On Forming Commitment To Change And Affecting Upon Employees’ Behavioral Reactions And Their Well-being

So far, organizational change management is a focal point among management scholars and business circles. As a qualified enterprise, it should make timely adjustments on its strategies, structure and staff to stay competitive in complex and volatile commercial environment. However,these changes bring in a lot of pressure and uncertainty on employees. Most traditional researches concerning with organizational change focus on the reasons, outcome and strategies adopted in the change process, while the effects of people on it during the process has always been ignored. Organization is a co-operative system, which needs support from the whole staff to achieve its goal. Meanwhile, organization is also multi-layered, which finally affects individual employees variously. Hence, employees’ behavior plays an essential role in organizational change, and it’s of great significance to investigate the employees’ reaction to change and comprehend their well-being and behavioral reactions.Using the questionnaires survey method, we investigate employees from 3 provincial branch-companies of the major competitors located in 2 different provinces(Sichuan and Guangxi in China) and analyze many factors, such as, reasons for change, psychological contract, commitment to change, employee behavioral reactions, employee well-being, and so on and so forth. Contents studied in this paper are as follows: How do employees react to organizational change? How do reasons for change and psychological contract impact upon employees’ commitment to change? How does commitment to change made by staff affect on employees’ behavioral reactions, as well as their well-being? What are the effects of control and traditionality? This study is divided into two stages. The first stage is the pre-feasibility study, aiming to test the applicability of western measuring tools in Chinese context. The second stage is the formal study, making an empirical experiment on the theoretical models and hypotheses. This paper proposes some advice about carrying out organizational change successfully, which has a vital importance to optimizing the theory of organizational change and implementing enterprise’s change.As shown by all our empirical tests: relational contract is positively related to affective commitment and normative commitment to change, and negatively related to continuance commitment to change. Transactional contract is negatively related to the affective commitment to change, and not significantly related to the other two. The significant level of relational contract upon commitment to change is much higher than that of transactional contract. External reasons are positively related to affective commitment and normative commitment to change, and negatively related to continuance commitment to change. Internal reasons have negative effect upon affective commitment, positive effect upon continuance commitment and insignificant effect upon normative commitment to change. The significant level of external reasons for change upon commitment to change is higher than that of internal reasons. When affective commitment to change is taken as the dependent variable, there is significant interaction effect between internal reasons and relational contract. When continuance commitment and normative commitment to change are taken as the dependent variable, there is no significant interaction effect. Normative commitment to change is positively associated with considerate voice and patience, negatively associated with exit and aggressive voice, and insignificantly associated with neglect. Affective commitment to change is negatively associated with exit and neglect, with insignificant effects upon the other three behavioral factors. Continuance commitment to change is only positively related to exit. External reasons are associated with active behaviors such as exit and considerate voice, and internal reasons are associated with aggressive voice. Two passive behavioral factors including neglect and patience are both insignificant. Somatic health symptoms are negatively associated with both affective commitment and normative commitment to change, while emotional exhaustion is only negatively associated with normative commitment. Continuance commitment to change is only positively related to emotional exhaustion. External reasons are positively associated with somatic health symptoms, while internal reasons are silent here. When affective commitment to change or normative commitment to change is taken as the dependent variable, the moderating effect is not significant. But when continuance commitment to change is dependent variable, the effect becomes significant.This paper attempts to explore new disciplines and key characters in the change process of Chinese enterprises. We explore the antecedents of employees’ commitment to change, outcome variables and mechanism behind them. Also, we analyze and test the individual’s behavioral reactions to organizational change, the mediating effect on commitment to change, and the moderating effect on control and employees’ traditionality as well. The main contributions and new ideas in this study lie in the following aspects:(1) a newly-developed scale about reasons for change to distinguish reasons driven by ourselves or pushed by outside, showing reasons for change play a very important part in affecting on employees’ behavior.(2) We lay particular emphasis on analyzing how psychological contracts, specifically relational contract, as antecedents of commitment to organizational change to impact upon employees’ behavioral reactions.(3) We probe into employees’ positive behavioral element of commitment to organizational change, in comparison with other reseaches concerning with employees’ negative behavioral reactions during organizational change process. This paper offers some proposals for Chinese enterprises so as to promote organizational change and achieve sustaining competition in the background of globalization and economic transformation in China.