Journal of Change Management Commitment to

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Commitment to Organizational Change: A Critical Review Stephen Jaros a a College of Business, Southern University, USA Online publication date: 26 February 2010

To cite this Article Jaros, Stephen(2010) 'Commitment to Organizational Change: A Critical Review', Journal of Change

Management, 10: 1, 79 — 108 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14697010903549457 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14697010903549457

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Journal of Change Management Vol. 10, No. 1, 79– 108, March 2010

Commitment to Organizational Change: A Critical Review

Downloaded By: [Jaros, Stephen] At: 12:48 26 February 2010

STEPHEN JAROS College of Business, Southern University, USA

ABSTRACT This article provides a critical, narrative review of existing findings from the organizational behavior literature on the assessment of employee commitment to change initiatives. First, articles that have assessed commitment to change and attempted to link it to antecedents and/or outcomes are analyzed. Second, implications of these results and recommendations for future research are provided, focusing on the need to clarify the dimensionality of change commitment, its measurement, its relationship to organizational commitment, and its relationship to culture. KEY WORDS : Commitment to change, change management, organizational commitment, goal commitment, critical review, multi-level analysis

Introduction

As markets become ever more global, de-regulated, and competitive, strategic adaptability, which often translates into the implementation of new goals and change initiatives, is becoming a requirement for many organizations. This fact of business life has made commitment to change initiatives more salient for managers and employees (Conner and Patterson, 1982; Fisher and Selman, 1992; Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999; Armenakis and Harris, 2009). Managers who can get their subordinates to commit to new goals, programs, policies, and procedures may stand a better chance of having these critical business activities successfully implemented (Kotter, 1996). Because this trend reflects relatively new developments in the business environment, the literature on this topic is of a more recent vintage than that of other foci of commitment, such as commitment

Correspondence Address: Stephen Jaros, Southern University, College of Business, 12445 Mollylea Drive, Baton Rouge, LA 70815, USA. Email: [email protected] 1469-7017 Print/1479-1811 Online/10/010079–30 # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14697010903549457


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to the organization, or commitment to the union or work group, all of which have been studied for several decades (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005). Nevertheless, the commitment to change (C2C) literature has arguably reached a critical mass, if not for formal meta-analysis, but such that a qualitative assessment of important studies and findings might be helpful to researchers seeking a way forward in advancing our understanding of how employees develop C2C and its impact on organizational outcomes. While other researchers have analyzed and reviewed the theoretical bases for commitment to change (cf. Coatsee, 1999) and the motivational processes that underlie employee reactions to change initiatives more generally (cf. Armenakis and Harris, 2009), no study has specifically focused on analyzing, integrating, and drawing research implications from the empirical commitment to change literature. Additionally, the Coatsee (1999) article, which is more closely focused on C2C than the Aremenakis and Harris article, was published 10 years ago, and in the interim a significant amount of theoretical and empirical work on C2C has emerged (the development of the Meyer/Herscovitch three-component model of C2C, for example). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to critically review existing empirical findings from the literature on C2C, the attitudinal and behavioral antecedents and outcomes associated with it, and to offer recommendations for future research in these areas. First, a theoretical overview is provided that critically compares, contrasts, and integrates existing theoretical models of C2C. Then, articles that empirically address C2C are analyzed for the hypotheses tested and research findings. This section of the article is structured around antecedents and outcomes of C2C with assessments of how C2C has been conceptualized and measured interspersed throughout. The purpose of this part of the article is to assist researchers who are not currently experts in the area, but are interested in the C2C concept and thinking about studying it, in getting up to speed with the key issues and findings generated and addressed by past research. Finally, implications of these results are discussed and recommendations for future research in the C2C area are provided. These recommendations focus on making progress in establishing the construct validity of C2C, improving our measurement of C2C, developing a theoretical framework for how C2C develops, and issues related to the multi-level and cross-cultural assessment of C2C. Thus, the second part of the article is intended to benefit anyone, expert or new to the literature, in crafting new research projects. Theoretical Overview

Commitment to change is an ‘action commitment’, in that unlike other forms of work commitment that are directed at relatively static entities such as ‘teams’ or ‘the organization’, C2C usually reflects an employee’s level of attachment to the implementation of new work rules, policies, programs, budgets, technology, and so forth, all of which are dynamic processes (Neubert and Wu, 2009). Thus, theorists have tended to model the development of C2C as a dynamic process as well. Conner (1992) proposes that C2C reflects internalization of a change program, the end result of a three-stage process which begins with an awareness of, followed by an acceptance of, the need for the change initiative. Coatsee (1999) builds on this model by incorporating Lawler’s (1992) concept


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of involvement (defined as a product of change-related information, knowledge, empowerment, and rewards), and shared goals/values. In other words, C2C reflects a state in which employees are made aware of a change, have the skills needed to implement it, are empowered to implement it, are motivated to do so by adequate rewards, and share the vision exemplified by the change. Thus, while Conner’s model is purely psychological, focusing on mental states such as awareness of an acceptance of the need for change, Coatsee’s model incorporates both psychological factors (awareness) and their interaction with objective factors (skills possession) and organizational context (reward structure). Also, by linking acceptance to the notion of goals/value congruence, Coatsee explicitly describes the condition needed for acceptance of, and thus commitment to, change that is only implicit in Conner’s theory. Additionally, Armenakis and colleagues (Armenakis et al., 1993; Armenakis and Harris, 2009) have also developed a model of the factors that motivate employees to commit to change. It encompasses: (a) discrepancy between the status quo and a desired state of affairs; (b) perceived change appropriateness; (c) change efficacy (can the employee and organization successfully implement the change?); (d) support for the change from leaders; and (e) perceived valence of the change for the employee. Their conceptualization of C2C is therefore also ‘unidimensional’, reflecting an employee’s willingness to support the change. Compared to the Coatsee and Conner models, Armenakis and colleague’s model clarifies the factors that determine the employee’s awareness of the need for change (a perceived discrepancy between the status quo and a desired state), and broadens Coatsee’s concept of skills beyond those possessed solely by the employee to include his/her assessment of the organization’s capabilities as well. The model also explicitly recognizes that the efforts of leaders may influence an employee’s felt-need for change and thus willingness to commit to it. The notion of ‘perceived valance’ of the change seems analogous to Coatsee’s notion of goal/value congruence, though it also conveys more of a sense of economic interest, whereas the Coatsee view seems broader and thus could encompass altruistic values as well. Finally, more recently, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) argue that C2C has three dimensions, reflecting normative (obligation-based), continuance (cost-based), and affective (feelings-based) attachments to change initiatives. Meyer and Herscovitch accept the motivational bases for C2C described by Conner, Coatsee, Armenakis and colleagues, but focus on the notion that commitment to change is a multidimensional construct, not a single, psychologically undifferentiated state. The model proposes that different types of goal/value congruence (in Coatsee’s terms) or perceived change valences (in Armenakis’s terms) will lead to the development of different forms of C2C: valence perceptions based on costs incurred from failing to support the change will lead to the development of continuance C2C, those based on positive feelings towards the change will produce affective C2C, and those based on a sense of obligation towards the change effort will foster normative C2C. What all these conceptualizations share is the notion that C2C reflects some kind of attachment to and involvement in the change initiative, which results from awareness of the change, some combination of motivating factors, be they


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goal congruence, affective affinity, or self-interest, and the mental/physical ability to work on behalf of the change initiative. Thus, theoretically, this discussion shows that the intellectual development of models of C2C has been one of elaboration: Conner offers the basic framework, which Coatsee, Armenakis, and Meyer/Herscovitch have fleshed out. These models also share some common ideational roots: Normative C2C’s intellectual legacy is ultimately based on Aristotelian concepts of ‘good name’ and ‘good faith’, where one commits to a change because one feels that doing so is part of the employment ‘contract’ (implicit or explicit) that one has agreed to, and is thus to an extent honor-bound to uphold. Similarly, continuance commitment to change is partially rooted in concepts of ‘face saving’: The employee commits to change because they fear that peers such as co-workers will feel letdown and their reputation will suffer if they fail to do so. Another ideational basis, shared by the Armenakis concept and the Meyer and Allen model of C2C, is that of dissonance reduction: the employee might commit to a change initiative because there is currently a discrepancy between the organizational status quo and its stated goals and values that the change initiative could resolve. Finally, all of the models share the same concerns with respect to outcomes of C2C: higher levels of C2C should lead to behaviors that are supportive of the change effort. Thus, to summarize, the key issues raised by this theoretical overview and to be addressed by the review of the empirical literature are: (a) does empirical research support the motivational components of these models, and to what extent are the more elaborated models (cf. Armenakis, Coatsee) superior to Conner’s general approach; (b) is Meyer/Herscovitch’s three-dimensional conceptualization an improvement on the unidimensional approach of the other models? And (c) does C2C positively predict change-supportive outcomes? Method: Selection of Empirical Research

Since this is a review of the empirical C2C literature, to be included in the review, a study had to: (1) empirically assess ‘commitment to change’, either for construct validity purposes or to assess its antecedents and/or outcomes; and (2) be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Articles that focused on commitment to aspects of change processes unrelated to these issues and/or did not assess the C2C construct itself (Dolcourt and Zuckerman, 2003; Fjortoft, 2007; Pereles et al., 1997; Wakefield et al., 2003) were not included in the analysis of antecedents/outcomes of commitment to change, though some of their insights are drawn upon in the research recommendations section. The studies selected for analysis were chosen by searching for specific terms including ‘commitment to change’, ‘change commitment’, ‘organizational commitment to change’, and ‘change management’, ‘affective commitment to change’, ‘continuance commitment to change’, and ‘normative commitment to change’, in the LexisNexis and EBSCO Research Databases (which include PsycINFO, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, SocINDEX and Business Source Premier/Complete). Additionally, a snowball method (review of references cited) was used on these and the articles generated from the database searches to identify


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other articles of interest. Articles were then read to ascertain their relevance in making a contribution to the concept, antecedents, and/or outcomes of commitment to change. Over 30 articles were read and citation counts assessed to determine which articles made the most impactful contributions, but this study is intended to be comprehensive in its coverage of the literature with respect to issues (1) and (2) above, so articles were not included if they did not address those issues. Studies included in the review are cited in the references, and studies read but not included in the review are indicated in the Appendix.


Commitment to Change: Antecedents

This section of the article reviews studies that have focused on determining what factors lead to the development of commitment to change. Summaries of key study attributes are reported in Table 1. These studies show some similarities, but mostly differences, in the ways they conceptualize and measure commitment to change, and the antecedents tested. Five of the six studies conceived of C2C as a unidimensional construct, but even among these considerable conceptual diversity is evident: Lau and Woodman (1995) defined C2C as a ‘specific attitude towards change’; Conway and Monks (2008) and Herold et al. (2008) conceptualized it as an affective reaction to change; Fedor et al. (2006) defined it as a cognitive intention to commit to change; and Neubert and Cady (2001, study 2) conceived C2C as similar to goal commitment, emphasizing a willingness to put forth effort on behalf of the change. A sixth study, Chen and Wang (2007), adopted the multidimensional approach developed by Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) positing that employees experience affective, continuance, and normative commitments to change. Thus, no two studies used the same scale to measure commitment to change. Concerning the factors hypothesized as antecedents of commitment to change, there has been relatively little effort made to fully assess the relevance of the motivational theories of C2C such as those developed by Armenakis and colleagues (1993) or Coatsee (1999). No study has comprehensively tested either model, though Lau and Woodman’s (1995) comes closest to testing the Armenakis model via its ‘change schema’ construct, which captures the employee’s sense of the impact, salience, meaning, significance, and their personal control over the change. Neubert and Cady (2001) assess aspects of these models via their concepts of change efficacy, supervisory expectations, and expected rewards, as do the two studies by Herold and colleagues (Fedor, Caldwell, and Herold, 2006, 2008), which assess job-level and work-unit impact of the change, and (in the latter study) the impact of change-oriented leadership from supervisors on employee C2C. Likewise, Conway and Monks (2008) assessed the import of expected rewards, communication about the change, and transformational/ transactional leadership on C2C. Additionally, two factors that do not readily fit in to any existing motivational model – locus of control and organizational commitment – were assessed as causal factors in multiple studies. Additionally, Neubert and Cady (2001) were also unable to find a linkage between yet another aspect of these models, perceived rewards, and commitment to change. Overall, these studies provide partial support for aspects of the theoretical models: Change schema (Lau and Woodman, 1995), perceived change efficacy

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Table 1. Summary of studies investigating antecedents of commitment to change Paper/Article

Commitment to change concept

Type of change

Method

Proposed elimination of traditional university bonfire ceremony, student sample

CrossEight-item scale ‘Change schema’, locus sectional SEM created for of control, analysis study organizational commitment, dogmatism, general attitude towards change

Change schema and general attitude towards change positively predicted C2C, but organizational commitment had a stronger, negative impact.

Neubert and Cady Unidimensional goal (2001, study 2) oriented N ¼ 413 Administrative employees at a Midwestern (USA) University

Customer service initiative among university staff

Longitudinal time-lagged regression

Modification of HKW goal commitment scale

External compliance factors (rewards, coworker and supervisor expectations) and affective factors

Affective antecedents including organizational commitment, teamwork commitment, and change efficacy positively predicted C2C, compliance measures had no impact

Chen and Wang (2007) N ¼ 256 Chinese customs workers

New performance appraisal system at Chinese Customs offices

Crosssectional, Hierarchical regression

Meyer/ Herscovitch (2002) scales

Locus of control (LC), demographic controls

Employees with high LC had low affective and normative C2C, employees with low LC had high continuance C2C

Lau and Woodman (1995) N ¼ 331 Student sample University

Unidimensional ‘specific attitude towards change’

Multidimensional: affective, continuance, normative commitment to change

Measure used

Antecedents

Key findings


Multiple kinds of change impacting employees across the 34 organizations

Multi-level, hierarchical linear modeling

Four-items, Group-level change Change favorableness written for study favorableness, work and positively predicted C2C, job unit change interacted with work and job level change to predict C2C

Herold et al. (2008) N ¼ 343, Employees in 34 organizations

Unidimensional: affective commitment to change

Multiple kinds across 30þ organizations, leader-subordinate groups

Multi-level, hierarchical linear modeling

Four-items from Meyer/ Herscovitch (2002) affective scale

Transformational leadership, changeoriented leadership, job-level impact of change, organizational commitment

Both types of leadership interacted with job-level impact to predict C2C, organizational commitment had direct positive impact on C2C, change-oriented leadership less impactful than transformational leadership

Conway and Unidimensional, Monks (2008) affective commitment N ¼ 259 to change Community care and maternity hospital employees in Ireland

New ‘patientfocused’ service enhancement program in three Irish health service institutions

Crosssectional, multiple regression

Six-item Meyer/ Herscovitch (2002) Affective scale

Transformational and transactional leadership, human resources practices

Move to patient-focused care, communications, and reward strategy positively predicted C2C, transactional leadership negatively predicted C2C

Notes: SEM: structural equation modeling; C2C: commitment to change; HWK: Hollenbeck, Williams, and Klein; LC: locus of control.


Fedor et al. (2006) Unidimensional, N ¼ 806 ‘intent to change’ Managers and office workers in 34 different organizations

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(Neubert and Cady, 2001), perceived change favorableness (Fedor et al., 2006; Conway and Monks, 2008) and job-level impact of change (Fedor et al., 2006; Herold et al., 2008) all were found to have positive effects on commitment to change. Another aspect of these models, managerial actions and leadership, received mixed support. Neubert and Cady (2001) found that supervisory expectations had no impact on C2C, but Herold et al. (2008) found that the use of transformational and change-oriented leadership did. However, in contrast to Herold et al. (2008), Conway and Monks (2008) found that while transformational leadership did not predict C2C, transactional leadership had a negative impact. Differences in how these studies were conducted could possibly account for these variant findings: the Neubert and Cady study was longitudinal whereas the Herold et al. and Conway/Monks studies were cross-sectional. Neubert and Cady also used a hybrid measure of leader behavior that combined elements from scales tapping transformational leadership, justice perceptions, and supervisor support for the change, and used a goal commitment-based measure of C2C. The Herold study and the Conway/Monks study used Meyer/ Herscovitch’s affective C2C scale, but the former employed a truncated four-item version while the latter used the complete six-item scale. Both used established measures of transformational leadership. In the case of these two studies, a critical factor could be the nature of the control variables included in the analyses. Herold et al. conducted a multi-level analysis and included organizational commitment as a control but Conway and Monks included a much broader array of controls, including contextual factors such as type of medical facility employed at, as well as controls for HR practices such as job autonomy, level of training, satisfaction with rewards and job security, and level of teamwork required on the job. Thus, different control factors could have affected the relationships reported between types of leadership and C2C in these studies. Mixed findings also characterize the assessments of organizational commitment and locus of control. Neubert and Cady (2001) and Herold et al. (2008) both found organizational commitment to be a significant, positive predictor of C2C, but Lau and Woodman (1995) found a negative relationship. This discrepancy could be explained by how organization members viewed the perceived change: in the former studies, the change was perceived as consistent with existing organizational values, so employees highly committed to the organization were willing to commit to the change. However, in the Lau and Woodman study, the proposed change (ending a traditional university bonfire ceremony) was perceived as contrary to organizational values, so those highly committed to the organization refused to commit to the change. Also, while Lau and Woodman (1995) found no relationship between locus of control and C2C, Chen and Wang (2007) found that locus of control had a positive relationship with two of Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) commitment to change constructs, but a negative effect on the third. Thus, in this instance, the multi-dimensional approach was perhaps able to tease out differences in how locus of control influenced C2C missed by the unidimensional approach. As of now, while aspects of the major theoretical models have been confirmed, and in a manner suggesting that the more elaborated approaches of Coatsee, Armenakis and colleagues is an improvement over the basic model proposed by Conner (1982), assessment of the major motivational models is proceeding in a


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piecemeal, and not the more desirable comprehensive, manner. Overall, these findings highlight the need to clarify: (a) the possible need for comprehensive tests of motivational models of C2C; and (b) the usefulness of modeling C2C as unidimensional or multidimensional and how it should be measured. These issues are explored in the Research Directions section of the article.


Consequences of Commitment to Change

Like the studies that focused on causes of C2C, studies that have assessed consequences of C2C have varied in how C2C has been conceptualized. While two of these studies consider C2C to be a unidimensional construct similar to identification with goals or the organization (cf. Hartline and Ferrell, 1996; Neubert and Cady, 2001, study 1), the four more recent studies have adopted the Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) multidimensional framework. Yet even among these studies there is variation in how the constructs are operationalized, with some using the full six-item scales but others (Meyer et al., 2007, Canadian sample) using truncated versions of the original measures. Not surprisingly, research into the consequences of C2C has for the most part focused on the impact of the construct on the employee’s willingness to engage in change-related behaviors (see Table 2 for comparison of key consequences studies). For example, Hartline and Ferrell (1996) examined managers commitment to a new service quality initiative as a mechanism influencing the behavior of hotel service workers. Neubert and Cady (2001) linked C2C with employee willingness to attend change-implementation meetings, while Meyer et al. (2007) assessed C2C’s impact on whether employees said that they merely complied with change mandates or enthusiastically championed them. This reflects researcher interest in testing the primary theoretical expectation about C2C outcomes: the ‘compatibility hypothesis’ (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002) which proposes that C2C should: (a) impact on change-related attitudes and behaviors; and (b) impact more strongly than other forms of work commitment, such as organizational commitment. The findings from these studies have been generally supportive. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) and Meyer et al. (2007) each found C2C to be a stronger predictor than organizational commitment of an employee’s willingness to enthusiastically support change programs. Another characteristic of this research is that the multidimensional studies have attempted to tease out differences in how affective, normative, and continuance C2C (AC2C, NC2C, and CC2C in Tables) affects outcomes. The basis for these investigations is the notion that since continuance C2C reflects being ‘forced’ to go along with a change due to the high costs of resisting it, affective and normative C2C reflect the employee’s ‘free’ choice to implement the change. Therefore, continuance C2C implies neutral or negative feelings about the change and thus should be associated with mere compliance with the change, while affective and normative C2C should lead to enthusiastic efforts (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002: Meyer et al., 2007) and a greater ability to cope with the change (Cunningham, 2006), and again results have been supportive. These findings also provide some support for the construct validity of the multidimensional model, since they suggest that the three dimensions really are distinguishable in their outcomes

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Table 2. Summary of studies focusing on consequences of commitment to change Paper/Article


Consequences assessed

Type of change

Method

Measure used

Hartline and Unidimensional, Ferrell (1996) identification with N ¼ 797, change Managers and customer service workers, 279 hotel units

Manager’s commitment to customer service initiative

Cross-sectional, SEM

Modified version of Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)

Use of empowerment and behavioral evaluation methods

Managers highly committed to the change were likely to use these methods to motivate subordinates to support the change

Neubert and Cady See Table 1 (2001, study 1) N ¼ 388(t1)/ 181(t2), political action committee workers

New membership drive among political action committee workers

Longitudinal, SEM

See Table 1

Willingness to attend membership drive meetings, make new sales calls

Employees with high C2C were more willing to engage in these behaviors, and succeeded in signing up more new members

Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) N ¼ 224 Graduate students in a psychology program N ¼ 157 Nurses working at various medical facilities

Multiple initiatives Mail survey, among two samples Hierarchical of hospital nurses in Linear Modeling many hospitals and university students

Multidimensional, affective, continuance, normative

Key findings

AC2C, NC2C, and Behavioral AC2C positively predicted CC2C scales continuum greater behavioral written for the study reflecting range of activity in both samples, change-support NC2C in one sample but actions not the other, CC2C in neither sample


Multidimensional: affective, continuance, normative

NCAA sponsored athletic department changes at 10 universities

Cross-sectional, SEM

Herscovitch and Coping with the Meyer (2002) scales change, turnover intentions

CC2C negatively impacted coping ability and positively impacted quitting intentions. NC2C positively impacted both, AC2C positively impacted coping ability

Meyer et al. (2007, Indian study) N ¼ 379 Departmental managers at an Indian company


Downsizing and restructuring at Indian firm

Cross-sectional, hierarchical regression and profile analysis

Herscovitch and Mere compliance, Meyer (2002) scales compliance, cooperation, and championing

NC2C and AC2C positively predicted championing, negatively predicted compliance, CC2C reverse

Meyer et al. (2007, Canadian study) N ¼ 699(t1), 337(t2) Employees of a Canadian energy company


Downsizing/reorganization at Canadian energy company

Longitudinal, time-lagged regression and profile analysis

Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) scales (truncated four-item versions)

Behavioral AC2C and NC2C continuum predicted changereflecting range of supportive behaviors, but change-support only concurrently. CCC actions predicted complianceonly behaviors, longitudinally. The three forms of C2C did not interact to predict behavior, but C2C was a better predictor than organizational commitment

Notes: SEM: structural equation modeling; C2C: commitment to change; AC2C: affective commitment to change; NC2C: normative commitment to change; CC2C: continuance commitment to change; NCAA: National Collegiate Athletic Association.


Cunningham (2006) N ¼ 299 Employees of 10 NCAA athletic departments

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(though this has not been shown for affective and normative C2C). These differences suggest that managers should focus their efforts more on cultivating affective and normative C2C, as opposed to continuance C2C. Thus, compared to the antecedents research, the outcomes research appears to be on somewhat firmer theoretical footing. The compatibility hypothesis is proving to be a solid conceptual basis upon which to build models hypothesizing C2C’s impact on change-related outcomes. However, this literature reveals the same schism between uni- and multidimensional conceptualizations of C2C evident in the antecedents literature, and a failure to agree on a common measure of C2C. And, this literature also points to the need to clarify the relationship between C2C and organizational commitment. Recall that in the antecedents literature, organizational commitment was modeled as a cause of C2C, but in the outcomes literature it has been treated as a covariate, something experienced simultaneously with C2C and that ‘competes’ with C2C as a predictor of change-related outcomes. Also, another shortcoming of this literature is a tendency to use self-reports as proxies for actual behavior. Cunningham (2006), for example, investigated C2C’s impact on turnover intentions, not actual quitting behavior. Likewise, the Meyer and colleagues studies have used C2C dimensions to predict self-reported willingness to champion change, rather than actual championing behavior. The one exception is Neubert and Cady (2001), which used C2C to predict actual attendance at change implementation meetings, and did so longitudinally, important when trying to make cause-effect inferences. Studies Assessing Both Causes and Consequences of Commitment to Change

Finally, three studies have examined both causes and consequences of C2C, and a summary of these articles is presented in Table 3. Again, these studies reflect differing beliefs about the dimensionality of C2C, with two of them (Ford et al., 2003; Neves, 2009) using a unidimensional concept, and one (Parish et al., 2008) using the Herscovitch/Meyer multidimensional approach. Neves actually uses one of the three Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) scales, the affective C2C measure, to operationalize commitment to change. On the antecedents side, these articles are similar to the studies described earlier, in that they tend to posit factors that capture some aspects of the Armenakis and colleagues, and Coatsee developmental models, such as perceived change appropriateness and perceived self-efficacy (Neves, 2009), fit with existing mission and supervisor relations (Parish et al., 2008) and supervisory support (Ford et al., 2003). Support for these model components was mostly favorable, though in the Neves study, self-efficacy failed to predict commitment to change. Perhaps most interesting was Parish et al.’s finding that continuance C2C was negatively predicted by motivation and supervisory relations, suggesting that if an employee has good relations with their boss, and is highly motivated to support the change program, they will not feel that they are being ‘forced’ or compelled to implement the change. On the consequences side, these studies are similar to the outcome studies described in Table 2, in that they focus on change-related outcomes. The results


Table 3. Summary of studies assessing causes and consequences of commitment to change Paper/Article


Ford et al. (2003) N ¼ 432 Police officers and sergeants from 11 police departments

Method

Unidimensional: focused on identification with change, willingness to put forth effort

Community policing practices among police officers

Parish et al. (2008) N ¼ 191 Employees from a “large not-forprofit” organization

Multidimensional: affective, continuance, normative

Reorganization, new technology introduction among transport services workers

Neves (2009) N ¼ 191 Portuguese university employees

Unidimensional: affective C2C

New performance Cross-sectional, appraisal system SEM path analysis among Portuguese university employees

Measures used

Antecedents

Outcomes

Cross-sectional, Six-item scale SEM path analysis written for study, influenced by the OCQ

Managerial support for change, experience with similar changes, organizational commitment

Community All three antecedents policing behaviors positively predicted C2C, which then positively predicted community policing behaviors

Cross-sectional, Herscovitch and SEM path analysis Meyer (2002) scales (truncated four-item versions)

Fit of change with existing mission, role autonomy, motivation, supervisory relations

Individual learning, implementation success, improved job performance

AC2C positively predicted by all four causes, NC2C by fit with vision and supervisory relations, CC2C negatively predicted by motivation and supervisory relations; AC2C positively predicted all three outcomes, NC2C only individual learning

Perceived change self-efficacy, perceived change appropriateness

Change-related actions, turnover intentions

Affective C2C positively predicted by change appropriateness, but not by self-efficacy; affective C2C negatively impacted turnover intentions and positively impacted selfreport change behaviors

Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) AC2C scale (truncated threeitem version)

Key findings

Notes: SEM: structural equation modeling; OCQ: Organizational Commitment Questionnaire; C2C: commitment to change; AC2C: affective commitment to change; NC2C: normative commitment to change; CC2C: continuance commitment to change.


Type of change

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show strong support for an affect-based unidimensional C2C construct. Both the Ford et al. (2003) and Neves (2009) studies utilized affect-based measures: Ford et al. used a scale developed from the organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ), a measure of affective organizational commitment, while Neves used Hescovitch and Meyer’s (2002) affective C2C scale. In both studies, C2C was a significant, positive predictor of change-related outcomes. Likewise, in the Parish et al. (2008) study, affective C2C was the only one of the three dimensions that predicted all three outcome variables. Continuance C2C did not predict any of them, while normative C2C predicted only one. Finally, while generally supporting the compatibility hypothesis related to outcomes, and for the most part supporting aspects of the motivational models, this research also reflects some of the weaknesses of the outcomes literature: a reliance on cross-sectional research designs despite an ostensible goal of making causal inferences, and the use of behavioral intent proxies for actual behavior. Implications and Directions for Future Research

What are the implications of these studies for future directions in commitment-tochange research? In the theoretical overview section, three issues were identified: the adequacy of the motivational models of C2C, the usefulness of an elaborated multidimensional approach to C2C, and C2C’s efficacy as a predictor of changerelated behaviors. Concerning the last issue, the existing findings seem clear: C2C does indeed predict change-related behaviors. Yet, concerning the first two issues, the evidence is mixed, and the review also raises additional issues as well. Thus, future research is needed to: (1) make additional progress in understanding the nature of the concept itself; (2) distinguish C2C from organizational commitment; (3) improve measurement of C2C; (4) determine how C2C develops, and (5) address issues related to choosing which types of employees and change to study. For each of these issues, the implications of the literature survey are discussed, and then specific directions for research implied by this discussion are identified. Table 4 contains a summary of these issues and the recommended directions for future research. (1) The Concept of Commitment to Change

The first step in understanding behavior that flows from a concept, such as C2C, is to establish the definition of the concept because this is a precondition for making behavioral attributions to it (Schwab, 1980). The review of the literature shows that disagreement exists over exactly what is meant by the term ‘commitment to change’, with a key issue being whether C2C is a unidimensional or multidimensional construct. Despite their differences, the multidimensional approach and the unidimensional approach discussed above seemingly share a common theme, C2C as an emotional state of mind is reflected in cognitions: in the unidimensional approach, commitment to change is defined as a general feeling (Lau and Woodman, 1995; Ford et al., 2003) and in the multidimensional approach as feelings of desire (affective C2C), obligation (normative C2C), or felt –need to commit to the change (continuance commitment to change,


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Table 4. Research issues and recommendations Research issue Commitment to change concept


Relationship between commitment to change and other work commitments

Measurement of commitment to change

Development of commitment to change

Decisions about employees to study

Recommendations 1) Studies that compare the predictive power of unidimensional and multidimensional C2C constructs, and whether normative C2C has a different factor structure and independent predictive utility compared to affective C2C. 2) Avoid usage of ‘intent to commit’ proxies for C2C. 3) If using only a single component of a multidimensional C2C construct, provide rationale for doing so. 1) CFA analysis to determine if continuance C2C and continuance OC are distinct constructs. 2) CFA analysis to distinguish C2C constructs from organizational commitment and goal commitment. 3) If modeling C2C as a cause of non-change related outcomes, like turnover, control for OC. 4) Explore possible reciprocal relations among organizational commitment and C2C. 1) Make sure item wording of C2C scales reflects the specific change being assessed. 2) Utilize LGM to capture how C2C develops, and influences outcomes, as changes are implemented over time. 3) Modifications to validated C2C scales should have a theoretical justification, and the modified scale should be empirically assessed before being used. 1) Studies that investigate core psychological processes that may inhibit or facilitate the development of C2C, such as cognitive dissonance, habituation, and entrainment. 2) Comprehensive assessments of theoretical models such as Conner (1992), Coatsee (1999), Armenakis et al. (2009). 1) Careful assessment of the change context: which departments/subunits/employee groups/job categories are affected, and possible multi-level effects. 2) Cross-cultural assessments of C2C processes using tests of statistical invariance. 3) If assessing C2C’s impact on behavior, avoid use of behavioral proxy and self-reports in lieu of actual behaviors.

Notes: C2C: commitment to change; OC: organizational change; CFA: confirmatory factor analysis; LGM: latent growth modeling.

continuance C2C). The issue is whether a model of three distinct feelings of commitment will predict outcomes better than a single general feeling of commitment. Among the articles adopting the multidimensional approach, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results generally showed that affective, continuance, and normative commitment to change scale items loaded on three separate factors, a prerequisite for establishing their distinguishability (Herscovitch and Meyer,


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2002). Furthermore, the correlations among these factors, with the exception of affective C2C and normative C2C, were for the most part modest, suggesting that there is not a great deal of conceptual overlap among them. These studies also found some evidence that affective, normative, and continuance C2C had different relations with outcomes such as turnover intentions (Cunningham, 2006) and change-related behaviors (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002; Meyer et al., 2007) and attitudes (Parish et al., 2008). Likewise, while Chen and Wang (2007) did not conduct a CFA to assess the factor structure of the Herscovitch and Meyer scales, they did report correlations among them that did not suggest much concept redundancy, and they also found that locus of control predicted them somewhat differently. On the other hand, some evidence of construct redundancy, particularly between affective and normative C2C was present as well. For example, when Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) modeled the impact of change commitment profiles, high and low combinations, of the three commitment to change constructs on the behavioral continuum, approximately 80% of the profiles reflected affective C2C and normative C2C at the same level, such that it was hard to fill the cells of profiles that have these forms of commitment at contrasting levels. This reflects the relatively high correlation among these two constructs, which tend to be highly correlated in organizational commitment research as well. Whether this high correlation is an inherent aspect of the affective and normative constructs themselves (perhaps the allegedly different normative and affective mindsets are largely redundant – Jaros, 2009), or is a measurement artifact of the Meyer and Allen scales, is yet to be fully resolved (Bergman, 2006; Jaros, 2007). In addition, Meyer et al. (2007) found that, among Indian employees, affective C2C and normative C2C were not distinguishable – items from both scales loaded on the same factor. Also, while the preponderance of the evidence suggests that affective, normative, and continuance C2C are distinguishable from each other in the sense that scale items load on separate factors, constructs can be distinguishable in factor analyses, and yet not assess the same construct domain (job satisfaction, job performance, and turnover intentions scales will load on separate factors, but of course refer to different constructs). Consider that in both Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) and Meyer et al. (2007), profile analyses showed that as long as affective C2C is high, no matter whether continuance C2C or normative C2C are high or low, the expression of commitment will be within a narrow range on the behavioral continuum used in these studies – between 72– 77 in both 2002 samples, and between 70– 81 in both 2007 samples. On the behavioral continuum, which ranges from active resistance to passive resistance to compliance, to cooperation, to championing, this translates into a finding that as long as affective C2C is high, the employee will exhibit a ‘high level of cooperation’ with the change effort, which suggests that perhaps this form of C2C alone is the critical factor. Likewise, Parish et al. (2008) found that only affective C2C predicted all three attitudinal and performance outcomes, normative C2C predicted only one, and much less strongly than affective C2C, while continuance C2C did not predict any outcomes. These findings call in to question the predictive validity of the three-component model in that they suggest that affective C2C is the only powerful predictor of behavior.



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However, one finding that does seem to provide unambiguous support for the predictive utility of this model is Cunningham’s (2006) result that continuance C2C was a significant positive predictor of turnover intentions, whereas normative C2C (direct effect) and affective C2C (indirect effect) had significant negative impacts on turnover intentions. Yet, these findings can be questioned because Cunningham (2006) did not control for organizational commitment, which by Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) ‘compatibility hypothesis’ should be a stronger predictor of an organizational outcome, turnover, than C2C should be. If organizational commitment had been included in the analyses, perhaps the significant findings for all three C2C constructs would have been rendered non-significant. In contrast to the feelings-based view of both the unidimensional and multidimensional perspectives described above, Fedor et al. (2006) define C2C as ‘the individual’s intentions to act on behalf of the change’, a concept which is devoid of emotional content and encompassing only behavioral intentions. In the organizational commitment literature, a consensus is emerging that behavioral-intentions and commitment are separate constructs (Bozeman and Perrewe, 2001; Jaros, 2009). Consistent with the traditional tri-partite definition of an attitude, maybe feelings of commitment to a change effort cause the formation of a behavioral intent to act, which leads to actual change-supportive behaviors. This implies a causal ordering among the concepts, testable by structural path analysis. But it also implies that behavioral intentions and commitment to change are not the same thing, meaning that Fedor et al. (2006) did not actually assess C2C. Indeed, the same group of authors that conducted Fedor et al. (2006) used a different conceptualization of C2C in Herold et al. (2008). In the latter study, C2C was not defined as a behavioral intention, but instead Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) concept of affective C2C was utilized. Thus, any substantive conclusions about differences and similarities across the two studies with respect to their findings about the causes of C2C might be confounded by this difference in the C2C constructs used, even though each was labeled ‘commitment to change’ in both studies. The approach of Herold et al. (2008) raises another conceptual issue that also pertains to Neves (2009) and Conway and Monks (2008) as well: in each of these studies, why was affective C2C analyzed while the normative and continuance C2C constructs were omitted? The latter are also part of the Meyer/Herscovitch model. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) considered affective C2C to be just one component in a three-component model of C2C. So was the choice to omit normative C2C and continuance C2C from analysis one of convenience, or did the authors of these studies believe that affective C2C alone captures the concept of C2C? Choices of this kind should be explained so as to improve the conceptual clarity of the C2C construct. This discussion implies the following directions for future research: first, to resolve the dimensionality issue, what is needed is research that compares the predictive power of the Meyer/Herscovitch constructs and the unidimensional constructs. For example, data could be collected on both the three Meyer/ Herscovitch measures and the Ford et al. (2003), Neubert and Cady (2001) or the Lau and Woodman (1995) measures, and their ability to predict important

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outcomes thereby compared. If the Meyer/Herscovitch measures predict outcomes above-and-beyond what the unidimensional measures are able to predict, that would support the multidimensional framework. However, if the additional Meyer/Herscovitch constructs do not provide additional predictive power, this would be supportive of the unidimensional approach. Second, researchers should avoid the use of C2C scales that model C2C as an ‘intent to’ construct, since this is better thought of as a consequence of C2C, not C2C itself. Third, when utilizing a component of the Meyer/Herscovitch model but not all of it, an explanation should be given as to why this is being done. Finally, within the Meyer/Herscovitch model, additional research is needed to support the idea that normative C2C is distinguishable from affective C2C, in terms of factor structure, and predictive utility. (2) How are Change Commitment and Other Forms of Commitment Related?

Another issue that remains unresolved is exactly how commitment to change is related to other forms of commitment, such as organizational commitment (OC). This issue is similar to topic (1), in that it partially concerns the construct validity of C2C, because one issue that needs to be clarified is whether C2C is redundant with organizational commitment. Of the studies that have used the Meyer/Herscovitch scales, for example, only Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) conducted CFAs that modeled both C2C and organizational commitment to determine the distinguishability of those measures. While that study’s CFA results indicated a six-factor model that included separate affective, normative, and continuance commitments to the organization and to change fit the data better than models that collapsed measures of change commitment and organizational commitment on to single factors, this model did not reach the level of ‘good fit’ on the RMSEA measure. The authors reported only one other fit statistic, the ECVI, so it’s not clear if multiple fit statistics would have altered this conclusion. Also, the very high continuance C2C and continuance OC correlations reported in studies two and three suggest a lack of discriminant validity between continuance C2C and continuance OC. Likewise, the failure of the continuance C2C measure to predict behavioral outcomes when controlling for organizational commitment also suggests that it lacks predictive utility. Note that in Meyer et al. (2007) in the Canadian sample, continuance C2C at time 1 did negatively predict turnover intentions at time 2 but in this analysis, organizational commitment was not controlled for. Meyer et al. (2007) did conduct preliminary analyses that showed that the three C2C constructs predicted the behavioral continuum better than did organizational commitment but this analysis was conducted at the block-level, so it could not be determined if each specific dimension of C2C had predictive utility when controlling for each specific dimension of organizational commitment. Likewise, in Cunningham (2006) and in Neves (2009), it would have been interesting to know if C2C predicted organizational turnover intentions when controlling for organizational commitment, because theoretically (as per the ‘compatibility thesis’) we would expect organizational commitment to be the stronger predictor of an organizational outcome like turnover intentions.



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Additionally, we also need to know more about their causal ordering. Lau and Woodman (1995) found that OC negatively predicted C2C, while Ford et al. (2003) found that OC positively predicted C2C. These contradictory findings suggest that organizational and C2C can be characterized as having reinforcing or conflicting goals: if employees are highly committed to the organization but perceive the change initiative as being contrary to the organization’s interests, they are not likely to be high in C2C. In contrast, highly organizationally-committed employees who perceive a change initiative as advancing the mission of the organization are likely to respond with high levels of commitment to the change (Huy, 1999). This implies that managers hoping to foster high levels of employee commitment to a change initiative must be able to persuade employees to believe that the goals of the change initiative are congruent with the goals of the organization. However, these inferences are tempered by the fact that in the two studies, these relations were derived from cross-sectional, not longitudinal, data. Conversely, though none of the studies reviewed here tested for this relationship, it could be the case that C2C influences organizational commitment as well. If an employee is experiencing a low level of OC because he/she is alienated, or perhaps just not enthused, about the current goals and mission of the organization, but his or her supervisor implements a change initiative that the employee is excited and enthused about, their high commitment to this change initiative could possibly have a positive influence on their OC, because the ‘changed’ organization will be more appealing to them. Specifically, high commitment to the change initiative could raise the psychological costs of leaving the organization (continuance C2C), and/or cause the employee to view the goals/missions of the organization in a more emotionally positive light (affective C2C). Future research could assess these possibilities by modeling reciprocal relations between change commitment and organizational commitment via longitudinal research. One other relationship that merits further study is how C2C relates to goal commitment (GC). Unlike the other studies, Neubert and Cady (2001) derived their change-commitment scale from a measure of goal commitment (GC), not organizational commitment. In doing so, the authors distinguished GC from C2C by arguing that ‘Program commitment . . . differs from the traditional conceptualization of goal commitment in that program commitment is a psychological attachment to the overall goals of a program rather than commitment to individual performance goals’ (Neubert and Cady, 2001, p. 422). This definition implies a strong relationship: both are goal-related, the alleged difference being that C2C has a focus on overall programmatic goals rather than individual goals. Yet, GC research has not confined itself to individual performance goals. Group-level and work-unit level GC has been studied as well (Klein and Mulvey, 1995 for example), and it would seem that for any type of impactful change, new goals for the employee would be formulated. Furthermore, the two sets of antecedents Neubert and Cady posited as causes of C2C, affective and compliance factors, were derived in large part from Locke et al.’s (1988) goal-commitment model. Even in studies that did not derive the C2C construct from GC, the antecedents studied frequently mirror those theorized as causes of GC. The ‘change schema’ antecedent analyzed by Lau and Woodman (1995), for example, includes factors


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such as the impact of the change on current practice (also assessed as an antecedent of C2C by Fedor et al., 2006; Herold et al., 2008), meaning of the change, self-efficacy, salience of the change, and personal control over the change – factors frequently studied in GC research. Locus of control was also posited as an important antecedent in this study, and in Chen and Wang (2007) as well. Overall, most of the antecedents posited as causes of C2C are ones that figure very prominently in models of goal commitment. This could be a case of ‘if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . it’s probably a duck.’ The problem of construct proliferation – the specification of many, often redundant, commitment constructs in organizational behavior research – is one that is frequently lamented (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesveran, 2005). Future research should investigate the distinguishability and predictive utility of the emerging C2C construct with the well-established goal commitment construct. Directions for future research (2): First, at least in the short-run, until their distinguishability is firmly established, studies that use the Herscovitch and Meyer scales in substantive research should first conduct CFA’s to determine the dimensionality of the scales in conjunction with measures of organizational commitment. This should also be done for studies that adopt a unidimensional approach as well, with respect to organizational and goal commitment. Second, if hypotheses involve only C2C and not organizational commitment, OC should be controlled for when testing for relationships with outcomes, as per Herold et al. (2008). Third, while controlling for OC implies that OC and C2C are covariates, it is possible that they have a causal/reciprocal relationship that may vary (causality may be positive or negative) depending on whether the employee is more committed to the change or to the organization, and future research could investigate these processes. Finally, theoretical work is needed to justify C2C as different from goal commitment, and empirical work is needed to establish C2C’s distinguishability from this seemingly quite similar construct. (3) Measurement of Commitment to Change

Researchers have to be able to measure the C2C construct, and that means choices have to be made: is it better to develop a scale from ‘scratch’ (Lau and Woodman, 1995), or to modify a scale used to measure some other kind of commitment, such as organizational commitment (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996) or goal commitment (Neubert and Cady, 2001)? Should a C2C scale already developed by someone else be employed (Cunningham, 2006)? Sometimes, these choices are compelled by the research agenda. If, like Lau and Woodman, one is operationalizing the construct for the first time, then the last option is not available. If, like Cunningham (2006), Chen and Wang (2007) or Parish et al. (2008), propositions derived from a particular model of C2C (in their cases, Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002), then the measures associated with that model should be used. Yet regardless of the choice made, without reliable, valid measures of C2C, it is difficult to draw substantive conclusions about relations among variables (cf. Schwab, 1980). In this regard, a comparison with organizational commitment is warranted, because most C2C measures used in the studies previously discussed are



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modifications of scales originally developed to measure organizational commitment, such as the Meyer/Allen measures and the OCQ. Assessment of commitment to change initiatives differs from the measurement of organizational commitment in two important ways. First, commitment to the organization is usually more of an enduring experience. As long as the employee is a member of organization X, they experience some, albeit fluctuating, level of commitment to organization X; and second, it is usually a unique and unambiguous experience. That is, when an employee is asked to fill out an organizational commitment questionnaire, there are usually no multiple entities that could reasonably be called ‘the organization’ for that employee (though in some rare cases there might be). The ‘target’ of the commitment they are being asked about by the researcher, the organization, is usually clearly understood by the employee (Vandenberghe, 2009). In contrast, by their nature, change initiatives tend to be of a shorter duration, since they are usually implemented to take the organization (or department or work-unit) from state A to state B, and thus typically have a finite start and end point, so C2C should be a less enduring, more transient state of mind. Furthermore, at any given point in time, the target of commitment, ‘change’, might be uncertain to the employee, because change initiatives may be either non-existent (if the organization is not undergoing change at that moment) or there might be multiple change initiatives underway, such that if an employee is asked to report their commitment to change, they might think to themselves ‘what change?’ or ‘which change?’ (cf. Herold, Fedor, and Caldwell, 2007). For measurement purposes, these differences raise the issues of the timing of measurement, and of how the change-referent is worded in the scale. With regard to the latter, in some of the research reviewed here, such as Herscovitch and Meyer (2002), Cunningham (2006), and Chen and Wang (2007), item wording of change commitment measures referred to a generic ‘change’ process, as in ‘I believe in the value of this change’ from the Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) AC2C scale. In the Chen and Wang study, the authors prefaced the administration of the measure by telling respondents to think specifically about the new performance appraisal system when filling out the survey, while Cunningham (2006) conducted a group-level manipulation check to make sure employees in the departments he surveyed were experiencing significant change. These practices possibly mitigated respondent confusion about ‘what or which change’ they might have experience. Timing of measurement also matters, because as noted above, organizational changes processes are often of finite duration. So far, researchers have adopted different strategies. In effect, Lau and Woodman (1995) measured commitment to a proposed change, because their study involved a change to a university bonfire tradition that had not yet been decided upon but was being debated by the campus community. Cunningham (2006) measured C2C at university athletic departments that were in the midst of change efforts, while Chen and Wang (2007) and Herold et al. (2008) measured commitment to change efforts that had recently been completed. Can the timing of measurement influence matter? Earlier, it was noted that most studies of C2C antecedents and outcomes have relied on cross-sectional, not


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longitudinal, methods. Therefore, results from the two studies that have measured C2C at multiple points in time might be instructive. Neubert and Cady (2001) measured C2C before a membership campaign was initiated and then immediately afterwards. Likewise, Meyer et al. (2007, Canadian study) measured C2C just before and then eight months after organizational restructuring had been implemented and the effects were being felt. In their study of the causes of C2C, Neubert and Cady found that affective factors were strong predictors of C2C at both time 1 and time 2, but of the three compliance factors assessed, only one was a significant predictor of C2C at time 1, and none were at time 2. They also found that for the affective factors, the impact of antecedents at time 1 on C2C at time 2 was fully mediated by the antecedents at time 2. These results suggest a significant amount of temporal stability in how antecedents influence C2C, meaning that perhaps C2C and its causes could have been measured concurrently and at any single point in time during the change effort and the results would likely have been the same. However, in addition to the stronger attribution of causality made possible by measuring the impact of antecedents at time 1 on C2C at time 2, the longitudinal design meant that they were able to control for the influence of C2C at time 1 on C2C at time 2. Since C2C at time 1 was found to be the single strongest predictor of C2C at time 1, had time 1 C2C not been controlled for, perhaps the compliance factor that was found to have been a significant predictor at time 1 would also have been significant at time 2, and the impact (variance explained) in time 2 C2C by the affective factors might have been much higher as well, causing us to misconstrue the actual impact of all of the antecedents on change commitment. Similarly, Meyer et al. (2007) found that the impact of affective C2C and normative C2C at time 1 on behavioral support (BS) for change at time 2 was mediated by affective and normative C2C measured at time 2, again suggesting that concurrent measurement would have been just as effective as longitudinal analysis. However, they also found that time 1 continuance C2C was a significant, direct predictor of time 2 BS while time 2 continuance C2C was not a significant predictor. In the case of continuance C2C, ‘first impressions’ seemed to have an enduring effect on behavior, something that cross-sectional analysis would have missed. They also found that BS at time 1 was a significant predictor of BS at time 2, meaning that controlling for this factor was important in deriving an accurate assessment of how the three forms of C2C impacted on behavioral support for the change. Thus, going forward, these results speak to the import of using longitudinal measurement strategies, unless the specific research question implies concurrent analyses only. Even better, some researchers have begun to use advanced forms of structural equation analysis such as Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) to analyze changes in commitment over time (Bentein et al., 2005, for an application to organizational commitment). LGM requires the collection of three waves of data, and allows the researcher to specify not just the focal variables of interest (such as locus of control or C2C) as latent constructs, but the change in those variables as latent constructs as well. LGM allows the researcher to capture more nuances of the process of how something unfolds over time, which would seem to be of particular import in assessing commitment to change, which by definition



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is about commitment to a dynamic, unfolding process as opposed to entities with more existential stability, such as a team or organization. Researchers could use LGM to explore how C2C varies as a change effort is implemented and unfolds, and how these changes in C2C impact on behavioral outcomes. A variant of LGM, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), can be used to similar advantage when assessing the impact of profiles of multiple forms of commitment, such as in the Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) and Meyer et al. (2007) studies. Vandenberg and Stanley (2009) provide a detailed discussion of the use of these methods. Finally, another measurement issue of potential import is the modification of existing measures of C2C for use in later studies. For example, Herold et al. (2008) also chose to use a four-item version of Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002) affective C2C scale, not the complete six-item scale. Likewise, Neves (2009) used a three-item version of the Hescovitch/Meyer affective C2C scale. This is a potential problem because the addition or deletion of items can change the psychometric properties of a scale (Jaros, 2009) and, thus, change the substantive relationships between constructs that we find in our data. A four-item or threeitem affective C2C might relate differently to antecedents or outcomes than a six-item affective C2C. This is not to say that this problem was actually present in the Herold et al. (2008) and Neves (2009) studies. It may not have been, and the fact that both of these truncated scales had high internal reliability scores indicated that they were sound, at least on that particular psychometric dimension. However, internal reliability is not the only important aspect of a scale’s construct validity. And, this is not to say that scale items should never be deleted or added. Scale refinement is an ongoing process and deleting problematic items can make a scale a more valid, reliable measure of the C2C construct. If, for example, confirmatory factor analysis of our data shows that particular C2C scale items do not load strongly with other C2C scale items in our data, then that is a sound basis for deleting those items. In the Canadian sample, for example, Meyer et al. (2007), citing survey-length issues, used four-item versions of the Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) scales to assess affective, normative, and continuance C2C but the complete six-item versions of these scales in the Indian sample. While the four-item versions used in the Canadian sample all reported reliabilities of greater than 0.8, in the Indian sample, the six-item version of the normative C2C scale had a reliability score of 0.67, below the customary 0.70 threshold for ‘adequate’ reliability. Thus, the truncated normative C2C was more reliable in its data set than the complete version was in its data set. This is surprising because all else equal, due to the formula used to derive it, a scale’s internal reliability tends to rise with additional items. Additional psychometric tests might show that the four-item normative C2C scale used in the Canadian study might be a better measure than the six-item version and should be used in future research. But, Herold et al. (2008) and Neves (2009) do not provide any rationale for why they truncated the affective C2C scale, so it is not known whether the basis for the choice was sound or not. The proliferation of different versions of the same measure also makes knowledge accumulation difficult when later researchers try to conduct meta-analyses. Directions for research (3): First, concerning item wording to prompt employees to think about the change they are experiencing, the best practice is to word the

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items so as to refer specifically to the change that the researcher wishes to measure the employee’s commitment to. In both Hartline and Ferrell (1996) and Ford et al. (2003), for example, the specific change/strategy initiative is mentioned in the scale items, as in ‘I am committed to the idea of community policing’ from the latter study. This practice would probably eliminate all confusion from the mind of the respondent about the change they are being asked to reflect on. Second, researchers should be mindful of the timing of C2C measurement, and utilize methods such as LGM that can capture how C2C itself changes as employee’s experience the change process. Finally, modifications to previously validated scales should be justified theoretically, or if they are done for convenience, construct validity tests such as CFA should be conducted to establish that truncation hasn’t violated the conceptual integrity of the scale. (4) Development of Commitment to Change

Concerning how C2C develops, the review of the antecedents literature shows that for the most part, researchers have tended to focus on specific factors that might influence an employee’s level (that is, high or low) of C2C, such as supervisory support, locus of control, perceived favorableness of the proposed change, and prior experience with a change effort. Even in studies such as Parish et al. (2008) that grounded their antecedents in a theoretical model, what tends to be lacking is a broader theoretical account for the development of C2C in the first place, before it achieves any particular level in the mind of the employee. This is problematic, because it means that we have no systematic way of comparing the relative predictive power of specific causes identified in the reviewed studies. What would a process model of C2C development look like? Perhaps it might be that before a change initiative is introduced, an employee has an explicit or perhaps implicit ‘commitment to the status quo’ that must be ‘unfrozen’ for commitment to develop. This commitment to the status quo would be a mental construct that must be altered for C2C to emerge, constituting a barrier to the latter’s development. For example, the literature on habitual routines (Gersick and Hackman, 1990) or entrainment (Ancona and Chong, 1996) may describe some of the mechanisms that underlie a commitment to the status quo and thus inhibit C2C, and/or might contribute to an employee’s ‘readiness’ to commitment to change (Harris and Cole, 2007). Likewise, classic psychological work on cognitive dissonance has shown that dissonance reduction is an important motivator in getting employees to change their behaviors, and thus possibly their commitments (Mazmanian and Mazmanian, 1999; Gruber, 2003); and research on medical education has shown that by getting physicians to make a written commitment, an explicit promise, to changing their diagnosis procedures predicts whether they actually follow through on changes (Wakefield et al., 2003; Fjortoft, 2007). Similarly, as discussed earlier, Coatsee (1999) and Armenakis and colleagues (Armenakis et al., 1993: Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999; Berneth et al., 2007; Armenakis and Harris, 2009) have developed theoretical models for predicting employee’s motivation to implement planned change, and existing research has investigated some of these factors as causes of commitment, albeit in a piecemeal,



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and not comprehensive, manner. This makes it difficult to know the relative strength of each motivational factor in predicting C2C. Directions for research (4): in addition to investigating core psychological processes such as dissonance reduction, habit formation, and entrainment as barriers to the development of C2C, exiting motivational models such as those developed by Conner (1992), Coatsee (1999) and Armenakis and colleagues should be comprehensively tested, so as to tease out the predictive validity of each model component. Thus either confirming the model, or pointing to how it should be modified. Armenakis and Harris (2009) note that recently, scales have been developed and validated to assess the five factors that comprise their model of motivation to change (Holt et al., 2007), which overcomes a barrier to comprehensively testing this model as a description of the development of C2C. However, in the Armenakis and colleagues model, ‘change adoption’ is posited as a precursor, not a consequence, of C2C. This hypothesis is questionable on theoretical grounds, since commitment to change might be a perquisite for the employee’s willingness to adopt the change. Even from an organizational perspective, it might be better to try and convince employees to commit to a change before seeking to implement it. Future research should test for the causal ordering of the adoption and C2C aspects of the model. (5) Deciding which Employees to Study

Fedor et al. (2006) and Herold et al. (2007, 2008) are exemplary in the modeling of cross-level effects on commitment to change. Organizational change is often a multi-level phenomenon, initiated at the top and having ripple effects down and across the hierarchy, and if cross-level effects are not modeled and measured, improper inferences about what is influencing C2C may be drawn. Sometimes, change initiatives ostensibly apply to the entire organization, and yet may impact some employees far more than others. A company-wide Total Quality Management initiative might have profound work experience implications for production workers, for example, but be barely noticed in the accounting department. Or, the change might be equally felt in each department, but be perceived in very different ways by members of the different areas of the firm because of how it specifically impacts their jobs. On the other hand, multi-level effects are not always to be expected. If a change is initiated within a work-unit and its effects are limited to that sphere, it would not make sense to model multi-level factors when analyzing the C2C of employees in that work unit. In this vein, the Hartline and Ferrell (1996) study is instructive. If a change initiative is specifically aimed at a particular workgroup or department, than only employees in that department should be studied, and multi-level effects need not be modeled. Additionally, even within a particular work unit, managers and subordinates often have different responsibilities in implementing the change. Notably, Hartline and Ferrell (1996) assessed managerial, not service-worker, commitment to implementing a customer-service policy, since in their research setting it was managers that were primarily responsible for directing the implementation of the change strategy. But since then, C2C research has focused on the commitment of subordinates, not managers. Along the same


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lines, different types of changes might have different effects on commitment. For example, in the Fedor et al. (2006) and Herold et al. (2008) studies, multiple organizations undergoing different kinds of changes were sampled. Some were experiencing re-structuring, others the implementation of new technologies, still others changes in leadership personnel and strategy. It is possible that the causes of C2C could vary depending on the type of change being implemented. Finally, national and cultural differences might exist in how employees experience change commitment. As indicated in Tables 1– 3, a wide variety of employees in different types of occupations and organizations have been assessed, but much of this research has taken place in a USA– Western European context, but it is possible that cross-cultural differences exist. For example, in research using the Herscovitch and Meyer scales, both Chen and Wang (2007), using a Chinese sample, and Cunningham (2006), analyzing a USA sample, found that NC2C and CC2C were not significantly correlated (r ¼ 0.05, r ¼ 0.01), whereas Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) found a significant relationship (r ¼ 0.24 in both study 2 and study 3, significant at 0.01 and 0.05 respectively). Perhaps Canadians view their obligation to the change initiative (normative C2C) as a kind of a ‘cost’ that would be incurred should they violate it (and thus somewhat akin to continuance C2C), whereas USA and Chinese employees might view normative C2C in a more purely moral/normative light, clearly distinguishing it from economic costs, and thus from continuance C2C. Likewise, Meyer et al.’s (2007) study of Canadian and Indian samples found that while affective C2C and normative C2C were distinguishable in the former sample, in the latter they loaded on the same factor. Meyer et al. (2007) argued that perhaps Indian culture is more collectivist in nature, which could account for this finding. Alternatively, as was noted earlier, perhaps the difference can be explained by the different scales (four-item vs. six-item) used in the two studies. At this point, these speculations are not well-grounded because the empirical difference reported so far are both modest and drawn from just a few studies. Directions for research (5): as per Herold and Fedor et al.’s research, we should be sensitive to targeting employees who are likely to be undergoing the most changes, and control for subunit membership when conducting empirical analyses to determine the level of change commitment, and perceptions about the change effort. This means controlling for or modeling the effects of employee type, level, or job category when testing substantive relationships with outcomes. Also, in future research analyzing multiple organizations undergoing different types of change, it would be helpful if these different types of change are controlled for in the analysis of causes and consequences of change commitment so that different effects might be teased out. Finally, future research should investigate national/cultural differences in how employees experience commitment to change, including tests of cross-cultural invariance with regard to factor structure and relationships with antecedents and outcomes. Finally, although it does not fit in to any of the five categories discussed, it was noted earlier that C2C studies that focus on outcomes have tended to use behavioral-intent proxies or self-reports of behaviors rather than actual behaviors. Thus, our confidence in claims about C2C impacting on change-related behaviors


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goes up if the actual behaviors are directly measured (as in Neubert and Cady, 2001) rather than via proxy.


Conclusion

In a recent review of their research on organizational change, Armenakis and Harris (2009) argued that in order for organizations to not just survive but prosper, they must be knowledgeable about ‘how to implement appropriate organizational changes that will be embraced by their employees’ (Armenakis and Harris, 2009, p. 128) but, unfortunately, successful organizational change efforts are ‘rare’, with most failing to fulfill their promise. Thus, although organizational change initiatives are a ubiquitous and necessary aspect of organizational life, they often prove to be problematic. Commitment to change has been postulated as a key psychological mechanism linking organizational efforts to implement planned change and the behaviors of employees. Thus, commitment to change is of import to employees, in terms of how they experience their working lives, and to managers, in terms of achieving desirable organizational or work-unit outcomes, and overcoming resistance to change (Oreg, 2003). Pursuing the research recommendations outlined above could take us closer towards greater understanding of commitment to change, why it develops, what structural and psychological barriers might inhibit or enhance its development, and how and why it impacts on change and perhaps even non-change related employee behaviors and organizational outcomes, thereby helping organizations implement change initiatives more successfully. Our role as researchers is to continue to generate the basic knowledge about commitment to change and thereby help practicing managers implement change more effectively. In terms of setting an agenda, the construct validity issues merit the most immediate attention because only if we clearly define and measure commitment to change and distinguish it from other related constructs, such as commitment to other foci like the organization, can progress be made in understanding what can be done to promote C2C in employees (developing a strong theoretical model of its development) and make further progress in determining what outcomes it impacts upon – issues which are of greatest import to the change-manager. In this regard, while much progress has been made, much work remains to be done. References Armenakis, A. and Bedeian, A. (1999) Organizational change: a review of theory and research in the 1990s, Journal of Management, 25(3), pp. 293–315. Armenakis, A. and Harris, S. (2009) Reflections: our journey in organizational change research and practice, Journal of Change Management, 9(2), pp. 127–142. Armenakis, A., Harris, S. and Mossholder, K. (1993) Creating readiness for organizational change, Human Relations, 46(6), pp. 681–701. Ancona, D. and Chong, C. (1996) Entrainment: pace, cycle and rhythm in organizational behavior, in: B.M. Staw and L.L Cummings (eds) Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 19, pp. 251–284 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press). Bergman, M. (2006) The relationship between affective and normative commitment: review and research agenda, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(5), pp. 645–663.


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Bentein, K., Vandenberghe, C., Vandenberg, R. and Stinglhamber, F. (2005) The role of change in the relationship between commitment and turnover: A latent growth modeling approach, Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(2), pp. 468–482. Bernerth, J., Armenakis, A.A., Feild, H.S. and Walker, H.J. (2007) Justice, cynicism, and commitment: a study of important organizational change variables, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43(3), pp. 303–326. Bozeman, D.B. and Perrewe, P.L. (2001) The effect of item content overlap on Organisational Commitment Questionnaire – turnover cognitions relationships, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), pp. 16–25. Chen, J. and Wang, L. (2007) Locus of control and the three components of commitmentto change, Personality and Individual Differences, 42(3), pp. 503–512. Coatsee, L. (1999) From resistance to commitment, Public Administration Quarterly, 23, pp. 204–222. Conner, D.R. (1992) Managing at the Speed of Change: How Resilient Managers Succeed and Prosper Where Others Fail (New York: Villard Books). Conner, D.R. and Patterson, R.W. (1982) Building commitment to organizational change, Training and Development Journal, 36(1), pp. 18–30. Cooper-Hakim, A. and Viswesvaran, C. (2005) The construct of work commitment: testing an integrative framework, Psychological Bulletin, 131(2), pp. 241–259. Conway, E. and Monks, K. (2008) HR practices and commitment to change: an employee-level analysis, Human Resource Management Journal, 18(2), pp. 72–89. Cunningham, G. (2006) The relationships among commitment to change, coping with change, and turnover intentions, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 15(1), pp. 29–45. Dolcourt, J. and Zuckerman, G. (2003) Unanticipated learning outcomes associated with commitment to change in continuing medical education, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 23(1), pp. 173–181. Fedor, D.B., Caldwell, S. and Herold, D. (2006) The effects of organizational changes on employee commitment: A multi-level investigation, Personnel Psychology, 59(1), pp. 1–29. Fisher, L. and Selman, J. (1992) Rethinking commitment to change, Journal of Management Inquiry, 1(3), pp. 250–256. Fjortoft, N. (2007) The effectiveness of commitment to change statements on improving practice behaviors following continuing pharmacy education, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 71(6), pp. 1–7. Ford, J., Wessbein, D. and Plamandon, K. (2003) Distinguishing organizational from strategy commitment: linking officers’ commitment to community policing to job behaviors and satisfaction, Justice Quarterly, 20(1), pp. 159–183. Gersick, C.J.G. and Hackman, J.R. (1990) Habitual routines in task-performing teams, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1), pp. 65–99. Gruber, M. (2003) Cognitive dissonance theory and motivation for change: a case study, Gastroenterology Nursing, 26(6), pp. 242–245. Harris, S.G. and Cole, M.S. (2007) A stages of change perspective on managers’ motivation to learn in a leadership development context, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 20(4), pp. 774–793. Hartline, M. and Ferrell, O. (1996) The management of customer-contact service employees: an empirical investigation, Journal of Marketing, 60(October), pp. 52–70. Herold, D., Fedor, D., Caldwell, S. and Liu, Y. (2008) The effects of transformational leadership and change leadership on employees’ commitment to change: a multi-level study, Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), pp. 346–357. Herold, D., Fedor, D. and Caldwell, S. (2007) Beyond change management: A multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employee’s commitment to change, Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), pp. 942–951. Herscovitch, L. and Meyer, J.P. (2002) Commitment to organizational change: extension of a three-component model, Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), pp. 474–487. Holt, D., Armenakis, A., Feild, H. and Harris, S. (2007) Readiness for organizational change: the systematic development of a scale, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43(2), pp. 232–242. Huy, Q.N. (1999) Emotional capability, emotional intelligence, and radical change, Academy of Management Review, 24(2), pp. 325–345. Jaros, S. (2007) Measurement issues in the Meyer and Allen model of organizational commitment, ICFAI Journal of Organizational Behavior, 6(4), pp. 7–25.



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Jaros, S. (2009) Measurement of commitment, in: H. Klein, T. Becker and J. Meyer (eds) Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions, pp. 347–382 (New York: Routledge). Klein, H.J. and Mulvey, P.W. (1995) The setting of goals in groups: An examination of processes and performance, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 61(1), pp. 44–53. Kotter, J.P. (1996) Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press). Lau, C. and Woodman, R. (1995) Understanding organizational change: a schematic Perspective, Academy of Management Journal, 38(2), pp. 537–554. Lawler, E. (1992) The ultimate advantage: creating the high-involvement organization (San Francisco: JosseyBass). Locke, E., Latham, G. and Erez, M. (1988) The determinants of goal commitment, Academy of Management Review, 13(1), pp. 23–39. Mazmanian, P.E. and Mazmanian, P.M. (1999) Commitment to change: theoretical foundations, methods and outcomes, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 19(1), pp. 200–207. Meyer, J., Srinivas, E., Lai, J. and Topolnytsky, L. (2007) Employee commitment and support for an organizational change: test of the three-component model in two cultures, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80(1), pp. 185–211. Neubert, M.J. and Cady, S.H. (2001) Program commitment: a multi-study longitudinal field investigation of its impact and antecedents, Personnel Psychology, 54(2), pp. 421–448. Neubert, M. and Wu, C. (2009) Action commitments, in: H. Klein, T. Becker and J. Meyer (eds) Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions, pp. 181–210 (New York: Routledge). Neves, P. (2009) Readiness for change: contributions for employee’s level of individual change and turnover intentions, Journal of Change Management, 9(2), pp. 215–231. Oreg, S. (2003) Resistance to change: developing an individual difference measure, Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), pp. 680–693. Parish, J., Cadwallader, S. and Busch, P. (2008) Want to, need to, ought to: employee commitment to organizational change, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21(1), pp. 32–52. Pereles, L., Lockyer, J., Hogan, D., Gondocz, T. and Parboosingh, J. (1997) Effectiveness of commitment contracts in facilitating change in continuing medical education intervention, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 17(1), pp. 27–31. Schwab, D. (1980) Construct validity in organizational behavior, in: B.M. Staw and L.L. Cummings (eds) Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 2, pp. 3–48 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press). Vandenberghe, C. (2009) Organizational commitments, in: H. Klein, T.T. Becker and J. Meyer (eds) Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions, pp. 99–135 (New York: Routledge). Vandenberg, R. and Stanley, L. (2009) Statistical methodological challenges for commitment research: issues of invariance, change across time, and profile differences, in: H. Klein, T. Becker and J. Meyer (eds) Commitment in Organizations: Accumulated Wisdom and New Directions, pp. 383–418 (New York: Routledge). Wakefield, J. et al. (2003) Commitment to change statements can predict actual change in practice, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 23(1), pp. 89–93.

Appendix

Articles read for the review but not included: Angle, H. and Lawson, M. (1993) Changes in affective and continuance commitment in times of relocation, Journal of Business Research, 26(1), pp. 3– 15. Demers, R. and Forrer, S. (1996) Commitment to change. Training & Development, 50(8), pp. 22–27. Gordon, W. (1993) Individual commitment and organizational change: a guide for HR and OD specialists, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 6(2), pp. 173–175. Hofman, P. (2008) Commitment to change, Utility Week, 29(5), pp. 1 –2. Huy, Q. (2002) Emotional balancing of organizational continuity and radical change: the contribution of middle managers, Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(1), pp. 31–69. Iverson, R. (1996) Employee acceptance of organisational change: the role of organisational commitment, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 7(1), pp. 122–149.

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Lines, R. (2004) Influence of participation in strategic change: resistance, organizational commitment, and change goal achievement, Journal of Change Management, 4(3), pp. 193–215. Maurer, R. (2005) Sustaining commitment to change, Journal for Quality and Participation, 28, pp. 30– 35. Nijhof, W., de Jong, M. and Beukhof, G. (1998) Employee commitment in changing organizations: an exploration, Journal of European Industrial Training, 22(6), pp. 243– 250. Shum, P., Bowe, L. and Auh, S. (2008) Employee’s affective commitment to change: the key to successful CRM implementation, European Journal of Marketing, 42(11), pp. 1346–1371. Singh, A. and Shoura, M. (2006) A life-cycle evaluation of change in an engineering organization: a case study, International Journal of Project Management, 24(4), pp. 337– 348. Skordoulis, R. and Dawson, P. (2007) Reflective decisions: the use of Socratic dialogue in managing organizational change, Management Decision, 45(6), pp. 991–1007. Smith, J. (2008) Commitment to change, Plant Engineering, 62(12), pp. 38–43.


Swailes, S. (2004) Commitment to change: profiles of commitment and in-role performance, Personnel Review, 33(2), pp. 187– 204. Switzer, M. (2008) Preparing the soft stuff: building commitment for change, Public Management, September, pp. 12–15. Varney, G. and Hunady, R. (1978) Energizing commitment to change in a team-building intervention: a FIRO-B approach, Group and Organization Studies, 3(4), pp. 435– 446.

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