-status positions. In another study (Armstrong-Stassen, 1998), however, the relationship between status and reactions to change was non-significant. Although managers in the latter study tended to perceive the change process as fairer than nonmanagers, they were nevertheless no different than non-managers in their ultimate reaction to the change. Other demographic variables considered, yet which have not yielded significant effects with the reaction to change, include age (e.g., Begley and Czajka, 1993; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999, 2002; Giacquinta, 1975; Kiefer, 2005; Madsen et al., 2005; Michaelis et al., 2009; Näswall et al., 2005; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006; Spreitzer and Mishra, 2002; Weber and Weber, 2001), gender (Armstrong-Stassen, 1998; Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Kiefer, 2005; Madsen et al., 2005; Michaelis et al., 2009; Morgeson et al., 2006; Näswell et al., 2005; Spreitzer and Mishra, 2002), domestic demands (Cunningham et al., 2002), marital status (Begley and Czajka, 1993), organizational tenure (Zalesny and Farace, 1987), and job-level (Parsons et al., 1991). Although age tended to be non-significant when main effects were sought with reactions to change, in one of the studies mentioned above (Caldwell et al., 2004), age was involved in an interaction effect. Specifically, it moderated the relationship between perceived change fairness and perceived person–organization fit. Caldwell et al.’s (2004) rationale was that younger workers will do a better job than older workers in adapting to

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changing job demands. As hypothesized, a weaker relationship between perceived change fairness and perceived p–o fit was found among older employees (Caldwell et al., 2004). Overall, demographic variables have provided few insights for understanding differences in employees’ reactions to change. Although, as reviewed above, some significant effects have been found, several inconsistencies exist across studies, and the vast majority of effects with such variables have been non-significant. It therefore seems that when trying to explain how employees react to organizational changes, psychographic variables, which aim to describe the intrinsic nature of the individual, are much more meaningful. Change consequences We defined change consequences as those indirect, longer-term effects of an organizational change, namely work-related and personal consequences. A few studies in our review investigated all three categories of variables in our model (see Figure 5.1), namely change recipients’ characteristics, explicit reactions toward the organizational change (as a mediator), and work-related and/or personal consequences. For example, Oreg (2006) investigated the effects of affect toward the change (i.e., affective explicit reaction), cognition about the change (i.e., cognitive explicit reaction), and intentions following the change (i.e., behavioral explicit reaction) in mediating the relationship between dispositional resistance to change (a change recipient characteristic) and job satisfaction and organizational commitment (i.e., work-related consequences). Others assessed only the relationship between change recipients’ characteristics and subsequent work-related and personal consequences. For example, Logan and Ganster (2007) assessed the relationship between self-efficacy (i.e., a change recipient characteristic) and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and unit performance (i.e., change consequences). Furthermore, other researchers assessed the relationship between change recipients’ characteristics and various personal consequences, such as psychological withdrawal from work (Fried et al., 1996; Parsons et al., 1991), stress or strain (Bordia et al., 2004; Parsons et al., 1991), work-related irritation (Begley and Czajka, 1993; Wanberg and Banas, 2000), emotional exhaustion (Paulsen et al., 2005), and perceived control and uncertainty (Bordia et al., 2004; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006). Discussion We identified fifty-seven empirical studies published between 1975 and 2010 in which the relationships between change recipients’

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characteristics, explicit reactions to change, and change consequences were examined. We sought to facilitate an understanding of how personal characteristics of change recipients are related to their reactions toward organizational change. Our review revealed that researchers’ interests have been mostly focused on the personal dispositions of self-efficacy and locus of control. There have also been a number of studies that examined the role of self-esteem, as well as one study that examined the role of neuroticism. As we noted above, it is revealing that these four factors (self-efficacy, locus of control, neuroticism, and self-esteem) are the four dispositions that comprise the construct of core self-evaluation, which pertains to individuals’ deeply rooted beliefs about the self (Judge et al., 1997). From the research we reviewed, it appears that these core beliefs have an important role in shaping change recipients’ reactions to organizational changes. Overall, when using individual differences variables to explain change recipients’ reactions to change, most of the attention has been given to personality dispositions, such as the traits discussed above. Far less attention has been given to change recipients’ coping styles (which address the questions of how change recipients deal with change) and motivational needs (which address the questions of why they deal with change as they do). Our review highlights several gaps in the literature that remain to be filled, and a number of problems that make it difficult to compare and integrate findings from different studies. First, the same terms have been used for labeling different variables (i.e., Block’s 1995, “jingle fallacy”). For example, we identified three studies in which a scale labeled “affective commitment” was used for measuring change recipients’ cognitive views and thoughts about the change being implemented (Michaelis et al., 2009; Fugate and Kinicki, 2008; Neves, 2009). We suggest that researchers acknowledge the distinction between the three reaction components and be attentive to the particular component(s) they aim to investigate. As in any study, on this topic as well, researchers should ensure that there is a match between the variables they aim to measure and the measurement scales they use. Second, our review revealed that almost 50 percent of the studies were based on a longitudinal design. Because of survey anonymity, however, many of these studies could not link change recipients’ responses in Time 1 to their subsequent responses, which restricted the conclusions from the longitudinal findings to aggregate trends. This prohibited an analysis of trends at the individual level. Obviously, individual responses must be matched across survey administrations to allow for inferences to be made at the individual level about relationships between variables measured at different times. Certainly there are logistic difficulties in collecting data in a manner that allows matching individuals’ responses over time, yet overcoming these difficulties will yield a much broader

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range of findings that could be very informative for understanding individuals’ reactions to change. Following the previous point, we identified numerous studies in which cross-sectional designs based on self-report data from a single source were employed (see Judge et al., 1999; Caldwell et al., 2004 for exceptions). Such designs render data susceptible to the impact of mono-method, single-source, bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Researchers should aim to collect multisource data, including archival data and other objective indicators. As noted by Oreg et al. (2011), use of the tripartite structure of attitudes can be valuable for distinguishing between different, and sometimes conflicting (see discussion of this point by Piderit, 2000) types of reactions. Only in very few cases have researchers explicitly considered how a given individual differences variable differentially explains affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to change. Furthermore, most of the studies we reviewed did not include an inclusive view of the change process, whereby both antecedents and consequences of employees’ reactions have been considered. Future research that takes on such considerations is likely to yield valuable insights about change recipients’ reactions throughout the change process. From a practical perspective, findings on the dispositional characteristics associated with reactions to change imply that organizational leaders could benefit from identifying in advance those individuals who are likely to react positively to change, and seek their advice and assistance in the diffusion of the change throughout the organization. In addition, change agents and HR specialists can provide specialized training and support to those individuals who may have a harder time managing change. For example, a vast majority of studies revealed the important role of self-efficacy in positively reacting to change. HR specialists can therefore devote attention to enhancing change recipients’ efficacy vis-à-vis the tasks they will be required to undertake as part of the organizational change (see Bandura, 1977, 1995). In some cases, timely and appropriate training could substantially reduce, or even help recipients entirely avoid, stress, unsuccessful coping, and other dysfunctional behaviors.

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6

Employee adaptability to change at work: a multidimensional, resource-based framework Karen van Dam

Introduction Today’s organizations are facing dynamic and changing environments that emphasize the importance of enhanced organizational flexibility and adaptation. Increased competition, changing markets, innovation, and advances in technology are some of the forces that require organizations to continuously change and develop. In turn, this fast pace of environmental and organizational change implies heightened pressure on employees to be increasingly adaptable, versatile, and tolerant of uncertainty in order to perform effectively in new or changing work situations (Pulakos et al., 2000). The competency to successfully adjust to a changing work context is generally referred to as “individual adaptability.” Individual adaptability is widely acknowledged as a key quality for today’s employee, and has even been proposed as a third type of job performance in addition to task and contextual performance (Griffin, Neal, and Parker, 2007; Tucker, Pleban, and Gunther, 2010). Despite the importance of adaptability at work, there is still limited integrated research on individual adaptability (Griffin and Hesketh, 2003). Only recently, researchers have started to address adaptability and adaptive behaviors, focusing on, for instance, adaptive performance (Pulakos et al., 2000; Pulakos et al., 2002), task adaptability (e.g., LePine, Colquitt, and Erez, 2000), adaptation to work transitions (e.g., Ashford and Taylor, 1990), career adaptability (e.g., Savickas, 2005), and leader adaptability (e.g., Mueller-Hanson et al., 2005). In addition to this expanding research field of adaptability, others have also investigated employee adjustment to changing, uncertain, or new work situations, without directly referring to the concept of individual adaptability. As the other chapters in this book show, there is an impressive body of work focusing on employees’ responses to organizational change, investigating for example employees’ openness (Wanberg and Banas, 2000) or resistance (Oreg, 2003) to change. Similarly, researchers 123

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have studied how employees cope with stress and work demands (e.g., Carver and Scheier, 1994; Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004) or how newcomers socialize and adjust to a new job and organization (e.g., Gruman, Saks, and Zweig, 2006). Together, these different research fields offer a rich source of conceptual frameworks, theories, and findings concerning individuals’ adjustment behaviors and underlying adaptive competencies. Although these different fields and approaches are valuable, their variety and different foci can also be considered a potential limitation toward developing a general model of individual adaptability (Ployhart and Bliese, 2006). Therefore, the primary objective of this chapter is to present a general model for individual adaptability that integrates different frameworks and findings, and contributes to the understanding of employees’ responses to changing work situations. I propose that individual adaptability as outlined in this framework might underlie employee responses to many different situations, and that the concept of individual adaptability therefore might serve as a linking pin that connects these different research areas. In this chapter, I will first discuss the concept of individual adaptability. Two general approaches to adaptability will be outlined that focus either on behavior and performance or on individuals’ underlying potential to be adaptive; differences and similarities of these approaches will be presented and the relevance of psychological resources for individual adaptability will be emphasized. Next, three core aspects of adaptability (cognitive, affective, and behavioral adaptability) and some of the psychological resources that fuel these aspects are presented. Finally, I will discuss the role of employee adaptability in times of change and provide some theoretical and empirical challenges to be addressed in the future. Similar to previous reviews of adaptability (Ashford and Taylor, 1990; Ployhart and Bliese, 2006), this chapter takes a broad perspective on the processes involved in individual adaptation. Yet, this chapter differs from these reviews by extending the focus beyond adaptation to job changes (Ashford and Taylor, 1990) to a broader perspective on adaptability, by incorporating different views on adaptability in one framework. The concept of adaptability Researchers often use the concept of adaptability without defining it (Ashford and Taylor, 1990). In both the scientific literature and the popular press, authors have emphasized the importance of organizational and individual adaptability for organizations’ competitiveness, performance, or survival, usually without providing a careful explanation of the

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term and its meaning. When a definition is provided, it often refers to a specific application of the concept, such as career adaptability (Savickas, 2005), managerial adaptability (Karaevli and Hall, 2006), or adaptive performance (Pulakos et al., 2000). This lack of conceptual clarity is likely to hinder theoretical development and the development of valid measures and interventions (Pulakos, Dorsey, and White, 2006), and has caused some authors (e.g., Griffin and Hesketh, 2003) to proclaim that the construct of adaptability, and the processes invoking adaptive behavior, are poorly understood. Individual adaptability appears to be conceptually related to the process of adaptation, which is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat. Adaptation is supposed to help organisms adjust to a changing and/or demanding environment and as such contribute to the survival of the species (King, Stansfield, and Mulligan, 2006). In evolutionary biology, a distinction is made between: (a) adaptation as a process; (b) adaptedness as the state of being adapted; and (c) an adaptive trait as an aspect of the organism that enables or enhances the probability that the organism will survive and reproduce (Orr, 2005). The latter aspect appears similar to how the concept of adaptability is defined in Webster’s (2011) dictionary, namely as the quality of being adaptable, and the ability to change or be changed to fit changed circumstances. Regarding adaptability in the work context, a similar distinction exists between researchers (e.g., Kozlowski et al., 2001; LePine et al., 2000) who focus on adaptive behavior and performance (i.e., the process and outcome of adaptation), and those (e.g., B. Griffin and Hesketh, 2003; M. Griffin et al., 2007) who focus on adaptability as individuals’ underlying potential to enact adaptive behavior (i.e., the quality of being adaptable). The behavioral approach focuses on what individuals do: their behaviors and performance; if these behaviors lead to successful performance, they are considered adaptive. Researchers have investigated, for instance, how employees respond when some features of the task change (e.g., LePine et al., 2000), how well individuals generalize and transfer knowledge and skills (e.g., Kozlowski et al., 2001), or how employees adapt to new work roles and new work processes (e.g., Griffin, Parker, and Mason, 2010; Niessen, Binnewies, and Rank, 2010). Instead of inferring individual adaptability from successful behavior and performance, the second approach directly tries to define individual adaptability as the potential underlying adaptive behavior and performance (e.g., B. Griffin and Hesketh, 2003; M. Griffin et al., 2007). At its core, individual adaptability is viewed as the capacity to change, including both the competence and the motivation to do so (Hall, 2002; Griffin and Hesketh, 2003). How adaptability has been specified often

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depends on the specific field and focus of the author. For example, within the field of careers, Savickas (2005, 51) relates to career adaptability as “the attributes that individuals need to successfully engage in tasks inherent in minicycle transitions and maxicycle stages.” More generally, Ployhart and Bliese (2006, 13) define individual adaptability as representing “an individual’s ability, skill, disposition, willingness, and/or motivation, to change or fit different task, social, and environmental features.” Despite these differences, there are several similarities in these approaches to adaptability that warrant our attention. A first similarity pertains to the malleability of adaptability. It is generally assumed that individuals’ adaptability can change through training and other experiences (Mueller-Hanson et al., 2005; O’Connell, McNeely, and Hall, 2008), and that learning is an important factor in adaptability development (Mainemelis, Boyatzis, and Kolb, 2002). Yet, it is also acknowledged that individuals’ stable characteristics, such as openness to experience (Barrick and Mount, 1991), dispositional resistance to change (Oreg, 2003), and cognitive abilities (Kozlowski et al., 2001; Mueller-Hanson et al., 2005), might set boundaries to adaptability development. In sum, it is generally assumed that both state and trait factors can affect an individual’s adaptability at a specific point in time (Hall, 2002). A second similarity relates to the question of whether adaptability implies a reactive or a proactive stance. Only a few authors have opted for a reactive view of adaptability. Griffin and his colleagues (2007, 2010), for instance, have separated adaptability from proactivity, viewing adaptiveness as employees’ adjustment to task changes, and proactiveness as self-initiated changes in the task environment. Most authors however emphasize that adaptability is more than mere adjustment and getting along in the world. Block and Kremen (1996), for example, warn that mere adjustment might have negative consequences for individuals’ health, arguing that an adjusted person might not be a happy person, but just a person who has settled for less. In line with this position, most authors have included proactivity in their view of adaptability, emphasizing that whereas individuals can modify their behavior and competencies to fit the environment, the environment is also malleable and subject to change (Ashford and Taylor, 1990; White, 1974). This position aligns well with recent research on job crafting (Berg, Wrzesniewski, and Dutton, 2010) suggesting that employees proactively change the task and relational boundaries of their jobs; they might especially be inclined to craft their work situation when they perceive a decreased person–job fit owing to organizational change (see Caldwell, Herold, and Fedor, 2004; see also Chapter 11 in this volume). In fact, van Dam and Nikolova (2012) have studied job crafting as an instance of adaptive behavior.

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A third similarity pertains to the importance of individual characteristics for employee adaptability. Whereas individual characteristics are implicit in the conceptualization of adaptability as individuals’ underlying potential, they have served as predictors in studies that focused on adaptive behaviors and performance. Cognitive capabilities, conscientiousness, openness, and mastery orientation are some of the variables that have been related to adaptive task performance (Kozlowski et al., 2001; LePine et al., 2000). Still, there is little consensus about the specific characteristics involved in employee adaptation. Recent developments suggest that individuals’ psychological resources may play an important role in individual adaptation (Taylor et al., 2000). Psychological resources relate to valuable personal entities that function as a means of dealing with the world, and are also known as personal resources (Hobfoll, 2002), personal coping resources (Wheaton, 1983), and psychological capital (Luthans et al., 2007). Resource-based views of human adaptation have been developed since World War II when researchers (e.g., Grinker and Spiegel, 1945) tried to understand why some soldiers developed health problems whereas others were resilient (Hobfoll, 2002). More recently, theoretical developments within the field of positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) have emphasized the importance of individual resources for positive behavior and well-being (e.g., Hobfoll, 2002; Luthans et al., 2007). Psychological resources can relate to cognitions (e.g., optimism, Carver and Scheier, 1994; Taylor et al., 2000), affect (e.g., resilience, Luthans et al., 2007) and behavior (e.g., coping, Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004), aspects that have also been emphasized in adaptability research (Fugate, Kinicki, and Ashforth, 2004; Ployhart and Bliese, 2006). Accordingly, individuals’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources are likely to contribute to how employees adapt to a changing work environment. A definition of employee adaptability Based on the different approaches and insights discussed above, I propose the following definition of employee adaptability: Individual adaptability at work refers to employees’ underlying potential as derived from cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources that can be applied to effectively adjust and/or anticipate to task-related, environmental and vocational demands.

This definition suggests that employee adaptability is relevant in many different situations, including organizational change, socialization, career

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advancement, and stressful work situations. Moreover, the definition suggests that there are three related dimensions to adaptability, namely cognitive, affective, and behavioral adaptability (see Fugate et al., 2004). By emphasizing individuals’ resources, this definition incorporates the view that adaptability is molded by a combination of stable and malleable characteristics and therefore is subject to development and change, as well as the view that adaptability includes a proactive stance toward the environment (see Ashford and Taylor, 1990), so individuals can try to optimize the fit between environmental and personal demands (Caldwell et al., 2004). The emphasis on psychological resources implies that employees do not necessarily need to change these resources in response to environmental demands – as some other definitions have emphasized (e.g., Fugate et al., 2004; Ployhart and Bliese, 2006) – but that merely applying one’s personal resources might suffice to effectively deal with organizational change. The remainder of this chapter will focus on adaptability as an underlying potential. More specifically, the next section will elaborate on the different resources that may contribute to individuals’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral adaptability. Although the next section is divided into different sections that focus on the dimensions and resources separately, it should be noted that these resources and processes are considered to be closely and reciprocally related, and collectively implicate individual adaptability. The model for individual adaptability introduced in this chapter is presented in Figure 6.1.

Individual Adaptability

Cognitive Adaptability

Affective Adaptability

Resources

Resources

Behavioral Adaptability

Resources

– Situation Awareness

– Resilience

– Adaptive skills

– Mental Abilities

– Positive Emotions

– Behavioral tendencies (e.g. proactivity; problem-focused coping; approach–avoidance motivation)

(e.g. cognitive flexibility, focused attention)

– Adaptive Orientation (e.g. optimism; hope; self-efficacy; control; challenge; open-mindedness; curiosity learning orientation)

– Emotion regulation (e.g. antecedent-focused strategies, response modulation)

Figure 6.1 A multidimensional, resource-based framework for individual adaptability

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A multidimensional, resource-based framework for individual adaptability This section elaborates on a multidimensional, resource-based framework for individual adaptability including three dimensions, cognitive, affective, and behavioral adaptability, and their underlying resources and processes. As three core components of individual adaptability, these dimensions are considered to be intrinsically related, with reciprocal relationships, and, in a synergistic combination, affecting employees’ adaptive behavior at work generally, and in times of change specifically. Although these dimensions work in unison, they will be discussed separately because they relate to different individual resources, and have been addressed in different research fields. Moreover, discussing them separately will provide a broader picture of the concept of individual adaptability. The resources and processes mentioned in the next paragraphs resulted from a thorough review of the literature, and are considered most valuable for individual adaptability. Yet, it should be noted that they comprise only a selection of all possible resources and processes, and that it is not the objective of this chapter to provide a comprehensive review of all of them. Resources of cognitive adaptability In the literature, it is generally admitted that adaptability is in part a cognitive capability (e.g., Good, 2010). Yet, individuals’ cognitive adaptability has been investigated in different ways addressing different aspects. A first aspect of cognitive adaptability relates to individuals’ awareness and interpretation of the environment. In order to adapt to a changing environment, individuals need to be aware of the fact that the situation is changing, and realize that some response is required. If employees perceive the work environment as familiar and stable, they will experience little need for an adaptive response. Therefore, recognizing changes in the environment, and determining what is new and what to learn is considered an important requirement for effective adaptation (Wryszynski, 2011). This change awareness closely resembles the concept of “situation awareness” (Endsley, 1995) as it has been applied in research on cognitive task performance (see Duso and Sethumadhaven, 2008). Endsley (1995, 36) defines situation awareness as “the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future.” As individuals’ internal model of the environment, situation awareness appears relevant for adaptation efforts especially in environments that

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are ambiguous, such as in aviation and during military operations. In these environments, a failure or lack of situation awareness has been shown to result in performance failures and accidents (see Duso and Sethumadhaven, 2008). It is likely that situation awareness is also relevant in other situations requiring adaptation, such as organizational change and innovation. A second aspect of cognitive adaptability refers to the specific mental abilities relevant for adaptive responses such as cognitive flexibility and focused attention. Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to consider new ideas and solutions, alter the perception of situations and models, and think about something differently than before (Boyatzis and Kolb, 1993). As such, cognitive flexibility is related to openness, novelty seeking, and creativity (Good, 2010). Employees who can think flexibly will adjust better to changed or new task demands and situations. Evidence indicates that cognitive flexibility underlies task performance in the task–change paradigm that was discussed previously (Kozlowski et al., 2001). Another relevant mental ability is focused attention: the ability to attend to relevant stimuli and ignore distracting ones (Lustig, May, and Hasher, 2001). Focused attention has been found to predict adaptive performance in the task–change paradigm (LePine et al., 2000), but also in other settings. Studying employees’ adaptation to new work roles, Niessen, Binnewies, and Rank (2010) found that employees learned the new work role faster and performed better when they were able to disengage themselves from their old work role and routines, and focused on the demands of the new job. Following, it is likely that employees will adjust better to organizational change when they are open to a new perception of the situation and can focus on the new work situation instead of holding on to the old one. A third aspect of cognitive adaptability relates to a positive state of mind (Taylor et al., 2000) and has been referred to as an “adaptive orientation” (van Dam, 2011). An adaptive orientation entails a set of adaptive cognitions, attitudes, and/or beliefs relevant for dealing with new or changing situations. In the literature, different cognitive resources have been proposed that might contribute to an adaptive orientation. Taylor et al. (2000) mention optimism, self-esteem, and personal control as important resources for individual adjustment to stressful life events. Luthans (2002) refers to optimism, self-efficacy, hope, and resilience as four personal resources affecting positive organizational behavior. Similarly, Fugate et al. (2004) distinguish five elements of personal adaptability contributing to employability: optimism, self-efficacy, control, openness, and propensity to learn. Reviewing the literature, van Dam (2011) identified eight different cognitive resources that could be part of an adaptive orientation: optimism, hope, self-efficacy, control, challenge

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(a dimension of hardiness), open-mindedness, learning orientation, and curiosity (Bandura, 1997; Fugate et al., 2004; Kobasa, 1979; Seligman, 1998; Snyder, 2000; Spector, 1988, Van der Zee and Van Oudenhoven, 2000). These resources share three common characteristics. First, they relate to individual agency; that is, they predispose individuals to meet their environment positively, be proactive and engage in self-regulation (e.g., Bandura, 1997). Second, they have consistently been associated with positive outcomes, such as performance, health, psychological adjustment, and well-being (e.g., Luthans et al., 2007). Third, these resources are malleable, that is, they can be considered dynamic constructs that change over time as new information and experience are acquired. Owing to these characteristics, these psychological resources have relevance for adaptive behavior within the work context. In a series of studies, van Dam (2011) showed that a general measure of adaptive orientation, which included these eight resources, was predictive of employee well-being, job satisfaction, and openness to change. In sum, cognitive adaptability draws from individuals’ situation awareness, mental capabilities for dealing with change, and adaptive orientation in terms of attitudes and beliefs concerning change. Whereas the first two aspects have been associated with task performance and adaptive behavior (Duso and Sethumadhaven, 2008; Good, 2010; Kozlowski et al., 2001), the second view has related cognitive adaptability to psychological adjustment and well-being (e.g., Taylor et al., 2000). Clearly, all three aspects of cognitive adaptability will help individuals to adjust to organizational change.

Resources of affective adaptability Employees’ affective adjustment responses have been investigated in different fields, such as organizational change (e.g., Wanberg and Banas, 2000), coping with stressful or traumatic events (e.g., Carver and Scheier, 1994; Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004), and emotion work (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002). Findings indicate that employees adjust more effectively if they maintain a positive mood, or recover more quickly from negative emotions (Ong et al., 2006). Accordingly, affective adaptability is considered to refer to an individual’s ability to respond positively to new and uncertain situations, as well as to the ability to bounce back once a negative emotional experience has happened. A review of the literature suggests a number of emotional resources and processes underlying affective adaptation, such as resilience (Block and Kremen, 1996), positive emotions (Ong et al., 2006), and emotion regulation (Gross, 2002).

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Resilience refers to the psychological capability to “bounce back” from negative emotional experiences associated with adversity, uncertainty, and threat (Block and Kremen, 1996; Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). Whereas resilience in the early days was viewed as a trait that only a few people possessed, it is nowadays recognized as a relatively common state that plays a role in many daily situations, and can be enhanced by protective factors in the social and cultural environment (Zautra, Hall, and Murray, 2010). Resilience has been studied mainly in the context of traumatic and stressful life events (e.g., Richardson, 2002). Only recently, Luthans and his colleagues (e.g., Luthans, 2002; Luthans et al., 2007) have started to explore the relevance of resiliency for organizational behavior, relating it also to positive experiences such as change, progress, and increased responsibility. Like resilience, positive emotions are considered to underlie employees’ affective adaptability. Evidence indicates that positive emotions have a variety of positive outcomes for individuals, ranging from enhanced flexibility in thinking and problem solving to increased well-being (Fredrickson and Branigan, 2005). Positive emotions can diminish the effects of negative emotions by quieting or undoing the autonomic arousal generated by negative emotions (Zautra et al., 2001). As such, positive emotions appear to play an important role in recovery processes. Research indicates a strong association between psychological resilience and the experience of positive emotions, such as happiness (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004), and positive affectivity (Block and Kremen, 1996). Moreover, individuals who are more resilient appear to use certain strategies, such as humor and optimistic thinking, in order to elicit positive emotions (Masten, 2001). Resilience and positive emotions are related to a range of advantageous health outcomes, such as increased immune function, lowered risk of heart disease, and lower depression symptoms (for an overview, see Tugade, Fredrickson, and Feldman Barret, 2004). Tugade and colleagues found that highly resilient individuals showed faster cardiovascular recovery from negative emotional arousal compared to lower-resilient individuals, and that this effect was mediated by positive emotions. Recent insights from neuropsychological studies of brain activity (e.g., Davidson, 2000) suggest that recovery from emotional challenge is preceded by increased activation in a part of the brain that is implicated in the experience of positive emotion. Resilience and positive emotions in turn appear closely related to emotion regulation. Emotion regulation refers to “the processes by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we express them” (Gross, 2002, 282). When trying to regulate their emotions, people can use different strategies, which have been categorized

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as either antecedent-focused or response-focused strategies (Gross, 2002). Antecedent-focused strategies (also known as “proactive coping,” Aspinwall and Taylor, 1997) refer to the things people do before the emotion response tendency becomes fully activated, such as selecting or changing one’s situation (situation selection and modification), directing one’s focus to different aspects of the situation (attentional deployment), or changing one’s interpretation of the situation (reappraisal). Response-focused strategies, or response modulation, refer to the things people do once an affective response is underway, such as emotion suppression, drugs use, or relaxation. With its focus on the emotion itself, response modulation appears similar to emotion self-management, a dimension of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998), emotion-focused coping as studied in the stress and coping literature (e.g., Carver and Scheier, 1994), and “surface acting” in the context of emotion work (e.g., Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002). Although all emotion regulation strategies are aimed at influencing one’s emotions, and may help employees adapt to challenging work situations, they are not equally effective in terms of personal costs. Especially emotion suppression has been positively related to sympathetic activation, burnout, and depression, and negatively related to well-being, life satisfaction, and depression (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002). In sum, psychological resilience, positive emotions, and emotion regulation are three resources that can support employees in dealing emotionally with organizational change. These three resources are strongly related and have been associated with positive outcomes, such as increased wellbeing. Yet, it should be noted that some regulation strategies might be more effective than others. Resources of behavioral adaptability Behavioral adaptability derives from resources such as specific skills and behavioral tendencies that are part of individuals’ adaptive potential. As an underlying competency, behavioral adaptability should be distinguished from actual adaptive behavior in specific situations. Whether these skills and behavioral tendencies will actually affect adaptive behavior also depends on other factors in the individual and the environment. Skills and behavioral tendencies are considered adaptive behavioral resources, when they generally appear to contribute to effective adaptive behavior. In the literature, different approaches can be distinguished focusing on either adaptive skills or behavioral tendencies. Researchers focusing on adaptive skills face an enormous problem. Since change-oriented and adaptive behaviors are generally considered

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an emergent form of behavior, it is difficult to specify in advance which actions and related skills will be relevant (Griffin et al., 2010). Accordingly, there may be a potentially limitless number of skills and behavioral tendencies contributing to behavioral adaptability. Yet, several attempts have been made to provide a set of adaptive skills relevant for specific situations, especially by researchers focusing on adaptability in the military (Pulakos et al., 2000, 2002; Tucker, Gesselman, and Johnson, 2010). Pulakos et al. (2000), for instance, have developed a taxonomy of adaptive performance that distinguishes among eight dimensions including “dealing with uncertain or unpredictable work situations” and “demonstrating cultural adaptability,” which are defined in terms of a large number of specific skills. Similarly, Tucker and colleagues (2010) have specified several skills that are considered crucial for army commanders’ adaptive decision making during military operations, such as maintaining focus on the mission, and remaining flexible to meet contingencies. Instead of specifying specific skills, others have tried to establish more general behavioral tendencies in adaptive responses. Using Pulakos et al.’s (2000) framework as a starting point, Griffin and Hesketh (2003) distinguish three broad categories of adaptive behavior: proactive behavior (i.e., initiating actions that have a positive effect on the changed environment), reactive behavior (i.e., changing or modifying oneself to better suit the new environment), and tolerant behavior (i.e., being able to function despite the changing environment), obtaining evidence for the existence of proactive and reactive behavior, but not for tolerant behavior. Van Dam (2011) similarly investigated three behavioral tendencies: proactive adaptation (i.e., actively changing one’s actions and situation to maintain performance levels), procrastination (i.e., waiting to see how things would develop), and denial (i.e., holding on to old routines). Employees holding a proactive approach reported better health and more life satisfaction, while employees who preferred to wait or to stick to the old situation reported lower well-being (see also Niessen et al., 2010). Where the previous examples directly relate to individual adaptability, other literatures have also indicated general behavioral tendencies that may underlie behavioral adaptability. Stress research for example has investigated the importance of coping styles as response tendencies in challenging situations. Based on Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) model of stress and coping, several coping styles have been defined, i.e. problemfocused coping (the tendency to do something about the situation), emotion-focused coping (the tendency to reduce one’s negative emotional response), and avoidance coping (the tendency to engage in denial and disengagement) (Ben-Zur, 1999). These coping styles have been found to predict actual coping behavior (Carver and Scheier, 1994).

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In general, a proactive (problem- and/or emotion-focused) coping style appears more effective in terms of elimination of the stressor, reduction of physiological arousal, and enhanced well-being, than an avoidant coping style (e.g., Ben-Zur, 1999). Similarly, research on approach–avoidance motivation might bear relevance for individual adaptability. Approach–avoidance motivation refers to the energization of behavior by, or direction of behavior toward positive stimuli (approach) and away from negative stimuli (avoidance). The evaluation of stimuli as positive or negative produces (at a minimum) a physiological and somatic preparedness for physical movement toward or away from these stimuli (Elliot, 2008). The concept of approach–avoidance motivation has been successfully used in the achievement context, especially as it relates to goal orientation (Elliot and McGregor, 2001), and regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997). Findings indicate that approach and avoidance motivation have differential effects on emotion, cognition, and behavior (e.g., Elliot, 2008), with approach motivation generally relating to more beneficial outcomes, such as enhanced performance, learning, and well-being (Payne, Youngcourt, and Beaubien, 2007), and adaptation to unemployment (van Dam and Menting, 2012). In sum, the literature offers several approaches and concepts that can be used when addressing behavioral adaptability, ranging from specific adaptive skills to more general behavioral response tendencies. Research findings generally appear to favor a proactive approach over a more conservative or avoidant approach. Yet, as Elliot (2008) has noted, both approach and avoidance processes can be essential for successful adaptation to the environment. For example, in some cases, it might be more adaptive to withhold a response or avoid a situation, than to enter the situation, speak out, or proactively try to modify it. Therefore, an evaluation of the effectiveness of these response tendencies should also take contextual characteristics into consideration. The role of employee adaptability in times of change This chapter has outlined a general multidimensional framework that defines adaptability in terms of three related requirements for effectively responding to changing work situations: cognitive, affective, and behavioral adaptability. These dimensions are considered to represent individuals’ underlying potential to effectively adjust to changes at work. Although this framework is intended to increase insight in individual adaptability at work, several unresolved issues and research challenges still exist to be addressed in the future.

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A first relevant question concerns the role of employee adaptability in times of change: is adaptability more likely to be an antecedent, mediator, moderator or an outcome variable in change processes? I would suggest that adaptability might play all of these roles. Earlier in this chapter, adaptability was linked with the evolutionary definition of adaptation as an aspect of the organism that enables or enhances the probability that the organism will survive and reproduce (Orr, 2005). In line with this approach to adaptability and the emphasis on psychological resources, employee adaptability can be considered firstly and mostly an antecedent of employees’ actual behavior in specific change situations, such as a merger or the introduction of new technological equipment. In these situations, high-adaptive employees will be more open and less resistant to the change (e.g., Oreg, 2006), contribute more to the implementation of this change (see Piderit, 2000), and focus more strongly on the new situation (Niessen et al., 2010) than low-adaptive employees. Yet, because adaptability itself can be affected by both situational and dispositional factors, it is possible that adaptability serves as a mediator. In some of my previous studies, I noticed how leadership as well as personality (i.e., emotional stability and openness to experience) were related to individuals’ adaptability, which in turn mediated the relationships between these predictors and several outcome variables, including health and job satisfaction (Van Dam, 2011). Yet, it is also possible that employee adaptability serves as a moderator. As an example, employee adaptability might moderate the impact of change process characteristics on employees’ responses to change. When certain change process characteristics, such as communication and participation (see van Dam, Oreg, and Schyns, 2008), are lacking, low-adaptive employees are likely to develop more resistance to a change than high-adaptive employees. Still, future research is needed to support this claim. In turn, employee adaptability might be affected by previous experiences with change processes. Employees who have experienced successful adaptation to changes in the past might become more adaptive than employees who have encountered several changes that did not work out well or did not allow space for individual contributions. Whereas adaptability might be crucially important for employee responses to organizational change, the framework proposed in this chapter might also be used to better understand employee responses to other situations, including task changes, vocational changes, socialization, daily hassles, and stressful work environments. As such, this framework could be considered a first effort to connect different research fields and literatures, and a call for integrating knowledge and insights that have already been obtained. This exchange of knowledge could work in different ways.

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By acknowledging that adaptability can play a part in these different situations, more attention can be given to the cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources affecting how employees deal with these situations. At the same time, if adaptability underlies the responses in these different situations, this raises the question whether the findings found in these different areas in turn might generalize to situations requiring adaptive responses. For instance, could the behaviors that lead to effective socialization of newcomers, such as information seeking and feedback seeking (Gruman et al., 2006), be considered adaptive behaviors in general, and during organizational change specifically? More research is needed to establish possible connections between research fields. Challenges and suggestions for future research Additionally, there are more challenges for future research. A first challenge relates to the multidimensional view of individual adaptability. The distinction into a cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspect is not uncommon in psychology and has been successfully used when studying attitudes in social psychology (e.g., Ajzen, 2001) or employee resistance in change research (Oreg, 2006; Piderit, 2000). The question is not whether these aspects are important, but rather how they integrate and relate to each other. It is as yet unclear whether one aspect might be more salient when employees face a specific change situation, whether there are causal relationships among the three aspects, and how these aspects affect each other over time. Will these aspects always reinforce each other or can they contradict each other; and is it possible that a change in one of them might affect the others? Clearly, there is a great need for studies that take all three aspects, and their reciprocal relationships, into account. A second challenge relates to the generalization of the adaptability framework presented in this chapter. In order to apply the framework to different research fields, we should become more aware of the aspects of situations requiring adaptation, and the different levels (task, job/career, and organizational) at which changes occur. What do these situations have in common, how do they differ, and how does this relate to effective adaptation? Theory-based and empirically validated taxonomies of adaptation situations, demands, and performance requirements are needed in order to better understand the change context and what it requires from employees in order to respond effectively. A third issue concerns adaptability development and enhancement. At this moment, there is little integrated knowledge about how individual adaptability evolves, and the factors and processes that are responsible for adaptability development. For organizations, it is of crucial importance to

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know how they can enhance workers’ adaptability in order to increase organizations’ versatility and ability to survive in a dynamic environment. Studies using army soldiers (Mueller-Hanson et al., 2005) and regular employees (e.g., M. Griffin, Neal, and Parker, 2007; M. Griffin, Parker, and Mason, 2010; O’Connell, McNeely, and Hall, 2008) have already indicated the relevance of several workplace characteristics, such as leadership, social support, and autonomy, for employee adaptation. Future research using longitudinal designs is needed to investigate the process of adaptability development, and examine individual and contextual factors that may enhance or hinder this process. Studies could also focus on those instances where responses fail to be adaptive and how this, in turn, affects individual adaptability. A final challenge relates to the resources that fuel individual adaptability. This chapter has provided an overview of the cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources as they have been related to (some equivalent of) adaptability in the literature. Yet, it is possible that other resources might underlie adaptability as well. Future theoretical and empirical evidence might reveal additional adaptive resources and as such advance the model proposed in this chapter. Because individual adaptability is central to many work processes (O’Connell, McNeely, and Hall, 2008), efforts to use or extend this adaptability framework are to be encouraged. In the end, increased insight in the concept of individual adaptability will contribute to a better understanding of employee behavior, performance, and well-being in complex and changing work environments.

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Part IV

Predicting employees’ reactions to change: organizational factors

7

When leadership meets organizational change: the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes, and adjustment to change Alannah E. Rafferty, Nerina L. Jimmieson, and Simon Lloyd D. Restubog

When leadership meets organizational change: the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes and adjustment to change Despite the importance of adaption and change for firm survival, the failure rate of organizational change efforts remains alarmingly high (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 1995). In a recent global survey of over 3,000 executives, Meaney and Pung (2008) reported that two-thirds of executives indicated that their firm had failed to successfully implement organizational changes. Similarly, academic researchers have also concluded that difficulties in implementing and managing organizational change efforts often precipitate organizational crises (Probst and Raisch, 2005). As a result, attention has been directed to identify the factors that improve the likelihood of successfully implementing organizational change efforts. While there has been practitioner-oriented discussion around the pivotal role of workplace leaders in reducing resistance to change, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined relationships between leader behavior and employee change attitudes (e.g., Bommer, Rich, and Rubin, 2005; Herold, Caldwell, and Liu, 2008; Nemanich and Keller, 2007; Oreg and Berson, 2011). However, Miller, Johnson, and Grau (1994) argued that while the failure to successfully This study was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0877314) awarded to the first author and an Australian Research Discovery Grant (DP0984209) awarded to the first and third authors.

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Leadership, Appraisals about Change and Change Attitudes Time 1 H3b

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Psychological Contract Violation

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Figure 7.1 Theoretical model of relationships among leadership and change attitudes

implement planned change may be attributed to many factors, few issues are as critical as employees’ attitudes toward change. In this chapter, we examine the role of top management team (TMT) transformational leadership and supervisory transformational leadership on employees’ appraisals and attitudes about change, and, ultimately, on their adjustment to a large-scale organizational restructuring. Our study makes a number of contributions to the change and leadership literatures. First, the proposed research model (see Figure 7.1) enables a fine-grained analysis of the processes through which leaders, at two hierarchical levels, influence employees’ adjustment to large-scale organizational changes. More specifically, we identify two types of psychological uncertainty and two change attitudes as mediating relationships among leadership and employee adjustment to change. Furthermore, our model explicitly acknowledges that employees experience a range of potentially conflicting attitudes when confronted with organizational change events. Despite the theoretical importance of change attitudes (Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999; Miller et al., 1994), we could not identify any studies that have simultaneously examined relationships among leadership and conflicting employee attitudes such as openness to change and cynicism about organizational change. However, it is likely that managers and employees experience a range of conflicting and contradictory responses to organizational change events (Kiefer, 2002; Piderit, 2000). As a first step, we discuss the different demands and roles of the TMT and supervisory leaders within an organization and then define transformational leadership. Next, we develop hypotheses concerning relationships among TMT and supervisory transformational leadership and psychological uncertainty.

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TMT and supervisory leadership To date, research has emphasized the role of a single leadership group such as strategic leaders within an organization (Kotter, 1995) or middle managers (e.g., Huy, 2002) when studying organizational change events. However, large-scale change efforts require a concerted effort from leaders from multiple hierarchical levels within an organization to ensure that change efforts succeed (Hill et al., 2012). Research on the fundamental demands and work requirements of leadership at different levels suggests that at higher hierarchical levels leadership becomes more indirect, involves longer time perspectives and is concerned with a larger scope and span of work and entails greater informational and social complexities (Zaccaro, Ely, and Nelson, 2008). In addition, top executives or strategic leaders are primarily concerned with the introduction of structural change into organizations (Katz and Kahn, 1978). It is important to note that strategic leadership is not the sole responsibility of a single individual (Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996; Zaccaro and Klimoski, 2001). Rather, a chief executive officer (CEO) usually works in close collaboration with a TMT, who provide the interface between a firm and its environment (Carpenter, Geletkanycz, and Sandres, 2004). The TMT refers to the group of executives who report directly to the CEO (Certo et al., 2006; Nielsen, 2010). By contrast, supervisory leaders are concerned with the day-to-day operation of a company (Katz and Kahn, 1978). Leadership at this level is more focused, short term in outlook and is characterized by greater brevity and fragmentation than leadership at higher hierarchical levels (Jonas, Fry, and Srivastva, 1990; Pavett and Lau, 1983). Real-time internal roles such as disturbance handler and negotiator are more important for supervisory leaders as compared to strategic leaders (Pavett and Lau, 1983). In addition, leadership at lower levels is more concerned with “translating” high-level change implementation plans and visions into a meaningful work group vision, identifying the implications of the change for the group and developing the capability of the group to deal with any pending changes (Ness and Cucuza, 1995). Research findings suggest that while the duties of leaders at different hierarchical levels may differ, both higher-level and lower-level leaders display transformational leadership behaviors (Lowe, Kroeck, and Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Transformational leaders motivate employees to go beyond standard expectations by transforming followers’ attitudes, beliefs, and values as opposed to simply gaining compliance (Bass, 1985). While there is some debate regarding the dimensionality of transformational leadership (e.g., Rafferty and Griffin, 2004; Yukl, 1999), theorists

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have argued that articulating a vision and inspirational leadership are core aspects of this leadership style (House, 1977; Podsakoff et al., 1990). We focus on the visionary and inspirational behaviors of the TMT and of supervisory leaders. Vision involves presenting an ideal goal of the future based around organizational values. Inspirational leadership involves communicating positive and encouraging messages about the future of the organization (Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). We suggest that TMT and supervisory transformational leadership are likely to reduce employee uncertainty about change and we outline these arguments in more detail below. Psychological uncertainty about change The key to understanding organizational change processes is the way in which individuals acquire, organize, and make sense of change in their environment (George and Jones, 2001; Weber and Manning, 2001). Theorists adopting this perspective suggest that the world does not consist of events that are meaningful by themselves (Bartunek and Moch, 1987; Dutton, 1993). Rather, organizational members interact with and affirm the existence of events, casting them in a particular light through the process of sense making (Dutton, 1993). Weick (1995, 14) suggested that to “engage in sensemaking is to construct, filter, frame, create facticity and render the subjective into something more tangible.” However, one of the difficulties with organizational change is that these events contain a lot of unknowns, so that employees often experience a great deal of psychological uncertainty before and during change (Davy et al., 1988; Miller and Monge, 1985; Nelson, Cooper, and Jackson, 1995; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006). As a result, a key employee appraisal resulting from change is that of uncertainty (see Chapter 2 in this volume, which discusses the role of appraisal in organizational change). Psychological uncertainty has been defined as the inability to assign probabilities as to the likelihood of future events (Duncan, 1972) or as a psychological state of doubt about what an event signifies or portends (DiFonzo and Bordia, 1998). We focus on two types of uncertainty including strategic and job-related uncertainty (Bordia et al., 2006). Strategic uncertainty refers to “uncertainty regarding organization-level issues, such as reasons for change, planning and future direction of the organization, its sustainability, the nature of the business environment” (Bordia et al., 2004a, 511). In contrast, job-related uncertainty refers to “uncertainty regarding job security, promotion opportunities, changes to the job role” (Bordia et al., 2004, 510). Discussions of effective strategic leadership during change have emphasized the importance of establishing a clear vision of the future so as to

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reduce uncertainty and to maintain employees’ energy and enthusiasm during difficult times (e.g., Kouzes and Posner, 1995). Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector (1990) emphasized that articulation of a vision is important because it provides individuals with a clear sense of where a change will take an organization in the future. Articulating a vision aligns leaders’ and followers’ values and beliefs, and goals, enabling individuals to render events as meaningful and providing a guide to action during change, therefore reducing strategic uncertainty (Fiol, Harris, and House, 1999). We suggest that when the TMT articulates a vision of the future and inspire followers through saying positive and encouraging statements about the future, this will reduce employees’ strategic uncertainty. Thus, we propose that: Hypothesis 1: TMT transformational leadership will be negatively associated with strategic uncertainty. In contrast, effective transformational leadership by supervisors involves appropriately managing daily operational problems and maintaining workflow during periods of change (Nadler, 1995). In a change-related case study of a corporate audit department in a large bank, Whelan-Barry, Gordon, and Hinings (2003) reported that at the group level, maintaining change momentum involved explicitly communicating: (a) a group-level change vision that addressed what the change meant for the work group; and (2) a work group-level implementation plan that reflected the particular contingencies that were in operation in that work group. We propose that these supervisory behaviors will reduce employees’ job-related uncertainty about what tasks he or she should be carrying out during change and what the change means for the work group as a whole and for his or her job in the future. In addition, we argue that effective supervisory transformational leaders will also make positive and encouraging statements about the group’s capacity to implement the changes and the future of the group, which will also reduce job-related uncertainty. Thus, we propose that: Hypothesis 2: supervisory transformational leadership will be negatively associated with job-related uncertainty.

Attitudes toward change We focus on the influence of the TMT and supervisory leaders on two employee attitudes – openness toward change and cynicism about change. Both attitudinal constructs are critical during organizational change events (e.g., Bommer et al., 2005; Bernerth et al., 2007; Brown and Cregan, 2008;

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Wanous, Reichers, Austin, 2000). Wanberg and Banas (2000) identified two factors underlying openness toward change including a willingness to accommodate or accept change and a positive view of change. They examined the relationships between openness to change and job satisfaction, work irritation, intention to quit, and turnover fourteen months after a restructuring effort. Results indicated that individuals with lower levels of change acceptance reported lower job satisfaction, greater work irritation, and increased intentions to quit fourteen months later. In addition, a positive view of the changes was also associated with these outcomes in the expected direction after change acceptance was taken out of the equation. A number of empirical studies have examined the relationship between transformational leaders and employees’ reactions to organizational change (e.g., Bommer et al., 2005; Herold et al., 2008; Nemanich and Keller, 2007; Oreg and Berson, 2011; Wanous et al., 2000). However, to date, none of these studies have focused on openness to change. Nemanich and Keller (2007) studied an acquisition and found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and acquisition acceptance, a construct likely to be conceptually related to openness about change. Transformational leadership displayed a positive relationship with acquisition acceptance, and this relationship was fully mediated by a climate supporting new ways of thinking. With very few exceptions (e.g., Oreg and Berson, 2011; Hill et al., 2012), most studies examining the relationship between transformational leadership and change attitudes have focused at lower hierarchical levels of an organization. However, Hill and colleagues conducted a study in a large US government agency that was in the process of restructuring to develop cross-functional capabilities. These authors conducted a longitudinal survey study, collecting survey data at two points in time separated by a twelve-month period and also collected multilevel data. In particular, data on commitment to change and perceptions of TMT communication were collected at the individual level while work group members’ assessment of their manager’s transformational leadership were aggregated to the group level. The results of this study suggested that hierarchical distance from the TMT was negatively related to affective commitment to change and normative commitment to change at both Times 1 and 2. In addition, employees reported higher levels of affective and normative commitment to change when their direct manager displayed a more transformational style. In this study, we suggest that both TMT and supervisory transformational leadership will be positively associated with openness to change. In particular, when the TMT articulate a vision of the organization’s future,

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then followers are more likely to endorse change-related values and will have a more positive view of organizational changes. In addition, we suggest that when supervisors present a clear vision that is tailored to their specific work team and also present positive and encouraging messages about what change means for the team, then employees will be more accepting of change and will also have a more favorable impression of the potential outcomes of change. On the basis of these theoretical arguments and empirical evidence, we propose that: Hypothesis 3a: TMT transformational leadership will be significantly positively associated with openness toward change. Hypothesis 3b: supervisory transformational leadership will be significantly positively associated with openness toward change. We also propose that TMT and supervisory transformational leadership will be significantly negatively associated with cynicism about change. A variety of different perspectives have been adopted when defining this change attitude. Wu, Neubert, and Yi (2007, 328) defined cynicism as “frustration, disillusionment and negative feelings toward and distrust of a person, ideology, social convention, or institution.” In contrast, most authors focused on cynicism about change have adopted a more cognitively focused definition, arguing that cynicism about change is composed of two dimensions; pessimism about future changes being successful and blaming those responsible for one’s pessimism (Wanous et al., 2000). Reichers, Wanous, and Austin (1997) suggest that cynicism involves a loss of faith in change leaders and develops in response to a history of change attempts that are not entirely or clearly successful. Research suggests that, during periods of change and uncertainty, employees observe leaders’ behaviors and actions in an effort to make sense of change. For example, Bordia et al. (2006) found that employees spent a great deal of time discussing how change was being managed during the initial changes of change implementation. As a result, the words and deeds of the TMT and supervisory leaders influence employees’ attitudes toward change, including whether people feel pessimistic about change and whether they attribute blame for change failure to leaders. In a study with three manufacturing organizations with data collected in two surveys over a nine-month period, Bommer et al. (2005) reported that transformational leadership was significantly negatively associated with employee cynicism about change. Oreg and Berson (2011) obtained data from seventy-five schools in Israel and found that employees of transformational leaders were less likely to report resistance intentions than employees working for non-transformational leaders. In addition, Oreg and Berson reported that as transformational leadership increased, the relationship

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between teachers’ dispositional resistance and resistance intentions weakened. On the basis of the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence mentioned above, we propose that: Hypothesis 4a: TMT transformational leadership will be significantly negatively associated with cynicism about change. Hypothesis 4b: supervisory transformational leadership will be significantly negatively associated with cynicism about change. Relationships among uncertainty and change attitudes The experience of psychological uncertainty – or the absence of information – is a particularly aversive and anxiety-provoking state (e.g., Bordia et al., 2004b). When people face an event, the possession of information about that event allows that individual to make sense of each individual step and also to know when something signals a problem. Having basic information about an aversive event enables people to employ their own coping styles more effectively by seeing how their efforts will mesh with forthcoming events. In addition, information reduces the amount of time that individuals spend in fearful anticipation of a stressful event (e.g., Seligman, 1968). When employees report strategic and job-related uncertainty about change it is likely that they will be less willing to accommodate or accept change and will have a less positive view of change while also being more pessimistic about change and blaming those responsible for managing change. Thus, we propose that: Hypothesis 5a: strategic uncertainty about change will be significantly negatively associated with openness toward change and will be significantly positively associated with cynicism about change. Hypothesis 5b: job-related uncertainty will be significantly negatively associated with openness toward change and will be significantly positively associated with cynicism about change. Adjustment to organizational change The notion that initial reactions to change influence subsequent attitudes has received some empirical support (e.g., Armstrong-Stassen, 2004; Fugate, Kinicki, and Prussia, 2008; Kiefer, 2005; Rafferty and Restubog, 2010). We argue that when employees are open to change and report low levels of cynicism about change early in the restructuring process, then they will be more likely to be affectively committed to the organization after change has been implemented. Individuals who have a high level of affective commitment to an organization are emotionally attached to, identify

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with and are involved in the organization and remain with the company because they want to (e.g., Allen and Meyer, 1990, 1996). Dean, Barandes, and Dhar-Wahdkar (1998) argued that cynicism often fosters disparaging remarks about the organization and its members, which is likely to reduce employees’ emotional attachment to their organization, as their discontent leads them to believe (or hope) that they will not be there for the long term. Thus, we propose that: Hypothesis 6a: openness toward change will be significantly positively associated with affective commitment to the organization while cynicism about change will be significantly negatively associated with affective commitment to the organization. We also identify psychological contract violation as an important indicator of employees’ adjustment to change events. The increased prevalence of large-scale organizational changes not only makes it increasingly unclear what employees and organizations owe each other, it also increases the likelihood that obligations cannot or will not be met (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). That is, organizational change events make an individual’s psychological contract with their company highly salient. A psychological contract has been defined as “a belief that some form of a promise has been made and that the terms and conditions of the contract have been accepted by both parties” (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994, 246). When a psychological contract is violated, employees are likely to experience emotions such as anger, frustration, and resentment, because an individual is reacting to both unmet expectations and also to indications that they are not respected or valued by their organization (Andersson, 1996; Robinson and Morrison, 2000). We propose that when employees report that they are willing to accommodate or accept change and have a positive view of change early in the organizational change process, then they are likely to accept the discomfort and disturbance that accompanies change efforts as they see the benefit of the change in the long term. In contrast, when individuals are pessimistic about change being successful and blame those responsible for their pessimism, then they are less likely to respond well to the disruptions that accompany any change effort and will therefore be more likely to feel less emotionally attached to the organization and will be more likely to perceive that their psychological contract has been violated. Thus, we propose: Hypothesis 6b: openness toward change will be significantly negatively associated with psychological contract violation while cynicism about change will be significantly positively associated with psychological contract violation.

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Method The research context The research was conducted in a manufacturing organization involved in the production and distribution of home and food products in the Philippines. The executive vice president of the organization assumed the role of the CEO and the mandate of the new CEO included improving profitability, creating and delivering high-quality products, and streamlining processes and procedures. The TMT sought to review and modify the existing traditional, bureaucratic, and hierarchical structure in order to streamline processes to become more efficient and effective. This decision was a by-product of a corporate planning and strategy discussion, which identified achieving enhanced competitiveness and becoming a market leader as important organizational goals. In order to achieve these goals, senior management identified that there was a need to conduct an organizational restructuring review with the goal of adopting innovative work practices that could help to decentralize decision-making processes and empower middle managers to attend to improving competitiveness. To address the CEO’s platform, a review team was created consisting of the senior management team and selected employee representatives across divisions. This group was asked to develop an optimum organizational structure that would facilitate the achievement of future business goals and maximize opportunities for growth. The review process involved an analysis of the organizational structure by reviewing core functions and responsibilities of each division and its members. Employees were assured that there would be no job losses and that the goal was to establish an optimal structure that would maintain the organization’s long-term competitive advantage. Similarly, employees were informed that the review team would issue regular emails and organize discussion groups to update them about the initial phase of the change effort. The survey process began at the time when the CEO announced the creation of the review team. Interviews with senior and middle managers in the organization after the restructuring process have indicated that while it is too early to determine whether the implementation of the restructuring efforts was successful, informal discussions with the middle managers suggest that key processes have become more efficient. For example, product deliveries which normally take five days have been streamlined to three days. Procedure and participants The study participants were full-time employees of a manufacturing organization in the Philippines who were surveyed at two time points.

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The Time 1 (T1) survey was administered just as the new CEO announced the creation of the review team to study the current organizational structure. The Time 2 (T2) survey was administered six months after the completion of the review, when restructuring had commenced. At Time 1, 518 employees received a survey kit consisting of a survey and a letter of support from management indicating the goals of the study, voluntary participation and confidentiality of the study results. Surveys were sent to employees across various functional divisions/units to ensure that we captured employees from all parts of the company. A total of 309 participants returned the surveys (response rate 59.6 percent). The T2 survey was disseminated six months later to the T1 respondents. After several follow-ups, 291 participants returned the surveys (response rate 94.2 percent). Upon inspection of these surveys, 18 surveys were disregarded due to: (a) a large number of missing responses; (b) surveys were not completed; or (c) participants failed to provide a self-generated code that would allow their T2 survey to be matched to their T1 survey. The final matched sample of 273 participants who completed surveys at Time 1 and Time 2 was included in the analysis. The final sample consisted of 159 males and 113 females (one person did not respond to this question). The average age of the participants was 34.2 years (SD = 8.2 years) and the average organizational tenure was 5.96 years (SD = 3.91 years). A large majority (97.8 percent) of the participants had a college degree, while others had a high school certificate (1.5 percent), college undergraduate (.7 percent), vocational training (3.3 percent), and a graduate degree (2.2 percent).

Time 1 measures We asked employees to respond to the openness to change and the cynicism about change questions based on their experience with the current restructuring changes. In contrast, for the remaining questions in this study participants were asked to respond on the basis of their experience in the organization in the past six months in general. Top management team transformational leadership We assessed employees’ perceptions of TMT leadership using six items to assess vision and inspirational communication (Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). We asked respondents to “rate the leadership practices of the top management team (which includes the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and the Executive Vice President).” An example of an item assessing TMT vision is, “The TMT has a clear sense of where they want our institution to be in 5 years.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .93.

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Alannah E. Rafferty, Nerina L. Jimmieson, Simon L. D. Restubog

Supervisory transformational leadership We assessed employees’ perceptions of supervisory leadership using six items measuring vision and inspirational communication (Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). We asked respondents to “rate the leadership practices of your immediate supervisor. This is the person to whom you directly report for your work responsibilities.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .95. Job-related uncertainty We used three items (Bordia et al., 2004a) to assess job uncertainty. An example item is, “You are clear about the extent to which job role/tasks will change.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .93. Strategic uncertainty We assessed this construct using three items (Bordia et al., 2004a). An example item is, “The extent to which you are clear about the strategic direction in which this organization is heading.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .92. Openness toward change We used five items (Wanberg and Banas, 2000) to assess this construct. An example item is “I would consider myself open to these changes.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .65. Cynicism about change Eight items assessed cynicism about change (Wanous et al., 2000). An example item is “Most of the changes that are supposed to solve problems will not do much good.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .93. Time 2 measures Affective organizational commitment Three items assessed this construct (Meyer et al., 1993). An example item is “I feel emotionally attached to this organization.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .85. Psychological contract violation Three items (Robinson and Morrison, 2000) assessed this construct. An example item includes “I feel that this organization has violated the ‘contract’ between us.” This scale had a Cronbach alpha of .94. Results Table 7.1 displays the zero-order correlations among the study variables. Relationships among the constructs were in the expected direction.

Table 7.1 Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations

1. TMT transformational leadership T1 2. Supervisory transformational leadership T1 3. Job uncertainty T1 4. Strategic uncertainty T1 5. Cynicism about change T1 6. Openness to change T1 7. Affective commitment to the organization T2 8. Psychological contract violation T2 Note: n = 273. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Mean (SD)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

4.52 (.97) 4.55 (1.09) 3.74 (1.08) 3.78 (.97) 3.02 (.97) 4.81 (.70) 4.86 (.86) 2.22 (1.22)

(.93) .56*** −.37*** −.41*** −.33*** .24*** .41*** −.28***

(.95) −.37*** −.24** −.33*** .19** .29*** −.18**

(.93) .43*** .10 −.06 −.30*** .13*

(.92) .22*** −.20** −.33*** .13*

(.93) −.58*** −.18* .47***

(.65) .20** −.42***

(.85) −.34***

(.94)

158

Alannah E. Rafferty, Nerina L. Jimmieson, Simon L. D. Restubog

Overview of analyses We conducted a two-step procedure when estimating relationships among the constructs (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). First, we estimated a series of nested measurement models. Next, we estimated a series of nested structural models to test the study hypotheses. Due to the relatively small sample size, we sought to minimize the number of indicators per construct. TMT and supervisory leadership were each assessed by the two scales measuring vision and inspirational communication. Cynicism about change T1 was assessed using the pessimism about change scale and the dispositional attribution for change failure scale. In contrast, job uncertainty T1, strategic uncertainty T1, openness to change T1, affective commitment to the organization T2 and psychological contract violation T2 were assessed using individual items. Measurement models To assess the factor structure of the measures in the study, we tested a series of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models. Analyses were conducted on the data of the 273 respondents who provided responses at T1 and T2. Each model included the twenty-three items or scales from the eight constructs assessed. All model tests were based on this matrix and maximum likelihood estimation was used as implemented in LISREL 8.8. In the first measurement model – the 2-factor model – we created a T1 and T2 factor. All of the items and scales assessed at T1 loaded on a single factor including the TMT vision scale, TMT inspiration scale, the supervisory leadership vision scale, the supervisory inspiration scale, the strategic uncertainty items, the job uncertainty items, the openness to change items, and the cynicism about change scales. In addition, the items assessing affective commitment and psychological contract violation items loaded on a T2 factor. This model was not a good fit to the data, χ2(229) = 3187.18, p < .001; GFI = .50, CFI = .53, NNFI = .48, RMSEA =.22, SRMR = .19. The next measurement model estimated was the 4-factor model in which a T1 leadership factor, a T1 uncertainty factor, a T1 change attitudes factor and a T2 outcomes factor were estimated. This model was not a good fit to the data, χ2(224) = 1963.49, p < .001; GFI = .61, CFI = .71, NNFI = .67, RMSEA=.17, SRMR = .15, but was a significantly better fit to the data than Model 1 as determined by application of a chi-square difference test, Δχ2 (5) = 1223.69, p