How and when leaders’ Perception of Organizational Change Influence Followers’ Perception and Coping

Abstract

Leaders take dual roles as both recipients and implementors during organizational change. Extant research, however, has primarily focused on only one of these dual roles with the other role ignored. Building on conservation of resource theory and attribution theory, this study integrates leaders’ recipient and implementor roles in one model by examining how and when leaders’ threat perception links to employees’ threat perception and maladaptive coping behaviors. With three-wave data from 59 leaders and 436 employees, we found that leaders’ threat perception was indirectly associated with employees’ threat perception and maladaptive coping via change-related information hiding, and leader-member exchange mean strengthened the indirect effect that leaders have on employees. The implications of our findings for theory, practices, and future research are discussed.