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The purpose of this paper is to determine whether managers who are not in top management perceive change-related voice from their work group as support and whether this perception is an explaining mechanism that can predict the managers' behavioral support for change. Such voice can be a valuable asset for managers during change.

Lower and middle managers' perceptions of subordinates' support is investigated as mediator in the relationship between group change-related voice and managers' behavioral support for change. Seventy managers who were experiencing organizational change completed a survey at two points in time. Data were analyzed using regression analyses and the bootstrapping approach.

Managers perceive promotive but not prohibitive group change-related voice as support. Perceived subordinate support serves as explaining mechanism in the relationship between promotive group change-related voice and managers' championing behavior.

The study's results have practical implications, as insights are gained into how managers react to upward communication from the work group and how such communication influences managers' reaction to change. These insights can be used to facilitate effective participation during change, as it creates sensitivity to managers as recipients of change.

Research on how managers react to change-related ideas and concerns is scarce. The study extends current research on organizational change by investigating the impact of subordinates' communications on managers' reaction to change. Research on voice is enriched by focusing on the voice-receiving process.

This study investigates the impact of transformational leadership and transparent communication on employees' openness to change with the mediating role of employee organization trust and moderating effects of change-related self-efficacy.

A sample of 260 employees from banking sector of Pakistan through self-administrated questionnaire participated in this study and the data was analysed through partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that transformational leadership and transparent communication help to create trust among employees of the organization which ultimately have positive effects on employee openness to change. Further, the results suggest that the presence of change-related self-efficacy significantly moderates relation between the transformational leadership and employee openness to change. However, change self-efficacy does not change the relationship between transparent communication and employee openness to change.

This study contributes to change management literature and helps organizations to understand the importance of employees and their positive behaviour during change.

The researcher provides the guidelines for employers to craft change communication policy during the change implementation phase.

This study tests a mediating role of employee organization trust and moderating role of change-related self-efficacy in relation with transformational leadership and transparent communication on employees' openness to change which had not been tested theoretically and empirically in the context of Pakistan.

The purpose of the present paper is to advance a testable model, rooted on well‐established control and self‐regulation theory principles, explaining the causal links between change‐related sensemaking, interpretation, readiness and subsequent behavioural action.

Following a review of the two motivation theories and clarification of change‐related sensemaking, interpretation, and readiness concepts, the paper proposes a series of research propositions (illustrated by a conceptual model) clarifying how these concepts interact with self‐regulating mechanisms. In addition, the feedback model exemplifies how cognitive processes triggered by new knowledge structures relate to behavioural action.

The model expands upon other existing frameworks by allowing the examination of multi‐level factors that account for, and moderate causal links between, change‐related sensemaking, interpretation, readiness, and behavioural action. Suggestions for future research and guidelines for practice are outlined.

The variables and processes depicted in the model provide guidelines for change management in organisations, both for individuals and for groups. By eliciting important self‐regulating functions, change agents will likely facilitate sensemaking processes, positive interpretations of change, change readiness, and effective change behaviours.

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, it offers a comprehensive and dynamic account of the relationships between change‐related sensemaking, interpretation, readiness, and behavioural action decision‐making. Second, it elucidates the impact of human agency properties, namely the interplay of efficacy perceptions, social learning, and self‐regulating mechanisms on these change‐related cognitive processes and subsequent behavioural outcomes.

With employees’ support of organizational changes being vital for today’s organizations, the purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of how organizational commitment is linked to change-supportive intentions. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1991), mediated effects of affective organizational commitment were empirically tested to explore the underlying psychological processes.

The study was conducted in the context of a complex change process at a production facility of a large international manufacturing company (n=667). Data from the change survey were analyzed employing Hayes’ (2012) PROCESS macro.

The results showed that organizational commitment relates to change-supportive intentions directly and, as suggested by the TPB, its effects are mediated via change-related attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Furthermore, results suggest additional effects of change recipients’ age and occupational status.

Employing the TPB offers specific insights for tailored interventions to create conditions facilitating organizational changes. The results indicate that commitment lays the ground for employees’ change reactions. Moreover, the psychological processes suggested by the TPB serve as additional levers for explaining change-supportive intentions.

The study provides valuable information on the relationship between commitment and change-supportive intentions. Specifically, affective organizational commitment is shown to be an important resource in times of change, as it relates to more positive psychological reactions to change.

Change drivers are events, activities, or behaviors that facilitate the individual adoption of change initiatives and the implementation of organizational change. The purpose of this paper is an exploratory study of whether gender differences exist for change drivers.

This paper involves a three‐year study of an organizational change in the banking industry, and uses survey and interview data.

Data show that the mean perceived significance of change drivers to the understanding and adoption of change initiatives by male and female employees is similar and does not vary at a statistically significant level. Statistically significant gender differences do exist in terms of the relationship between change drivers and employees' reported individual adoption of change initiatives. Qualitative data from the interviews support those quantitative findings, showing gender differences in how change drivers are perceived; differences in change‐related vision, leadership, communication and positive outcomes as drivers are discussed.

This is an exploratory study and needs to be replicated with other organizational changes in a variety of industries with varied employee demographics and differences in change leadership gender.

Change drivers are a form of resource allocation. Better understanding of gender differences in terms of the perception of and significance of change drivers to individual employees' understanding and adoption of change initiatives can result in more effective allocation of resources by change leaders.

Very limited prior research explores gender or other demographic differences for change drivers. This research provides an empirical study of gender and change drivers and extends prior research on change drivers and the change process.

Responding to a recent editorial call for sustainable development (Truong and Saunders, 2021), this study aims to explore the persuasiveness of climate-change-related appeals.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to test the effect of climate-change-related appeals on persuasion, the underlying mechanism causing that effect and associated boundary conditions. Statistical results were based on analysis of variance, mediation and moderation analysis.

Adaptation-oriented appeals are more persuasive than mitigation-oriented appeals. Specifically, adaptation (versus mitigation) appeals activate a self-regulation process that encourages people to think about the future, making them more likely to address climate change. This effect is salient when consumers’ environmental concerns are low.

To boost message persuasiveness, marketers and public policymakers could construct abstract and long-horizon climate-change-related appeals and provide prompts or interventions to promote people’s elaborations about potential outcomes.

To boost message persuasiveness, marketers and public policymakers could construct abstract and long-horizon climate-change-related appeals and provide prompts or interventions to promote people’s elaborations about potential outcomes.

Revealing mitigation and adaptation climate-change-related appeals yield diverse effects.

Much of the literature in organizational change has taken a single approach to explain employee expectation formation regarding the outcomes of a change event. A conceptual model is developed to integrate two existing streams of research (the information effects approach and the social effects approach) and to develop a comprehensive picture of outcome expectation formation. We propose that information and social effects function simultaneously to shape an employee's outcome expectations. The strength and content consistency of information and social effects jointly determine what people expect regarding change outcomes and how confident they feel about those expectations. Implications are discussed in terms of setting the boundaries for information and social effects as well as future research directions.

Commitment to change is vital for the success of any organizational change initiative. However, despite a sustained increase in research interest on employees’ commitment to change, there is still no consistency about the unidimensional or multi-dimensional construct of commitment to change, and previous research tends to ignore the impact vocational drivers may have on it. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing on prospect theory, the authors extended Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) commitment to change construct by developing and testing an additional dimension of commitment to change centered on employees’ vocational commitment across two studies, adopting a longitudinal design within a Chinese context. As organizational change often has implications that impacts individual decision making, vocational development and work adjustments and attitudes within the workplace, the authors presented the case for vocational commitment to change as an important extension to the commitment to change literature. The authors first provided evidence for the internal consistency, factor structure and the validity of the commitment to change in the Chinese context. Subsequently, the authors examined the changes of employees’ commitment to change across time, and demonstrated its predictive validity by exploring the relationship between commitment to change and change-related behaviors.

The current research represents improvements in commitment to change measurement, provides construct clarification in the Asia context, and sheds light on theoretical and empirical evidence for how to support change in the Chinese context. Limitations, implications and directions for future research are further discussed.

The current study responds to a call for research to further investigate the mechanisms of commitment to change within non-Western contexts, specifically within the Chinese context. Through a rigorous scale development process, the authors clarified Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) commitment to change model and present an augmented model with a fourth dimension –vocational commitment to change. Furthermore, through a longitudinal study, the current study also demonstrates that the cultivation of commitment to change has great importance to improving employees’ change-supportive behavior and reducing their resistance to change. This is consistent with cross-cultural research, which shows that Chinese individuals are more likely to possess inconsistent attitudes toward an object, including themselves, compared to Western individuals (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004). The study also explained the change of commitment to change over time, showing the significant relationships among the commitment to change and change-related behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and voice during the change-planning process. The authors propose a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between voice, other change-related variables, and the boundary conditions of transformational leadership.

The authors collected survey data from 124 employees and their leaders in a medical technology company in Norway. The organization was planning a major restructuring of its working procedures. The authors analyzed the data using PROCESS and a fixed effect approach.

The results suggest that transformational leadership has no effect on change-related voice (CRV) by itself. However, there is an indirect effect through affective commitment to change. This effect is conditional on the employees’ level of perceived change impact.

The paper is limited by the cross-sectional design of the study. Other potential limitations are discussed.

The paper is the first to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and CRV, and is thus interesting for practitioners who wish to increase the level of CRV from their employees. Furthermore, researchers interested in organizational change and proactivity constructs such as voice will also find the paper valuable.

Drawing on the self-extended and regulatory focus theories, the present study examined the mechanism as well as the boundary condition under which psychological ownership might relate positively to the work engagement of employees working in public sector organizations in Ghana.

Data were collected from employees (n = 313) working in public sector organizations in Ghana at a single point in time with a survey questionnaire.

The results indicated that psychological ownership and self-regulatory focus behaviors (i.e. prevention and promotion focus behaviors) were beneficial for work engagement; and that while prevention focus mediated psychological ownership-work engagement relationship, that relationship was positive and stronger for employees who performed less promotion focus behaviors.

Managers in public sector organizations should understand that employees with strong psychological ownership would feel more engaged if they perform less promotion focus behaviors.

The authors’ study contributes uniquely to the nascent work engagement literature in the Ghanaian context, and by testing boundary conditions and underlying mechanisms increased the authors’ understanding of work engagement among public sector employees in Ghana.