Perceived fairness and resistance to organizational change in relation to change-commitment

The present study examined commitment to change in an organization. Change-commitment is important for the success of a change. Change-commitment is divided into affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. In order to test factors relevant for change-commitment, a multidimensional model consisting of fairness dimensions (distributive fairness, procedural fairness, interpersonal fairness and informational fairness) and resistance dimensions (affective resistance, behavioral resistance and cognitive resistance) was used. The goal of the present study was to analyze a change process and contribute knowledge about how to best approach a change. It was hypothesized that the fairness dimensions would have a positive relation to change-commitment and that the resistance dimensions would have a negative relation to change-commitment. The sample was drawn from employees working at a psychiatric clinic in the Norwegian public health sector (N=111), including 77 women and 34 men with a mean age of 44 years. This study examined the different changes the wards had gone through. Hierarchical multiple regression was used in the analysis. The results indicated partial support for the hypotheses: procedural fairness was the only fairness dimension to have a significant relationship with change-commitment. It further showed that behavioral and cognitive resistance were the only resistance dimensions significantly related to change-commitment. Practitioners may use the findings of this study to approach change; suggestions to strengthen change-commitment among employees are discussed. Future research should approach the change process with a longitudinal design, examining change-commitment’s development while considering specific changes in public and private organizations