Coping with the stress of transformational change in a government department

Abstract

Transformational organizational change is a significant life event for employees within the organization in question and can be a source of considerable stress. However, the causal pathway by which the experience of change results in stress is still unclear. The current study looks at transformational change in a government department. An open-ended interview methodology was used to explore why change can be stressful and how individuals employ coping responses to deal with it. Five sources of change stress were found: increased workload, uncertainty/ambiguity, interpersonal conflict, perceived unfairness, and perceived loss. Fifteen coping responses accounted for the data. These were categorized into four coping types: task-centered coping, emotion-focused coping, cognitive coping, and social support coping. Four of the five stressors were related to the use of certain coping types. A model is proposed to account for the process of coping with organizational change stressors, which is offered for quantitative validation. © 2005 NTL Institute.