The Role of Social Support in Coping during the Anticipatory Stage of Organizational Change: A Test of an Integrative Model

Abstract

Few researchers have explored how employees use social support to cope during organizational change. The current research proposed and tested a model that integrates moderation and mediation effects in order to understand how perceived available support influences employees' use of support mobilization to deal with change-related stress. Survey data were collected from 476 health professionals working in a large public hospital undergoing large-scale change and downsizing. Moderated path analyses revealed evidence to suggest that perceived available support plays a moderated mediation role during coping with change. Support mobilization mediated the indirect relationship between change-related stress and job satisfaction, at both low and high levels of perceived available colleague support. Perceived available non-work support moderated the relationship between support mobilization and job satisfaction, and perceived available supervisor support moderated the relationship between change-related stress and support mobilization. The direction of simple effects was not always as expected and alternative explanations for these unexpected findings are offered, along with practical implications for supervisors managing organizational change.