SOCIAL INFLUENCE EFFECTS ON COMMITMENT TO CHANGE AND IMPLEMENTATION BEHAVIORS.

Planned organizational changes can be expensive and difficult to implement. Research suggests that implementation failure occurs when managers do not gain their employees¿ skilled, consistent, and committed program (or product) use (Klein, Conn, & Sorra, 2001). Thus, the need to understand both commitment to change and the implementation stage of organizational change remains critical. The purpose of this paper is to enable researchers to better predict attitudinal and behavioral reactions to an organizational change by specifying how dyadic influence mechanisms within social networks relate to employee commitment to the change¿and ultimately to implementation. Two theories are used to understand the process employees go through in deciding to support and implement a change. First, I use behavioral reasons theory (Westaby, 2000) to identify the reasons people consider when deciding to support or resist a change. Second, I use social information processing theory (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) and suggest that people emphasize different reasons for and against supporting a change after interacting with different network partners. I then use social network theory (Burt, 1987) to argue that employees¿ commitment to change is in part due to the reasons they adopt from influential exchange partners at work. This research allows researchers and managers to trace how employees influence attitudes and behaviors during an organizational change; more specifically it explains the social influence mechanisms that lead to commitment to change and implementation behaviors. This work helps researchers understand more about the social-contextual factors related to organizational change and it helps practitioners intervene in facilitating the implementation of organizational change initiatives.