Purpose – Through the combination of change process, context and content the purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of failure or success of organizational change. This study considers the effect of organizational climate on affective commitment to change simultaneously with quality change communication and employee participation during the change process, while controlling for perceived change impact. Design/methodology/approach – The findings are based on 134 survey responses gathered through surveys in two police forces that recently underwent a merger. Findings – First, quality change communication is the only process variable that directly impacts affective commitment to change. Second, the results indicate that an involvement-oriented climate positively affects affective commitment to change, mediated through quality change communication. Originality/value – First, the general understanding of the impact of climate on organizational change is very limited. Second, employee participation and quality change communication are generally studied together. The authors propose that both process variables each have their unique impact on attitudes toward change.

Although leadership is generally considered an important lever to increase commitment during organizational change, empirical research has yet to unravel many of the underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we propose that the impact of participative leadership on affective commitment to change will be contingent on employees' orientation toward leadership. In our empirical study in two police organizations, we find evidence that followers' orientation toward leadership is a useful interacting variable. Participative leadership lowers affective commitment to change for individuals with high dominance orientation. In contrast, participative leadership increases affective commitment to change for employees with high development orientation toward leadership. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Purpose -This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach -This study is part of the large EU-funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings -European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.Originality/value -A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

Purpose In this paper, the authors develop a cognitive organization theory (COT) of organizational change. COT was developed in the 2000s, by taking insights from cognitive psychology and anthropology to rebuild the foundation of organizational ecology (OE), grounding macro processes of organizational legitimation, inertia and mortality in micro processes of appeal and engagement. COT also explored the micro-level process of organizational change, arguing that four features (i.e. asperity, intricacy, opacity, and viscosity) of an organization's texture impact the appeal of organizational change. However, to data, empirical studies of a COT of organizational change are absent. An important reason is that many of the new COT constructs are not linked to empirical measures. The purpose of this paper is to develop reliable and valid survey measures of COT's key constructs. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow a three-step procedure to develop reliable and valid survey measures of COT's key constructs. First, the authors construct survey measures by using existing organizational behavior (OB) scales and develop new scales in consultation with COT experts. Second, the authors apply factor analysis to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity and use Cronbach's α to determine the reliability of the scales. Third, the authors estimate a structural equation model to determine external validity, by exploring whether the measures have the effect hypothesized in COT. Findings The authors find that existing OB scales can be used to proxy for COT's key constructs of appeal and engagement. The authors also find that two organizational texture variables (i.e., asperity and opacity) are significantly associated with the appeal of organizational change, further confirming the validity of applying a COT to organization change. The results are promising, proving evidence as to the criterion-related validity of the measures of COT constructs. From the total of 39 coefficients of COT-inspired independent and control variables, 22 are significant. Research limitations/implications The authors’ findings illustrate that micro OB and macro OE can be effectively combined in a COT of organizational change. However, the authors' contribution is only a first step, requiring further theoretical and methodological refinement. Theoretically, OB and OE can be integrated further, by linking together more concepts and constructs from the two streams of literature. Methodologically, the link between constructs and empirical measures can be refined, by adding extra scales and items, and collecting more data to validate them. Originality/value In this paper, the authors develop a COT of organizational change and link its central constructs to empirical measures, by connecting them to existing OB constructs and developing new scales and items. This opens the door to empirical studies on a COT of organizational change, hereby providing a stepping-stone for further integration of micro OB and macro OE.

Purpose: Technology is an important driver of organizational change and often strategically used to facilitate adaptations in organizational processes and cultures. While the link between technological and organizational change is widely recognized, the role of macro-context for this link remains undervalued. Based on data from technology implementations in European police forces the paper aims to illustrate the importance of integrating analyses of the macro-context to understand the complexity of technology driven organizational change. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted 56 interviews and five focus groups with police officers from 13 countries on two of the major technology trends in European police forces: automatic number plate recognition systems (ANPR) systems and social media. They further conducted site visits to police forces in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom to observe technology usage first hand. Comparing accounts across countries th ey analyzed how macro-context impacted adoption decisions and implementation processes. In this analysis they concentrated on the five macro-contextual factors in the PESTL framework, i.e. political, economic, social, technological and legal factors. Findings: In analyses of ANPR systems and social media the paper details how the macro-context of police organizations impacted decisions to adopt a technology as well as the intra-organizational alignments of processes and structures. Practical implications: Organizational decision makers and implementers need to be aware not only of the strong agency of technology for organizations' structure and processes, but also of the relevance of the organizational macro-context for the process and impact of technology implementations on the organizational as well as individual level. Originality/value: The paper illustrates the impact of the macro-context of organizations in shaping the link between technological change and organizational change