How to Create Change Readiness? The Change Interpretation Matters

Abstract

That how employees interpret change plays a critical role in organizational change. To offer an understanding of the relationship between organizational change strategies and employees' readiness for change from a social cognitive perspective, a model is initially built based on relevant literature reviewed and then data are collected from 22 organizations in China and Zimbabwe. A sample of 132 individuals is analysed, and hypothesized relationships are investigated using AMOS software. The findings support an integrated perspective in which both change management strategies and employees' change interpretations shape change readiness. Furthermore, the findings show that employees with high change communication, participation and perceptions of principal support tend to exhibit high levels of change readiness and that change interpretation plays a partial mediating role between change strategies and change readiness. In the last part of paper the theoretical contribution and practical implication of this study are discussed