조직변화에 대한 구성원 저항과 관련한 선행연구에서 변화에 대한 구성원들의 심리적 정서와 행동이 반드시 일치하지 않을 수 있기 때문에 조직변화에 대한 저 항의 다차원적 접근이 필요함을 제시하였다. 즉 변화에 대한 저항은 노골적으로 드러내놓고 저항하는 경우와 드러나지 않게 교묘하게 감추어진 형태로 나타날 수 있다. 이러한 선행연구를 바탕으로 본 연구에서는 저항을 심리적, 행동적 저항의 2가지 요인으로 파악하고 조직변화에 대한 저항을 유발하는 원인들을 고용안정감, 변화에 관한 정보 및 경영자 신뢰 풍토로 구분하여 이들이 각각 심리적, 행동적 저항과 어떠한 관련성을 가지는지를 실증적으로 밝히고자 하였다. 그리고 저항에 따른 결과로써 구성원들의 심리적, 행동적 저항이 조직몰입과 어떠한 연관성을 갖 는가를 검증하였다. 실증분석을 위해 조직변화를 추진하고 있는 국내 12개 기업 을 대상으로 분석한 결과, 첫째 고용안정감은 구성원의 심리적 저항과 행동적 저 항에 모두 부(-)적인 영향을 미치며, 둘째, 변화 과정에서 제공되는 변화 정보는 심리적 저항에 부정적 영향을 미치나, 행동적 저항에는 긍정적 영향을 미치는 것 으로 파악되었다. 셋째, 변화 과정에서 근로자 -경영자간 신뢰 풍토는 심리적, 행 동적 저항과의 관계에 모두 유의한 관련성을 확인할 수 없었다. 마지막으로, 구성 원의 심리적, 행동적 저항이 높을수록 조직몰입 모두 부정적으로 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다.
The study on employee resistance to organizational change literature noted that resistance should be classified into psychological resistance and behavioral resistance within the multi-dimensional approach. Based on the prior research, this paper examines empirically context traits(job security, change-related information, and trust climate) as antecedents that affect on those resistances and to examine how both psychological and behavioral resistance impact on organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Previous research on resistance to organizational change suggested that resistance to change in organizations requires multi-dimensional approach because employees’ emotions and behaviors in response to change do not necessarily coincide. In other words, resistance to change can be made either openly or subtly. Based on the prior research, resistance should be classified into psychological resistance and behavioral resistance within the multi-dimensional approach, and this paper examines empirically context traits(job security, change-related information, and trust climate) as antecedents that affect those resistances and to examine how both psychological and behavioral resistance impact on organizational commitment as consequences. Researchers and businessmen have attempted to define and reunify the concept of resistance to organizational change based on the assertion that organizational change efforts fail mainly because of employee resistance. However, they have not shown how employee resistance affects the success or failure of various change attempts (George & Jones, 2001; Piderit, 2000). First, most previous research examined resistance to organizational change from a single- dimensional perspective. Some researchers focused on employees’ psychological state during the change process (Labianca, Gray, & Brass, 2000), while others defined resistance with emphasis on employees’ behavior (Brower & Abolafia, 1995). Most researchers investigated resistance to change in organizations from one of the two perspectives. From a theoretical view, however, employee reactions to change include cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions (Breckler, 1984; Piderit, 2000). In short, resistance can be conceptualized as an emotional state or a behavior. As each state is an important component of employee response to change in organizations, defining resistance with emphasis on either of the two perspectives seems less than complete. In reality, understanding employee resistance to organizational change from the both perspectives will help understand employee response to change in depth. Thus, this paper attempted to define each state of employee resistance to change in organizations based on the fact that employees’ psychological and behavioral reactions to organizational change can be different. For instance, during the change process, employees can have discontent or other psychological resistance, but the resistance can be explicitly expressed and lead to behavioral resistance. In addition, as psychology, behavior and cognition of organizational change do not necessarily coincide, resistance can usually accompany conflicting emotions. In this regard, this paper put an emphasis on multi-dimensions of resistance, examine the relations between each dimension and factors that cause employee resistance during the organizational change process and empirically identify how the outcomes of resistance affect organizational commitment. For an empirical analysis, this paper administered surveys to 12 Korean companies which were implementing organizational change, and this paper obtained the following findings: First, job security was found to have a significant negative relationship with an employee’s psychological and behavioral resistance. It was found that, among factors that affect resistance, job security is the only variable that has significant impact on both of the psychological and behavioral factors of resistance and has the highest impact on employees’ psychological resistance to change (β = -.336, p < .001). In other words, this paper reached the conclusion that cognition of job security is an important variable of psychological and behavioral resistance. Prior research asserted that although both the change outcome and process affect how employees feel and act, the outcome generally has a bigger impact on employees’ psychological reaction (Crino, 1994; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). In this context, job security explains psychological resistance more than variables related to the change process (change-related information and trust climate). Second, change-related information is negatively associated with employees’ psychological resistance, but the change-related information is positively related to employees’ behavioral resistance with the result being contrary to the hypothesis. It was also found that if employees recognize the level of change-related information as high, their psychological resistance level is low. This shows that providing the right information related to change can make a difference because employee resistance to change and the inability to change organizations are attributable to the gap in perspectives to change or different interest of business units. In particular, employees are faced with uncertainty when change is required within the organization and they have to deal with the uncertainty. During the change process, change-related information will ease employees anxiety and tension. This paper, however, witnessed the positive relationship between more information and behavioral resistance contrary to the fact that psychological resistance is lowered when more change-related information is provided. The result can be explained from various perspectives. Previous research examined employee resistance on the assumption that employees resist change because they are not familiar with details of change. However, in most cases, employees’ resistance to change is justifiable. If change means repeated process of losing something, employees are predicted to exhibit more resistance as they have more change-related information. Thus, the relationship between change-related information and employees resistance depends on the quality of information, not on the existence of information and the way of providing information is also likely to affect employees’ behavioral resistance. Third, the relationship between trust climate and employees’ resistance is not significant to both psychological and behavior resistance. This is because of the different variables used in measuring trust climate. While prior research used items that can measure trust in executives directly related to organizational change, this paper measured general trust climate between employees and executives, which might have weakened the relations between dependant and independent variables. Finally, both psychological and behavioral resistance to organizational change are negatively related to organizational commitment. This becomes evident by the fact that employees reported as having been stressed, unsettled or angry tend to show lower commitment to their jobs.
