Employee Commitment in Times of Change:
Assessing the Importance of Attitudes Toward
Organizational Change†
Steven M. Elias*
Department of Psychology, Auburn University Montgomery, Montgomery, AL
Organizations are dynamic and changing entities. Variables associated with organizational change have been shown to serve as mediators of several individual difference variable/workrelated outcome relationships. This study examines three potential antecedents of 258 police officers’ attitudes toward organizational change (ATOC), and whether ATOC mediates the relationships between these antecedents and affective organizational commitment (AOC). At the time of data collection, the officers’ police department was restructuring its
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A review of the psychological and organizational behavior literature points out that (a) intrinsic motivation can be thought of as internal work motivation, (b) the ability to see change as a learning opportunity can be thought of as growth need strength, and (c) having control over the change process can be thought of as an internal locus of control. With this in mind, these individual difference variables should be of importance to how employees cope with organizational change. In a related line of research,Wanberg and Banas (2000) obtained partial support for their conceptual model that individual difference variables (e.g., personal resilience) affect one’s openness toward organizational change, which in turn affects work-related outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction and intention to quit). The purpose of the current study is to extend the work of Wanberg and Banas by examining whether attitudes toward organizational change mediate the relationships that exist between the psychological variables mentioned above (i.e., growth need strength, locus of control, and internal work motivation) and affective organizational commitment. The focus of this study is the
Financial Advisor (2007) reported that one of the major reasons employees left their jobs was because of job dissatisfaction. Kreitner and Kinicki (2010) defined job satisfaction as “an affective or emotional
In order understand the events leading to the failure to recognize change, comprehension of the mechanism by which change is successfully recognized is requisite. According to the traditional understanding of this process, an individual must form an internal
Job Satisfaction: whether or not being satisfied with one’s current position, status, wage, companies, etc.
Organizations can face change for any number of reasons. Managers must be the leaders in change in order to influence employees. Complacency is an obstacle to change. According to Organizational Behavior and Management, “It is management’s responsibility to show employees why they should want to change” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson, 2014, p. 507). By creating a sense of urgency, employees can recognize the need for change. The ability of employees to recognize the need for change combats the problem of complacency. Kotter, in Leading Change, states
Recently, my company has experienced massive change. The company has had around a 50 percent turnover in the last year. Included in that turnover was everyone in the executive team, excluding the CEO. As our company struggles to handle new employees and a new vision, motivation and morale seems to be decreasing. In this paper I plan to explore why motivation and morale tend to decrease during times of change and investigate ways how a company can maintain high morale during massive change.
Today’s business world is constantly evolving. To keep up with the rapidly shifting environment, companies introduce process changes frequently within their organization to improve performance, and outdo their competition. In this memo, the pros and cons of frequent organizational changes are first investigated. By going through the effectiveness of adopting specific activities and leadership style in communicating changes, we seek to understand employees’ reaction to frequent process changes, and how it affects their work performance and attitude towards the organization. This will allow us to understand if employees learn and get better at change, or does change does irreparable damages.
Explain in detail one of the theories of motivation and assess its value in the current business environment
The relationship between job satisfaction, motivation, and efficiency or productivity is very important in the business industry as well as in personal life. Long term research has found that the single greatest predictor of longevity is work satisfaction. Work is one third to one half of a persons' lifetime, and if frustrated the mental and physical effects are very costly. Job characteristics including skill variety, task identity, and task significance lead to psychological conditions in which in turn leads to increased motivation, performance and job satisfaction. It is important to investigate this area in order to determine how much of an effect does
Gîlmeanu (2015 p.70) defines job satisfaction as “an attitude or emotional response to work tasks and simultaneously to the social and physical conditions of the workplace”. In order to employ these feelings and behaviours, it is necessary to understand the cause of dissatisfaction in order to disperse it. As mentioned in Figure 1, the cause of job dissatisfaction are concerned with personal disposition, task and roles, supervisors and co-workers, and pay and benefits. Three of these categories are directly controlled by the organisation and without effectively understanding them organisations know little on how to avoid them (Noe et al. 2015).
Job satisfaction is an important aspect that contributes to the overall success realized by an organization. A lot of research has been done on the ways through which job satisfaction of workers can be improved (Tan & Waheed, 2011). Some of the factors studied by these research studies include the samples from academic sector, the hotel sector, the
Job satisfaction is very critical for both workplace growth as well as employee’s growth, but if the employee is not happy what he or she is doing, than that would hurt employee’s performance, and hurt employer’s well-being. Information technology has become one of the most prominent sectors in employing employees as well as creating new jobs in the markets all around the world. It seems like Information Technology has taken over all the fields of work out there. Along with the growth in the Information Technology in the market, the professionals have not grown in the same ratio. As the field of employment has grown, Information Technology workers job satisfaction is a very
Job satisfaction is the very important factor in general quality of life because it is closely connected with working life (e.g. Argyle, 1989; Bang & Lee, 2006), with family life, everyday life, and mental health (Orpen, 1978; Schmitt and Bedeian, 1982; Faragher, Cass & Cooper, 2005). Level of job satisfaction is also highly related to turnover, absenteeism rate, work productivity or accomplishment (Muchinsky, 1977; Organ, 1977). Many researchers (e.g. Cherrington, 1994; Acorn, Ratner & Crawford, 1997; Ostroff, 1992; Spector, 1997) state that employees who experience high job satisfaction contribute to organisational commitment, job involvement, their physical, mental health and overall well-being are improved. Job dissatisfaction on the
Topics concerning job satisfaction are commonly studied. Some of the reasons for this can be identified. According to Kalleberg (1977, p. 124), personal value systems of researchers are significant in terms of driving job satisfaction studies, the humanitarian perspective as Spector (1997, p. 2) pointed out, gives rise to job satisfaction studies. Some researchers further argued that job satisfaction is not only the thing employees should have but also the thing they have the opportunity to get access to (Cranny et al. 1992 cited in Fitzpatrick, 1993, p. 372). Also, from a utilitarian perspective (Spector, 1997, p. 2), belief that job satisfaction is related to performance and functioning of organisations encourages more researches in job satisfaction. And evidence linking job satisfaction to life satisfaction and the intention to improve productivity and functioning performance through better employee experiences are also important motivators (Kalleberg, 1977, p. 124). Furthermore, job satisfaction can be a diagnostic tool in performance and functioning checking. Besides, as a matter of study concentration, job satisfaction is significant factor to study for all researchers who are interested in
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in measuring satisfaction among employees in organization. Work environment is complex mainly due to its structure which involves two or more parties. It is important for employers and organization to know if their employees are satisfied with their job as it may directly influence of their performance and in turn, the performance of the organization. Satisfaction could mean different things to different individuals. Many people may agree that satisfaction is determined when their expectations are met and may feel disappointed when they are not.
Organizational commitment is one of the most investigated areas of study. Colakoglu, Culha and Atay (2010) state that increasing interests of various disciplines, such as sociology, psychology and behavioural sciences on organizational commitment, and examining organizational commitment by researchers in the field, both cause one’s own perspective to take different definitions into account. However, the view of commitment is that it can influence individual actions independent of other factors. Cetin (2006) outlines that organizational commitment means one’s devotion to his/her occupation, it requires the purpose of the occupation, belief in the values of the occupation and acceptance of them; and showing an effort to survive in his/her occupation and membership. Herrbach (2006) found that organizational commitment can lead to persistence in a course of action even in the face of conflicting motives or attitudes, and may even lead individuals to behave in ways that, from the perspective of neutral observers, might seem contrary to their own self-interest.