Commitment to Change: Its Role in the Relationship Between Expectation of Change Outcome and Emotional Exhaustion

Abstract

Successful implementation of organizational changes greatly depends on committed employees. It is crucial for managers, leaders, and HRD professionals to understand the antecedents and outcomes of commitment to change. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among expectation of change outcome at the individual level, commitment to change, and emotional exhaustion. Four hundred and sixty‐three usable surveys were returned from managers and employees from three companies in the Chinese telecom industry that were undergoing large‐scale organizational changes. Results of correlation analysis demonstrated that expectation of change outcome was positively correlated with affective and normative commitments to change and negatively correlated with continuance commitment to change. Affective and normative commitments to change were both negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion, while continuance commitment to change was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that a full mediation model fitted best to the data. The relationships between the two dimensions of expectation of change outcome and emotional exhaustion were fully mediated by affective and normative commitments to change. This study offers insights into understanding the complex nature of commitment to change, how to cultivate commitment to change, and how to use commitment to change as an intervention solution to reduce stress.

Differentiating the Three Components of Resistance to Change: The Moderating Effect of Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem on the Employee Involvement‐Resistance Relation

“…Specifically, we regarded an organization as suitable for this study when it had carried out a structural change (Hornung & Rousseau, ), as Table shows. This criterion guarantees that the changes affected the employees and required their commitment for implementation, as Ning and Jing () recommend. To identify suitable firms, we used informal interviews with managers and experts from business associations, public reports, and knowledge gathered about potential firms.…”

“…Since Coch and French (1948) discussed the importance of employee participation for preventing resistance to change, researchers have focused on identifying key variables to achieve successful change processes (Ning & Jing, 2012). Specifi cally, both the strategic and fairness approaches to the change process highlight the use of communication and participation practices to involve employees in the intervention (Choi & Ruona, 2011).…”

“…The literatures on organizational change (OC) and OD coincide in suggesting that resistance is determined by a large number of antecedents (e.g., Lewin, ; Ning & Jing, ) having to do with the individual, the organization, and the change context (Holt, Armenakis, Field, & Harris, ). With respect to the latter, the literature finds that how a change is carried out—the change process—and how favorable its outcomes are for participants—the change content—influence employees’ reactions to the change events (e.g., Van Dam et al, ).…”

Stressor factors, internal communication and commitment to change among administrative staff in Malaysian public higher-education institutions

“…Hence, change is an inevitable phenomenon nowadays for organizations to confront new development in their business operation. Most importantly, the need for the implementation of change has led to changes in strategy, structure, process and culture in organizations (Armenakis et al, 1993;Ning and Jing, 2012).…”

Organizational Change and Development

“…Hence, for managers to be in control of OCD initiatives they must be 'learning focused', which means being in control of the KASH issues associated with change itself. Thus, sufficient time and attention needs to be given to the 'soft' HRD aspects of managing the change process (Hamlin, 2001a(Hamlin, , 2002Ning & Jing, 2012;Thornhill et al, 2000). For managers to manage change effectively and beneficially they need consciously to incorporate HRD into the very 'fabric' of their everyday management practice, and to use it as a tool for managing change.…”