Team Readiness to Change: Reflexivity, Tenure, and Vision in Play

Abstract

How can teams make sense of a complex organizational transformation and be ready to change? These questions must be addressed as organizations turn towards team-based structures to become more reactive. During organizational transformations, we argue team reflexivity enables team members to share interpretations of changes, leading to the development of team change vision—the overarching sense of direction for simultaneous change initiatives. We further argue that team reflexivity is more effective for teams with greater team tenure dispersion and additive team tenure. We tested and found support for our theory using time-lagged, survey-based data from 70 teams at a Canadian governmental organization. Overall, our study contributes to team readiness to change literature by identifying team reflexivity as a central information-processing activity enabling teams to develop a team change vision during an organizational transformation and by clarifying the effect of team tenure on such activity.