The Individual Job Impact of Change and Employees’ Well-Being: Role Clarity and Interpersonal Justice as Leadership-Related Moderators*

ABSTRACT

Leadership behaviour plays a key role in terms of change-related well-being and health impact. The objective of this study was to identify leadership determined circumstances which mitigate the potential detrimental effects of the individual job impact of organizational change on well-being outcomes. Based on the Job Demands-Resources Model we explicate two-way and three-way interactions between individual job impact and crucial resources during organizational change provided by leaders (role clarity and interpersonal justice). Specifically, we propose that the combination of these resources will attenuate the relationships between individual job impact and both psychological contract breach/violation and mental ill-health. Field survey data were gathered from 189 employees in a group of hospitals in Germany undergoing restructuring. Only the combination of low demands and high measures of either of the resources was related to favourable criterion levels, implying that the provision of resources is not enough to mitigate negative well-being impact. Rather the increase of demands has to be monitored in phases of change. With high individual job impact, psychological contract violation was low only when both role clarity and interpersonal justice were high (significant three-way interaction).

MAD statement

This article makes a difference by contributing to the discussion on the central buffering hypothesis of the JDR-M considering the specific context of organizational change. It highlights that drastic individual job impact of change is a particularly difficult scenario for employees in which single or even several combined resources provided by the leader might not be able to buffer followers’ unfavourable well-being impact. We add to change literature by focussing on ‘healthy leadership’ which is relatively underrepresented in research. Our results imply that individual job impact and well-being are important aspects in planning change processes beyond outcomes considered traditionally in Organizational Behaviour Literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational change
• individual job impact
• leadership behaviour
• job demands-resources model
• well-being

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Birgit Thomson

Birgit Thomson (PhD) is a senior researcher at the German Federal Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA). She has a background in economics and work/organizational psychology. Since 2002 she is concerned with various research issues around the well-being and health impact of major organizational change, job insecurity and the role of leadership in this process. Moreover, she is involved in teaching at various German universities and has extensive contact with both the national and international scientific community. Email: [email protected]

Johannes Rank

Johannes Rank received a graduate degree in psychology from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Additionally, he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of South Florida. His research on creativity, proactivity and innovation management has been published in international journals such as Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Human Performance, International Journal of Project Management, and Applied Psychology: An International Review.

Corinna Steidelmüller

Corinna Steidelmüller is a research fellow at the German Federal Institute for Occupational safety and health. Her current activities relate to an extensive research project tackling leadership’s impact on well-being considering organizational contexts such as structure, climate and culture. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Wuppertal, Germany. Email: [email protected]