Employees' Attitudes towards Organizational Change and Its Effects on Employee Commitment

Organizations are expected to enhance their capacity to ensure employees are provided with the necessary support for the acceptance for change initiatives. Review of relevant literature reveals that high extents of organizational activities towards acceptance of change are unsuccessful as studies have generally agreed that employee resistance is one of the leading causes for the failure of change initiatives (Bovey and Hede, 2001; Beer and Nohria, 2000). In studies that have inspected the conditions in which workers support authoritative change, specialists have concentrated on different attitudinal factors that represents employees' states of mind toward hierarchical change. These factors include preparation for change, responsibility to change, openness to change, and pessimism about authoritative change. These factors have distinct meaning and implications for the organization and thus serve as representative assessment of employees' evaluation and worries about specific change activities. This study examines the attitudes of employees towards organizational change through review of relevant literature and discusses how attitudinal factors relate to organizational change, the inherent antecedents of each factor and its influence on employee commitment. Based on the discussion, possible recommendations will be made for industry practitioners and policy makers.