Relationship Between Cognition Of Change And Behavior Intention:the Moderating Effect Of Faultline In Organizational Change

In a rapidly changing market, enterprises often carry out organizational change practices to seek and maintain persistent competitive advantages. They view organizational change as a magic weapon of enterprise to keep vitality. So the success or failure of organizational change means the enterprise’s rise and fall. For a rather long time, researchers pay more attention to the role of organizational level factors, rather than individual level variables concerning about organizational members. However, the most important object of organizational change is employee. Employee’s response to change is directly related to the implementation of organizational change. There is a common phenomenon in organizational change: grassroots employees, mid-level employees and top employees hold different or even opposing opinions on change activities, and the conflicts between them severely hinder the change process. Based on the reality above, this study attempts to explore the contents of employee’s cognition of change, inspect the causal relationship between cognition of change and employee’s behavior intention in change position, meanwhile test the role of different-level-employee’s cognitive differences (i.e., faultline in change) in the relationship between cognition of change and employee’s behavior intention. Purpose of this study is to abstract theoretical model for organizational change from the phenomenon of change practice, clarify the relationship between different variables in the model and, in turn, give better instructions for enterprise change practice.This study reviewed and summarized literatures about organizational change, change cognition, change resistance, faultline in change and other related research achievements. Then proposed the framework that employee’s cognition of change affects employee’s behavior intention in change with faultline in change and change intensity as two mediators. After that, we compiled the scale for faultline in change and tested its reliability and validity through preliminary research.The final scale was applied to the formal questionnaire. This study finally took back198effective questionnaires, and according to the data, we inspected the research design and hypothesis through statistical methods such as descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlation analysis, variance analysis and regression analysis.Finally we obtained the following results:(1) Under the background of organizational change, employee’s cognition of change consists of four dimensions:cognition on the necessity of change, cognition on the information of change, cognition on the participation of change, cognition on the result of change.(2) Cognition of change has a significant negative correlation with employee’s resistant behavior and a significant positive correlation with employee’s supportive behavior. Furthermore, cognition on the necessity of change and cognition on the result of change has significant predicting effect on employee’s resistant behavior. Cognition on the result of change, cognition on the participation of change and cognition on the necessity of change has significant predicting effect on employee’s supportive behavior.(3) Faultline in change has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between cognition of change and employee’s resistant behavior. The higher the faultline is, the stronger the relationship between cognition of change and employee’s resistant behavior will be.(4) Change intensity has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between cognition of change and employee’s behavior intention. The higher the intensity is, the stronger the relationship between cognition of change and employee’s resistant behavior will be. And change intensity significantly influence faultline in change, the higher the intensity is, the greater the faultline will be.(5) Individual characteristic variables and type of organizational change have different impacts on cognition of change, falutline in change, felt change intensity and behavior intention. Furthermore, position level’s impact on cognition of change, felt change intensity and behavior intention is much more significant.