فرآیندهای روانشناختی پیوند تعهد سازمانی و اهداف حمایت کننده تغییر Psychological Processes Linking Organizational Commitment and Change-Supportive Intentions

Introduction In times of globalization, challenging market environments, and rapid technological innovations, an organization’s competitiveness is largely based on its ability to constantly adapt and change (e.g., Drzensky et al., 2012). The success of organizational changes, in turn, is largely determined by the reactions and supportive behaviors of the employees, as “organizations only change and act through their members (George & Jones, 2001, p. 420). Indeed, change management research identified employees’ change-supportive behaviors as a critical factor for the success of organizational changes (Jimmieson et al., 2008; Rafferty et al., 2013). By initiating and managing multiple change projects at the same time, organizations are challenged with higher degrees of uncertainty and a lower ability to foresee all consequences and challenges of the changes. To compensate for the increased complexity, even more change support and active contributions of the employees are required in the context of multiple, simultaneous changes (Morin et al., 2016). Recent research clearly identified behavioral intentions as important and most proximal antecedents of employees’ change-supportive behaviors (e.g., Ajzen, 1991; Jimmieson et al., 2008; Kim et al., 2011). Accordingly, it is of high relevance for researchers and practitioners to understand the psychological mechanisms that lead to change-supportive intentions of employees (e.g., Jimmieson et al., 2008). Such knowledge can help to identify potential levers of change support and to proactively manage organizational changes, instead of reactively overcoming change resistance (Armenakis et al., 1993). Many factors relating to the content, process, and the context of changes have been studied as antecedents of employees’ support of or resistance to change (Armenakis et al., 1993). Yet, one factor that has been repeatedly suggested as a general individual attribute that allegedly predisposes positive employee reactions to organizational changes is employees’ commitment to their organization (Oreg et al., 2011). Irrespective of the complexity of organizational changes, committed employees should be more willing to engage in the extra efforts required by organizational changes, and they should show higher acceptance of changes as they identify strongly with the organization and its values (Mowday et al., 1979; Oreg et al., 2011). Especially, employees’ affective commitment has been suggested as an important antecedent for employees’ reactions to organizational changes (Peccei et al., 2011). Affective commitment represents an “emotional attachment to the organization such that the strongly committed individual identifies with, is involved in, and enjoys membership in, the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p. 2).