Ready, steady, go ... or no? : Perceived human resource practices, change readiness and change turbulence

Abstract

In a world where digitalization and an accelerating environmental complexity is affecting organizations, managing changes with great complexity and high frequency is required. This can result in unexpected challenges, and successful change management becomes crucial to stay ahead of competitors. Taking a micro-perspective level of change, successful changes depend on the support of the employees. Therefore, individual change readiness, considered as the most positive attitude toward change, is of high relevance. This thesis aims to detect what organizations can do to strengthen this attitude among employees. More specifically, we wanted to test if the perception of HR practices intending to enhance employees’ abilities, motivation and opportunities associated positively with change readiness. Also, we proposed that an internal environment, characterized by change turbulence, would moderate these relationships negatively. We empirically tested our hypotheses by gathering data from a Norwegian insurance company, using self-reported questionnaires with 407 respondents. When analyzing the data, we found a significant, positive relationship between perceived ability-, and motivation-enhancing HR practices, and change readiness. These findings imply that such HR practices in the organization strengthens employees’ individual change readiness. Hence, these practices are worth emphasizing when organizations undergo new changes. We were not able to test the association between opportunity-enhancing HR practices and change readiness with our data, leaving this an area for further research. Finally, change turbulence as a moderating variable showed no significant effect.