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Why change management fails:The data is in

Midwest Academy of ManagementOctober 3, 2014

About Ron Koller

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Acknowledgements

Dr. Rick Fenwick (instigator)Dr. Paula Fremont (chair)Dr. Angela Bruch (committee)Dr. Suzanna Reynolds (committee)Dr. Diana Wong (EMU & MAOM member)Dr. Greg HuszczoDr. James LeBretonDr. Therese Yaeger & Dr. Peter Sorensen

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3 learning points

1. Resistance is no longer Change’s biggest enemy

2. Too much of a good thing (i.e. commitment) is a bad thing

3. Nonlinear statistics portray organizational psychology phenomenon (i.e. behavior) more accurately than linear statistics

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Agenda

1. 4-component Commitment Model2. Literature3. Methodology4. Results5. Conclusions, implications, and

recommendations

Commitment to change concept

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To much of a good thing is bad

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Coetsee Nonlinear Model

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H1: Commitment < R + Compliance

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H2: Each Predictor Separately

Affective Commitment to Change (AC2C)

Likert scale 1-76-items

Continuance Commitment to Change (CC2C)Likert scale 1-7

6-items

Normative Commitment to Change (NC2C) Likert scale 1-7

6-items

Behavioral Support for Change (BSC)

1-100 continuum1-item

3 Predictors

1 Outcome

• Active Resistance• Passive Resistance• Compliance• Cooperation• Championing

Supported byMorin et al., 2013

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H3: Curvilinear Relationship (together)

Behavioral Support for Change (BSC)

1-100 continuum1-item

3 Predictors

1 Outcome

• Active Resistance• Passive Resistance• Compliance• Cooperation• Championing

H1: Practical Results

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H2 Result

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H3 ResultAC2C

one-way

AC2C xCC2C

two-way

NC2Cone-way

NC2C xCC2C

two-way

AC2C xCC2C

two-way

AC2C xNC2C xCC2C

three-way

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H3 BreakdownBehavioralSupport forChange

AC2C

NC2C

AC2C x NC2Ctwo-way interaction

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Limits of Linear RegressionBehavioralSupport forChange

Linear can onlyexplain additivecontributions

Linear regression cannot explain what is REALLY happeningSIMULTANEOUS contributions

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No Δ in variance ≠ no contribution

CC2C’s contributionIs MASKED

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Double the two-way interactionAC2C

one-way

AC2C xCC2C

two-way

NC2Cone-way

NC2C xCC2C

two-way

AC2C xCC2C

two-way

AC2C xNC2C xCC2C

three-way

Recommendations

1. Practitioners: stop spending so much time worrying about resistance start paying more attention to compliance/ambivalence

2. Researchers: a. Use (new) squared terms of predictor variables to run a

nonlinear regression• how much commitment/resistance is optimal versus sub-

optimal?• what types of commitment/resistance are optimal versus sub-

optimal?

b. Use the tools at http://relativeimportance.davidson.edu to more accurately decompose the variance

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What this study showed us

1. Resistance is no longer Change’s biggest enemy (hypothesis 1)

2. Too much of a good thing (i.e. commitment) is a bad thing (hypothesis 2)

3. Nonlinear statistics portray organizational psychology phenomenon (i.e. behavior) more accurately than linear statistics (hypothesis 3)