New Publication in the Journal of Management

Whether employees actively help shape organizational change depends not only on how positively they view it, but also on how that view develops over time. This is the key message of the forthcoming Journal of Management article “Shift Happens During Change: Appraisal Shifts and Employee Proactive Support for Organizational Change” by Rouven Kanitz, Leander De Schutter, Julia Backmann, Tina Kiefer, Mel Fugate und Martin Hoegl. Drawing on a two-wave survey at a technology firm (n = 267) and an experiment (n = 523), the team finds that employees show the highest proactive support when they increasingly see the change as beneficial for their work. Even a decrease in perceived benefits is linked to more proactive support than consistently low benefits. Positive emotions help explain why these shifts matter. The study emphasizes temporal dynamics in change research and suggests that leaders should guide change as a process and help employees experience its benefits for their daily work as it unfolds.

• Link to the article