VIEW OF MANAGING CHANGES AND STRESS IN CROATIAN ENTERPRISES

Abstract

Every organization faces organizational changes during its existence. Changes in customer needs, emergence of new competitors, new technologies, availability of limited resources, economic and social trends are just some of the reasons why organizations have to adapt their strategies, structure, culture, technology and people (their skills, knowledge, habits…). Human resources are most valuable asset and therefore require to be carefully managed through the process of change implementation. This is a prerequisite for an organization to be successful in the contemporary environment. Changes generate stress for all members of the organization which in return affects the quality of work, behaviour and engagement. The purpose of this paper is to examine characteristics of managing changes and stress in Croatian enterprises from the perspective of the employees and managers. The results of the study conducted on a sample of 102 respondents show that organizations mostly operate in dynamic environment which reflects the necessity for continuous implementations of changes whether they are adaptive or innovative. More than 60% of the respondents perceive change as a positive process even though almost half of them regard resistance to change in their organizations to be moderate. Results from the simple linear regression also confirmed that change and stress management strategies have an effect on the level of resistance to change.