Study On Employees’ Expectation Of Change Outcome, Commitment To Change And Stress Response

In order to survive and develop in the fierce competitive environment, change hasbecome one of the most popular strategic measures taken by many organizations.Research on organizational change has been largely dominated by a macro,system-oriented perspective. Some researchers have called for a more micro,person-oriented perspective and focusing on employees’ reactions to change.Successful implementation of organizational changes greatly depends oncommitted employees. It is crucial for managers to gain and retain employees’commitment to change. This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding ofcommitment to change by exploring its antecedents and outcomes. Using a sample ofemployees and managers from telecommunications industry who were undergoing alarge-scale organizational change, this study investigate the relationships amongexpectation of change outcome at the individual level, commitment to change, andstress (emotional exhaustion and somatization). This study consists of two relatedsub-studies. Study1aims to discover the underlying factor structure of expectation ofchange outcome scale. Study2aims to empirically examine the theoretical model–theantecedents and consequences of commitment to change.In study1, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a following confirmatoryfactor analysis (CFA) were conducted to explore the internal structure of expectation ofchange outcome scale. The empirical results indicated that there were two dimensions inthe expectation of change outcome scale. One dimension was about an individual’sexpectation of how the change would impact his/her financial reward. The otherdimension was about an individual’s expectation of how the change would impacthis/her work itself (job content, personal opportunities, the relationships with otherorganizational members, etc). The two factors were named “expectation ofreward-related outcome” and “expectation of work-related outcome” respectively.Study2aims to empirically examine the effects of expectation of change outcomeon commitment to change, the effects of commitment to change on stress (emotionalexhaustion and somatization), and whether the relationship between expectation of change outcome and stress (emotional exhaustion and somatization) is mediated bycommitment to change. Empirical results demonstrated that expectation ofreward-related outcome was positively correlated with affective commitment to change,and not significantly correlated with the other two dimensions of commitment to change.Expectation of work-related outcome was positive correlated with affective andnormative commitments to change and negatively correlated with continuancecommitment to change. Affective and normative commitments to change were bothnegatively correlated with emotional exhaustion while continuance commitment tochange was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion. Affective commitment tochange was negatively correlated with somatization, normative and continuancecommitments to change were not significantly correlated with somatization. Therelationship between expectation of reward-related outcome and emotional exhaustionwas fully mediated by affective commitment to change. The relationship betweenexpectation of work-related outcome and emotional exhaustion was fully mediated byaffective, normative and continuance commitments to change. The relationshipsbetween the two dimensions of change outcome and somatization were fully mediatedby affective commitment to change.This study provides a deeper understanding of the human side of organizationalchange and offers contributions to organizational change literature. First, theexpectation of change outcome scale was developed to measure the extent to which theorganizational change would impact individuals’ financial reward and work. Second, thepresent study extended existing findings on employees’ commitment to change byexploring the antecedents of the three component of commitment to change. Third, thisstudy revealed the intrinsic link between cognitive appraisal and stress response fromthe perspective of coping, and also helped people to better understand the potentialconsequences of commitment to change.