Managerial coping with organizational change: A dispositional perspective.

Abstract

In a departure from the organizational development literature, this study hypothesized that managerial responses to organizational change are influenced by 7 dispositional traits (locus of control, generalized self-efficacy, self-esteem, positive affectivity, openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity, and risk aversion). Data were collected from 6 organizations (N = 514) to test the hypotheses. The 7 traits were reduced to 2 factors: Positive Self-Concept and Risk Tolerance. Both of these trait factors significantly predicted self-reports and independent assessments of coping with change. Results also indicated that coping with organizational change was related to extrinsic (salary, job level, plateauing, job performance) and intrinsic (organizational commitment, job satisfaction) career outcomes and that coping mediated roughly half of the relationships between the dispositional factors and these career outcomes. In a recent review of the literature, Quinn, Kahn, and Mandl (1994) noted that research in the field of organizational change and development has evolved from four major paradigms: organizational development, strategic choice, resource dependence-institutional theory, and population ecology. That all four of these paradigms consider change at the organizational level is a telling depiction of the organizational change literature. Research dealing with organizational change has been largely dominated by a macro, systems-oriented focus. Some researchers have called for a more micro, person-oriented focus pertaining to issues important in change (Bray, 1994), yet micro-level research on organizational change remains limited. Studies of individual behavior in relation to organizational change typically have