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Organizational change is usually stressful and destabilizing for employees, for whom coping with the induced stress is primordial to commit to the change. This paper aims to unravel how and when change recipients can enact different coping strategies and, ultimately, manifest different forms of commitment to change.

We propose a theoretical model that identifies challenge appraisal and hindrance appraisal as two primary appraisals of organizational change that fuel, respectively, proactive and preventive coping strategies and, indirectly, affective and normative forms of commitment to change. Moreover, this framework suggests that coping strategies and commitment are influenced by the secondary appraisal of two vital resources – resilience and POS – allowing individuals to react effectively to primary change-related appraisals. Finally, the relationship between coping strategies and the components of commitment to change is proposed to be moderated by employees' regulatory focus.

Using appraisal theory and conservation of resources theory as guiding frameworks, our integrated model describes the antecedents, processes and boundary conditions associated with coping with the stress of organizational change and how they ultimately influence commitment to it.

This is the first theoretical paper to identify a conditional dual path to disclose the different reactions that change recipients can manifest in response to the stressful aspects of organizational change.

This study, conducted in a large public sector undertaking in India that had undergone a major change recently, examines the influence of personality factors on employees ability of coping with organizational change in the Indian context. The role of personality factors—self‐esteem, optimism, perceived control, and change self‐efficacy—on influencing employees for coping with organizational change has been examined. Further, the role of demographic variables on the employee's ability of coping with organizational change has also been studied. Results that these personality factors—perceived control, optimism and change self‐efficacy—indicate a significant relationship with coping with organizational change. Contrary to expectations, self‐esteem has not been significantly associated with coping with organizational change. Demographic variables—seniority and education—indicate a significant relationship with the outcome variable.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of person-organization (P-O) value congruence on employees’ coping with organizational change and to test the moderating effect of change event attributes vis-à-vis value congruence and coping strategies.

This paper uses a four-dimensional design to examine relationships between P-O value congruence and employees’ coping strategies. It discusses moderating effects of change attributes based on an elaboration likelihood model. The sample includes 242 employees from 34 organizations in China. Data are analyzed by a structural equation model, dominance analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.

This paper provides empirical evidence that the four dimensions of P-O value congruence have different impacts on employees’ coping strategies with change; and the effects are moderated by employees’ perceived scope of change.

Future research should collect data at different time points during change processes to better understand the influence of value congruence on coping processes. To generalize robustly beyond this case-study requires research across a larger number of individuals and organizations.

According to this paper, value congruence between employees and organizations could be better ensured by considering it as an important factor in the recruitment and selection processes, which is more effective in the long run. This is particularly pertinent for those organizations which experience frequent changes.

First, this paper considers the influences of stable organizational factors and attributes of change events on employees’ coping abilities; these are both ignored in previous studies. Second, it develops a four-dimensional coping with change structure and a two-dimensional measure of change attributes in a Chinese context which are reliable and can thus be employed in future studies.

Purpose: In this chapter we examine the emotional experience and identity of sustainability change agents and advance understanding of their emotion management strategies. We explore how sustainability change agents experience, manage, and respond to the negative emotions that arise in the course of their jobs. Study Design: We took a mixed-method and multimodal approach to answer our research questions. Using a narrative approach, we collected data using in-depth narrative interviews and supplemented this with quantitative measurement of participants' heart rate and sweat response during the interviews. Findings: Our results confirm that sustainability change agency is an emotionally laden profession. Furthermore, we found that sustainability change agents use three different coping mechanisms including emotion-focused coping (EFC) (“rational avoiders”), problem-focused coping (PFC) (“committed go-getters”), and meaning-focused coping (MFC) (“green philosophers”). Originality: Our research shows that sustainability change agents experienced strong negative emotions in relation to their jobs and they employed one of the three coping styles: EFC, PFC, or MFC. We found that MFC was an isolated cognitive appraisal style, rather than a form of EFC. These findings provide a starting point for further work to help sustainability change agents avoid potential burnout and continue to contribute to the future health of the planet while at the same time maintain their personal well-being.

The purpose of this case study was to increase the knowledge base of how research librarians experience and cope with the turbulence of change within their library system. A library belonging to the Association of Research Libraries was selected for case study investigation. Seventeen librarians participated in on-site interviews, utilizing a protocol composed of a clustering technique and semi-structured interviewing. Instrumental case studies of each individual were then developed through a collective case method. The findings presented in this chapter include: the competing tensions between the physical and virtual environments, the speed of change, the search for professional meaning, and coping with the experiences of professional change. Analysis of the findings suggest: the emergence of a hypercritical state, the limiting nature of negative feedback, a complex systems framework for professional thinking, and coping in the hypercritical organization.

Stress damages us and our performance. It is a real part of most manager's experience and can be said to occur when significant demands exceed perceived management responsibilities and routines. Stress can be the essence of working life, and certainly need not always be damaging to us. But when it becomes excessive, it is something unwanted.

In response to external conditions, organizations yearn to gain a competitive edge during unremitting change. Recognizing the importance of managing change, researchers have aggressively investigated organizational change at the macro level. This research, however, argues that an employee's ability to cope with change is a function of both micro (individual) and macro (contextual) factors.

The survey data were collected at an organization that was undergoing a significant internal change. Correlational and structural equation modeling techniques were used for data analysis.

The results suggest that individual differences (intolerance for ambiguity) and contextual factors (LMX, TMX receipts and TMX contributions) are important factors for understanding the ability to manage organizational change effectively. Additionally, it is argued that contextual factors not only have direct effects on coping with change but indirect effects through perceptions of work group effectiveness. Our results indicate that both micro and macro factors are important for understanding the ability to cope with and manage change.

The research leaves open some interesting questions around the role of contextual factors in coping with change, in addition to the interaction with individual differences.

Most sources discuss change as focused at the organizational level. Managers will be well served to understand that the degree to which employees cope effectively with change will be partly determined by the interaction of individual differences and the organizational and team level context.

This research extends our understanding of the relationship between social exchange relationships and how individuals cope with change in organizations and the mechanism by which that occurs.

The purpose of this paper is to study the following related terms: flexibility, resilience and coping capacity, in order to clarify relationships between them.

Methods applied in the study include the analysis and synthesis of scientific literature and a critical discussion considering provided references. By drawing on the notion of the ladder of abstraction, conceptual differences between the three terms are proposed.

Based on the most common associations of the terms in the literature, the paper proposes the following relationships between the terms: flexibility is most commonly associated with the inherent property of systems, which allows them to change within pre-established parameters; resilience is the ability of organizations to withstand changes in their environment and still function; coping capacity commonly refers to organizational behavior involving timely purposeful change.

As managers strive to improve the performance of their organizations in turbulent conditions, the paper provides a useful enhanced understanding of the relative roles that flexibility, resilience and coping capacity play in changes and maintaining the continuity of the organization.

While confusion between the meanings of these terms has been noted by various authors, the paper is believed to be the first to discuss the three terms in conjunction and thereby propose relationships between them. The proposed framework overcomes existing definitional fragmentation and raises awareness in the conceptualization of terms: flexibility, coping capacity and resilience. We contribute to extant business and management literature by proposing a model indicating the relationships between them.

Two complementary objectives are addressed in this paper. First, several studies are introduced based on the assumption that organizational change is now excessive. The purpose of this paper is to propose an operational definition to change excessiveness, and the authors assess whether it is a generalized phenomenon at a societal level. Second, these studies are habitually mobilizing coping theories to address their purpose. However, an integrated model of coping, including appraisals and coping reactions towards change is still to be tested. Thus, the assessment is anchored in an application of the Stimulus-Response Theory of Coping (SRTC).

A quantitative study is conducted by administering questionnaires to a nationwide representative sample (n=1,002). Anderson and Gerbing (1991) two-step approach is used to validate the study and tests its hypothesized model. Change excessiveness is measured in order to observe if it is a generalized phenomenon in the working population. Its effects on coping are modelled through the fully mediated SRTC. Therefore, the hypothetical model predicted that the relationships between the perception of excessive change contexts and negative coping reactions is fully mediated by negative appraisals towards change contexts.

Perceptions of excessive change is a normally distributed and a statistically centralized phenomenon. As hypothesized, an structural equation modelling test of the SRTC shows a full mediation effect of negative appraisal between change intensity and negative coping to change.

This paper empirically tests a nationwide sample where organizational change may be too excessive for individuals’ positive coping. It is the first to generalize the observation of change excessiveness as perceived by employees to a nationwide level. Moreover, it addresses the gap between change excessiveness and coping theories in modelling the SRTC through its three components: event, appraisals, and coping reactions. Finally, it presents managerial discussions towards the strategic necessity for organizational change and its potential “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effects.