The purpose of this study is to develop a communication model of employee cynicism toward organizational change. The few studies on employee cynicism were mainly conducted in the fields of management and psychology. The role of communication in shaping employee cynicism was rarely highlighted. Using the theoretical framework of social information processing (SIP), this study explored the communication variables in the social context which contribute to employee cynicism toward organizational change in a higher education institution. In the model, the three variables reflecting the social context, specifically, perceived quality of information, cynicism of colleagues, trust in the administration, are hypothesized to predict change-specific cynicism, which in turn, leads to intention to resist change. Participation in decision making (PDM) is hypothesized to predict intention to resist change both directly and indirectly through the mediating role of change-specific cynicism.
The research was conducted in a Midwestern university which was undergoing a comprehensive strategic planning process. An online survey was administered to all full time tenure track faculty in this university. Path analysis was used to test the overall model fit. The findings of the study suggest that the proposed model explained a significant amount of variance in the outcome variables. However, contrary to the theoretical assumptions, PDM did not have significant causal effects on the outcome variables. Based on the empirical data, the proposed model was revised. The revised model fit the empirical data under study and all path coefficients were statistically significant at the .05 level. The revised model suggests that perceived quality of information had the largest causal effect on change-specific cynicism, followed by cynicism of colleagues, and finally trust in administration. Change-specific cynicism explained 79% of the variance in intention to resist change.
The results of the study support SIP theory by indicating that change-specific cynicism emerges from the work environment. Future studies are called for to explore cynicism from the communication perspective. Further, more research should be conducted to investigate employee cynicism in the changing higher education environment. This study has significant practical implications for administrators in higher education institutions.