IFPOC Symposium:Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change.

IFPOC symposium: Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change Chairs: Maria Vakola (Athens University of Economics and Business) & Karen Van Dam (Open University) Discussant: Mel Fugate (American University, Washington, D.C) State of the art Organisations are required to continuously change and develop but there is a high failure rate associated with change implementation success. In the past two decades, change researchers have started to investigate change recipients' reactions to change recognizing the crucial role of these reactions for successful change. This symposium aims at identifying and discussing the complex processes that underlie the relationships among antecedents, reactions and outcomes associated with organizational change. New perspective / contributions This symposium consists of five studies that extend our knowledge in the field by (i) providing an analysis of change recipients' reactions going beyond the dichotomous approaches (acceptance or resistance) (ii) revealing understudied antecedents-reactions and reactions-consequences patterns and relationships (iii) shedding light on the role of contextual factors i.e team climate and individual factors i.e emotion regulation on the adaptation to change. This symposium is based on a combination of both quantitative (i.e diary, survey) and qualitative (i.e interviews) research methodology. Research / practical implications This symposium aims to increase our understanding of the complex processes associated with change recipients' reactions to change. Discovering how these reactions are created and what are their results may reveal important contingencies that can explain how positive organizational outcomes during times of change can be stimulated which is beneficial for both researchers and practitioners

Spiraling work engagement and change appraisals : A three-wave longitudinal study during organizational change

In this longitudinal field study, we examine reciprocal relationships between within-person changes in work engagement and cognitive appraisals of change (threat and challenge) across an organizational merger. Examination of these cyclical relationships provides a more accurate understanding of the complexity of employees' experience of change and a new test of spiraling work engagement and cognitive appraisals. Latent change score modeling is used to analyze 3 waves of longitudinal survey data (N = 623). Our findings showed that engagement mitigated threat appraisals and enhanced challenge appraisals through pre- and postmerger phases. A reciprocal relationship between threat appraisal and engagement was also observed, such that threat fueled decreases in engagement throughout the merger. Challenge appraisal was associated with enhanced work engagement during the first merger phase. This examination advocates managers of change to foster employees' work engagement already prior to change endeavors, along with mitigating threat appraisals throughout organizational change events. Fostering positive challenge appraisals appears to be particularly important for employees' work engagement during times of major changes. Findings suggest that upward spiral of work engagement, as postulated on the basis of the broaden-and-build theory, may be more likely to occur through engagement mitigating negative cognitions (threat) than promoting positive cognitions (challenge).Peer reviewe