The attributes of organizational change: How person-organization value congruence influences employees' coping

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of person-organization (P-O) value congruence on employees' coping with organizational change and to test the moderating effect of change event attributes vis-a-vis value congruence and coping strategies.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a four-dimensional design to examine relationships between P-O value congruence and employees' coping strategies. It discusses moderating effects of change attributes based on an elaboration likelihood model. The sample includes 242 employees from 34 organizations in China. Data are analyzed by a structural equation model, dominance analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThis paper provides empirical evidence that the four dimensions of P-O value congruence have different impacts on employees' coping strategies with change; and the effects are moderated by employees' perceived scope of change.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should collect data at different time points during change processes to better understand the influence of value congruence on coping processes. To generalize robustly beyond this case-study requires research across a larger number of individuals and organizations.Practical implicationsAccording to this paper, value congruence between employees and organizations could be better ensured by considering it as an important factor in the recruitment and selection processes, which is more effective in the long run. This is particularly pertinent for those organizations which experience frequent changes.Originality/valueFirst, this paper considers the influences of stable organizational factors and attributes of change events on employees' coping abilities; these are both ignored in previous studies. Second, it develops a four-dimensional coping with change structure and a two-dimensional measure of change attributes in a Chinese context which are reliable and can thus be employed in future studies.