Psychology Publications
Longitudinal associations between employees’ beliefs about the quality of the change management process, affective commitment to change and psychological empowerment
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-3-2015
Journal
Human Relations
Volume
69
Issue
3
First Page
839
Last Page
867
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715602046
Abstract
Organizational changes are costly ventures that too often fail to deliver the expected outcomes. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change are proposed as especially important in turbulent contexts characterized by multiple and ongoing changes requiring employees’ continuing contributions. In such a context, employees’ beliefs that the changes are necessary, legitimate and will be supported, are presumed to increase psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change. In a three-wave longitudinal panel study of 819 employees, we examined autoregressive and cross-lagged relations among latent constructs reflecting change-related beliefs (necessity, legitimacy, support) and psychological reactions (psychological empowerment, affective commitment to change). Our findings suggest that psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change represent largely orthogonal reactions, that psychological empowerment is influenced more by beliefs regarding support, whereas affective commitment to change is shaped more by beliefs concerning necessity and legitimacy.
Notes
Article available at Human Relations
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715602046