Multiple Facets of Employee Responses to Organizational Change

Previous studies in the organizational change literature imply that positive work attitude playsan important role in explaining employee support for change (e.g., Herscovitch and Meyer, 2000). The current study challenges such untested but conventional wisdom by identifying two distinctivepredictors of behavioralsupport for change and their respective relationships with positive work attitude (job satisfaction and perceived organizational support) using a field survey of 166 employees at a northeastern U.S. hospital under organizational change toward employee empowerment. 1) One critical predictor of behavioral support for change is commitment to change and involves employee reciprocation based on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). Under this theoretical framework, employees may view change-supportive actions as an opportunity to reciprocate beneficial actions and treatment they have received from the organization and employer (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001). It is especially so when the change is initiated by the management and requires voluntary employee participations. Typically, employees treated well by the organization are those with positive work attitude and they will actively support and participate in organizational change (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002). The other psychologicalprocess underlying behavioral support for change is presented in the form of perceived need for change meaning employee’s personal evaluation of general need for change. The current study argues that psychological process underlying perceived need for changeis independent and distinctive process from that of commitment to change above. Commitment to change involves much of affective and cognitive assessment of change-related players (both sponsors and agents) as well as change-related outcomes (Conner and Patterson, 1982). In contrast, perceived need for change involves more general assessment of the current employment state based on an individual’s evaluation of the working environment (Rousseau & Tijoriwala, 1999). The issue of the status quo comes into play in employees’ perceived need for change since it addresses a question from an individual employee “do I need to change?”The change-oriented behavior is motivated by desire to eliminate personal dissatisfaction with the current state and involves cognitive evaluation of the status quo (Withey & Cooper, 1989). Individual employees’evaluation of the status quo includes the quality of their experiences in organizations. If employees have positive experiences with their organization, they are less likely to feel change is necessary. A status quo that employees consider to besatisfactory also has been viewed as a barrier to organizational change since comfort with the status quo can impede an employee’s perceived need for change by creating complacency (Nurick, 1985; Lewin, 1951). In sum, the key hypotheses of the current study include 1) commitment to change and perceived need for change are distinctive and independent predictors of behavioral support for change, 2) job satisfaction and perceived organizational support will be positively associated with employees’commitment to change and 3) job satisfaction and perceived organizational support will be negatively associated with employees’ perceived need for change. The results from structural equation model analyses as well as regression analyses support all of the major hypotheses presented by the current study and confirm two competing motives underlying behavioral responses to change (i.e., commitment to change and perceived need for change). It also finds distinctive effects of positiveworker experiences with opposite directions on two different attitudinal predictors of active change support. In actuality, such dual attitudes toward change (i.e., ambivalence) may explain non-significant zero-order correlations 1) between job satisfaction and behavioral support for change and 2) between per