Introduction:
Organizations are being challenged to retain their competitive edge more than ever before.
In order to compete, organizations have been forced to implement large-scale change and quality improvement initiatives, which include reengineering, rightsizing, mergers, job relocations, and management restructuring (Kets de Vries and Balazs, 1997).
As a part of such change initiatives, it is common for the company’s executives to persuasively argue that specific changes are needed, even vital, if the company wishes to survive. And yet, enthusiasm is often in short supply from those lower in the management ranks (Strebel, 1996).
In part, the lack of enthusiasm can be explained if one considers the growing body of literature that suggests organizational change places demands not only on the organization, but also on the individual employees, both physiologically and psychologically (Grunberg et al., 2001; Pfeffer, 1998; Sverke et al., 2002).
Interestingly, individuals respond differently to organizational change (e.g. Barger and Kirby, 1995).
For some, change may bring increased satisfaction as they perceive the change as a chance to grow and learn; others, however, may react negatively to the smallest change.
In their review of the change literature, Armenakis and Bedeian (1999, p. 307) noted that “as open systems, organizations depend on human direction to succeed”, and called for a more person-centered investigation of organizational change.
In spite of the recent empirical studies that have suggested individuals are an appropriate level of analysis when exploring organizational change (e.g. Judge et al., 1999; Oreg, 2003), an implicit assumption in much of the organizational change literature is that change initiatives either succeed or fail uniformly across the organization (Wanberg and Banas, 2000) and therefore the organization is deemed the appropriate unit of analysis.
In line with Armenakis and Bedeian (1999), we contend that organizational change begins with the individual, as resistance or support are ultimately individual decisions and behaviors.
Armenakis and colleagues (Armenakis et al., 1993, 1999, Holt et al., 2006) and, more recently Bernerth (2004), have asserted the primary mechanism for creating individual change readiness, acceptance, and institutionalization is the “change message” as perceived from direct communication and symbolic evidence as the change unfolds.
Armenakis et al. (1999) argued, for example, that the message creates core sentiments in individuals that they use to guide decisions about their level of support for the change initiative.
Although scholars have stressed the importance of employees’ beliefs with regard to organizational changes (Armenakis et al., 1999; Kotter, 1995), few empirical studies have investigated the linkage between individuals’ perceptions of the organizational change and job-relevant outcomes (for an exception see Wanberg and Banas, 2000).
The present study examined the extent to which a sample of upper and middle-level managers’ sentiments regarding an organizational change were associated with four relevant affective outcomes – their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and role ambiguity.
Moreover, we focused on sentiments regarding three aspects of the change: the clarity of the vision driving change, the appropriateness of the change, and the quality of the change execution.
Finally, our review of the literature has revealed that past research has focused primarily on simple relationships between change perceptions and outcomes, thereby overlooking more complex models.
It is likely, however, that individual perceptions of organizational change interact in their influence on employee affective outcomes.
Therefore, we investigated the interaction effects of the three change process perceptions on the outcomes.
To the extent relationships are found between management’s change sentiments and outcomes, the findings might help explain why some change efforts fail while others are accepted and even championed (see Lau and Woodman, 1995).
Conclusion:
In summary, complex organizational changes are becoming ever more common in today’s workplace.
Whereas much of the previous research on organizational change has focused on macro-level variables, our results support the view that micro or individual-level variables play an important role in the success of the organizational change.
Furthermore, our results suggest the simultaneous consideration of the effects of change vision clarity, appropriateness, and execution sentiments can improve our understanding of organizationally relevant attitudes tied to the change experience.