The Impact of Negative Informal Information Before a Change on Performance: A Within-Person Approach

Xia Jiang, Jing Du, Jinfan Zhou and Yumeng Cui
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Xia Jiang: Department of Human Resources Management, Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430000, China
Jing Du: Department of Human Resources Management, Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430000, China
Jinfan Zhou: Department of Human Resource Management, Business School, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Yumeng Cui: Human Resource Department, WISDRI Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited, Wuhan 430000, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: We live in a rapidly changing business environment where change has become the norm for organizations to maintain competitiveness. Although both scholars and practitioners agree that organizational change communication is important to help employees adjust to change, little is known about how negative informal information before the change affects employees’ reaction to the change and occurrence of possible within-person dynamics of resistance intention over time. Based on the construal-level theory, we used SPSS 22, AMOS 20, and HLM 6.0 as tools to explore how negative informal information affects individual performance. We used a multilevel approach to probe within-person processes among 215 MBA students in China. The results show that (1) negative informal information provided before the organizational change is positively related to the resistance intention, (2) resistance intention decreases significantly over time, and (3) negative informal information is negatively related to individual performance during the organizational change. The results from this study extend the literature on informal communication before the change and provide a dynamic perspective on the occurrence of possible within-person dynamics of resistance intention over time.

Keywords: informal information; organizational change; resistance intention; within-person; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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