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The vast majority of interventions during organizational change tend to focus on individually-held attitudes toward change. However, groups often form collective attitudes that are distinct from those held by its individual members, and organizational change often necessitates collective attitude change within teams, work units, or even the entire organization. We challenge the dominant view that collective attitudes to organizational change merely reflect an aggregation of individual attitudes by considering how and why collectively-held change attitudes are formed and activated. Drawing on social network theory, we propose an alternative approach toward an understanding of change. Acknowledging and detailing attitude formation as a social response to change – a social system of interaction among change recipients – we explain how collective attitudes to organizational change emerge. With this stance, individuals may hold broad and differing attitudes, but as a group can come together to share a collective attitude toward change. Using this approach, we explain how collective attitudes and individual attitudes are linked through top-down or bottom-up processes, or a combination of both. Developing this alternative perspective improves our understanding of how collective attitudes to change develop and evolve and enables both scholars and practitioners to better manage and influence the formation of change-supportive collective attitudes.

Estonian companies have been in a continuous state of change for the past 15 years, and there is still a lot to be done to achieve welfare levels comparable with developed countries in the European Union. The crucial question is how to achieve employee commitment to organisational change. The aim of this research is to highlight employee attitudes toward organisational change and how organisational culture can influence these attitudes in a rapidly changing environment.

A model showing the connections between organisational culture and employee attitudes in the organisational change process has been developed as the theoretical conceptual frame for the study. The empirical study was conducted by the authors in 26 Estonian organisations with 412 respondents. A tool for measuring employee attitudes in the process of organisational change and a questionnaire for measuring organisational culture were developed by the authors.

Under the conditions of economic transition, employees with higher job satisfaction are more willing to participate in an organisational change process than employees with a lower level of job satisfaction. Employees who evaluated their organisational culture as being stronger were more willing to participate in implementing organisational changes and were more satisfied with their jobs and managers. The attitudes of those managers who were younger than 45 were more strongly related to a positive organisational culture than to a strong organisational culture.

The most significant finding was that in a transition economy a strong organisational culture influences attitudes to change in a positive way. This is different from countries with more stable economies, where a strong organisational culture is considered to promote stability.

Ethical leadership wields a significant influence on productive work attitudes of employees. The relationship may partly be because of existing conditions in the organization. However, there is dearth of research on the impact that conditions in the organization affect work attitudes and other employee behaviours. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine organizational climate as an explanatory mechanism for the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ productive work attitudes (employee commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour).

The researchers obtained responses from 150 employees working in micro financial institutions in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The cross-sectional survey design was used. The hypotheses of the study were analysed using regression analyses.

Findings indicated a positive and significant relationship between ethical leadership and productive work attitudes (employee commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that organizational climate moderated the relationships between both ethical leadership – employee commitment and ethical leadership – organizational citizenship behaviours. Explicitly, ethical leadership produced the highest productive work attitudes when organizational climate was favourable for productive work attitudes.

Generally, this study highlights the prominence of organizational climate in understanding the influence of ethical leadership on employees’ work attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to establish whether positive or negative relationships exist between boundaryless and protean career attitudes (respectively) and organizational commitment and whether such relationships can be moderated by development opportunities.

Surveys from 212 part‐time MBAs were analyzed using correlation, regression, or moderated multiple regression to explore relationships between boundaryless career attitudes (boundaryless mindset, organizational mobility), protean career attitudes (self‐directed career management, values‐driven career management), organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative), and development opportunities.

Only organizational mobility preference was correlated (negatively) with each type of commitment. Boundaryless mindset was moderated in its relationship to normative commitment in that lower development opportunities resulted in lower commitment for those with higher levels of boundaryless mindset.

The study is limited due to sample nature and the lack of longitudinal design. Also, it does not provide implications for other types of commitment that may be impacted by career attitudes and development opportunities (occupational commitment, for example).

A counterintuitive finding but important implication from this research is that employers should not assume that protean and boundaryless employees (respectively) will be less committed to the organization. Another practical finding is that developmental opportunities, while important to all employees, did not generally make employees with protean and boundaryless attitudes more committed to their organization.

The paper is the first, to one's knowledge, to assess organizational commitment with specific measures of boundaryless and protean career attitudes. While the results are simple, they refute many stereotypes of the new career and, in that sense, add an important perspective to the career literature.

This study investigates the role of various dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction in predicting various attitudes toward organizational change in a non‐western work setting. The study uses a sample of 474 employees in 30 organizations in the United Arab Emirates. Path analysis results reveal that employees’ affective and behavioral tendency attitudes toward organizational change increase with the increase in affective commitment, and that continuance commitment (low perceived alternatives) directly and negatively influences cognitive attitudes toward change. Results further show that affective commitment mediates the influences of satisfaction with working conditions, pay, supervision and security on both affective and behavioral tendency attitudes toward change. Continuance commitment (low perceived alternatives) mediates the influences of satisfaction with pay on cognitive attitudes toward change. Satisfaction with various facets of the job directly and positively influences different dimensions of organizational commitment. Implications, limitations and lines of future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model on how business managers perceive that an employee’s psychological contract influences his or her attitude toward an organizational change. More specifically, it aims to provide insight into the managerial views on: first, the affective, behavioral and cognitive responses of employees toward organizational change; second, the pre-change and change antecedents of these responses; and third, the role of the psychological contract as a pre-change antecedent.

Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 39 human resource directors, change managers and management consultants in eight European countries. Based on detailed grounded theory-driven analyses of the qualitative data, a conceptual model was developed.

Based on the grounded theory analysis, a model emerged that positions the individual change perception and individual answer to the “what’s in it for me?” question as central determinants of an employee’s attitude toward change. Moreover, the model distinguishes between “influencing” variables that shape the employees’ change perception, and “overruling” variables that can potentially reverse the change perceptions.

A strong emphasis on managing the employment relationship by fulfilling mutual obligations and by creating trust will yield more constructive responses to organizational change than focussing on managing an organizational change as an independent event.

As one of the first in its field, this study provides insight in the sense-making processes during organizational change, while adopting a managerial perspective. A grounded theory approach by means of interviewing, serves as a first step toward better understanding of the development of employees’ affective, behavioral and cognitive responses to organizational change.

The primary purpose of this study is not only to examine the connections between self-determined motivation, attitudes toward change and participation in change, but also to explore the moderating impact of perceived organizational support on organizational change, and the mediating role of attitudes toward change in the link between perceived competence and participation in change.

The data were collected from one semiconductor manufacturing company (study 1) and one logistics service company (study 2). Employees who experienced organizational change before were invited to finish the survey. The partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and SPSS PROCESS (model 14) were utilized to analyze the data.

The study findings indicated that the perceived autonomy and relatedness were positively connected with perceived competence, which in turn would lead to better attitude toward change. Additionally, it was found that the perceived competence and attitude toward change would positively predict participation in change. More importantly, perceived organizational support would reinforce the positive relationship between attitude toward change and participation in change.

Although there are many organizational change reports, relatively little attention has been paid not only to the mediating role of attitudes toward change in the implication of organizational change but also to the moderating impact of perceived organizational support on the final success of organizational change.

: 本研究的主要目的, 除了探討自決動機和對變革的態度兩者與參與變革的關係;也探究組織支持感對組織變革所起的緩和作用, 以及對變革的態度在感知的才能和參與變革兩者的關聯上所起的調節作用。

: 有關的數據取自一間半導體製造商 (研究一) 和一間物流服務公司 (研究二) 。 曾體驗過組織變革的僱員被邀參與一項調查, 研究人員採用結構方程模式: 偏最小平方法 PLS-SEM、以及SPSS PROCESS (模型14), 來分析調查得來的數據。

: 研究結果顯示、感知的自主和關聯性兩者與感知的才能有正關聯的關係, 而這反過來則會引來對變革有較良好的態度。研究結果亦顯示、感知的才能和對變革的態度兩者均能積極預測變革的參與;更重要的是、組織支持感會強化對變革的態度與參與變革之間的正關聯。

: 雖然有關組織變革的研究報告唯數不少, 惟於組織變革上的啟示而言, 探討對變革的態度所起的調節作用的研究實唯數不多, 而且、探討組織支持感對組織變革能否最終成功所起的緩和作用的研究似頗稀少。

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the quality of change information influences employees’ attitude toward organizational change and turnover intention. Additionally, the role of engagement, psychological contract fulfillment and trust in the relationship between change information and attitude toward change is assessed.

In a technology services organization that was implementing a “new way of working,” questionnaire data of 669 employees were gathered. The organizational change in question sought to increase employees’ autonomy by increasing management support and improving IT support to facilitate working at other locations (e.g. at home) or at hours outside of regular working hours (e.g. in evening).

The results showed that change information was positively related to psychological contract fulfillment and attitude toward change. Engagement and psychological contract fulfillment were positively related to attitude toward change and negatively related to turnover intention. Contrary to what was expected, trust did not influence attitude toward change but was negatively related to turnover intention.

The study presents a model that can help management to foster positive affective, behavioral, and cognitive responses to change, as well as to reduce employee turnover. Fulfilling employees’ psychological contracts and cultivating engagement is important in this respect, as well as continuously considering whether information about the organizational change is received in good time, is useful, is adequate and satisfies employees’ questions about the change.

As one of the first studies in its field, attitude toward change was conceptualized and operationalized as a multidimensional construct, comprising an affective, a behavioral and a cognitive dimension.

This study aims to examine how organizational change and attitude towards change affects the fulfillment of the psychological contract. The influence of type of change, impact of change, former change experiences and frequency of change on fulfillment of the psychological contract is assessed, as well as the influence on the employee's attitude towards change.

Regression analyses were carried out to test the effects of the change antecedents and the attitude towards change on the fulfillment of the psychological contract and to test the effects of the change determinants on the attitude towards change. The data used in this study are from 161 respondents working for different organizations who completed an online questionnaire.

The results show that type of change, impact and former experience with organizational change influence attitude towards change. With respect to the fulfillment of the psychological contract, only frequency, former experiences and the attitude towards change had an impact.

A limitation is the cross-sectional design of the study. A recommendation for future research is to further explore the results by using case studies or longitudinal research.

This study contributes to managers', HR professionals' and change professionals' understanding of the change factors that have the highest impact for employees.

This study highlights the effects of organizational changes on the psychological contract and includes the role of attitude towards change. Empirical research in this area is scarce.

Although the role of organisational characteristics in the change process has been extensively analysed and discussed in the literature, individual characteristics, which are equally crucial for the success of change, have been neglected. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to add a different way of looking and working with organisational change by focusing on individuals’ emotions and personality traits. This paper explores how emotional intelligence and the “big five” dimensions of personality can facilitate organisational change at an individual level by exploring the relationship between these attributes and attitudes toward organisational change. The sample consisted of 137 professionals who completed self‐report inventories assessing emotional intelligence, personality traits and attitudes towards organisational change. The results confirmed that there is a relationship between personality traits and employees’ attitudes toward change. Similarly, the contribution of emotional intelligence to the attitudes to change was found to be significant, indicating the added value of using an emotional intelligence measure above and beyond the effect of personality. The practical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the phases of a change project.