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Purpose-This paper aims to examine the relationship between managers' understanding of a specific organizational change process and their attitudes towards implementing the change. Design/methodology/approach-After a review of the current literature on the link between organizational change, knowledge of the change, and attitudes towards implementing the change, limited research was found that examined the relationship between knowledge of change and resistance to change. Then original empirical research was conducted by administering a survey to 296 managers from the Botswana Government. Findings-The results of the regression models suggest that managers who understand the change effort are more likely to be less resistant to change. Specifically, the more a manager understood the change, the more likely they were to be excited about the change, the less likely that they would think the change effort would fail, and the less likely they were to state that they wished their organization had never implemented the change. Research limitations/implications-The major limitation of our research is that the data are self-reported. The managers themselves rated their knowledge of the change and their resistance or lack of resistance to the change. However, because the question is one where social desirability bias (a major concern of self-reported data) would lead to no variance (all managers should have said that they understood the change) and the self-report bias is minimal. The research implications are that a link between knowledge of the organizational change has been found, and resistance to change, adding to the literature on why individuals resist change. Practical implications-The practical implications is that senior managers need to focus more on developing checks to ensure that managers understand the change program and the implications of the change program as a way of ensuring that they, and their subordinates, understand the change program. Originality/value-The value of the study is that it is one of the first studies to empirically show a link between knowledge of change and resistance to change. The originality of the study is the dataset (managers from the public sector in Botswana) and the application (managers attempting to implement total quality techniques in a large-scale bureaucracy).

PurposeThe ability of production organizations to respond quickly to changes in the market with new products requires flexibility. The relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the performance of organizations in new product development is not well characterized. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a flexibility model focused on new product performance in manufacturing organizations empirically in one industrial sector.Design/methodology/approachHypothesized relationships between manufacturing flexibility, new product type, and new product performance are empirically tested using survey data from 273 companies, representing a range of US electronic manufacturers.FindingsFactor and cluster analysis identifies eight distinct flexibility dimensions and a hierarchy among these dimensions. The relationships between the identified flexibility dimensions and new product performance, as tested through correlation analyses, are found to be dependent on the type of new product development.Research limitations/implicationsOverall, this study highlights the complexity of the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and new product performance. This study is conducted in a specific sector, so the results cannot be generalized. More complex mathematical models, requiring a larger data set, would be helpful in further separating out direct and indirect effects of variables, such as new product type, on the relationship between flexibility and performance.Practical implicationsWith multiple dimensions of flexibility, organizational leaders must choose the dimension(s) that is/are most appropriate to develop. This study helps provide insight into which dimensions of flexibility a particular plant should focus on, given a particular type of new product.Originality/valueThe study has made a significant contribution by identifying the dimensions of flexibility related to new product performance and in proposing a hierarchical structure for these dimensions. This study has also made a contribution by providing empirical support for the role of new product type as a moderator in the flexibility/performance relationship.

Virtual teams are an increasingly frequent response to the new competitive environment. Technological advances and global competition have moved virtual teaming from the "good idea I' stage to a critical strategy for many organizations. Our understanding of critical factors relative to virtual teams is limited us very few studies have been completed. Virtual teams are characterized as having high social complexity. Jointly optimizing the social and the technical organizational subsystems has been demonstrated by sociotechnical theory to improve overall performance. Consequently, technical system interventions may improve the virtual team's ability to leverage its social system complexity. This paper explores a sociotechnical upproach to investigating technical system interventions to enhance virtual team performance.