How does regulatory focus affect uncertainty towards organizational change?

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a research model on Taiwan's National Police Administration setting, extending the theory of planned behavior, reasoned action, and expectancy-valence, and developing the more neglected aspects of the goal-setting theory. Design/methodology/approach -Participants were Taiwan's National Police Administration employing 500 full-time employees. Structural Equation Modeling was used to explore the relationship among regulatory focus, uncertainty towards organizational change, and organizational commitment. Findings -The results were that promotion focus or prevention focus had a significantly positive influence on uncertainty towards organizational change, and only promotion focus had a significantly positive influence on organizational commitment. In addition, uncertainty towards organizational change had a significantly negative influence on organizational commitment. The results supported the significant role of uncertainty towards organizational change as a mediator in the relationship between promotion focus (or prevention focus) and organizational commitment. Originality/value -The results of the research help fill important research gaps (lack of empirical research and generalization) in the regulatory focus theory literature, clarifying the special role of regulatory focus in a traditional police organization's change processing, and its implications for police officers utilizing a non-US setting to allow a cross-cultural examination of regulatory focus theory.

The relationship between job insecurity and burnout

“…Employees therefore lack a sense of stability, identity and belonging and are experiencing feelings of uncertainty. This, of course, takes an emotional and physical toll on employees (Cuyper, De Witte, Van der Elst & Handaja, 2010;Elovainio, van den Bos, Linna, Kivimäki, Ala-Mursula, Pentti & Vahtera, 2005), which manifests in job insecurity (Cuyper et al, 2010;Tseng & Kang, 2008). There are detrimental consequences for both individuals and those at the organisational level (Ashford, Lee & Bobko, 1989;Davy, Kinicki & Scheck, 1991;Allen, Freeman, Russell, Reizenstein & Rentz, 2001;Krause, Stadil & Bunke, 2003).…”

When fit matters more: The effect of regulatory fit on adaptation to change

“…They also have a sharp perception of uncertainty (Tseng & Kang, 2008) and process information in a local rather than global manner, screening the environment to identify obstacles when threat is perceived (Förster & Higgins, 2005). Provided that changes signal dissimilarity, prevention-focused individuals should be more alert during change.…”

“…Research has explored implications of regulatory focus for changerelated attitudes (Tseng & Kang, 2008) or choices (Liberman, Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999) or the role of regulatory fit in dynamic decision-making context (Otto, Markman, Gureckis, & Love, 2010), but not the role of regulatory fit in change implementation. In a time of continuous organizational change (Rafferty & Jimmieson, 2010) and difficult transitions within work life (Wilke, 2012), this question becomes urgent.…”

“…We made use of a multimethod approach, comprising one experiment among students and two survey studies among employees, which lead to a similar pattern of results. Furthermore, instead of participants' choices or attitudes as dependent variables (e.g., Liberman et al, 1999;Tseng & Kang, 2008), we measured actual performance on a changing task. Within the third study, although the weekly design has not captured longitudinal effects, it added on the interpretation of our findings by employing multiple weekly measurements and by controlling for individual "baseline" behaviours.…”

Motivational focus of international entrepreneurs in Spain: From early explorers to straggler exploiters

“…A promotion approach is more suited to certain aspects, whereas for others an attitude oriented towards prevention will prove more adequate (Brockner et al, 2004). These motivational orientations affect the uncertainty about organizational change and only promotion focus has a significantly positive influence on organizational commitment (Tseng & Kang, 2008). Promotion orientation is linked positively to opportunity recognition (Tumasjan & Braun, 2012).…”