Change Appraisals and Job Crafting as Foundation to Inculcate Support for Change: A Dual Manifestation.
| Autor | Mehboob, Farhan |
1 Introduction
Large-scale change has often been viewed as central to organizational performance and a critical factor that drives organizational growth and sustainability. Unfortunately, past studies reveal that only one out of three change initiatives are successful (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Grover, 1999). Even the recent figures have not shown any significant improvement regarding successful implementation of change (Brakman et al., 2013; Jacobs et al., 2013; Jansson, 2013; Jarrel, 2017; Vakola & Petrou, 2018). While change has been taken as a strategically imperative choice for organizations, it is also crucial to note that employees are the determinants of such initiatives' ultimate success (Fugate et al., 2012). Employees' lack of support for change is often considered as a reason for the failure of change initiatives (Haffar et al., 2019; Oreg et al., 2018; Rafferty & Minbashian, 2019; Stouten et al., 2018). Therefore, it is of no surprise that individuals' support for change has been a dominant focus of organizational change research, particularly how employees react and behaviorally demonstrate the organizational change; this is acknowledged as a potential avenue for further inquiry since they are at the frontline to implement change initiatives (Campbell, 2018; Fugate & Soenen, 2018; Oreg et al., 2018; Rafferty & Minbashian, 2019). Behavioral support for change refers to the extent to which change recipients get actively involved in change-related activities and embrace them with their real sense (Coyle-Shapiro, 1999; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Kim et al., 2011).
It is evident in the past literature that individuals' reactions to change initiatives largely depend on the way they appraise change as a challenge or a threat (Biggane et al., 2017; Fugate et al., 2011, 2012; Fugate & Soenen, 2018; Oreg et al., 2018; Rafferty & Restubog, 2017). Change appraisals are perceptions regarding the ways employees assess their commitment and goals concerning the opportunities and demands in the context of organizational change (Fugate et al., 2012; Fugate & Soenen, 2018; Rafferty & Restubog, 2017). Fugate (2012, p. 182) stated that "[...] appraisals give meaning to employees' experience of change". They refer to the process by which individuals evaluate a potentially stressful event and its likely influence on their wellbeing (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Challenge appraisal, for instance, reflects the possibility of future gains or benefits (associated with the change), while threat appraisal represents the concerns about possible future losses related to the prospective change (Rafferty & Restubog, 2017). Thus, cognitive appraisal emerges as a fundamental concept to understand human adaptation to stressful events (Gomes et al., 2016). As such, an examination of cognitive appraisals and reactions to change enable researchers and practitioners to understand why individuals respond differently, either positively or negatively, to similar aspects of a changing context (Rafferty & Restubog, 2017). However, little has been explored yet regarding how people's change-related appraisals unfold into their behavioral manifestations, particularly during an organizational change.
To be specific, two essential features highlighted by past research have either been overlooked or have been found to be substantive in unveiling people's support for change and are open to further inquiry. First, while examining individuals' reactions to change, Oreg et al. (2018) pointed out that previous studies on employees' behavioral reactions to change have been preoccupied with the valence aspect and the degree to which subsequent reactions are positive or negative while discounted their level of activation and the extent to which their reaction to change is active or passive. They stress that change recipients' reactions should be examined and contemplated in terms of valence as well as their level of activation. Therefore, this study addresses this call to advance the research beyond valence reactions to change by incorporating the propensity for activation. It proposes job crafting as people's bottom-up approach to job (re) design based on the active-passive spectrum to further our understanding of the activation phenomenon in response to change appraisals. By active and passive, we mean it articulates distinct ways (approach-avoidance) through which employees make adjustments into their job constituents (Bruning & Campion, 2018; Makikangas, 2018). Since the channels through which job crafting affects change-supportive behavior remained largely unexplored, the study suggests that job crafting works as a catalyst and provides an underlying mechanism that explains how people's change-related appraisals translate into change-supportive behaviors.
Second, prior studies on organizational change have not yet fully tapped the simultaneous examination of the personal and contextual factors with regards to employees' reactions to change (Fugate & Soenen, 2018; Mehboob & Othman, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; Oreg et al., 2011; Rafferty et al., 2013; Walk & Handy, 2018). For instance, Fugate and Soenen (2018) highlighted that despite the prevailing belief that both personal and contextual factors substantively contribute to the successful implementation of change, there is a lack of investigations into their simultaneous and differential impact in the same empirical study. They further argued that cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) helps to conceptually integrate both personal and contextual factors in determining employees' reactions to change. Given the significance, an improved understanding of the personal and contextual enablers to promote change is of great concern for individuals and organizations. Previous research has also revealed that personal factors such as personal resources can buffer the adverse outcomes imposed by high job demands (Kang & Jang, 2019; Kimura et al., 2019; Yavas et al., 2013).
Given that the JD-R model is postulated based on the principles of the interaction between personal and contextual factors (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014), personal resources such as hope are recognized as essential resources that characterize individuals' perceptions of and reactions to the working context and wellbeing (Alarcon et al., 2013). People with high hope hold beliefs regarding the extent to which they persevere towards goals and when needed are likely to redirect their path to those goals to succeed (Luthans et al., 2010). Highly hopeful individuals generally invest more effort into goal accomplishments, they are inclined to take risks, and act proactively while performing their work tasks (Yu et al., 2019), which have a positive impact on performance, engagement, commitment, job satisfaction, and creativity (Bouckenooghe et al., 2019; Karatepe & Karadas, 2015; Yu et al., 2019). To further enhance the academic understanding of the role of personal resources in promoting positive behaviors at work, the study suspects that hope is a key factor that makes it a potential antecedent with potential positive links to valued outcomes. We assume that examining the role of hope as a moderator in the relationship between challenge-threat appraisals and approach-avoidance job crafting provides distinct insights to enrich our understanding of the subsequent propositions.
The study contributes to the existing literature by offering a fresh theoretical perspective in relation to organizational change. Integrating cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) and the JD-R model provides a sound theoretical foundation to concurrently examine personal and contextual factors as antecedents to employees' behavioral activation and reactions to change. Beyond this, it also illustrates the linking mechanism or processes that adequately explain how and why change-related predictors affect both active and passive modes of behavioral activation (i.e., approach-avoidance job crafting) and lead the ways to frame behavioral support for change.
Taken altogether, the study specifically aims to accomplish the following research objectives:
i) To examine individuals' challenge-threat appraisals of change as predictors of change-supportive behavior.
ii) To investigate the intervening role of approach-avoidance job crafting in the relationship between individuals' challenge-threat appraisals and change-supportive behavior.
iii) To assess the buffering effect of hope on the path between challenge-threat appraisals and approach-avoidance job crafting.
2 Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses Development
2.1 Challenge-threat appraisals and effect on change-supportive behavior
Change interventions, such as organizational restructuring, the adoption of new technologies, or fine-tuning of processes and procedures, are usually carried out to help organizations become more compatible with socio-economic or technological fluctuations. Individuals generally perceive them as a disruption to their already-established work practices and routines, thus making them stressful events (Fedor et al., 2006; Jimmieson et al., 2004). Many researchers have concluded that individuals are typically predisposed to react in specific ways when they experience change (Vakola et al., 2013). For example, some individuals welcome change, appraising it as an opportunity to benefit themselves and improve their status, while others view it as a threat because it inhibits them from continuing their work routines, consequently fostering a negative attitude towards it (Judge et al., 1999).
Appraisals of and responses to stressful situations may vary depending on the individual's set of characteristics, which "[...] determines what is salient for well-being, shapes the person's understanding of the event, and in consequence his or her emotions and coping efforts, and provides the basis for evaluating outcome" (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 55). Gomes (2014) argued that during a stressful situation, individuals assess the...
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