Insecure commitment and resistance: an examination of change leadership, self-efficacy, and trust on the relationship between job insecurity, employee commitment, and resistance to organizational change

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the mediation role of self-efficacy and the moderating roles of change leadership strategy and trust on the change attitudes of job insecure employees. Using job insecurity theory (Greenhalgh, 1983), Chin & Benne's (1961) seminal classification of change leadership strategies and the tripartite model of attitudes (Breckler, 1984; McDougal, 1909) as a theoretical basis, data were collected from two samples of employees including a manufacturing firm (n=275) and a retail company (n= 350). The samples and study hypotheses were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analysis.As predicted, job insecurity was directly positively related to affective, behavioral, and cognitive resistance to change and self-efficacy partially or fully mediated the relationships. Mixed results were found for the role of trust as well as information and participation-based change leadership strategies in moderating employee resistance to change. In some cases perceived information-based and participation change leadership approaches were associated with increased resistance rather than decreased resistance to change. Power-based change leadership strategies however were found to be consistently associated with more pessimistic employee attitudes. Results support previous findings showing that individuals who believe they will be negatively impacted by organizational change are particularly sensitive to change leadership approaches. The results also suggest that commonly prescribed change leadership strategies such as increased information, communication, and participation during periods of heightened job insecurity may not always be effective in reducing resistance to change but efforts to increase employee self-efficacy may support the coping mechanism employees use to reduce resistance to change attitudes in organizational change climates with moderate levels of job insecurity.