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

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