Coping with Supervisor Sanctions During Organizational Change: Core Members’ Active Change Behavior and Followers’ Middle Way Thinking

Yuan Jing Luo,Yan Ping Li,Jing Du

doi:10.3390/su12156277

Abstract

Recent research has shown that an organizational change implementation tactic is vital for influencing employee reactions to change. Hard tactics, such as supervisor sanction, are generally verified as obstructive to employees’ positive change behavior. The aim of this study is to identify the contingency circumstances under which sanction would be less harmful or even effective to change. By identifying the organizational situational influence of core members’ active change behavior and followers’ individual differences of middle way thinking, this study constructed a model that offers insight into the effectiveness of supervisor sanctions during change. Data from 250 employees in China were gathered by questionnaires. Results from hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed that core members’ behavior neutralized the negative effect of supervisor sanctions on followers’ active change behavior. Moreover, this moderating effect was further magnified by followers’ personal middle way thinking value. The conclusions emphasized the roles of core members’ supportive behavior to change, which acts as role model, and of the individual middle way thinking values that have sustained Eastern Asia for thousands of years in successfully implementing change. The findings provide insights for the successful implementation tactics in organization change and enrich the understanding of the organizational change process. Research should continue to treat followers’ change reactions as a synergy output of situational factors and individual characteristics and examine the variables of these dimensions in the work environment.

Highlights

According to Kiefer, “ongoing organizational change has become an increasingly common context for contemporary work” [1]
The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results showed that the three-factor model for variables reported by followers produced a significantly better model fit (χ2 = 132.69, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.94, RMSEA = 0.058) compared to the two-factor model (combining core members’ active change behavior and middle way thinking, χ2 = 240.22, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.85, RMSEA = 0.122) and the one-factor model (χ2 = 685.23, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.51, RMSEA = 0.221)
Taking into account the nested structure of the current data with 250 employees of 38 work teams, we utilized this analytic approach of hierarchical linear modeling to consider the shared variance among employees from the same team, as well as the non-independence of employee ratings offered by the team leader synchronously [43]

Summary

Introduction

According to Kiefer, “ongoing organizational change has become an increasingly common context for contemporary work” [1]. Researchers have noticed that sanctions and authoritative managerial styles sustain popularity in Eastern management scenarios [18] This disconnect between the conceptual counter-productiveness and the actual popularity of sanctions indicates that the effectiveness of these management tactics may exist with a situational contingency that has not been well explored. To further explore this paradox, scholars have gone beyond the nature and process of change and increasingly emphasized individual differences [3], colleagues’ interactions [19,20,21], and the cultural contexts [22,23]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion