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This study aims to identify when and why receiving i-deals will result in an increase in affective commitment rather than continuance commitment. As affective commitment yields long-term benefits for organizations than continuance commitment, this work will help organizations accrue maximum benefits from granting i-deals.

This study develops a cognitive model delineating the process between i-deal receipt and the variation in i-dealers’ continuance or affective commitment.

After receiving i-deals, i-dealers’ perceived valence may change with i-dealers’ evaluations of i-deal resources under the condition of coworkers' negative reactions or organizational investment. The i-deal valence changes trigger i-dealers’ internal or external attributions of coworkers' negative reactions or organizational investment, which leads to the variation in continuance or affective commitment. The changes of affective commitment also affect the variation in continuance commitment.

Integrating expectancy theory and attribution theory, this research addresses inconsistent findings about i-deals’ effect on continuance or affective commitment by revealing the critical factors that lead to the variation in the two types of commitment. The proposed model offers new theoretical rationale for why i-dealers may not reciprocate the goodwill of i-deals to their organizations. This study suggests i-dealers will engage in attributions rather than being passive recipients of their coworkers' negative reactions, which challenges previous view that the effectiveness of i-deals is ultimately determined by coworkers' acceptance. This research also extends the i-deal dynamics literature by depicting how i-deal valence changes arise and influence continuance or affective commitment.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of leadership credibility on employees' behaviours and attitudes towards organisational change through the lens of employee commitment to change.

The authors conducted a quantitative study in which 239 participants from diverse organisations participated.

Using structural equation modelling techniques, the results reveal that leadership credibility has a positive effect on both affective and normative commitment to change but a negative effect on continuance commitment to change. The authors also report that change success is positively impacted by affective commitment to change and negatively impacted by continuance commitment to change but is not significantly affected by normative commitment to change.

Thus, the authors contribute to closing a knowledge gap in change management theory while making practical recommendations for leading people during times of organisational transition.

This study sheds light on the role of leadership credibility and employee commitment during organisational change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents (psychological contract and perceived reasons for change) and consequences (work behaviors and well-being) of employees’ commitment to organizational change.

The authors developed a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of commitment to organizational change. In Study 1, based on interviews, the authors developed an instrument to measure the construct “reasons for change.” In Study 2, the authors collected questionnaire data from 228 employees of a Chinese telecom company undergoing organizational changes and tested the conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that the strength of a relational contract (one form of psychological contract) was positively related to normative commitment to change and negatively related to continuance commitment to change. External reasons for change were positively related to affective and normative commitment to change, whereas internal reasons for change were negatively related to affective commitment to change and positively related to continuance commitment to change. Affective commitment was negatively related to exit and aggressive voice. Continuance commitment was positively related to emotional exhaustion, and normative commitment was negatively related to emotional exhaustion.

The single-source cross-sectional design limits the robustness of the conclusions drawn from the findings. Two promising avenues were opened for further research: the interaction of employees’ commitment to change at different levels and the process of social construction of perceived reasons for change.

To facilitate employee commitment to change, organizations should cultivate relational contracts with their employees and attend to the “framing effects” of employees’ perceptions of reasons for change.

This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between employer-employee relations and employee well-being in Chinese society. It suggests that healthy employer-employee relations are beneficial for employee well-being. Moreover, Chinese firms should pay more attention to the changes occurring inside and outside their organizations, which are related to the psychological health of their employees.

The study highlights the importance of relational contracts between an organization and its employees during organizational change process. Moreover, it is among the first to examine the relationship between employees’ perceived reasons for change and their commitment to change.

Future organizations must focus on their ability to change to be sustainable, and this calls more attention to sustainability as an organizational issue. However, change initiatives often fail because of a lack of employee commitment. The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational culture and individual readiness for change (IRFC) relate to types of commitment to change.

Survey data from a sample of 259 employees in a Norwegian public organization undergoing major strategic changes were used to test the hypothesized relations.

The results show that flexible and stable organizational cultures did not relate differently to types of change commitment. This may indicate that the strength, rather than the type, of organizational culture is vital for change commitment. Nevertheless, a flexible organizational culture had a clearer relation to positive change commitment; in part through its positive relation with both change self-efficacy and negative personal valence. These are important dimensions of IRFC.

The study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the role of contextual and individual factors in explaining various types of commitment to organizational change, in particular, by examining the distinction between flexible and stable organizational culture, as well as separate dimensions of IRFC. A flexible culture together with both of the included dimensions of IRFC is shown to be of importance in fostering affective commitment to change – the gold standard of change commitment. Recognizing sustainability as an organizational issue underscores the need for creating a culture conducive to change.

This research aims to examine the relationships among employee commitment to change, naïve dialecticism, and performance change in the context of change in Chinese state‐owned enterprises (SOEs).

A total of 287 employee‐supervisor matched data were collected by questionnaire from three Chinese SOEs implementing a major change on sector restructuring.

Results showed that affective commitment to change was related to performance change. Change thinking was positively related to all three components of commitment to change, whereas contradictory thinking was negatively related to affective commitment to change. Affective commitment to change fully mediated the association between contradictory thinking and performance change.

This research integrates “outside in” and “inside out” approaches to contextualize commitment to change studies in China. An “outside in” approach was followed to investigate the relationship between commitment to change and performance change, whereas an “inside out” approach was followed to add valuable insights to the commitment to change model from the point of view of Chinese naïve dialecticism.

Although there is growing academic and business interest in autism employment programs, few studies have examined employee (manager and coworker) attitudes toward these programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of workload changes (a job demand) and perceived supervisor support (a job resource) on commitment to the program and employee engagement more broadly.

A total of 229 employees from two Australian public sector organizations completed a survey about the autism employment program in their organization.

Perceived workload increases were associated with lower affective commitment and higher continuance commitment to the program. Perceived supervisor support was associated with higher affective commitment to the program and employee engagement, but lower continuance commitment to the program. Perceived supervisor support moderated the effect of workload increase on employee engagement, but not in the expected direction.

This research helps to fill a gap in the autism employment literature by focusing on commitment toward autism employment programs among existing employees. The research helps to provide a more complete and nuanced view of these programs within their broader organizational context.

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 the this study was to explore the development of commitment to change among leaders in the home help services during organizational change and to study this development in relation to workload and stress. During organizational change initiatives, commitment to change among leaders is important to ensure the implementation of the change. However, little is known of development of commitment of change over time.

The study used a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews with ten leaders by the time an organizational change initiative was launched and follow-up one year later. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the interviews.

Commitment to change is not static, but seems to develop over time and during organizational change. At the first interview, leaders had a varied pattern reflecting different dimensions of commitment to change. One year later, the differences between leaders’ commitment to change was less obvious. Differences in commitment to change had no apparent relationship with workload or stress.

The data were collected from one organization, and the number of participants were small which could affect the results on workload and stress in relation to commitment to change.

It is important to support leaders during organizational change initiatives to maintain their commitment. One way to accomplish this is to use management team meetings to monitor how leaders perceive their situation.

Qualitative, longitudinal and leader studies on commitment to change are all unusual, and taken together, this study shows new aspects of commitment.

This study aims to focus on the role of employee commitment in the success of organizational change initiatives. The authors seek to propose and test a model that delineates antecedents and consequences of affective, normative, and continuance commitment to organizational change.

Data were collected via online survey from employees working in a large not‐for‐profit organization. A total of 191 responses (32 per cent) were obtained. The hypothesized model relationships were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that the antecedents: fit with vision, employee‐manager relationship quality, job motivation, and role autonomy all influence commitment to change (C2C). Notably, affective commitment, which in turn influences employee perceptions about improved performance, implementation success, and individual learning regarding the change, had the greatest impact.

Limitations that could lead to future research include three primary issues. First, the data were collected from one organization. Second, data were collected at one point in time. Third, the proposed model is far from exhaustive. Other antecedents to C2C could include risk acceptance, organizational culture, and/or leadership style.

In addition, given affective commitment to change (AC2C) has the greatest influence on outcomes such as implementation success and improved performance, the antecedents of AC2C warrant management's attention. If managers can influence AC2C through such factors as those proposed here, outcomes such as individual learning, perceived implementation success, and perceived improved performance will be influenced.

The paper integrates two models evaluating employee reactions to change, an under researched area, to help uncover ways to improve the success of change initiatives.

The flexibility of corporations to adapt their strategy to a fast-changing environment can be a major source for competitive advantage and survival. While research mainly focuses on outcomes of this ability, little is known of how to foster it in organizations. Thus, by building on the upper echelons theory, the authors assume that the strategic flexibility of the company depends on the willingness and permission to change of the chief executive officer (CEO). To support the hypotheses, the authors apply the dimensions of commitment to change and work autonomy to the CEO and test for moderation under conditions of technological turbulence. The authors’ results based on medium-sized organizations in Germany show significant effects of both dimensions on strategic flexibility. In particular, under conditions of high technological turbulence, commitment based on loyalty and not on pressure together with autonomy on control and evaluation criteria is best suited to increase strategic flexibility. These insights extend the research literature and provide guidelines for CEOs and their supervisors alike.