The rate of technological change within organizations has been fast-tracked by the recent global health crisis and shifting workplace dynamics. As many organizations decide how to best manage the implementation of new technologies, they must also consider the human response, which can facilitate the success of the overall implementation. Complementing the focus of this book (how is change perceived by recipients?), we focus on what is known about how employees respond to technological changes. In this review, we provide a retrospective account of the body of work on this topic. First, we review the types of technological changes that have been studied in relation to broader dimensions of organizational change. Second, we elaborate on theoretical perspectives that have been used, including comparing technology-specific models with broader theoretical approaches. Third, we summarize the antecedent-response relationships that have been examined. We hope that this bird’s-eye view of the field allows scholars to span disciplines and consider aspects related to the design and type of the technology, which have been largely treated as a setting, in future research.

Employee resistance is often seen as the major force against the enactment of change. The literature has privileged the view that resistance, for the most extent, is the resistors’ own fault. As Ford and Ford put it, “the assumption is that they resisted a perfectly logical move.” I build on the approach that resistance to change is a form of feedback, to argue that, if organizations and their agents examine the underlying reasons, they will be better equipped to deal with the challenges related to resistance. In light of Uncertainty Reduction Theory, I also suggest that we need to move beyond the viewpoint that examines change as a one-off phenomenon and interpret it as grounded in the broader organizational life. Finally, and building on recent empirical evidence, I put forth a framework on anticipating intentions to resist future change that integrates the organization’s history of change, individual characteristics, leadership factors, and organizational factors, alongside important boundary conditions that influence the sensemaking process underlying the development of intentions to resist future changes.

Organizational identification might become weaker when confronted with organizational changes, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Identification change in M&As has received significant attention from scholars, but the extant theoretical evidence might not apply to employees involved in Chinese M&As. Indeed, cultural characteristics (e.g., dialectical thinking, collectivism, power distance) might make Chinese employees more tolerant of contradictions and ambivalence than employees in the Western hemisphere. To address this gap, we will refer to the social identity theory and the extant knowledge on identification change in cross-border M&As. We will present a framework of organizational identification change for Chinese employees after acquisition together with factors that contribute to the success of M&As. We illustrate it with the case of a Chinese acquisition in Europe: ChinaCorp and EuroMall. We theorize on the role of identity leadership wherein a leader’s behavior has a particularly strong impact on identification processes in high power distance and collectivist cultures. We will show how acts of identity leadership matter for the transfer from pre-merger to post-merger identification in the case of Chinese acquirers.

Here I comment on the chapters that have formed the contribution of this volume. I note that this second edition makes contributions considerably beyond those of the first edition, in particular by devoting attention to the dynamics of planned organizational change, not simply its instigators and outcomes. In particular, the chapters contribute to several important themes associated with dynamics of planned change. These include ways of classifying types of organizational change, the importance of change leaders and the development of change leadership, the importance of both affective and cognitive processes (especially sensemaking) in change, the roles of several types of identity processes in change, and the recognition of temporal processes in change. The chapters show the salience of these dynamics, whether they are recognized or not, to sensitize scholars to look for them. I conclude by suggesting some possible new directions for future investigations of change. These include the use of process as well as variance theorizing, attention to change emergence, and attention to changes that extend beyond individual organizations.

We offer in this chapter an overview of the state of research on organization members’ responses to organizational change since the publication of the first edition of the book. We also review this edition’s structure and content.

Using a social identity approach, this research program focuses on how Eastern and Western managers make sense of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Study 1 used online experiments to examine how people perceive intergroup criticism. We found that employees responded to criticism more negatively when it was made by an outgroup rather than by ingroup members. Building on the study 1 results, we further explored social identity processes and intergroup dynamics. We conducted interviews with European (Study 2) and Chinese managers (Study 3) involved in an acquisition of a European company by a Chinese holding. Study 2 shows that European managers’ organizational identity change is facilitated by alignment of a post-merger identity with their pre-merger historical identity, and over time, they engaged in collaboration and knowledge sharing with their Chinese counterparts. In Study 3, we found that Chinese managers leveraged an agile organizational identity to deal with status inferiority and rapid organizational changes. In summary, this research program addresses the need for a deeper understanding of social identity processes and change beyond M&A context, but also in other cross-cultural collaboration processes which involve employees who initially have various identities, practices, and cultural backgrounds.

We focus on change recipients’ emotional responses to organizational change. We identify the key theoretical frameworks that have been used to consider recipients’ emotional reactions to change. Our review reveals a focus on appraisal theories of emotions, although other theoretical perspectives have been adopted, including affective events theory (AET) and the broaden and build theory of positive emotions. We argue, however, that other dominant theories, including emotion regulation theories and emotional contagion, have not received adequate attention in the change field. Our review identifies four key foci of empirical research, including efforts to (1) understand the structure of change recipients’ emotional responses to change, (2) develop process models of emotional responses to change, (3) explore the antecedents and outcomes of emotional responses to change, and (4) consider the influence of change recipient and leader emotional intelligence on change outcomes. We develop an integrative framework that provides a conceptual map of relevant concepts when studying change recipients’ emotional responses to change. We conclude with identifying future directions for research.

Decades of research confirms that the behavior of leaders influences change outcomes. Correspondingly, leader development has aimed to identify and develop the individual traits and attributes that are precursors to desired behaviors. However, where this approach has traditionally targeted static precursors and, thus, relatively stable sets of behaviors, there is growing evidence that successful change requires leaders to switch behaviors during change. We introduce mindset activation as a leader development approach to aid this switch. We elaborate on two common change processes – top-down and bottom-up – and establish a connection between the desired leader behaviors of these processes and the fixed and growth mindsets, respectively. In doing so, we propose a means of operationalizing the activation of fixed and growth mindsets for leader development during change. This new approach overcomes some of the limitations of the traditional focus on static precursors of behaviors, by providing a more precise account that encompasses the malleable and dynamic nature of personality system processes to enable effective change leadership.

Successful organizational change requires the commitment of those charged with its implementation. We focus on the role that organizational leaders play in the development and maintenance of employees’ commitment to organizational change. We review a recent but growing body of research linking leadership to change commitment, beginning with transformational leadership, new genre leadership, change leadership, and change-specific leader behavior. In each case, we examine the link between leadership style/behavior and followers’ commitment to change, the mediating mechanisms (e.g., climate of trust, change self-efficacy) that help to explain the link, and the moderating conditions (magnitude of the change, impact on employees) that influence the strength or direction of the relationship. Evidence suggests that, although leadership at all levels can have an impact, direct managers play a particularly important role in fostering commitment and behavioral support for the change within their units. Organizations are advised to attend to this role in the planning and implementation of change, particularly when the change is likely to have a wide-ranging impact and require commitment at all levels.

This chapter takes a social identity perspective on change leadership. Although leading change is considered to be an essential part of leadership in general, the empirical literature on this topic is relatively sparse. Yet, the social identity perspective provides valuable insights into this topic, in particular, shedding light on why individuals resist or support change and how leaders can play a role in facilitating positive change pathways. Drawing on this literature, we develop a multi-identity pathway model, which outlines how leaders can enable employee change adjustment by enhancing perceptions of identity continuity and identity gain during change processes. This model further explores the identity management behaviors that leaders can employ to inspire support for change, and the different (organizational, team, and occupational) identity foci that may facilitate positive change reactions. Finally, we discuss whether shared or distributed models of leadership are feasible leadership mechanisms in fostering strong post-change support among employees.

Managers act as change agents on the frontlines of the day-to-day implementation of change processes at the same time as having to manage daily operations. This double role puts them under pressure to both implement change processes efficiently and emphasizes the need for tools and techniques to develop the change competencies of managers. This chapter addresses this issue by presenting a case study of a change management competency intervention. The intervention lasted four days of workshops and consisted of dialog exercises and serious-game simulations. The participating managers were presented with change dilemmas related to key change concepts such as change phases, change resistance/readiness, and balancing change and stability, with the aim to improve their change competencies. Drawing on interviews with managers participating in the training we analyze how the intervention challenged the managers’ perspectives on their change management and fostered learning and development of change competencies. The key role of sensemaking processes are analyzed to nuance and theorize the complexities of developing change competency.

Past decades have shown an increase in research into employee responses to organizational change (OC). However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the type of change. Different types of change are likely to affect change recipients’ learning and well-being in a different way. Our study aimed to identify OC types and investigate whether these are differentially associated with employee responses. Exploring OC types, two dimensions were distinguished and combined: a qualitative axis representing the prevalence of innovation; and a quantitative axis distinguishing between growth and decline. In a representative sample of private sector employees from a longitudinal survey, cluster analyses identified six OC types. We investigated whether these OC types are differentially associated with active workplace learning and emotional exhaustion. Results indicated that active learning is stimulated by OC types characterized by innovation/growth, while OC types characterized by decline and restructuring without innovation are associated with higher emotional exhaustion. In conclusion, various OC types revealed differential effects on employee personal development and well-being.