Changing attitudes about change by Bommer, W. H., Rich, G. A., & Rubin, R. S.
In this article, the authors aimed to demonstrate the longitudinal effects that transformational leader can have on the levels of employee cynicism about changes within the organisation. The authors chose the transformational style of leadership as they believed that this form of leadership required individuals to effectively change the fundamental beliefs and attitudes of followers’. In other words, they believed that in order to successfully transform a group of individuals’ readiness to change, the presence of a transformational leader is pivotal. Transformational leadership behaviour is linked with higher levels of employee satisfaction and performance, whilst maintaining high levels of organisational commitment; therefore, this behaviour represents positive change-orientated behaviour by those implementing the change.
In this course, we have learned that employees require a clear and compelling reason to why the change is required in order to buy in to it, as organisational change has been shown repeatedly to have high levels of failure. These failures over time have generated a distrust of senior management, and has disparaged the employees’ readiness to change; thus building cynics among the staff of the company. These cynics are hard to reach and can be provide a genuine challenge for leaders as they ready their staff for change. This cynicism against organisation change leaves employees feeling like they are being treated unfairly, as they become resistant and weary of the actions made by the organisation. These behaviours ultimately result in higher absenteeism, lower performance levels and a higher likelihood of these employees quitting.
Kotter argued that transformational leaders will need to reduce cynicism amongst employees if they are to conduct change in an organisation. However, if this change fails, it only reinforces the employee’s initial cynical beliefs, thus, making future change initiative even harder to enforce and turning this cynicism against organisational change into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The authors believe that the behaviour of transformational leaders would allow for the effective implementation of strategies aimed towards reducing cynicism. This includes keeping people informed of the ongoing changes, minimising surprising, rewarding and recognising the successful changes, and allowing the employees to provide their input towards the change. To test this, Bommer, Rich & Rubin hypothesised that transformational leadership will reduce the cynicism against organisational change.
This test