Commitment to Change

What is "commitment to change," anyway? Is it fully embracing a change regardless of how we feel personally? Is it accepting the externally generated WIIFM crammed down the throat by an over-zealous change zombie? Or could it be that commitment to change begins, simply, with a willingness to consider something new and, perhaps, even try it on?

There has been considerable interest in understanding the crucial role that commitment to change plays in shaping positive outcomes for organizations. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) postulated that commitment to change can take on three different forms, including desire, perceived cost, and obligation. That is, commitment to change reflects a desire to provide support for the change based on a belief in its inherent benefits (affective commitment to change), a recognition of the cost of not supporting the change (continuance commitment to change), and a sense of moral obligation to provide support for the change (normative commitment to change).

Herscovitch and Meyer introduced their three-component model demonstrating affective commitment to change (ACC), normative commitment to change (NCC), and continuance commitment to change (CCC) along with an associated survey deemed to measure these constructs. This framework has dominated commitment research over the last 10-15 years. Findings based on data collected from 17 studies using this framework indicate important differences in the strength of relationships among ACC-NCC, ACC-CCC, and NCC-CCC. Here is my oversimplification of the general findings from these studies.

Basically, what the findings consistently tell us is that types and combinations of commitment to change are connected to different responses to change. To wit: beliefs about costs and benefits associated with change (affective and continuance commitment to change) in combination with the felt pressure to follow the norm (normative commitment to change) shape people’s commitment intentions and their consequent behavioral actions.

What can be concluded here is that both ACC and NCC are critical to fostering positive behavioral responses to change, whereas CCC among employees is likely to be unfavorable to behavioral support. Regardless of the likelihood that commitment to change may have a personal and dispositional foundation, the majority of studies demonstrate that it is possible to manage commitment to change by altering the organizational, work, and job context. For example, Bouckenooghe (2012), demonstrated how the role of organizational politics in shaping ACC, CCC, and NCC was diluted by the level of two contextual elements: the degree of trust in top management and the organization's history with change. In another study, Baraldi et al. (2010) found that changes in perceived role ambiguity and job insecurity during a major transformation affect employees’ commitment to change.

The implication for change practitioners is that we can address perceived cynicism and negativity directly by examining the ecosystem in which change is occurring and adjusting our own interventions to influence target behavior. Stop thinking it’s about “them” failing to accurately interpret our perfect logic. Just as poor employee performance is usually linked to poorer management above, perhaps it’s time for us to take some responsibility and own negative outcomes in the same way we take credit for and celebrate the positive. Let’s do the work!