Exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect reactions to frequency of change, and impact of change

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how frequency of change (FC) in organizations and impact of change (IC) influence the employee behaviors, i.e. exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect (EVLN) through psychological contract fulfillment (PCF) as a mediator. The moderating role of successful past changes (SPC) is also assessed with direct and indirect relations of FC, and IC alongside employees’ behaviors. Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses were tested among a sample of 398 financial services-oriented non-managerial-level employees in Pakistan. Bootstrapped moderated mediation analyses (using PROCESS macro) were conducted to test the main and moderated mediation effects. The authors ran series of confirmatory factor analyses to validate the distinctiveness of variables and their items in this study. Findings – The results largely supported the hypotheses. Findings showed that FC is negatively related to loyalty but positively related to exit, voice, and neglect behaviors via contract fulfillment. IC is also found to have negatively related to loyalty but positively related to exit, voice, and neglect via PCF. SPC was found to moderate the relation between FC, IC, and contract fulfillment, as well as the indirect relationship with exit, voice, and neglect through contract fulfillment and negatively between FC, IC, and loyalty through contract fulfillment. The authors found direct interaction effects of FC via SPC in relation to exit and loyalty and also found direct interaction effects of IC via SPC to exit, voice, and loyalty. Research limitations/implications – The use of cross-sectional research design does not allow conclusions with respect to causality. The most important implication of the study is that employee behaviors following organizational change can best be understood via a psychological contract framework. A future suggestion is to include more organizations based on longitudinal research design with focus on both employee and employer perspective. Practical implications – This study highlights the importance of employees’ behavioral responses and their sensemaking of PCF in a post-organizational change period. Originality/value – This study empirically investigated the effects of FC, and IC on fulfillment of psychological contract and behavioral responses of employees using a sample of non-managerial employees, and provides new insights into employee behaviors following organizational changes.

High‐performance work system and employee performance: the mediating roles of social exchange and thriving and the moderating effect of employee proactive personality

“…We performed confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to examine the discriminant validity of individual-level variables (Akhtar et al 2016) included in our study: thriving, social exchange, competence, task performance, OCB, and proactive personality. Following Little et al (2002), we treated the first-order dimensions of thriving (e.g.…”

Transformational Changes and Sustainability: From the Perspective of Identity, Trust, Commitment, and Withdrawal

“…Prior to this, a few decades earlier, the notion of exit-based withdrawal was suggested by Hirschmann [34] and Farrell [35]. Exit is one of four theoretical categories underpinning diverse organizational behaviors, including turnover intention, requesting a transfer, and absenteeism, amongst others [35,36]. Thus, it constitutes a threat to the sustainability of major organizational changes.…”

“…Upon further research, we also considered that change favorableness as an attitude to change correlates with the individual's decision to exit the organization. The exit-based withdrawal concept suggests that during a change, individuals can develop a power struggle with senior management, and at these crucial junctures they can be driven to exit the organization [36,37]. However, it also seems that this process may be mediated by the degree to which the individual identifies with the organization and thus has a sense of loyalty, which may influence the decision to stay or leave [36].…”

“…The exit-based withdrawal concept suggests that during a change, individuals can develop a power struggle with senior management, and at these crucial junctures they can be driven to exit the organization [36,37]. However, it also seems that this process may be mediated by the degree to which the individual identifies with the organization and thus has a sense of loyalty, which may influence the decision to stay or leave [36]. The argument is that change favorableness, therefore, predicts exit from the organization relative to the degree to which the individual identifies with the organization.…”

“…The majority of the past studies were conducted in the developed world [7,15,72], whereas the developing country context offers more insight and understanding towards organizational changes in a cross-cultural setting. Secondly, we focused on larger organizations (having more than 500 employees) with a view to avoid any potential firm size dynamics with respect to major organizational changes, such as merger and acquisitions, downsizing, major restructuring, and changes in culture, HR policies, as well as in leadership [36,73]. Thirdly, organizations from the banking sector who underwent major organizational changes over the past two years were selected.…”