University of Twente Student Theses
Antecedents of commitment to change : a study about the contribution of change related variables, individual variables, communication variables and work-relationships to employees’ commitment to organizational change
Foks, M. (2015) Antecedents of commitment to change : a study about the contribution of change related variables, individual variables, communication variables and work-relationships to employees’ commitment to organizational change.
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| Abstract: | Commitment to change is considered to be one of most important factors for the successful implementation of change initiatives. Many organizations fail to achieve the results they pursue and want to know more about to what extent variables influence commitment to change. This study investigated the interplay of all these variables together and their unique contribution to commitment to organizational change. The purpose of the present research is to measure if work-relationships have a contribution to the demographic variables, change related variables, individual variables, communication variables mentioned in literature that have effect on employees’ commitment to organizational change. The theoretical framework was designed based on the literature. Commitment to change was divided into three forms: affective, continuance, and normative commitment to change. The variables discussed in this study were organizational tenure, change frequency, prior experience with organizational change, change related self-efficacy, personal job impact, participation, information, work-relationships with the manager and employees and employees’ perceptions of managers’ and colleagues’ opinion about change. Integrating research from the change literature, leader-member exchange (LMX) literature, and relationship literature, this study proposes eleven hypotheses about the variables which contribute to employees’ commitment to change in a positive and negative way. The results were measured with the use of an online questionnaire where the 161 respondents were employees who have had a significant change experience in an organization. The results indicated that the communication variables (participation and information) were the best predictors of employees’ commitment to change. Furthermore, the influence of the entirety of work-relationships on commitment to change showed no exclusive results. The work-relationship with the manager was significant to employees’ affective and normative commitment and the work-relationship with colleagues was only significant to employees’ normative commitment. The present study is important for commitment literature because it represents an attempt towards the identification of variables which may have an impact on employees’ attitude towards commitment to change. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 05 communication studies |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/66942 |
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