Abstract

The dynamic nature of business world makes frequent major changes inevitable for organizations. Successful implementation of these changes depends heavily on the level of commitment among employees. As such, this study first explores a number of antecedents to change commitment (including three forms of organizational justice, participation in decision-making, and management support for change initiative), and then examines the moderating effect of organizational change cynicism on the relationship between these antecedents and commitment. Data were collected using a questionnaire-based survey of 334 employees from several ICT companies undergoing various changes. The results indicated cynicism fully moderates the effects of distributive and interactional justice on commitment to change and partially moderates the relationship between management support and commitment. However, the study found no support for the effects of procedural justice and participation being moderated by cynicism. Thus, taking into account the level of cynicism in organization may help to adopt the suitable approach to implementing change initiative and increase the chances of success. By exploring antecedents to change commitment and disruptive effects of cynicism, this study provides better understanding of the mechanisms to increase the possibility of successful change.