Attitudes towards organizational change: validation of a scale .

Individual attitudes toward organizational change emerge as one of the most pervasive factors in individual resistance to processes of change. This resistance to change appears to account, in turn, for failure in such change processes. The aim of this study is to construct and validate a scale of attitudes toward organizational change by surveying attitudes of 409 workers from two Brazilian organizations. An exploratory factor analysis with Promax rotation was performed on the 50 items of the attitudes scale. These analyses were replicated within the samples from each organization. A confirmatory factor analysis, using AMOS, was also performed on the same scale, and showed good validity and reliability indices. Results are quite similar for the two organizations, attitudes of acceptance and fear towards change emerging with similar strength. Attitudes of cynicism towards organizational change are not so strong. Additional cluster analyses revealed some patterns of conflicting and consistent attitudes towards change, and the role of these patterns in organizational change is discussed