The role of change readiness and colleague support in the role stressors and withdrawal behaviors relationship among health care employees

The ripple effect of strain in times of change: how manager emotional exhaustion affects team psychological safety and readiness to change

Introduction

Managers assume a pivotal role during periods of organizational change, yet there exists a notable gap in our understanding of how their emotional exhaustion may impact their capacity to generate readiness to change within their teams. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory (COR), this study explores the crossover effect of managers' emotional exhaustion on team readiness to change. We expect this to occur through higher levels of laissez-faire leadership, which impacts the teams' psychological safety.

Methodology

Data was gathered within a Canadian governmental organization undergoing two significant changes-cultural change and digitalization-with a specific focus on leadership as a pivotal factor in preparing teams for change. Employing surveys from 372 team members and 62 managers affected by this change, we conducted path analysis to empirically test the proposed model across 74 teams and their respective managers.

Results

Managers' emotional exhaustion has a negative indirect effect on team readiness to change. The double mediation pathway implies a positive relationship on laissez-faire leadership, which hinders psychological safety. In turn, psychological safety hampers team readiness to change.

Conclusion

Managers must invest significant resources to fulfill their roles and responsibilities during strategic change. Those who feel exhausted during change may look for ways to protect some of their resources by reducing the time and energy they invest leading their team. This self-preserving resource strategy has detrimental consequences on teams' effectiveness during change due to an indirect crossover effect that affects the levels of psychological safety on the team.

How Nurses' Person-Organization Fit Influences Organizational Loyalty

Background

High turnover rates among nurses are a global concern due to the shortage of skilled professionals and increasing demand for high-quality healthcare. This study aims to enhance understanding of organizational fit by examining the impact of Person-organization fit (P-O fit) on organizational loyalty through the mediating role of organizational support and service quality, and the moderating impact of role ambiguity.

Methods

Using a convenience sampling technique, we employed a survey methodology by developing a questionnaire. Data were collected from a sample of 614 nurses in five different healthcare sectors in China. Employing SmartPLS 3.3, we conducted a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis to examine the relationships among the specified variables.

Results

The findings of the structural analysis suggest that the P-O fit influences organizational loyalty in the healthcare sector. Organizational support and service quality were identified as partial mediators of the P-O fit-organizational loyalty link. Additionally, the role of ambiguity represented a negative moderating impact between service quality and organizational loyalty.

Discussion

Overall, the study's findings extend the understanding of person-organization fit, organizational support, service quality, role ambiguity, and organizational loyalty in the context of healthcare sectors and offer implications for medical authorities. Discussions, limitations, practical implications, and suggestions for further research are also provided.

Toward a new conceptualization of resilience at work as a meta-construct?

Organizations of all kinds are faced with multiple demands for adaptation of increasing frequency and amplitude due to such factors as reorganizations, climate change, pandemics, and labor shortages. This new reality requires our organizations to anticipate, adjust, and demonstrate resilience. The study of resilience at work relies on the comprehension of how organizational systems, as well as their work collectives and members, manage to overcome adversity without suffering from irreversible damage. However, the study of this phenomenon of interest contains grey areas concerning both its definition, its conceptualization, and the dynamic processes that underlie it. This theoretical paper addresses these different issues by providing first, a conceptual content analysis of the most frequently used definitions and second, a new conceptualization of resilience at work as a resource, either individual or collective. Moreover, we suggest a multilevel, dynamic, and virtuous conceptual approach to resilience at work, relying on both bottom-up and top-down flows. Accordingly, we formulate different theoretical propositions upon which future empirical research can draw to analyze the relationships between individual, team, and organizational resilience. Building on a conservation of resources lens, we offer a novel contribution to the resilience in the workplace literature, by providing an integrative and multilevel theory of resilience at work that highlights both the processual and interpersonal nature of its emergence, and the organizational levers that can foster it.

Creating digital ecosystem for small and medium enterprises: the role of dynamic capability, agile leadership and change readiness

Purpose

The digitization efforts for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a result of advances in information technology are challenging, with one of them being the creation of digital ecosystems for SMEs. This study aims to develop a model of the relationship between SMEs’ readiness to change, agile leadership and dynamic capability to implement a digital ecosystem for SMEs in the creative industry in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey methodology was used in this study. Respondents in this study were creative industry SMEs in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. SMEs in the creative industry sector were chosen as samples as they require digital technology to manage their business development, production and distribution, customer relationships and to innovate in their businesses. In total, 250 creative SMEs, selected based on a purposive random sampling method, were included in this study. Data were analyzed using structural equation model-partial least square.

Findings

This study provides current insights and future needs for implementing digital ecosystems in SMEs in Indonesia’s creative industries. It also identifies three critical conditions for dealing with Industry 4.0: organizational readiness to change, agile leadership and dynamic capability.

Originality/value

In response to information technology advancements, this study proposes a new model for implementing digital ecosystems for SMEs. Furthermore, this study adds knowledge about the concept of a service-oriented technology ecosystem to help SMEs operate more efficiently. It focuses on the interaction of entities to improve the system’s utility, gain benefits and promote information exchange.

Leader Psychological Need Satisfaction Trickles Down: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange

This article addresses the impact of leader psychological need satisfaction on employees. We draw on the self-determination theory (SDT) and leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to investigate if and how leader psychological need satisfaction trickles down to employee psychological need satisfaction. Adopting a multi-actor, multilevel design, results from 1036 leader-employee dyads indicate that employee-rated LMX mediates the trickle-down effect of leader psychological need satisfaction. Additional analyses of leader psychological needs show that leader competence is the main psychological need that underlying this relationship. We also found an unexpected negative association between leader autonomy need satisfaction and employee competence need satisfaction. Overall, this study shows the importance of both (1) leaders' psychological need satisfaction and (2) employee perceptions of the relationship quality for employee psychological need satisfaction.

Employee Readiness for Organizational Change in the SME Internalization Process: The Case of a Medium-Sized Construction Company

A growing body of research, especially in the domain of psychology and business, is aimed at identifying the link between work-related factors and employee readiness to accept change. Moreover, change management is a topic that rapidly attracts the attention of the academic and business communities as well. Therefore, this study is conducted in order to identify the antecedents of the effective implementation of change(s) within a context of a medium-sized construction company that went through numerous changes during its lifetime. A total of 12 different hypotheses and sub-hypotheses was tested to better understand what factors affect employee readiness for change. A multiple regression analysis was used on a sample of 54 employees indicating that organizational commitment, career commitment, and job satisfaction positively affect employee readiness for organizational change. The research contributes to the fields of human resources, organizational psychology, management of small and medium-sized enterprises, and change management.

A concept analysis of role ambiguity experienced by hospital nurses providing bedside nursing care

The concept of role ambiguity, despite its wide application in nursing research, lacks a clear definition and conceptualization, resulting in inconsistencies about how it is defined, operationalized, and applied in research. The purpose of this paper was to analyze and define the concept of role ambiguity among hospital nurses providing nursing care, using the concept analysis method developed by Walker and Avant. The three defining attributes of role ambiguity were lack of information (information deficiency), lack of clarity, and unpredictability. Antecedents included lack of clear role definitions, lack of education/training, communication problems, supervisory behaviors and support, organizational culture, practice environment conditions, experience, group cohesiveness, and preferred work setting. The consequences of role ambiguity included increased stress, lack of organizational commitment, job dissatisfaction, burnout, and increased intent to leave. This concept analysis provides a clear conceptual definition to better understand role ambiguity among hospital nurses along with implications for nurse leaders, educators, clinicians, and researchers to support nurses and guide future research. This paper further emphasizes the importance of nurse-manager relationships in reducing the experience of role ambiguity among hospital nurses.

The role of dispositional mindfulness in employee readiness for change during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has forced organisations to change the way they work to maintain viability, even though change is not always successfully implemented. Multiple scholars have identified employees' readiness for change as an important factor of successful organisational change, but research focussed on psychological factors that facilitate change readiness is scarce. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether employee dispositional mindfulness contributes to readiness for change.

Design/methodology/approach

Employees (n = 301) from various industries in New Zealand participated in an online survey shortly after the local COVID-19 lockdown ended. The employees' levels of mindfulness, readiness for change, well-being and distress were assessed using well-validated psychometric scales. Multiple regression analyses tested the effect of mindfulness on readiness for change, with well-being and distress as moderating variables.

Findings

The results show that the effect of mindfulness on readiness for change is moderated by both well-being and distress. Mindfulness has a positive, significant effect on readiness for change when levels of well-being are high and levels of distress are low.

Practical implications

These findings have important implications for organisations who aim to promote readiness for change in their employees. Even though mindfulness has been shown to be beneficial, organisations also have to consider the mental states of their employees when managing change.

Originality/value

This study provides empirical evidence that dispositional mindfulness may facilitate the employees' readiness for change, but only when levels of well-being are high and distress are low.

Resistance to change and turnover intention: a moderated mediation model of burnout and perceived organizational support

Purpose

The purpose of the paper is to study the turnover intention of employees during the phenomenon of resistance to change. The paper examines the mediating role of burnout in the relationship of resistance of change to turnover intention and the moderating role of perceived organizational support in this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical data of the study has been collected via cross-sectional data collection method and include responses from 410 employees. The moderation mediation analysis has been done using the SPSS macro process.

Findings

The paper finds that resistance to change is an antecedent to the turnover intention which often represents employees' voluntary turnover in the future. This relationship of resistance to change and turnover intention is explained by burnout. However, the study establishes perceived organizational support as moderator, and with high POS, strength of this relationship will be reduced.

Originality/value

This paper contributes by examining the burnout as an intervening variable in the relationship of resistance to change and turnover intention and perhaps establishes for the first time the moderating role of perceived organizational support in reducing the influence of resistance to change on turnover intention, since retaining employees is of value to the organization.

Understanding the individual's reactions to the organizational change: a multidimensional approach

Purpose

The objective of this research is to analyze in a multidimensional perspective the individual responses to organizational change, specifically about the implementation of a new performance evaluation system, investigating some antecedents of the individual reactions to change.

Design/methodology/approach

Companies from the education industry were surveyed, and standardized questionnaires were applied. We obtained a sample size of 386 valid responses. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to assess the measurement model and test the hypotheses.

Findings

The results indicate positive reactions to the organizational change, without ambivalent responses. Employees' cognitive and behavioral reactions are influenced by the individuals' anticipation and past similar organizational change and do not depend on the perceived threat to social work life. The influence of group pressure and organizational readiness on cognitive and behavioral reactions differs in the direction that group pressure affects behaviors but not thoughts, and organizational readiness affects thoughts but not behaviors.

Research limitations/implications

Limitations include the inadequate measures of individuals' emotional reaction, preventing this dimension from being tested.

Originality/value

This research provides theoretical contributions as the literature on organizational change lacks a multidimensional view on individuals' reactions to change. The main contribution of this study is to investigate how each of the individual and organizational antecedents of the employees' responses to the change influences the cognitive and behavioral reactions towards the change employing a multidimensional approach.