Modes of Processing Change: How Organizations’ Actions Cause Employee Reactions to Fluctuate

Abstract

Organizational change triggers a period of processing, wherein employees attempt to make sense of the change and determine how they should respond. During this process, employees may fluctuate between experiencing a sense of loss about the past, excitement about the future, or even simultaneous experiences of both. Yet how employees process change is typically construed as largely static and impervious to fluctuations after their initial reactions. This view limits the ability to explain growing empirical observations of dynamic fluctuations in how employees process change across time. The purpose of this article is hence to highlight how both the temporal directionality and emotional valence of employees’ reactions can shift in response to actions by organizations throughout the period of processing change. Specifically, I suggest employees can enter three distinct modes of processing change – loss, restoration, or oscillation – each mode comprising distinct cognitions, emotions, and behaviours. I further postulate how an organization’s actions can shift employees across the three modes of processing, which in turn have implications on employees’ reactions in the new equilibrium. Through this model, I suggest that viewing how employees process change as a more dynamic process which can be constantly influenced by organizational (in)actions enriches understanding of employee reactions to change. In doing so, I take steps towards reconciling conflict within and introducing a more dynamic perspective to organizational change and meaning-making literatures.