Stanley G. Harris

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).

The Affective Implications of Perceived Congruence with Culture Dimensions during Organizational Transformation

The influence of individuals’ congruence with an organization’s culture on their affective orientations toward the organization has been the focus of a growing body of research. The present study contributes to this research by examining this relationship (I) in the context of an organization undergoing significant cultural transformation, and (2) across four theoretically identified dimensions of culture. We found that, across all four culture dimensions, the discrepancy between individuals’ assessments of the current culture and their ideal culture explained significant variance in two organization-focused affective outcomes, organizational commitment and optimism about the organization’s future. In contrast, the congruence effects across the four culture dimensions were not uniformly significant for job satisfaction, job involvement, and job turnover intention. The implications of these findings for future individual-culture congruence theory and research are considered.

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.

The workplace social exchange network: A multilevel, conceptual examination.

In this article, the authors present a framework (the Workplace Social Exchange Network) that draws from multiple streams of social exchange research. The authors attempt to provide an integrative, cross-level theory for understanding the diverse social exchanges that occur in the work-place. Within the workplace, there are a number of social exchanges that may take place between an individual and (a) the organization, (b) their supervisor, and (c) their work group. Surprisingly, researchers have overlooked the influence of social exchanges between employees and their work groups. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first article that collectively discusses the influences and interactions between the three predominate social exchange domains. In addition, the authors provide testable propositions that specify relationships between domains of exchange relationships, moderating organizational factors, and employee outcomes.

Toward a Comprehensive Definition of Readiness for Change: A Review of Research and Instrumentation

Although the measurement of organizational readiness for change has been encouraged, measuring readiness for change poses a major empirical challenge. This is not because instruments designed to do this are not available. Researchers, consultants, and practitioners have published an array of instruments, suggesting that readiness can be measured from various perspectives and the concept of readiness has not been clearly defined. This paper reviews the history of the readiness concept, the perspectives used to assess readiness, and the psychometric properties of readiness instruments. Based on the review, an integrated definition of readiness is presented along with the implications of the definition for research and practice.

Has the Inverted-U Theory of Stress and Job Performance Had a Fair Test?

Even though researchers have been exploring the relation between stress and job performance for nearly a century, there remains controversy about whether the relation is best characterized as a negative linear relation, a positive linear relation, or as an inverted-U. The inverted-U theory has a great deal of intuitive appeal, yet research results weigh in favor of the negative linear relation. We reviewed studies performed over the past 25 years on the stress-performance relation. The results of our review identified three primary sets of problems with prior research: neglect of the understressed condition, negative connotation of stress, and contextual range restriction. All but one of the studies in our review were found to have at least one of these problems. Based on these results, we make suggestions for refinements in future research to provide a fair test of the inverted-U theory.

Emotion during Organizational Transformations An Interactive Model of Survivor Reactions

Researchers have begun to incorporate emotion as an explanatory construct in organizational studies. The present study sought to determine how the expressed emotion of top-level managers in a Fortune 500 organization undergoing a major transformation effort was associated with their assessments of change activities and job attitudes. Computer aided text analysis and the Dictionary of Affect in Language were used to assess the emotional content of responses to open-ended questions along two theoretically grounded dimensions of emotion: pleasantness and arousal. Results indicated that a hypothesized interaction between the two emotion dimensions explained significant variance in attitudes dealing directly with the managers’ jobs. Reasons for assessing emotion in transformation contexts are discussed.

Measuring Emotion in Open-ended Survey Responses: An Application of Textual Data Analysis

The present study illustrates the use of a qualitative research technique, textual data analysis, in assessing the emotional content of open-ended survey responses. The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL), one of many acceptable routes to the measurement of emotion, provided the basis for scoring open-ended responses collected in a study of the organizational transformation efforts of a Fortune 100 firm based in the midwestern United States. Managers and corporate executives were surveyed with an in-depth questionnaire that included quantitative measures of several work-related perceptions and attitudes as well as open-ended questions regarding two major events that occurred during the transformation. Dimension scores produced from the DAL and direct ratings of open-ended responses correlated with the quantitative measures in expected and consistent ways. The use of textual data analytic approaches is discussed, and advantages and disadvantages of such approaches are broadly addressed.

Change fatigue: Development and initial validation of a new measure

Abstract Although organizational change often places strain on employees, few studies have explored the impact of multiple organizational changes on their well-being and withdrawal, including organizational commitment and turnover intentions. To provide a means of directly investigating such issues, we developed a measure of change fatigue, and then empirically examined its implications for employees. Using data from change consultants and a manufacturing organization in the United States that had undertaken a number of organizational changes over the last three years, the authors developed a six-item measurement scale, obtained initial evidence of construct validity, and then investigated the relationship between change fatigue and harmful outcomes, including exhaustion, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Results indicated that change fatigue was positively associated with exhaustion, and exhaustion was in turn negatively related to organizational commitment and positively related to turnover intentions. Implications for organizations and employees facing multiple changes are discussed.

A Top Management Team's Reactions to Organizational Transformation: The Diagnostic Benefits of Five Key Change Sentiments

Abstract From research dating to the 1940s, we identified five precursor sentiments deemed important by organizational scientists studying reactions of organizational change recipients. Collectively, these sentiments constitute a framework for understanding reactions to change. We investigated the validity and utility of the framework for assessing the progress of an organizational change by using it to guide the analysis of qualitative interview data collected from a top management team as part of an assessment of a major organizational change. We demonstrate that the five-sentiment framework provides a useful and reliable tool for coding interview responses. In addition, the data, thus coded, provided very useful insight into the underlying concerns regarding the change. We suggest that the five sentiment framework is a useful guide for diagnosing change progress and planning measures to correct change shortcomings.