When change leadership impacts commitment to change and when it doesn't a multi-level multi-dimensional investigation.
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文摘
Recent research has urged more comprehensive theoretical development and empirical validation in the field of organizational change e.g., Pettigrew, Woodman & Cameron, 2001). However, while numerous recommendations have been made on specific strategies and activities that leaders should employ to implement change effectively, very little change-specific leadership research has moved beyond descriptive and prescriptive perspectives Higgs & Rowland, 2000； 2005). Moreover, the effects of change leadership behaviors have not been well tested with quantitative methods for exceptions see Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008). Rather, the presumption in much of the change literature is that the change processes are leader-centric Stacey, 1996), and that general change implementation models are suitable for most organizational change situations, based, to a great extent, on their face validity. This study is aimed at further developing the change leadership construct and investigating its effect on employees commitment to a particular change, along with investigating the moderating roles of leaders general transformational leadership styles and subordinates affective commitment to the larger organization. It involves 488 employees across 27 work units in 20 organizations that had recently experienced a change. The results for the change leadership measure suggest that change leadership behaviors encompass two factors---leaders change-selling behavior and change-implementing behavior. Hierarchical linear modeling results indicate that the two aspects of change leadership have different effects on employees affective commitment to change. While leaders change-selling behavior was positively associated with affective commitment to change p<；.01), the relationship between change-implementing behavior and commitment to change was not significant. In addition, the relationships between change leadership and employees commitment to change are best explained by two three-way interactions. Specifically, leaders change-selling behavior had fairly consistent effects on affective commitment to change in that it significantly increased commitment to change in three out of four conditions. In contrast, leaders change-implementing behavior was only significantly related to affective commitment to change when employees were highly committed to the organization, and the leader was not categorized as a transformational leader. To date, this is the first empirical investigation of employees responses to change that has pointed to the importance of distinguishing between leaders change-related selling and implementing behaviors. The different results for change selling and implementing behaviors help explain why previous examinations of change leadership, as a unitary construct, have failed to establish the empirical link between change leadership and commitment to change see Herold et al., 2008), while such effects have been suggested by the long standing, practice oriented change literature. Results on the three-way interaction also provided a more comprehensive view of organizational change situations. Additional implications are discussed.