Examining change appropriateness and related uncertainty as predictors of employees’ attitudes and behaviors: A moderated mediation model

Abstract

The present time has brought in complex business atmosphere, globalization, shortened product life cycles, rapid transformation in technology, artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning, these megatrends have made ‘change’ a norm instead of an exception. Organizations are engage in bringing company-wide change programs but unfortunately, most of the times these change programs fail due to negative attitudes and behaviors of employees towards change, despite the good change management strategies. There is a dire need to pay attention to employees’ concerns, reactions, and perspectives towards change interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to put forward some significant factors that influence employees’ attitudes and explain the reasons behind the particular behaviors during change. It has examined the effect of change related uncertainty (CRU) and change appropriateness (CAP) on employees’ job satisfaction (JS), turnover intentions (TOI) and job involvement (JI) with a mediation of perceived management support (PMS) and a moderation of change communication (CC). The study is based on cross sectional research design following a quantitative strategy. Hypotheses were developed and tested by collecting data from a sample of 473 employees working in banking sector of Pakistan. Only those banks were approached that were undergoing transformational changes. Analysis of moderation and mediation effects were carried out through SPSS PROCESS macro. Series of confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS v.23 were ran to examine how distinctive variables and their items are from each other. The results mainly supported the proposed hypotheses. Findings revealed that CRU has a negative relation with JS and JI, whereas positive with TOI. CAP has a positive impact on JS, JI and negative on TOI. However, with the mediation of PMS; CRU and CAP are positively related to JS, JI and negatively related to TOI. CC moderated the direct relationship of CRU and CAP with JS and JI only. Moreover, CC moderated the relation between CRU, CAP and PMS and also the indirect impact of CC moderated the relationship of CRU and CAP with JS, TOI and JI through PMS. The findings would help organizations to understand the aspects that could lead to negative and positive employees’ attitudes and behaviors and also help in developing effective strategies to make change a success. Management support and good communication cannot be ruled out if company aims to implement and sustain changes successfully. The model tested in this study has not been studied before. This study experientially gathered data to examine the impact of CRU and CAP on PMS and employees’ behaviors in the context of transformational organizational changes in banking sector.