Organizations comprise of groups who share and compete for resources. During organizational change, resources are often redistributed. Although change messages highlight overarching benefits for the organization, recipients of the message are interested in knowing how they will be affected at the group level, and this affects the way the message is processed. Using concepts from Social Identity Theory, Elaboration Likelihood Model and Prospect Theory, the effects of messages that outline benefits to a specific independent group (as compared with generic benefits to all), messages that outline benefits to a group the recipient’s own group shares resources with (as compared with an independent group), messages that outline specific losses to one’s own team (as compared with no mention of specific losses) and messages that outline losses to one’s own team and also mention generic gain as well as generic gains and compensatory action (as compared with messages that only mention losses to one’s own team) were studied. The dependent variable was negative opinion of the change initiative. The indirect cognitive path resulting from message perception to scrutiny, loss framing and subsequent negative opinion was also studied. The moderating role of in-group identification, out-group bias, and competitive work climate in the indirect cognitive path was studied. The findings indicated that messages that specify the beneficiary group, that outline gains to an interdependent out-group and those that explicitly state losses to one’s own team were likely to lead to the formation of negative opinion. Individuals were seen to directly frame messages that specified the beneficiary group and messages that outlined specific losses for their own team as losses, leading to negative opinion. Messages that offered gains to interdependent groups were scrutinized and framed as losses before the formation of negative opinion. Implications for research and practice of organizational change are discussed.

Last modified

• 04/27/2018

Creator

• Mrittika Sen

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2T69F

Subject

• Communication Studies

Keyword

• framing in organizational change
• competition for resources during organizational change
• group dynamics in organizational change
• organizational change communication
• resource interdependence in change management
• organizational change

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright