Beyond the individual‐level conceptualization of dispositional resistance to change: Multilevel effects on the response to organizational change

Abstract

We know much about the factors that determine employees' responses to organizational change. Among these, key factors are those that have to do with employees' personal dispositions and those that have to do with the organizational context. In the present study, we focus on dispositional resistance to change and demonstrate how it can be used at the collective level as a means of characterizing organizations rather than individuals. Specifically, we use it to capture organizations' collective orientation toward change and demonstrate its effects above and beyond the effects of individuals' dispositional resistance. Using data from 84 principals and 395 teachers, we demonstrate the complementary roles of employees', principals', and organizations' dispositional resistance to change in predicting employees' attitudes toward the introduction of changes in the organization. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding responses to organizational change and more broadly for the notion of translating dispositional variables to the organizational level.

How and when does authentic leadership reduce employee resistance to change? An explanation from uncertainty management theory

“…First, empirically, many studies (Furst and Cable, 2008; Liu et al. , 2021b; Sverdlik and Oreg, 2022) demonstrated that employee demographics influence employee resistance to change, thus, we included employees' demographic variables (e.g. employee gender, age, educational level and tenure) as control variables.…”

Collective friend group reactions to organizational change: A field theory approach

“…An even more glaring omission is a lack of study of collective performance. Like individual‐level studies, the limited studies of collective reactions have focused on attitudes rather than behavior (e.g., Sverdlik & Oreg, 2022). Given that a common purpose of change initiatives is improved overall performance, and high‐quality change communication is cited one of the most effective methods for proper change implementation, it is striking that the change literature has neglected studies of change communication's effects on collective performance.…”

The multiple faces of collective responses to organizational change: Taking stock and moving forward

“…There are multiple variants in compositional modeling (see Chan, 1998), with at its simplest, collective response to change is calculated as a mean of individual responses, which assumes that individual members have the same role in determining the collective response to change. For example, Sverdlik and Oreg (2023) use an additive model as composition approach to justify aggregation of dispositional resistance at the collective level (see also Kanitz et al, 2023) conceptualization of group championing level). Several researchers also focus on the referent‐shift composition models that entail the need for shifting the referent of focal construct before making the aggregation of individual responses to change to represent collective responses to change (e.g., Harvey, 2023; Pallotti et al, 2023; Peng et al, 2023).…”

“…While there are diverse ways to categorize the collective (e.g., Banerjee, 1992;Macy, 1991;Zerubavel, 2003) This divergence is evident in the papers included in our special issue. Six papers employ a psychology approach (e.g., de Jong et al, 2023;Harvey & Kudesia, 2023;Kanitz et al, 2023;Lam et al, 2023;Peng et al, 2023;Sverdlik & Oreg, 2023). While most of these studies address collective responses to change in a largely agentic manner, it should be noted that many also incorporate theories rooted in social psychology, acknowledging the broader social structure within which the agency operates.…”

“…In our special issue, an example of habitus could be an organization's history with change, and how dealings and experiences in the past with change shape the ways of responding to new challenges (see Vardaman et al, 2023). Also, the dispositional aspect in Sverdlik and Oreg's (2023) conceptualization of collective resistance to change reflects the fundamentals of habitus.…”