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A Study of Ohio State University Extension Employees’ Readiness for Change in Relation to Employee-Supervisor Relationship Quality, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, and Dispositional Resistance to Change

Bloir, Kirk L
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1408958834

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural and Extension Education.
Successfully managing and implementing change is a primary challenge all organizations face. Employee readiness for change plays a central role in effective organizational change. Understanding how employee-level variables influence, enable, support and promote organizational change is therefore a prerequisite for developing and implementing successful organizational change initiatives. Based upon Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995) and tenants of Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), this descriptive and correlational study explored relationships among factors that influence employee readiness for change in Ohio State University Extension, an organization experiencing significant, on-going transformation. The sample frame included all OSU Extension employees with a 25% or greater Extension-funded appointment. Variables of interest included quality of the employee-supervisor relationship, basic psychological needs satisfaction, dispositional resistant to change, readiness for change, and selected demographic characteristics. Data were gathered in two steps. First, demographics were obtained from personnel records. Second, perceptions were assessed through a web-based, self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included four existing scales: the 7-item Leader-Member Exchange scale (LMX-7; Graen & Scandura, 1987); the 21-item Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction at Work Scale (Deci et al., 2001); the 16-item Resistance to Change Scale (Oreg, 2003); and the 14-item Readiness for Change Scale (Madsen et al., 2005). The overall response rate was 74%. After removing incomplete responses, the final data set included 483 responses, giving a 64% usable response rate. Descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlations, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and hierarchical multiple regression, all performed using SPSS version 21, were the primary data analysis techniques. As a group, the 483 OSU Extension employees who participated in this study reported high-quality relationships with their supervisors and perceived their basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence were satisfied more often than not. Respondents reported neither high nor low levels of resistance to change, and somewhat high levels of readiness for change. Those with more years of service, who had worked for a longer period of time for their current supervisor, and who had higher levels of dispositional resistance to change reported lower levels of readiness for change. Those with higher quality relationships with their supervisor, and those with greater basic psychological needs satisfaction tended to report higher levels of readiness for change. High quality employee-supervisor relations were found to predict greater employee readiness for change, via basic psychological needs satisfaction. Basic psychological needs satisfaction partially mediated the effects of employee-supervisor relationship quality on readiness for change. Additionally, greater levels of dispositional resistance to change were found to predict lower levels of employee readiness for change. Collectively, this set of predictor variables explained approximately 16% of the variance in employee readiness for change. This research contributed to a better understanding of existing theories and approaches, while also providing empirical evidence that informs the construction and implementation of organizational change efforts aimed at enhancing employee readiness for change. The results inform approaches that increase the likelihood of employee commitment to organizational change enactments, and thereby increase the likelihood of organizational change implementation success.
Scott Scheer (Advisor)
Garee Earnest (Committee Member)
Keith Smith (Committee Member)
205 p.
Educational Leadership; Organizational Behavior
Leader-member Exchange; LMX; Self-determination; SDT; Readiness for Change; Resistance to Change; Cooperative Extension

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Bloir, K. L. (2014). A Study of Ohio State University Extension Employees’ Readiness for Change in Relation to Employee-Supervisor Relationship Quality, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, and Dispositional Resistance to Change [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1408958834

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bloir, Kirk. A Study of Ohio State University Extension Employees’ Readiness for Change in Relation to Employee-Supervisor Relationship Quality, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, and Dispositional Resistance to Change. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1408958834.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bloir, Kirk. "A Study of Ohio State University Extension Employees’ Readiness for Change in Relation to Employee-Supervisor Relationship Quality, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, and Dispositional Resistance to Change." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1408958834

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1408958834
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© 2014, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License A Study of Ohio State University Extension Employees’ Readiness for Change in Relation to Employee-Supervisor Relationship Quality, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, and Dispositional Resistance to Change by Kirk L Bloir is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.