Achilles A. Armenakis

Readiness for Organizational Change The Systematic Development of a Scale

Using a systematic item-development framework as a guide (i.e., item development, questionnaire administration, item reduction, scale evaluation, and replication), this article discusses the development and evaluation of an instrument that can be used to gauge readiness for organizational change at an individual level. In all, more than 900 organizational members from the public and private sector participated in the different phases of study, with the questionnaire being tested in two separate organizations. The results suggest that readiness for change is a multidimensional construct influenced by beliefs among employees that (a) they are capable of implementing a proposed change (i.e., change-specific efficacy), (b) the proposed change is appropriate for the organization (i.e., appropriateness), (c) the leaders are committed to the proposed change (i.e., management support), and (d) the proposed change is beneficial to organizational members (i.e., personal valence).

Crafting a change message to create transformational readiness

Explains how we used the change message components of discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support, and personal valence and the message conveying strategies of active participation, persuasive communication and management of information suggested by Armenakis and colleagues to help an organization create readiness for a major reorganization. We describe and evaluate our experiences from our initial coaching with the president, through initial management meetings to determine the new business unit’s strategy and structure, to the initial company‐wide announcement of the plans. We conclude with a set of observations and lessons and suggestions for future research on the use of the change message framework.

Change Recipients’ Reactions to Organizational Change A 60-Year Review of Quantitative Studies

This study reviews quantitative empirical studies of change recipients’ reactions to organizational change. The authors reviewed studies published between 1948 and 2007, out of which 79 met the criteria of being quantitative studies of change recipients’ reactions to an organizational change. Through an inductive review, the authors unravel a model of (a) explicit reactions to change, in which these reactions are conceptualized as tridimensional attitudes; (b) reaction antecedents that comprise prechange antecedents (viz., change recipient characteristics and internal context) and change antecedents (viz., change process, perceived benefit/harm, and change content); and (c) change consequences, including work-related and personal consequences. On the basis of their review the authors conclude by proposing directions for future research and practical managerial implications.

Reflections: our Journey in Organizational Change Research and Practice

This commentary summarizes our research and practice on the topic of organizational change over the past 30 years. Our purpose in preparing this commentary is to explain how our efforts accumulated over this period to produce the questions we addressed, the answers our findings revealed, and the direction of our future efforts. We summarize our journey thus far relative to six signposts, namely: (a) the identification of five key beliefs underlying change recipient motivations to change; (b) an emphasis on change recipient active participation in the change effort; (c) the importance of diagnosis; (d) the importance of creating readiness for change; (e) the identification of strategies for influencing the five beliefs throughout the change process; and, (f) the assessment of reactions to organizational change. To give an idea of where our journeys will take us in the future, we identify five trips we plan to make: (a) examine the relative importance of the five key beliefs for influencing change recipient support; (b) expand our cognitive view of change motivation to include emotional reactions to change; (c) investigate the relationship between change recipient characteristics (such as regulatory focus) and reactions to organizational transformation; (d) explore the relationship between internal contextual variables (relations with local change agents and co-workers) during organizational change; and (e) focus on ethics in organizational change.

Making change permanent A model for institutionalizing change interventions

Increasing global competition has accelerated the rate of organizational changes, such as reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing. As a result, organizational leaders find themselves faced with growing cynicism among employees that the current wave of changes is nothing more than the program of the month that will pass as those that preceded it. We address the issue of how to make changes permanent by providing a model developed from theory and research on organizational change and from successful practices implemented in numerous organizations worldwide. The model can serve at least three purposes. First, the model can assist change agents in planning for and assessing progress toward institutionalizing organizational change. Second, the model can help focus efforts of organizational scholars to study the change process. Third, the model offers the basis for hypothesis testing regarding the success or failure of change efforts.

Factors influencing organizational change efforts: An integrative investigation of change content, context, process and individual differences

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the integrative influence of content, context, process, and individual differences on organizational change efforts., – Data were collected from employees involved in a recent de‐merger. Using structural equation modeling, a hypothesized model that integrated individual differences with change content, context, and process factors was tested., – Results led to the acceptance of a model indicating that change context mediated the relationship between individual differences and change process and content. Similarly, change content and process mediated the relationship between change context and organizational change commitment., – Owing to the nature of the study, inferences of causality cannot be made. Additionally, common method bias may be a concern because criterion and response variables were collected at the same time., – An organizations prior change history (i.e. context) has the potential to negatively influence change success. In order to counteract these effects, change agents should concentrate on clearly communicating the change details (i.e. process) to employees., – This study is one of the first to integrate factors common to all change efforts, i.e. content, context, process and individual differences. Further, it elaborates on how these factors interact to influence change success.

Change Readiness A Multilevel Review

The authors conducted a theoretical review of the change readiness literature and identified two major limitations with this work. First, while there is substantial agreement about the key cognitions that underlie change readiness, researchers have not examined the affective element of this attitude. Second, researchers have not adopted a multilevel perspective when considering change readiness. The authors address these limitations and argue that it is important to incorporate affect into definitions of the change readiness construct and also when measuring this construct. They then develop a multilevel framework that identifies the antecedents and consequences of individual, work group, and organizational change readiness. Next, the authors outline the theoretical processes that lead to the development of individual and collective change readiness. They then review theoretical and empirical evidence to identify the antecedents of change readiness at the three levels of analysis. Finally, the authors identify a number of suggestions to guide future research seeking to adopt a multilevel approach to change readiness.

Justice, Cynicism, and Commitment: A Study of Important Organizational Change Variables

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have begun to address the commonality between organizational justice and organizational change efforts. In the present study, the authors build on these efforts by investigating the interactive effects of three forms of organizational justice on affective change commitment following the spin-off of a durable goods manufacturer from its parent corporation. Results indicated interactional justice interacted with both procedural and distributive justice. The authors also found procedural and interactional justice predicted organizational cynicism, and each form of justice interacted with cynicism to predict change commitment. Implications for organizations going through a change are discussed.

Organizational Change Content, Process, and Context: A Simultaneous Analysis of Employee Reactions

Abstract This study examines the relationship between three attributes of organizational change (that is, content, process, and context) in a Fortune 500 telecommunications firm. While researchers acknowledge the importance of the three attributions of organizational change, there is sparse empirical evidence of the systematic and simultaneous assessment of these attributes in organizational change efforts. The investigation undertaken in this study follows a design encompassing content, process, context and outcome variables. Results, utilizing quantitative and qualitative data, reveal that organizational change (an employee outcome variable) is strongly related to the impact of the change on employees (a content variable) and organizational communication media (a process variable). Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that the extent to which employees perceive an organizational change as justified is influenced by their perceived organizational support (an organizational context variable). Implications for practitioners and future research are offered.

ON USE OF MULTIPLE TESTS OF SIGNIFICANCE IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The evaluation of a series of statistical tests in psychological research is a common problem faced by many investigators. As the number of statistical tests increases, the probability of making a Type I error, i.e., of rejecting the null hypothesis when in fact it is true, increases as well. To help researchers evaluate their results, tables have been constructed which show the probability of obtaining k or more significant results due to chance in a series of K independent statistical tests. Recommendations are also given in order to avoid the problems of a Type I error.