Change and Organizational Commitment in Ukraine

Keywords: change, resistance, trust, justice, commitment

Abstract: An understudied issue is how change influences the employee-organization relationship, as exemplified by organizational commitment. We propose a relationship between resistance to change and commitment, moderated by two work place variables, which we test with samples from four Ukrainian firms undergoing change. The results indicate that those higher in resistance to change express lower commitment, which is conditioned by trust in management such that trust mitigates the negative relationship between resistance and commitment, and by procedural justice, which strengthens the negative relationship, a major divergence from the Western literature. These findings have a range of implications for theory and practice.