Organizational change and employee functioning: Investigating boundary conditions

Abstract

Organizational change is systematically associated with poor employee functioning, expressed through negative reactions, such as feelings of uncertainty (Rafferty & Griffin, 2006), reduced morale (Gilmore, Shea, & Useem, 1997), frustration (Ashford, 1988), and impaired well-being (e.g., Petrou, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2015), as well as counterproductive attitudes and behaviors (for a review, Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011). Previous studies are important because they shed light on how individuals experience organizational changes, how they react to these and which are the outcomes of these reactions. However, their main shortcoming is that they do not assess change directly, with the exceptions being few. For example, Petrou et al. (2015) assessed the degree to which change influenced employees’ daily work, Xanthopoulou, Gkorezis, Bellou and Petridou (2016a) examined the degree to which employees faced changes at work, while Fedor, Caldwell and Herold (2006) tested the extent of change occurring at the work-unit level. © 2018 selection and editorial matter.