The Effects of Resistance to Change on Job Performance and
Job Satisfaction via Psychological Empowerment:
Transformational Leadership as a Moderator
Master thesis, Msc HRM, University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
July 28, 2011 Yihan Wang Student number 1946080 Duindoornstraat 539 9741 PV Groningen Tel.: +31 (0)644425182 E-mail: kadwangyihan@126.com Supervisor/university/field of study Onne Janssen
Abstract
The purpose of present study was to explore direct and indirect (via psychological empowerment) relationships between employees’ resistance to change and their individual job outcomes of performance and satisfaction. In the meanwhile, this study also explored the moderating effects of transformational leadership on the above relationships. The author applied systematic questionnaires to collect the individual-level data of 200 employees from two manufacturing companies in China. The results indeed showed that resistance to change was negatively related to job performance and job satisfaction, and that psychological empowerment mediated these negative relationships. In addition, the author found that transformational leadership did not moderate the above relationships.
Key words: resistance to change, psychological empowerment, transformational
Table of Content
INTRODUCTION ... 1
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES ... 4
Resistance to Organizational Change and Job Performance and Job Satisfaction ... 4
Psychological Empowerment as a Mediator ... 6
Transformational Leadership as a Moderator ... 9
METHOD ... 12
Sample and Data Collection ... 12
Measures ... 14 Data analysis ... 15 RESULT ... 17 Descriptive Statistics ... 17 Tests of hypotheses ... 17 DISCUSSION ... 20 Theoretical implication ... 20 Practical implications ... 22
Limitation and future research ... 23
Conclusion ... 24
INTRODUCTION
In the development of organization, organizational change is inevitable. In general, it can produce positive results, such as enhancing individual and team performance and improving the organizational outcomes (Porras & Robertson, 1992). However, the results of change do not always meet the organization’s expectation, and the main reason for this is that the staff within the organization is inherently resistant to change (Bovey & Hede, 2001). Changes transfer the current situation from the known to the unknown (Zaltman & Duncan, 1977) that increases scare and anxiety among employees (Morris & Raben, 1995; Smith & Berg, 1987), decreases their confidence and motivation to work (Block, 1993; Bridges, 1980; Bryant, 1989; O’Toole, 1995), and threatens their established social relationships (O’Toole, 1995). Thus, under such circumstances, employees would rather resist the change than participate in it, which might have some negative consequences for them (Miller, Johnson, & Grau, 1994; Piderit, 2000), such as less satisfaction on job or worse individual performance than before (Miller et al, 1994). Therefore, resistance to change is an extremely significant element in the field of change management.
In accordance with its importance, resistance to change has attracted much research attention in the past decades, with a focus on identifying antecedents that are likely to contribute either to enhance or to reduce resistance to change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Judge et al., 1999; Piderit, 2000; Oreg, 2006; Elias, 2009; Van de Heuvel & Schalk, 2009). For example, people who possess higher level of irrational personality are more likely to act against organizational changes (Oreg, 2006), whereas organizational commitment is significantly associated with more positive responses to change (Peccei et al., 2011). Although some scholars have revealed that resistance to change would result in negative influence on work-related variables, like perceptions of organizational justice (Foster, 2010), there is hardly any empirical research that has examined the effect of resistance to change on important individual job outcomes such as job performance and job satisfaction (Miller et al., 1994; Piderit, 2000). To address this gap, to explore these important job consequences of resistance to change becomes the first target of the present study.
psychological empowerment to assume and test that resistance to change deteriorates the psychological empowerment of employees which in turn is responsible for decreasing levels of job performance and satisfaction. Foucault (1980, 1983) and Sawicki (1991) noted that resistance to change is negatively related with psychological empowerment. Besides, many researches from western countries revealed that organization could improve employees’ work performance and satisfaction by enhancing appropriates their psychological empowerment (Laschinger et al., 2001). From above descriptions, it is noted that resistance to change results in lower levels of job performance and job satisfaction. In other words, if companies cannot control resistance to change when it occurred, the psychological empowerment of employees would reduce. Consequently, employees with less psychological empowerment might lower their job performance and job satisfaction. Therefore, the second goal of the present study is to explore whether empowerment can mediate the relationship between resistance to change and individual performance and job satisfaction.
All in all, the present study aims to contribute to the current literatures in several ways. Researches have not yet explored the direct and indirect effect of resistance to change on job performance and satisfaction. The present work therefore examines how resistance to change influences employees’ individual job performance and job satisfaction and how psychological empowerment mediates these relationships. Furthermore, boundary conditions may regulate the above relationships and the present research will treat transformational leadership as a moderating mechanism that can buffer the negative effects of resistance to change on psychological empowerment and the subsequent job outcomes of performance and satisfaction. This study proceeds as follows. Firstly, the research model (see Figure 1) and the hypotheses of this study will be presented. This is followed by a brief description of research setting, along with measurement and data analysis technologies used in present study. Finally, I presented the main findings, followed by a discussion of theoretical and political implications.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES
Resistance to Organizational Change and Job Performance and Job Satisfaction
Ample theory and research has considered employees responses to change in terms of resistance to change (Lewin, 1951; Dent & Goldberg, 1999). Although resistance to change is a fairly broad term, most of the previous studies (Lawrence, 1954; Zaltman & Duncan, 1977; Kanter 1985) only pay attention on one facet of it. Some scholars described resistance of employees as the feelings of uncertainty and frustration in understanding responses to change (Kanter, 1985). Others discussed resistance as a set of undesirable behaviors (Coch & French, 1948). The focus in the present study is based on a comprehensive investigation from Piderit (2000). He conceptualized resistance to change as a multidimensional (negative) attitude towards change which includes three dimensions: affective, behavioral, and cognitive. The affective dimension of resistance to change is about the feelings of employees in front of changes (e.g., aggression, frustration). Particularly, the affective resistance is positively related with negative feelings. The cognitive dimension of resistance to change refers to the“(un)readiness" (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993), which regards what people think about and evaluate the change (e.g., is it acceptable? shall we get benefits?). The behavioral dimension of resistance to change is an action or inaction of people in response to the change (e.g., complain to management, convince peers that change is a good or a bad thing) (Coch & French, 1948; Brower & Abolafia, 1995). These three dimensions are interconnected with each other to help people fully understand how employees react to change.
change would have negatively close connection with individual performance. In other words, employees whose affective reaction to change is dysfunctional believe the changes would generate a number of hinders that could lower their performance (Ford, 2010). Furthermore, Cascio (1993) revealed that people who have dissatisfied feeling on change become narrow-minded and risk-averse, both of which are the obstacles of getting more capabilities on the job. In the meanwhile, the rigid pattern behavior of employees to organizational change would results in the decreased chances of performing successfully (Cameron, 1988). In addition, Oreg (2003) noted that cognitive reaction of employees to forced change is an indicator of inefficiency on work. In other words, people would produce worse performance with less effort on their work when they thought organizational change is unnecessary or unhelpful for their career development or destructed for their established work relationship. Therefore, I advance the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Resistance to change is negatively related to individual performance
On the other hand, the consequence of resistance to change is job satisfaction, including employees’ satisfaction on their wage, working time, working environment, and their colleagues, etc. (Notenbomer, Roelen, & Groothoff, 2006). Wanberg and Banas (2000) found that resistance to change as a low acceptance of change was associated with lower levels of job satisfaction. It is consistent with the research of Tina (2005), who suggested that organizational change makes employees to generate the feeling of anxiety about their work environment and career development. Moreover, people complained that the organization would encounter a large amount of expenditure in the process of change, which would result in the reduction of employees’ incomes; even worse, they thought that change could not benefit them at all but destroy their current working conditions (Bovey & Hede, 2001). In addition, affective resistance is most likely to relate to affective work related outcomes. Locke (1969) and Spector (1997) revealed that job satisfaction represents the work-related outcome with a great affective affinity and were therefore expected to relate extremely with the affective facet of resistance to change. Therefore, I advance the following hypothesis:
Psychological Empowerment as a Mediator
Psychological empowerment as an intrinsic task motivation is a multifaceted concept rather than only a set of managerial techniques, like employers delegating or sharing power with employees (Spreitzer, 1995b). It consists of four cognitions, including meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. First, the dimension of meaning can be thought of as the degree of importance of a job for an individual, which is based on an individual's values, needs, and goals (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Second, the dimension of competence represents employees’ self-efficacy, which means the extent to which an employee believes that he or she can perform activities successfully in their work role (Gist, 1987). Specifically, people with higher self-efficacy tend to be more proactive and effortful in their work (Bandura, 1977). Third, self-determination refers to an individual’s autonomy to initiate and regulate actions to make a decision about their work (Avolio et al., 2004). Deci and Ryan (1985) observed that autonomy can generate greater creativity, flexibility and higher self-esteem. Finally, impact is the degree to which a person has an influence on the outcomes of the strategy, administration, and operation in his or her work environment (Ashforth, 1989).
behaviors in response to the changes. In addition, in most cases, employees usually hold the conviction that the autonomy of job could be declined and they cannot keep the desirable current work situation when the unexpected changes occur. Stark (1996) noted that these employees’ convictions would hinder them to experience empowerment.
As noted by a number of researchers, psychological empowerment has inseparable relationship with individual job performance and job satisfaction. The perceptions of higher level of self-efficacy among employees have a strongly positive effect on work-related performance (Gist & Mitchell, 1992). Specifically, organizations that support their employees through systematical training and information sharing in contributing their capability assist in enhancing their work performance. In the meanwhile, the perceptions of self-determination among employees have a positive relationship with individual performance (Spector, 1986). That is, employees who can determine how to fulfill their work have higher level of performance (Thomas & Tymon, 1994) and get higher performance evaluation by their employers (Liden, Wayne & Sparrow, 2000) than employees with limited autonomy on their work. Amabile (1996) revealed similar findings. She found that, employees who have the autonomy in the daily conduct of work would be more creative and efficiency to accomplish their jobs than those without autonomy. What is more, the perceptions of importance of their job among employees are positively related with task performance (Thomas & Tymon 1994). That is, the more valuable the tasks that employees participate in, the more possibly employees can exert high level of performance. Thus, Thomas and Velthouse (1990) concluded that, on the one hand, employees with higher level of self-efficacy and self-determination are willing to develop their potential capabilities in their work; on the other hand, more valuable jobs will encourage employees to be more effortful in their tasks.
less empowered employees believe that they do not have an impact on their performance; they feel more constrained to perform their job (Amabile, 1988).
Taken together, I propose that lower levels of psychological empowerment operate as an explanatory link that can clarify why resistance to change would inhibit employees’ individual job performance. Therefore, I advance the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Psychological empowerment mediates the negative relationship between resistance to change and individual performance.
autonomy the employees have, the less chances they have to learn professional techniques, which is not helpful to increase the job satisfaction of employees (Zhimin & Hongyan, 2006). What is more, empowered employees are more likely to ask for more relevant work information and receive more management or social support to enhance their competence and the impact on their work (Kanter, 1977), which results in higher levels of job satisfaction (Isaiah & Kofi, 2000). In contrast, employees with less psychological empowerment could not get much more necessary resources and support from their organizations to enhance their self-efficacy, after which the job satisfaction would decline. In addition, empowerment plays a significant role for employees to develop the specific abilities, such as to regulate actions in front of risk and to develop the anti-pressure ability, to keep their satisfaction on the current job in the development of globalization and market competition (Block, 1987; Kizilos, 1990), whereas low level of psychological empowerment cannot help employees to keep the job satisfaction in their organization. Therefore, I advance the hypothesis as following:
Hypothesis 4: Psychological empowerment mediated the negative relationship between resistance to change and job satisfaction.
Transformational Leadership as a Moderator
and efficient to help moderate the negative relationship between resistance to change and its consequences.
The initial theories of leadership mainly focus on the transactional and transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). The transactional leadership is manifested by the exchange between leaders and employees, which means that leaders provide rewards to the followers for their contributions (Burns, 1978). However, transformational leadership goes beyond the previous one because it inspires followers to recognize the leader’s vision and contribute their self-interest to the organization (Bass, 1985). Likewise, descriptive research by Seltzer (1989) presents that transformational leadership broadens the subordinates’ interests and visions rather than regulates them by rules. Basically, conceptualization of transformational leadership behaviors have several characteristics (Bass et al., 2003), including inspirational motivation, charisma impact, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. In the change process, the inspirational motivation of transformational leader provides the vision of the future, which is a clear statement of the organization goal. At the same time, it is a source of confidence and motivation, which attracts those resisting subordinates to engage in the change rather than to further resist it (Ford, 1994; Kouzes & Posner, 1988) and inspires them to develop their capabilities to achieve the inspiring goals in the future. Thus, the leader’s vision of possible future could reduce the resistance of employees about present change (Kouzes & Posner, 1988). In the meanwhile, transformational leadership builds a shared perception of future blueprint through providing meaning to employees’ job and enhancing their autonomy, confidence and capabilities in their jobs (Avolio, 1999). Therefore, the negative influences of resistance to change on their psychological empowerment would be decreased, because working with the leader who has clear future visions and expectations can make employees feel more comfortable and empowered in their changing work roles (Luthans & Avolio, 2003; Walumbwa & Lawler, 2003).
make contribution to their work (Laschinger, Finnegan, & Shamian, 2001). In other words, by creating a shared perception of the changes, the transformational leaders could reduce the employees’ negative reaction to changes. By doing this, the psychological empowerment of employees would be increased, which would also enhance employees’ job performance and satisfaction (Wei, Hsien, & Jen, 2009).
With the characteristic of intellectual stimulation, transformational leaders encourage subordinates to question their current ways of doing things and support them to be creative in solving problems and performing job (Bass et al., 2003). As a coach and mentor, the transformational leader not only pays more attention to the needs of employees who are resistant to changes, but also encourages and supports them when they ask for help, which makes employees have a great belief in their capabilities to perform well in the job (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 1999). Accordingly, negative impact of resistance to change on job performance and satisfaction via psychological empowerment would be mitigated when the level of intellectual stimulation of transformational leadership is high.
The job performance and job satisfaction of employees can be increased by transformational leaders providing individual consideration that link employees’ needs to the shared perception of change. In the meanwhile, individualized consideration provides a number of opportunities to employees to help themselves develop their full potential (Kark & Shamir, 2002), such as self-determination, responsibility, and self-efficiency, which should result in higher levels of job performance and satisfaction of employees with relatively high psychological empowerment (Wayne, Liden, & Sparrowe, 2000). Hence, job performance and satisfaction may increase if the leader expresses the consideration and support to the needs of employees. In other words, transformational leader can integrate the interest of employees with organizational goals by which the employees can recognize the advantage of the change and therefore can overcome their initial resistance and increase their performance and satisfaction via developing their psychological empowerment (Haslam, 2001).
transformational leadership cannot prevent resisting subordinates from decrements in their psychological empowerment which, in turn, should result in lower levels of job performance and satisfaction. Thus, when resistance to change happens, the role of transformational leadership becomes highly important and should be paid more attention to. According to the leadership theories, transformational leaders may inform employees of how to clarify resistance to change (Eisenbach, Watson, & Pillai, 1999). As aforementioned, transformational leadership would help buffer the negative influence of resistance to change on job performance and satisfaction via facilitating employees to uphold their psychological empowerment. Hence, the present study expects a negative relationship between resistance to change and job performance and satisfaction via empowerment psychology when employees’ perceived transformational leadership is low. Therefore, the following hypothesis can be advanced:
Hypothesis 5: The indirect relationship of resistance to change on individual performance through psychological empowerment would be more pronounced for lower rather than higher levels of transformational leadership.
Hypothesis 6: The indirect relationship of resistance to change on job satisfaction through psychological empowerment would be more pronounced for lower rather than higher levels of transformational leadership.
METHOD
Sample and Data Collection
keep pace with the rapid globalization and intense competition, it is difficult for companies to get the strong advantages to compete with the competitors in the market. Thus, to enhance the market share and their operational and financial efficiency, both companies went through a series of adjustments last year. In particular, they managed to achieve a reasonable employee distribution through giving increasing redundancies and forced retirement to mitigate problems caused by the steadily increasing aging workforce. Moreover, in order to increase the efficiency of communication between subordinates and superiors, they made efforts to restructure their organization from a vertical one to a relatively horizontal one. In addition, significant changes also occurred in the other aspects, including recruitment policies, incentive systems and marketing programs. However, due to the unclear or wrong recognition of changes, employees resisted to the organizational changes rather than accepted them. Thereby, the leaders in the organization play a key role to mitigate these problems so that the organizational changes can achieve the expectations.
After the brief interviews, the questionnaires were designed and implemented to all employees of these two companies. I mailed all respondents in person to brief them about the purposes of the present research and explained the research, the questionnaire and the envelope. Two hundred questionnaires were distributed to respondents by the HR of the companies. Each survey envelop contained a cover letter that was used to state matters needing attention and participation was voluntary. Moreover, the letter instructed the respondents to complete the survey and handed it to the HR of the company. In order to ensure the privacy, respondents sealed the completed questionnaire in the envelopes. Finally, the HR will send all questionnaires to me.
Measures
Respondents offered self-report for all variables. All measures in the present research were used originally in English and therefore translated by myself. While the questions about employees’ initial reactions to change were in past tenses, because of the organizational changes happening one year ago, the questions regarding their current feeling of their job and work-related outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction and individual performance) were in present tenses. Thus, the employees provided their initial resistance to organizational changes they were confronted with from a retrospective perspective, whereas they reported their present perceptions of psychological empowerment, performance, satisfaction, and the extent to which their leader are transformational.
Resistance to change was measured using a fifteen-item scale developed by Oreg
(2006). It included three subscales which were consistent with multidimensional conceptualization of resistance to change. Specifically, five items were used to measure affective dimension, including both positive and negative feelings about change, such as “I was afraid of the change”; another five items were on the behavioral level to measure employees’behaviors in opposition to the change, such as “I protested against the change”; the rest five were on the cognitive level to lead employees to evaluate the benefits of the change, such as “I believed that the change would benefit the organization” (reversed item). The rating scale was anchored at 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). In the present study, the scale’s alpha coefficient of resistance to change was 0.83.
Psychological empowerment was assessed using a 12-item version of Spreitzer's
four subscales were measured to form a single empowerment score; scale’s alpha coefficient of psychologicalempowerment was 0.83.
Self-reported job performance was assessed using a five-item general performance
measurement (Denison, Hooijberg, & Quinn, 1995) which was based on the anchor at 1 (worse) to 7 (good). The two sample-items were “X’s level of performance is…” and “Compared to peers, X performs...” The scale’s alpha coefficient of self-reported job performance was 0.90.
Job satisfaction was measured with a 15-item scale, derived from Notenbomer, Roelen
and Groothoff (2006). Scale items referred to general satisfaction, working time, working content, task variety, working condition, salary, supervisor, colleagues, briefings, work demanding, autonomy and career development, all of which were measured on a seven-point Likert-scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The sample items were “I am satisfied with my working conditions” and “Education and training in my job improve my career perspectives”. In the present study, the scale’s alpha coefficient of job satisfaction was 0.86.
Transformational leadership was assessed with a 24-item scale developed by
Podsakoff (1990). The respondents were asked to assess the extent to which leaders displayed transformational leadership on a seven-point scale, ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). Sample items were: “My leader has a clear understanding of where we are going”, and “My leader always seeking new opportunities for the organization”. In the present study, the scale’s alpha coefficient of transformational leadership was 0.89.
Control variables. The potential effects of demographic variables, such as respondents’
age, gender organizational tenure, and education were reasonably expected to be connected with the dependent and independent variables in the present model and therefore controlled for.
Data analysis
empowerment, self-report job performance, job satisfaction, and transformational leadership were analyzed by Pearson correlation (two-tails). The significance levels were set at .01, .05 and .00.
Second, previous researches showed that demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, education, tenure) may influence employees’ resistance to change, psychological empowerment, job performance and job satisfaction. In order to identify these potential confounders, t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation were conducted to examine the relationships between these confounders with other variables in the present study. Only age was found to be related with job performance, job satisfaction and psychological empowerment. Therefore, as a confounder, age was regressed on the independent variables in the first step.
RESULT
Descriptive Statistics
Means, standard deviations and inter-correlations of all variables in the present study are shown in Table 1. As expected, resistance to change was significantly and negatively related to psychological empowerment (r=-.29, p<.01), to self-reported job performance .19, p<.01), to job satisfaction .36, p<.01) and to transformational leadership (r=-.45, p<.01). Regarding psychological empowerment, it was significantly and positively related to self-reported job performance, job satisfaction and transformational leadership (r=.29, p<.01; r=.63, p<.01; r=.45, p<.01, respectively). Moreover, transformational leadership related significantly and positively to self-reported job performance and job satisfaction (r=.28, p<.01; r=.69, p<.01, respectively). In addition, it can be noted that age was significantly and positively related to psychological empowerment (r=.24, p<.01), to transformational leadership (r=.20, p<.01), and to job satisfaction (r=.20, p<.01), but age did not significantly relate to self-reported performance.
Table 1 Means, Standard deviations, and Correlations of the Variables
variable M D 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1.Age 33.39 8.86 -- 2.Gender 1.27 .45 -.13 --3.Education 1.56 .55 -.22** .04 -- 4.Tenure 3.90 3.33 .54** .04 -.22** -- 5.Resistance to change 2.93 .85 -.04 .05 -.11 .04 -- 6.Psychological empowerment 4.86 .78 .24** -.13 -.11 .12 -.29** -- 7. Transformational leadership 4.93 .70 .20** -.05 .05 .05 -.45** .45** -- 8. Self-report performance 5.28 .95 .09 .10 .01 .05 -.19** .29** .28** -- 9. Job satisfaction 4.96 .83 .20** -.12 .02 .01 -.36** .63** .69** .18* -- Note. N=199, * p<.05, **p<.01 Tests of hypotheses
(B=-.29, p<.00). These findings provide support for hypotheses 1 and 2 predicting that resistance to change would be negatively related to self-reported job performance and satisfaction.
The results concerning of Hypothesis 3 and Hypothesis 4 were summarized in Table 2 with the relevant Sobel tests of mediation. Resistance to change was directly negatively related to psychological empowerment (B=-.22, p<.00). In turn, psychological empowerment was directly positively related to self-reported job performance and satisfaction (B=.24, p<.00; B=.46, p<.00, respectively). Furthermore, mediation analyses showed that resistance to change did indeed have significant negative indirect effects on self-reported job performance and job satisfaction, with the indirect effect on job performance (Sobel Z=-2.11, p<.001) and job satisfaction (Sobel Z=-3.97, p<.001) being significantly mediated by psychological empowerment.
Table 2 Results of mediating effects of psychological empowerment on the relationship between resistance to change and self-report job performance and job satisfaction
Dependent Variable Psychological empowerment Self-reported performance Job satisfaction 1. Age .19** .18** .08 .07 .02 .16** .15** .04 2. Resistance to change -.22*** -.18* -.11 -.29*** -.17*** 3. Psychological empowerment .24** .46*** R2 .06** .13*** .01 .04* .10*** .04** .16*** .44*** ∆R2 .06** .08*** .01 .04* .05** .04** .13*** .27***
Indirect Effect of Resistance to Change via Psychological Empowerment on
Indirect Effect Sobel Z P
Self-report job performance
-.05 -2.11 .00
Job satisfaction -.10 -3.97 .00
The results of the interactions from the liner regressions designed to test the moderator effect of transformational leadership as predicted in hypothesis 5 and hypothesis 6 are shown in Table 3. In the upper section of Table 3, after controlling for the control variable (age) in step 1, a second step of a liner regression indicated that resistance to change was insignificantly and negatively related to psychological empowerment, whereas transformational leadership was significantly and positively related to psychological empowerment. However, the third step testing interaction effects indicated that the main effects (step2) were not qualified by an interaction effect of resistance to change by transformational leadership for psychological empowerment (B=.05, p>.05). Furthermore, resistance to change and transformational leadership did not significantly interact in their effects on self-reported job performance and job satisfaction (B=-.02,
r<.05; B=.07, r<.05, respectively). Therefore, I concluded that these results did not
provide any support for the hypothesized role of transformational leadership in the indirect effects of resistance to change on job performance and satisfaction through psychological empowerment.
Table 3 Results of Moderated Mediation
Mediator variable model: Empowerment psychology
Predictor B se t p Age .13 .05 2.56 .01 Resistance to change -.09 .05 -1.66 .10 Transformational leadership .28 .06 5.03 .00 Resistance to change*Transformational leadership .05 .05 1.11 .27
Dependent variable model:
Self-report performance Job satisfaction
DISCUSSION
The aim of present study was to offer a better understanding of resistance to change by examining its direct and indirect effects on employees’ psychological empowerment and job outcomes of job performance and job satisfaction and exploring the moderating role of transformational leadership in these effects. As hypothesized, findings of present study showed resistance to change have directly negative relationship with job performance and job satisfaction. In the meanwhile, the indirect relationship between them via psychological empowerment also has proven. However, the research did not find the moderating role of transformational leadership for psychological empowerment and these job outcomes.
Theoretical implication
The present study shows that resistance to change has a negative impact on the employees’ job performance and job satisfaction. The findings are supportive with the results of other studies (e.g. Miller, 1994; Piderit, 2000), which present that resistance to change is an important predictor of worse job performance and less job satisfaction. Moreover, the present study claims that resistance to change is closely related to lower psychological empowerment, and lower empowerment will reduce employees’ job performance and satisfaction. These findings also are in line with the results of previous studies (Spreitzer, 1995; Drury, 2005), which show that resistance to change is negatively related to psychological empowerment and psychological empowerment is positively related to job performance and satisfaction. However, the present study goes beyond the previous researches. Besides the direct relationships between resistance to change and job performance and satisfaction, this study at the same time indicates the indirect impact of resistance to change on performance and satisfaction. In particular, the findings in the present study compensate the previous results by providing that the psychological empowerment is a necessary mediating mechanisms through which resistance to change may reduce employees’ job performance and job satisfaction.
of resistance to change for employees’ job outcomes, let alone that research has focused on examining factors that moderate these negative influences of resistance to change. The present study contributes to the literature by exploring the potential moderating role of transformational leadership in this regard. However, contrary to hypotheses, transformational leadership did not moderate the relationships between resistance to change and its consequences of decrements in psychological empowerment, job performance and job satisfaction. In the previous literatures, transformational leadership was treated as an effective approach in the organizational change process because it could help to enhance psychological empowerment, job performance and job satisfaction and reduce resistance to change (Eisenbach, et al, 1999; Geller, 2002; Podsakoff, et al, 1996). Although transformational leadership was found to have significant main direct effects on psychological empowerment, job performance and job satisfaction, the present study showed that transformational leadership failed to buffer the negative effects of employees’ resistance to change on these variables. In other words, the findings suggest that the high level of transformational leadership has no effect on securing job performance and satisfaction via psychological empowerment when employees experienced resistance to change. Thus, rather than buffering the negative effects of resistance to change, transformational leadership seem to compensate for its negative consequences for employees’ psychological empowerment, job performance, and job satisfaction.
Practical implications
The present research also has important contributions to the managerial implications. First of all, it confirmed that resistance to change has a negative influence on the organization in the change process. In particular, resistance to change is negatively related to psychological empowerment, which has a further negative impact on employees’ individual job performance and satisfaction. In other words, employees who were anxious, angry and stressed from the change, exert less job satisfaction and worse job performance. Therefore, our findings suggested that resistance to change should be treated as an alarm to remind organization to check whether the change may destroy the employees’ psychological empowerment that makes them lose confidence, autonomy and impact on their work, after which it could result in worse work performance and lower job satisfaction.
Limitation and future research
There are several limitations in the present study. Firstly, this study performed in China which is to some extent affected by the culture of China. Research in different cultures has proven that transformational leadership may influence outcomes of employee (Chen & Farh 1999). Thus it is likely that our findings are culturally specific and cannot be applied to other countries. At the same time, the sample of this research was collected from the two family-owned manufacture companies, the main findings can represent what these two companies faced and also can provide the specific suggestions for the organizations development, and however, it decreases the generalizability of our finding. Secondly, I did not gather additional and more objective information to measure the variables, the present research only measured the perceptions of the employees. Self-report measurement could increase the possibility of socially desirable reactions and of common method variance in the data. King and Anderson (1995) noted that such problems may be obvious when facing complex and sensitive matters, such as resistance to change. However, it should be found that average scores on the main scales used in this research analysis were not extremely high, which suggested that social desirable answers should not be an important issue and concern in this study.
Conclusion
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