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Concerns about change, a measure of the perception about future losses owing to organizational change, have received scarce attention within the organizational change literature. This study aims to address some relevant questions still unexplored regarding, the relationship between concerns about change and employees’ burnout and work engagement. Moreover, it evaluates the buffering role of social support namely, that of colleagues and superiors, during the anticipation stage of an organizational change process.

Six hundred and thirty-two employees of an administrative public sector filled out a self-reporting questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using hierarchical moderated regression to show direct and moderating effects.

Results suggest that concerns about change, measured during the anticipation stage of an organizational change process, relate to higher burnout and lower work engagement. Social support significantly affects the relationship between concerns and outcomes.

Overall, the study shows the role exerted from concerns about change in affecting employees’ wellbeing as the early stage of the organizational change process, providing scholars and practitioners in human resources management with new insight regarding the importance of support from colleagues and supervisor to sustain successful change implementation and employees’ wellbeing.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 is at the core of many sustainability initiatives on Mexican higher education institutions (HEIs). Yet, progress to SDG 13 and the entire 2030 Agenda might today appear unlikely to meet. To change this situation, it is necessary to form professionals aware of the impacts of climate change and competent to respond efficiently to its adaptation and mitigation. In this context, the purpose of this study is to reveal the beliefs and concerns about global warming of Mexican students enrolled in engineering bachelor's degrees at higher education institutes that promote sustainability.

In an exploratory study, engineering university students at six large public universities in Mexico answered questions regarding their beliefs and concerns regarding climate change. The study was carried out by using the Global Warming's Six Americas survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed by a research team from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University to identify different audiences within the American public regarding climate change. Participants were recruited via convenience/snowball techniques which provided access to a diverse sample. Those who agreed to partake in the study were directed to an online platform via Google forms. Data were collected from January to April 2021. Coding and data treatment was conducted according to the developers' codebook and SPSS scripts. After running the statistical program scripts to determine the respondents' segment, a univariate descriptive analysis was performed for each item in the questionnaire to describe general properties in each variable. Subsequently, a series of correspondence analyses was conducted to examine the existence of clusters or patterns that could indicate relationships among selected questions.

The findings of this study revealed that the majority of the Mexican engineering higher education students participating in the survey fell in the segment of alarmed, 47.3%, or the segment of concerned, 46.%. Furthermore, 78.6% of higher education students in the alarmed segment were extremely sure that global warming is happening. In addition, 98% believed that it is caused mostly by human activities. Furthermore, 89% stated that global warming would harm them personally significantly and 96% thought that future generations would be harmed considerably. About 78% believed that people in Mexico and the USA are currently being harmed by global warming. On the other hand, about 45% of students in the concerned group noted they were extremely sure. In addition, 96% of them thought that global warming is being produced mostly by anthropogenic activities. Furthermore, 39% said global warming will harm them personally to a great deal. However, nearly 80% noted that global warming would also hurt future generations. Although those students in the alarmed and concerned group show similar beliefs and concerns about global warming, the magnitude of concern was more significant for those in the alarmed segment.

There are several limitations to the study. First, the online questionnaire did not allow for clarification or follow-up on behalf of the respondents. Therefore, it could be possible that respondents misunderstood some items. However, the research team took the following measures to limit confusion: (1) The questionnaire had been previously used in several studies. None of these studies reported problems related to confusion, so the research team took this fact as evidence of the acceptable reliability of the questionnaire. (2) A face-to-face pilot test was carried out with 30 university students where no problems of comprehension were reported. (3) The target population had adequate prior knowledge of climate change, so the possibility of misunderstandings was likely low. A second limitation relates to the nature of the study. Fighting to mitigate the global climate crisis is a positive social norm. Respondents may have provided answers in line with this social norm and presented themselves as more pro-environmental than they actually are. Second, because of our selection criteria, our data may overestimate the general public's “worldviews” on climate change. Finally, this study was carried on during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have impacted items' responses. These limitations constitute future opportunities for future research. Specifically, future research might ideally use a large-scale comprehensive study evaluating the broader Mexican public's beliefs and views about climate change. Furthermore, because our data showed that our respondents were very concerned about climate change, but did little in terms of behavioral mitigation, future research should continue to examine and explore differences in various measures of climate friendly behaviors among different segments of the population.

This study's findings have at least twofold implications for university authorities and sustainability practitioners in their pursuit of meeting SDG 13. The first implication is related to academic life. Undoubtedly, having a high percentage of students believing in global warming and mainly that this phenomenon is by anthropogenic activities is a strong indication of their knowledge. But, indirectly, these results validate the sustainability teaching and research efforts in their HEIs, implying the commitment to sustaining and improving the quality of their sustainability-educational initiatives in all institutional areas. The second implication of our findings is related to HEIs' future commitments to address the target of SDG 13 during the present Decade of Actions. Results also lead us to reflect on the role of Mexican HEIs as agents of change, beyond offering good instruction on climate science as an agent of socialization to encourage positive mitigation and adaptation behaviors among the general population.

The social implication behind the environmental values of younger people found in this study is that a deeper understanding of these millennials' beliefs and concerns toward global warming will help Mexican policymakers implement policies in this regard and hopefully will be endorsed by a significant proportion of the Mexican population.

The originality of this study is the application of the Global Warming's Six Americas survey questionnaire in higher education settings. Therefore, the knowledge generated determines the quality of the article. As findings in this study revealed, there is apparently little disagreement among the Mexican engineering higher education students about the belief of the existence of global warming and this phenomenon is being caused mainly by human-related activities. Nevertheless, a minority of students still believe that global warming is caused naturally or not occurring. However, it is not possible to claim victory, as these achievements should not be considered, in any way, a guarantee that students will carry out behaviors in their daily lives that impact a reduction in global warming. Nevertheless, the study provides insights to allow university authorities to ensure that the current beliefs and concerns will not fade in the post-pandemic times. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic should be taken a pivotal era toward the goal of increasing the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The literature on climate change knowledge and attitudes has focused on primary and secondary school children. The limited research on college students is dated or narrowly focused. This study aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of views about climate change across a wide range of current college students.

The authors surveyed college students in a sample of lower- and upper-division courses in three content areas: knowledge and attitudes about climate change, intentions to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions, and student satisfaction with the amount of current teaching at the university about climate change and suggestions for improvement.

A strong majority of respondents believe that climate change is real and largely human-induced; a majority express concern about climate change. Yet, students in the sample hold misconceptions about the basic causes and consequences of climate change.

Further research is warranted to understand the college population, so educators can improve and target their educational efforts to the students most in need.

Higher education needs to expand its educational efforts to ensure that all university graduates understand scientific consensus about climate change and are actively engaged as part of the solution in their public and private roles.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing a broad portrayal of college student knowledge and engagement with climate change issues, at least for students on one campus. The study is the first to observe noteworthy differences in climate change understanding and concern between college women and men and across academic majors. It is the only study that asks college students how they would like to learn about global warming.

Climate change news and educational awareness programs have swamped Australia in the past four years, with earlier campaigns raising awareness in Europe and the USA via television and the internet. What is the impact on people's psychological states of such concerns? The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological impact of climate change within the general population and investigate what makes an individual vulnerable to distress.

A questionnaire was completed by 275 adults that assessed personality factors as well as environmental beliefs and religiosity. The design was cross‐sectional, and correlational analyses determined the associations between climate change distress and symptoms indicative of depression, anxiety and stress. Independent samples t‐tests and ANOVA revealed group differences for age and gender. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to identify important, unique predictors and to determine the extent to which environmental beliefs, future anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty and religiosity accounted for the variability in climate change measures beyond the effects of age and gender.

This study indicates that the public is becoming increasingly concerned about climate change and that there is a relationship between this concern and symptoms that are indicative of depression, anxiety and stress. The results indicate that an individual is more likely to be distressed about climate change if they are female, under the age of 35 years, have a pro‐environmental orientation, and possess personality traits such as high levels of future anxiety.

Bringing attention to the existence of climate change distress, understanding the extent of these fears and what makes a person vulnerable will be helpful in the treatment and prevention of general and clinical levels of climate‐related distress.

Examines the concerns profiles of 243 front‐line managers within Telecom Australia who were engaged in implementing two related innovations: (a) a new service policy called “Fix‐It‐First‐Time” and (b) a change in the functional role of front‐line managers. Results were considered to be broadly consistent with a developmental and stage model of concerns. However, the importance of concerns for this sample of workers was different from that suggested by previous research. The impact of innovations on colleagues, on clients and on their job security was paramount in this group, reflecting the fact that innovations occurred within a period of major retrenchment and redundancy. Results also confirmed a higher order structuring of concerns which occurs in the workplace and which goes beyond the original seven stages to encompass broadly defined personal concerns and impact concerns of the innovation. The implications of these findings are examined briefly in terms of an emerging critique of change management models for the 1990s.

The purpose of this study is to assess environmental concern at a Midwest university, analyze trends in concern over time and determine the effect of the development of a campus sustainability office.

A multi-question survey was administered through peer-to-peer recruitment from an undergraduate environmental science class each fall from 2010–2017. This exercise was originally developed as a pedagogical exercise on the scientific method.

Over eight years, incoming freshmen have expressed more concern that humans are harming the environment and students also express greater concern as they progress through college.

The first year of the survey (2010) and the year that the lead PI was on sabbatical (2014) saw reduced response rates (∼1%–3% of the student population) compared to 6%–9% of the student population in other years.

Responses to all of the questions in the survey provide guidance for university administrations and sustainability offices about the concerns of the campus community, awareness about campus efforts and support for sustainability activities on campus.

Few studies have been published on students’ perspectives on environmental concern and sustainability activities on university campuses. These data provide an overview of environmental concern, perceived government action and empowerment to action over an eight-year period. This approach is recommended as a technique to teach the scientific method in introductory classes and as a means to collect data about student perspectives on sustainability.

Conflict and resistance on the part of employees assigned to teams have accompanied the recent increase in the use of work teams in organizations. Previous empirical research identified several sources of employee resistance including violations of fairness, increased work‐load concerns, uncertain manager support, unclear role definitions, and lack of team member social support. From a literature review, we identified additional sources of employee resistance including trust, cultural values, and low tolerance for change. Empirically, we conducted a content analysis of 1,060 open‐ended comments of employees in two Fortune 50 organizations who were newly assigned to self‐managing work teams (SMWTs). The results suggest that employees' concerns did reflect issues of trust and low tolerance for change, but not cultural values. We discuss the implications of our findings for conflict management scholars as well as managers who are charged with handling increased conflict due to employee resistance to teams.

Corporate financial communications concern public and private disclosure (Holland, 2005). This paper aims to explain how banks developed financial communications and how problems emerged in the global financial crisis. It explores policy responses.

Bank cases reveal construction and destruction of the social, knowledge and economic world of financial communications over two periods.

In the 1990s, learning about financial communications by a “dominant coalition” (Cyert, March, 1963) in bank top management was stimulated by gradual change. The management learnt how to accumulate social and cultural capital and developed “habitus” for disclosure (Bourdieu, 1986). From 2000, rapid change and secrecy factors accelerated bank internalisation of shareholder wealth maximising values, turning “habitus” in “market for information” (MFI) (Barker, 1998) into a “psychic prison” (Morgan,1986), creating riskier bank cultures (Schein, 2004) and constraining learning.

The paper introduces sociological concepts to banking research and financial disclosures to increase the understanding about financial information and bank culture and about how regulation can avoid crises. Limitations reflect the small number of banks and range of qualitative data.

Regulators will have to make visible the change processes, new contexts and knowledge and connections to bank risk and performance through improved regulator action and bank public disclosure.

“Masking” and rituals (Andon and Free, 2012) restricted bank disclosure and weakened governance and market pressures on banks. These factors mediated bank failure and survival in 2008, as “psychic prisons” “fell apart”. Bank and MFI agents experienced a “cosmology episode” (Weick, 1988). Financial communications structures failed but were reconstructed by regulators.

The paper shows how citizens require transparency and contested accountability to democratise finance capitalism. Otherwise, problems will recur.

Discusses the Karpin Report which suggests that the development of management skills is the key to workplace reform. To achieve a breakthrough in management skills will require a new model of learning and a new model of change for middle management. Managers will need to learn how to learn about change, particularly during the implementation phases of any programme change. Describes a model of change management which successfully integrates action learning skills in the workplace with the manager’s networking style. Briefly outlines five key elements of the “concerns‐based networking” model of change. This change model was successfully “tested” in two large organizations, through participatory action research. Uses case study data from 30 middle managers involved in various action research projects to illustrate how the networking model works.