With a Little Help From Change Management

Change-management activities require extensive interventions, for which small and medium-sized companies often lack the expertise. Thus, we examined whether a short-term intervention could be an innovative approach that affects employees’ attitudes and behavior. In the cooperative project IviPep, a company developed digital tools for its own internal development process. Our intervention was part of the corresponding training and consisted of a 5-minute presentation about prototypical reactions to change and a 45-minute workshop. Employees could voice their concerns, reflect on advantages, and work on potential solutions to address their concerns. Results of a survey before and after the training ( N = 22) showed that the short-term intervention significantly increased readiness for change ( d = 0.72) but did not significantly increase overall attitude toward change ( d = 0.16) or behavioral resistance to change ( d = -0.37), although the effects pointed in the intended direction. Our results indicate that even small change efforts can make a difference.

Change ubiquity: employee perceptions of change prevalence from three countries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address assumptions about the prevalence of change in human resource management (HRM) and organizational change literature, providing evidence from employee perceptions across three countries. The results indicate change was commonplace even before the pandemic disruptions of 2020.Design/methodology/approachGiven this study's exploratory, employee perspective, a cross-sectional self-report survey was used. Three survey panel samples were collected in 2017: US (n = 718), Australia (n = 501) and New Zealand (n = 516). Analysis of variance was used to test whether the prevalence of change differed significantly between countries or specific groups of employees. An analysis of comments on change types and emotional response provides further insights.FindingsThe paper provides evidence of the ubiquity of change: 73% of employees are experiencing change at work and 42% perceived it as moderate to massive, with little variation between countries. Employees commonly experience more than one change, with those experiencing large amounts of change reporting predominantly negative emotional impacts.Research limitations/implicationsThe research provides a snapshot across three countries during a prosperous and relatively stable period, providing a point of comparison for the turbulent times we have faced in 2020” as the publication date will be 2021 the current text may not work as well. Since change can be arduous, the authors recommend that HRM researchers consider change prevalence as a contextual factor, and practitioners heed employee reactions to change, particularly during periods of significant change.Originality/valueIn providing foundational evidence of change ubiquity in contemporary workplaces, this paper enables more accurate discussions regarding change.

Embracing and Harnessing Uncertainty

This chapter offers insight into how change and uncertainty challenges effective leadership practices and offers guidance on how leaders can successfully lead in uncertain times. It adds to the existing field of studies by offering leaders a framework and specific ways to understand and consequently embrace and harness uncertainty. With the turmoil of 2020 as backdrop, effective leaders will need to master 3 tasks: 1) to pace the changes to which their teams are exposed, 2) to shape how changes are perceived by their team, and 3) to manage the team's emotional reactions to change. As leaders envision the future, guide choices, tame apprehension, regulate expectations, experiment nimbly, and collaborate frequently, they will be able to channel the pressures of change to create positive outcomes for their teams and organizations. More importantly, organizations that create routines and processes that encourage, develop, and enable these behaviors internally will lead in a world where customer needs, employee demands, and shareholder expectations are continuously evolving.

Self – efficacy as a resource

Purpose This study has two purposes. Firstly, it aims to investigate whether self-efficacy constitutes one of the mechanisms by which transformational leadership impacts on employee positivity in reacting to change. Secondly, it aims to investigate whether the extent of change moderates the relationship between transformational leadership, self-efficacy and reactions to change. This study also explores the possibility that when the extent of change is higher, the effectiveness of transformational leadership may be lower. Design/methodology/approach This study used a sample of employees where the organization was going through significant change. Employee ratings on specific scales were used to measure transformational leadership, self-efficacy, affective commitment to organizational change, and intention to support change. A cumulative change index was used to assess the number of changes employees had experienced during the change process. Findings The results confirmed hypothesis 1 that transformational leadership was related to affective commitment and intention to support change and this was to a high level of statistical significance. Testing hypothesis 2 that self-efficacy mediated the effect of transformational leadership on commitment and intention to support change indicated that self-efficacy did mediate in this relationship confirming both hypothesis 2a and 2 b. The results did not support hypothesis 3a, with no significant interaction effect showing that the interaction between transformational leadership and self-efficacy did not differ between low versus high extent of change. However, the results did support hypothesis 3 b with the strength of the positive relationship between self-efficacy and reactions to change differing across high versus low extent of change. For both affective commitment and intention to support change, the interaction of self-efficacy and change index was significant. Research limitations/implications Current weaknesses in the transformational leadership research include: a bias towards heroic leadership and away from collective and shared process of leadership, the underlying processes have not been clearly identified, lack of precision about situational variables that may impact on these processes. This paper does not address the first weakness. Practical implications Self-efficacy gains importance when the extent of change is high. The results suggest that change managers should adopt a transformational style of leadership to enhance recipients’ self-efficacy to generate positive attitudes and behaviours during change. They also suggest the selection and training of managers in transformational leadership attributes and also the inclusion of this in the monitoring of managers’ behaviours in post. The research outlined in this paper makes a significant contribution to an organization’s capacity to achieve change, particularly when the extent of change is high. Social implications This research provides ways in which organizations can better achieve change through positive processes. Originality/value Transformational leadership can create a vision of the future and inspire followers to work to achieve it and to build hope and confidence for the future. This can prevent or overcome resistance to or reluctance about change. Lack of alignment of values between employees and the organization can result in change failure. This paper provides original insight into how change can be achieved by transformational leadership building self-efficacy.

The Resource and the Role of Statistics

This chapter confirms whether the truth of determinism could, would, or should lead people to exercise the resource available to them and react normally in the way people characteristically react to the outliers. It explains P. F. Strawson's initial admission that it does not seem to be self-contradictory to suppose people would always use their resource. It also reflects on Strawson's thought, implying that to be engaged in anything like interpersonal relationships is to expect some sort of regard or goodwill from others. The chapter also analyzes how Strawson can and should allow expectations to change in their content and corresponding reactions to change in their tone. It speculates the thought of a human society in which there were no expectations of goodwill and no distinctive sort of reaction to failures of expectations.

Understanding the individual's reactions to the organizational change: a multidimensional approach

PurposeThe objective of this research is to analyze in a multidimensional perspective the individual responses to organizational change, specifically about the implementation of a new performance evaluation system, investigating some antecedents of the individual reactions to change.Design/methodology/approachCompanies from the education industry were surveyed, and standardized questionnaires were applied. We obtained a sample size of 386 valid responses. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to assess the measurement model and test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate positive reactions to the organizational change, without ambivalent responses. Employees' cognitive and behavioral reactions are influenced by the individuals' anticipation and past similar organizational change and do not depend on the perceived threat to social work life. The influence of group pressure and organizational readiness on cognitive and behavioral reactions differs in the direction that group pressure affects behaviors but not thoughts, and organizational readiness affects thoughts but not behaviors.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations include the inadequate measures of individuals' emotional reaction, preventing this dimension from being tested.Originality/valueThis research provides theoretical contributions as the literature on organizational change lacks a multidimensional view on individuals' reactions to change. The main contribution of this study is to investigate how each of the individual and organizational antecedents of the employees' responses to the change influences the cognitive and behavioral reactions towards the change employing a multidimensional approach.

Self-efficacy as a resource: a moderated mediation model of transformational leadership, extent of change and reactions to change

PurposeDrawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study empirically tests the impact of transformational leadership on commitment to and intention to support organizational change, proposing self-efficacy as a mediating mechanism. This study also aims to study whether the extent of change in the organization moderates the proposed relationship between transformational leadership, self-efficacy and change reactions.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted with a sample of 298 employees going through a major organizational change. The proposed moderated mediation relationship was tested by using PROCESS macro.FindingsThe findings showed that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and reactions to change. Moreover, the extent of changes experienced by the employees moderated the relationship between self-efficacy and outcome variables. In other words, in high change contexts, self-efficacy appeared as a more salient and instrumental resource leading to positive reactions.Practical implicationsThe results guide change managers to display a transformational leadership style to enhance self-efficacy of change recipients to generate positive attitudes and behaviors during change. Also, this study shows that self-efficacy particularly gains importance when the extent of change is high.Originality/valueThis study makes several important contributions to the organizational change literature. First, it shows that leaders play a crucial role in generating resources that enhance employees' positive reactions to change. Second, the conditional factor of the extent of change has not received much attention in the literature. This study raises attention to the fact that the importance of such resources may differ across low versus high extent of change contexts.