Gender Differences In Commitment To Change: Impacted By Gender?

J. Deprez, Herman van Den Broeck, Eva Cools and D. Bouckenhoooghe
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Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: The successful implementation of change initiatives remains challenging, as a high number of change processes still fail due to ‘human factor problems’. Following this challenge, our research aimed to investigate how individuals are differently affected by organizational change by looking at how gender has an impact on how employees perceive change process and context and feel commited towards a change initiative. With this inquiry, we hope to stimulate further understanding in the context of the contradictory results found in gender versus minority research respectively. Data were gathered with a survey in a Belgian automotive company (N = 77). Our research suggests that women in comparison to men generally experience more fairness and relational capital, hence lending more support to gender hypotheses in a change setting than to minority theories. Looking at commitment to change, differences were found between men and women for continuance commitment. Building on these preliminary findings, scholars within the change field and change agents alike can work further on a gender-balanced change approach and move away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Keywords: Commitment to change; organizational change; gender; individual differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2012-02
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:12/775

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