Reducing intentions to resist future change: Combined effects of commitment‐based HR practices and ethical leadership

• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21830
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Patrícia Almeida,Pedro Neves,Maria João Velez

RESEARCH NOTE

Reducing intentions to resist future change: Combined

effects of commitment-based HR practices and ethical

leadership

Pedro Neves

1

| Patrícia Almeida

2

| Maria João Velez

1

1

Nova School of Business and Economics,

Lisboa, Portugal

2

Grupo E.T.E., Lisboa, Portugal

Correspondence

Pedro Neves, Associate Professor, Nova

School of Business and Economics, Campus

de Campolide, 1099–032 Lisboa, Portugal.

Email: pneves@novasbe.pt

Change management, and particularly the human side of change, is a central tenet of the strat-

egy of contemporary organizations. However, there is little evidence concerning how strategic

HR practices influence how individuals anticipate and react to the implementation of a major

change and how direct supervisors influence that process. With a sample of 191 employees

from multiple organizations, who completed two surveys with a four-week lag, we examined

the role of commitment-based HR practices on employees’intentions to resist future change.

We found that commitment-based HR practices contribute to a decrease in intentions to resist

future change, measured four weeks later, via increased affective commitment to change.

Moreover, we found that this relationship is conditional on ethical leadership, in that it is signif-

icant when ethical leadership is high but not when it is low. Building on social exchange and

uncertainty reduction theories, our findings contribute to the literature by examining how and

under what boundary conditions HR practices are an effective means for organizations to

anticipate and manage change.

KEYWORDS

attitudes, change, individual, change, organizational, commitment, ethics, leadership, research

methods and design-quantitative research methodology

1|INTRODUCTION

In the current macroeconomic scenario, organizational change is

becoming more frequent, inevitable, and unanticipated (Herscovitch &

Meyer, 2002; Shin, Taylor, & Seo, 2012). If firms intend to remain

competitive, they have to effectively and efficiently manage organiza-

tional change and adapt to the changes in the market. However, fail-

ure seems to be the norm rather than the exception. Estimates

suggest that about two-thirds of changeprojects fail (Choi, 2011; Shin

et al., 2012). From the myriad of factors that can contribute to unsuc-

cessful change processes, including pressures from the business envi-

ronment and inadequate organizational infrastructure, resistance to

change has been identified as a primary source of change failure

(Reger, Mullane, Gustafson, & DeMarie, 1994; Szabla,2007).

Research examining resistance to change tends to emphasize the

role played by the characteristics of the change process (e.g., Dent &

Goldberg, 1999; Oreg, 2006; van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008) and

focuses on what happens during (or immediately prior to) the imple-

mentation (e.g., Coch & French, 1948; Furst & Cable, 2008; Hon,

Bloom, & Crant, 2014; van Dam et al., 2008). However, researchers

have acknowledged that organizational life (and change events in par-

ticular) does not occur in a vacuum and is strongly influenced not

only by the daily context (van Dam et al., 2008) but also by a longer

time span (Bluehorn & Denhardt, 1988). As Bluehorn and Denhardt

(1988) state, “individuals come and go but the organization lives on”

(p. 301). This lack of continuity between change processes, where

managers prepare the organization as if each event is the beginning

of a new cycle, rather than a part of the life cycle of the organization,

might help explain such low success rates. Taking into account time

and the organization's history, values, and traditions is fundamental

to understand how institutions and change agents create readiness

for change (Amis & Aissaoui, 2013). This strategy should help us pre-

pare for change by anticipating it and therefore influence not just

resistance to ongoing events but, more importantly, predict intentions

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21830

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:249–261. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 249