Beyond change management: A multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees' commitment to change.

Abstract

The extent to which attitudes toward organizational changes may be affected by contextual (other changes going on) and personal (self-efficacy) factors was investigated with a multilevel design involving 25 different changes. Even after aspects of the change itself were controlled, the interaction between the context and the individual difference explained significant variance in attitudes toward those specific changes. The positive relationship between self-efficacy and commitment to the change was stronger as the amount of simultaneous and overlapping change in the surroundings increased. The implications for research and practice are discussed.

Chapter 4 Personality, affect, and organizational change: a qualitative study

“…I like to initiate it, so I guess that's an issue and because I wasn't in control of part of that process and probably felt too far from the loci I suppose, which is something I learnt about myself" (O). These findings support the results obtained in a number of empirical studies that locus of control and change self-efficacy strongly predict people's ability to cope well with organizational change (Judge et al 1999;Wanberg & Banas, 2000;Jimmieson et al, 2004;Herold et al, 2007). People with a high internal locus of control tend to have the confidence (self-efficacy) that they can deal with the cognitive, emotional and behavioural challenges of an organizational change, and most of our participants believed they had the ability to cope with change.…”

“…Some participants were optimistic that some changes would benefit customers, colleagues or others. Optimism is also partially dependent on change selfefficacy (Herold et al, 2007;Avey et al, 2008). People who are convinced that a change will turn out well for them may partly believe this because they have the confidence to succeed at something new and partly because they think they have the capacity to deal with the emotional consequences.…”

“…Two of these are closely related: locus of control, the belief that one can influence events (Rotter, 1990) and self-efficacy, the belief one has the ability to deal with certain types of situation (Bandura, 1977), such as change (Herold et al 2007;Judge et al, 1999). Several respondents made it clear that the more control they had over change the more comfortable they were with it: "It all depends on whether I'm the architect of change or whether I'm having the change imposed on me" (A); "It's better if I'm driving it" (R); "I think I'm good with change to be honest.…”

“…Avey, Wernsing and Luthans (2008) found that a combination of hope, efficacy, optimism and resilience led to positive emotions and support for change. A number of researchers have reported self-efficacy, and more specifically change-related self-efficacy, to be a significant variable (Wanberg & Banas, 2000;Jimmieson, Terry & Callan, 2004;Herold, Fedor & Caldwell, 2007;Holt, Armenakis, Feild & Harris, 2007;Rudisill & Edwards, 2002). Lau and Woodman (1995) found a significant relationship between locus of control and the formation of change schemata but little impact of dogmatism.…”

What ' s in it for me? A managerial perspective on the influence of the psychological contract on attitude towards change

“…Moreover, as demonstrated here, these factors can explain why employees sometimes respond contrary to what is expected by change agents, who often place much emphasis on the change process itself and disregard the general employment context. However, as Herold et al (2007) concluded, "organizations cannot roll out change after change assuming that each change is an independent event" without carefully considering "extrachange factors, such as the workplace setting in which the change is occurring" (p. 949). To conclude, change agents can benefit from an increased focus on pre-change antecedents, which are perhaps hard to influence in the short term but that do largely shape the employee's perception of an organizational change.…”