When leadership meets organizational change: The influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes, and adjustment to change

When leadership meets organizational change: the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes and adjustment to change Despite the importance of adaption and change for firm survival, the failure rate of organizational change efforts remains alarmingly high (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 1995). In a recent global survey of over 3,000 executives, Meaney and Pung (2008) reported that two-thirds of executives indicated that their firm had failed to successfully implement organizational changes. Similarly, academic researchers have also concluded that difficulties in implementing and managing organizational change efforts often precipitate organizational crises (Probst and Raisch, 2005). As a result, attention has been directed to identify the factors that improve the likelihood of successfully implementing organizational change efforts. While there has been practitioner-oriented discussion around the pivotal role of workplace leaders in reducing resistance to change, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined relationships between leader behavior and employee change attitudes (e.g., Bommer, Rich, and Rubin, 2005; Herold, Caldwell, and Liu, 2008; Nemanich and Keller, 2007; Oreg and Berson, 2011). However, Miller, Johnson, and Grau (1994) argued that while the failure to successfully implement planned change may be attributed to many factors, few issues are as critical as employees’ attitudes toward change. In this chapter, we examine the role of top management team (TMT) transformational leadership and supervisory transformational leadership on employees’ appraisals and attitudes about change, and, ultimately, on their adjustment to a large-scale organizational restructuring.