Corporate Renewal-Academic-Resources for Change: The relationships of Organizational Inducements and Psychological Resilience to employees’ attitudes and behaviors towards organizational Change

The success of organizational change is not only dependent on the managers but also on how the employees support the changes being made. In my opinion this article takes a look on what are the motivating factors that will make an employee more receptive to change or not. The article analyzes inducements and psychological resilience as factors to an employee’s attitudes to organizational change. According to the authors, “little attention has been given to employee resources as a critical determinant of these effects.” (Shin et al,2012)

The authors of the article surveyed 234 employees and 45 managers and examined how employees reacted to change. The first factor tackled were organizational inducements, these inducements can be both intangible and tangible. The tangible ones being as higher wages, benefits while the intangible ones being such as feeling part of the “inner circle” The authors found that as the organization was about to initiate the organizational change, the “resource-rich” employees were more positive and willing to participate in the change than the “resource-poor” employees. This can be attributed to the fact that they felt that they’re jobs were not in danger or that they had enough professional development that they could go out and find another job without a problem. The authors states that the main reasons employees may oppose to change are “increased workloads resulting from the assignment of new work tasks, the need to adjust to new work relationships, and very often, the introduction of new strategic goals” (Shin et al, 2012) By having inducements that can make the employee feel well-equipped to take on those changes, can greatly increase the employees attitude towards the change. The manager must be careful not to only focus on monetary inducements as they are only a smart part of what the employee values.

The article also states the employee’s psychological resilience as another major factor. The organizational change will bring on many challenges and hardships.(Shin et al ,2012) The employee must have the resilience to be able to adapt to these change and not let it overwhelm him. In my opinion, the employee psychological strength is the biggest factor on how the employee reacts to the change. If the employee as the saying goes “doesn’t drown in a puddle”, he will be able to easily adapt to the hardships and changing environment.

The authors also saw that in many cases, employees who both had the inducements and resilience to endure an organizational seemed to have an increased sense of commitment towards the firm. The employees feel like they are “part of the team” and are more positive on the change. This is important for managers as they need to instill a sense of belonging to all of its employees.

In my opinion this article did a great job in contributing to the study of employee’s attitude to the organizational change. The managers must be preemptive of the change and start giving the employees inducements so that when the change comes they will be ready for it. It has been my personal experience that at times the employees are the factor that causes a change to fail or take longer than expected. Applying this article to current events, we can examine RIM. The company is growing thru some mighty big changes and the employees must be able to have a positive attitude to these changes. In order to achieve this, RIM must give its employees the necessary inducements so that they will feel part of the team and give the firm their full commitment.

Works Cited
Shin,Jiseon, M. Susan Taylor, and Myeong-Gu Seo "Resources for Change: The relationships of Organizational Inducements and Psychological Resilience to employees’ attitudes and behaviors towards organizational Change." Academy of Management Journal, 55.3 (2012): 727-748.