Dispositional resistance to change and emotional exhaustion: moderating effects at the work-unit level

Abstract

Organizational change, although essential for business success, may negatively impact employees’ well-being. Based on person–environment fit theory, the authors investigate employees’ dispositional resistance to change as it impacts emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, the authors examine boundary conditions that may affect dispositional resistance to change and its influence on emotional exhaustion. They take a trait activation approach and test the moderating roles of two work-unit-level internal contextual factors: perceived organizational support and informational team climate. Using a longitudinal research design of 709 participants in 30 work units, multilevel analyses reveal that dispositional resistance to change (time 1) is positively related to emotional exhaustion (time 2). Moreover, a lack of perceived organizational support and a high informational team climate strengthen these effects. The authors conclude that organizations should offer coaching and training programmes to cope with organizational change for employees who are highly change resistant. Furthermore, personal and organizational development strategies should consider the insights gained from the study regarding internal contextual factors that moderate change management processes.

Keywords:

• emotional exhaustion
• organizational change
• perceived organizational support
• resistance to change
• team climate

Acknowledgement

We thank Lea Lempert for her support in preparing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In our analyses, we tested if group size had a significant effect on our findings by including group size as a predictor and testing its interactions with all study variables. The data reveal no significant impact of group size.