Personality and Perceived Justice as Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing¹

Abstract

Downsizing, when deemed unfair, can result in negative outcomes in terras of survivors’ job attitudes and behaviors. Little research to date has examined whether a survivor's personality moderates these reactions. The present study examines the roles of personality and organizational justice in survivors’ reactions to downsizing. Results show that angry hostility moderates the relationships between survivors’ perceived interactional justice and (a) their organizational commitment, and (b) their intention to quit following downsizing. Specifically, the relationship between interactional justice and both criterion variables was significant only when angry hostility was low. Self‐discipline was found to moderate the relationship between survivors’ interactional justice and their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) such that there was a significant positive correlation between interactional justice and OCB only for those employees who were low on self‐discipline. These findings are discussed in light of how supervisors could best manage downsizing.

The six emotional stages of organizational change

“…Organizational managers might not consider the impact of organizational changes on morale, productivity (Cascio et al, 1997) and satisfaction (Wah, 1999) of employees because their future predictions are based solely on beliefs or past experiences (Kotter and Schlesinger, 2008). This planning error in the change process has serious consequences for the organization, such as desertion (Brennan and Skarlicki, 2004) or absenteeism (Martin et al, 2005).…”

Chapter 4 Personality, affect, and organizational change: a qualitative study

“…It has been shown that cynicism about organizational change can arise from previously failed change initiatives (Connell & Waring, 2002;Reichers et al, 1997;Abraham, 2000), or where change outcomes are unfavourable (Oreg, 2006) and injustice is perceived (Chawla & Kelloway, 2004;Brennan & Skarlicki, 2004;Oreg, 2006). This can lead to resistance to change or at least lack of engagement in it (Reichers et al, 1997;Connell & Waring, 2002;Stanley et al, 2005).…”

“…Past research has identified the impact of personality in perceptions of justice (e.g. Colquitt et al, 2006;Lilly & Virick, 2006), and specifically in the context of change (Brennan & Skarlicki, 2004;Moon et al, 2008). Elsewhere in our interviews in the broader study of emotions and change, respondents made comments about various experiences of fairness and unfairness and how they triggered affective responses.…”

“…Rudisill and Edwards (2002) note that self-efficacy and locus of control play a part in determining how employees react to being laid off, but maintain that limited research has been done. Brennan and Skarlicki (2004) found that angry hostility moderated survivors' perceptions of the fairness of downsizing. Organizational justice perceptions have also been related to other aspects of personality, such as trust propensity, risk aversion, morality (Colquitt, Scott, Judge & Shaw, 2006) and locus of control (Lilly & Virick, 2006), but seldom in the context of change.…”

“…The Big Five model has been tested empirically in the context of change by Vakola et al (2004), who found positive correlations between acceptance of change and extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and agreeableness, and a negative relationship with neuroticism. Brennan and Skarlicki (2004) found conscientiousness to be a contributing factor to the way survivors of downsizing continued to perform and Moon, Kamdar, Mayer and Takeuchi (2008) reported conscientiousness being related to taking charge, a construct which includes initiating change.…”