When the going gets tough: Employee reactions to large‐scale organizational change and the role of employee Machiavellianism

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2478
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Kate E. Horton,Frank D. Belschak,Gabriele Jacobs,Steffen R. Giessner,P. Saskia Bayerl
• Published date: 01 November 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

When the going gets tough: Employee reactions to large-scale

organizational change and the role of employee

Machiavellianism

Frank D. Belschak

1

| Gabriele Jacobs

2

| Steffen R. Giessner

3

|

Kate E. Horton

3,4

| P. Saskia Bayerl

5

1

Section Leadership & Management,

Amsterdam Business School, University of

Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2

Erasmus University College, Erasmus

University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The

Netherlands

3

Department of Personnel & Organisation,

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus

University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The

Netherlands

4

Federal University of Pernambuco,

Pernambuco, Brazil

5

Centre of Excellence for Terrorism,

Resilience, Intelligence and Organised Crime

Research (CENTRIC), College of Business,

Technology and Engineering, Sheffield Hallam

University, Sheffield, U.K.

Correspondence

Frank D. Belschak, Section Leadership &

Management, Amsterdam Business School,

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The

Netherlands.

Email: f.d.belschak@uva.nl

Funding information

European Commission, FP7-SECURITY,

Composite–Comparative Police Studies in the

EU, Grant/Award Number: 241918

Summary

Large-scale, long-term change initiatives take time to unfold, which can be a source of

uncertainty and strain. Investigating the initial 19 months of a large-scale change, we

argue that during these stages, employees' change-related beliefs become more negative

over time, which negatively affects their work engagement and, ultimately, increases

their turnover intentions. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of a trait, Machiavel-

lianism, on change reactions and propose that employees high in Machiavellianism react

more negatively during change processes as they are especially susceptible to uncer-

tainty and stress. We test our (cross-level) moderated mediation model in a three-wave

longitudinal study among employees undergoing a large-scale change (T1: n= 1,602; T2:

n=1,113;T3:n= 759). We find that employees' beliefs about the impact and value of

the change are indeed negatively related to change duration and that decreases in these

perceptions come with a decline in engagement and increases in turnover intentions.

Moreover, employees high in Machiavellianism react more strongly to a deterioration in

change-related beliefs, showing stronger reductions in engagement and stronger

increases in turnover intentions than employees low in Machiavellianism. Our study

offers explanations for the negative effects of large-scale changes including an explana-

tory factor for disparate employee reactions to change over time.

KEYWORDS

change beliefs, longitudinal study, Machiavellianism, organizational change, turnover

intentions, work engagement

1|INTRODUCTION

Research shows that large-scale organizational changes are risky

endeavors. Indeed, according to Lovallo and Kahneman (2003),

about three quarters of all mergers and acquisitions never pay

off. This persistently high failure rate testifies to the demanding

and challenging nature of these types of changes (Jacobs, van

Witteloostuijn, & Christe-Zeyse, 2013). Large-scale organizational

changes can be defined as those that dramatically alter the struc-

ture and/or culture of an organization (i.e., transformative changes;

e.g., Bartunek & Moch, 1987; Nutt & Backoff, 1997). They imply

significant shifts in basic aspects of an organization and can be

seen as a “shock to the system”(Rafferty & Griffin, 2006,

p. 1159).

Received: 25 March 2019 Revised: 10 July 2020 Accepted: 31 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2478

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reprodu ction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Organizational Behavior published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

830 J Organ Behav. 2020;41:830–850.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

Processual perspectives on change emphasize its unforeseen and

unexpected nature, which often creates ambiguities, uncertainties,

and confusion for employees (Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014;

Konlechner, Latzke, Güttel, & Höfferer, 2019). In consequence,

change has been labeled a stressor (e.g., Rafferty & Griffin, 2006).

Although employees might start large-scale change processes with

high expectations and hopes for fundamental improvements, they are

often unaware of their complexity and consequences. Moreover,

changes are often implemented sequentially leading to growing adap-

tation demands on employees (Herold, Fedor, & Caldwell, 2007;

Jacobs, Christe-Zeyse, Keegan, & Polos, 2008). The risk of losing

momentum has thus been identified as a crucial challenge, as initia-

tives need to keep up their momentum in order to be successful

(e.g., Jansen, 2004; Kotter, 1995).

Jansen, Shipp, and Michael (2016) have shown that employees'

change perceptions fluctuate during a project and that this has impli-

cations for their (perceptions of) change momentum. We build on this

observation and extend it by exploring more closely in what way

employees' perceptions evolve during a change project and how a loss

in change momentum may affect individuals' behavior. This is an

important extension, because—although past research has shown that

employees' perceptions can vary during the course of a change pro-

ject, and that these variations may have implications for their behavior

(e.g., Meyer, Srinavas, Lal, & Topolnytsky, 2007)—we still have a lim-

ited understanding of how perceptions of and reactions to large-scale

changes unfold over time (Rafferty & Jimmieson, 2017) and how

shifting perceptions and related losses in change momentum (Jansen

et al., 2016) are linked to employee reactions. Understanding such

dynamics is vital in order to better manage long-term change efforts

and avoid the frequent negative outcomes of change.

We argue that, due to the inherently uncertain and stressful

nature of large-scale organizational change, employees' beliefs about

such a change will become more negative over time, resulting in a loss

in change momentum (Jansen et al., 2016) and a broader decline in

work outcomes (employees' work engagement and turnover inten-

tions) as the change unfolds. More specifically, we posit that a deteri-

oration in employees' change beliefs will lead to declines in their

work engagement and, in turn, to increases in their turnover inten-

tions (see Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011; Rafferty, Jimmieson, &

Armenakis, 2013; Van Dierendonck & Jacobs, 2012).

At the same time, past research has shown that employees differ

in their ability to cope with change (e.g., Amiot, Terry, Jimmieson, &

Callan, 2006), which suggests that personal characteristics like

employee personality might moderate change reactions. One person-

ality variable that has been conceptually linked to the ineffective han-

dling of stress and uncertainty is Machiavellianism. Machiavellians

(Machs) are characterized by a cynical, negative, and selfish worldview

(e.g., Christie & Geis, 1970; Jones & Paulhus, 2009). High Machs focus

on short-term profit maximization and are inclined to defect from

social relationships (Wilson, Near, & Miller, 1996), hence increasing

the likelihood that they will leave their organization as the costs of

organizational change become clear. They also tend to expect the

worst from others and often show increased anxiety (Fehr, Samsom, &

Paulhus, 1992; Wilson et al., 1996), which exacerbates negative reac-

tions to uncertain and stressful situations. Machiavellianism is signifi-

cantly related to individual differences that trigger negative reactions

to uncertainty like general distrust and anxiety (e.g., Fehr et al., 1992),

(low) tolerance for ambiguity (e.g., Mudrack, 1993), (low) self-esteem

(e.g., Valentine & Fleischman, 2003), pessimism (Jonason, Foster,

Csatho, & Gouveia, 2018), and neuroticism (e.g., Jakobwitz &

Egan, 2006). Drawing on stress and coping perspectives on change

that emphasize the stressful, ambiguous, and uncertain nature of

organizational change (e.g., Rafferty & Griffin, 2006; Rafferty &

Jimmieson, 2017), we thus predict that Machiavellianism will be a key

trait in moderating employees' change-related reactions. We propose

that high Machs will develop more negative change beliefs during a

change project and will show stronger decreases in work engagement

and increases in turnover intentions compared to their low Mach

colleagues.

Integrating the above arguments, we hypothesize a longitudinal

(cross-level) moderated mediation model (see Figure 1) in which dete-

riorations in change beliefs during a large-scale organizational change

lead to a decline in work engagement and ultimately to an increase in

turnover intentions, with Machiavellianism as a moderator. Our model

thus explicitly focuses on the dynamics in the pathway from change

beliefs to turnover intentions.

Our study investigates the hypothesized effects during the first

19 months of a large-scale change process, in a three-wave longitudi-

nal study. By integrating change-specific beliefs and general work atti-

tudes with the moderating role of Machiavellianism as a personality

variable, we extend insights into the mechanisms and processes

through which the psychological costs of change unfold and manifest

over time. The importance of such a longitudinal perspective has

been noted by several authors (e.g., Pettigrew, Woodman, &

Cameron, 2001). It is further underlined by the results of Chen,

Ployhart, Cooper Thomas, Anderson, and Bliese (2011) who found

that variations over time in job satisfaction explained variance in turn-

over intentions over and above absolute (average) levels of satisfac-

tion and by the results of Piderit (2000) and Jansen et al. (2016) who

noted that a dynamic perspective focusing on variations over time in

attitudes and perceptions is better able to explain change success or

failure than a static perspective. We build on the general idea by Jan-

sen et al. (2016) that variations in change perceptions negatively influ-

ence change momentum and extend this model by investigating the

broader consequences of this process (for work engagement and turn-

over intentions) in a longitudinal design. We further extend the model

and add to the literature on traits in the context of change by adding

Machiavellianism as a stress-related contingency variable that explains

variation in change reactions between employee groups over time.

2|EMPLOYEES' BELIEFS DURING LARGE-

SCALE CHANGE

Scholars have noted that change recipients' attitudes and behaviors

are strongly affected by their subjective beliefs about change

BELSCHAK ET AL.831