Hurry Up! Change Now or Never: The Mediating Role of Affective Commitment to Perceived Organizational Support and Readiness for Change

Artisita Rochmi^a and Arum Etikariena^b*

^aFaculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia and Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia^b

*Corresponding author:

Arum Etikariena

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Department

Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia

Jl. Lkr. Kampus Raya, Depok, Jawa Barat

Indonesia, 16424

Tel.: +62 217270004

E-mail: arum.etikariena@ui.ac.id

Hurry Up! Change Now or Never: The Mediating Role of Affective Commitment to Perceived Organizational Support and Readiness for Change

Background. Indonesian Non-Ministry Government Institution employees play an important role in governments’ bureaucratic reform as an agent of change. It imply that they need to exhibit a competence and commitment toward government and institution ongoing work that involved various form of work changes. Readiness for change itself defined as the extent to which individuals are mentally, psychologically, or physically ready, prepared, or primed, to participate in organization development activities in workplace. Previous research found that various organizational and individual factors influence employees’ readiness for change. This study attempt to examine the mediating role of affective commitment on the relationship between perceived organizational support and employees’ readiness for change. Furthermore, this study aim to arrange the intervention needed to foster the readiness for change within civil servant.

Methods. This research used a cross-sectional study design. The empirical data collected from 144 non-probability convenient sample of government’s employees. Respondents are 32% men and 68% women from various levels and positions in a non-ministry government institutions. The organization involved in this research responsible for minimizing the abuse of controlled substances through prevention and law enforcement. Readiness for change measured using the Readiness for Change Scale (1997) with good reliability (α=.83). Perceived organizational support assessed using the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) (1986) adapted and tested in Bahasa Indonesia with good reliability of α=.71 whereas the Affective Commitment Subscale of Commitment Scale (1990) (α=.74) used to measure employees’ affective commitment. Descriptive statistic performed to explore respondents’ demographic data. Pearson Product Moment correlation used to see the correlation between variables. The simple mediation model (model 4) ran in PROCESS macro for SPSS 24.0 to test the research hypothesis.

Results. It is proved that perceived organizational support predict readiness for change through affective commitment as the mediation variable, Effect = 0.29, SE = 0.06, 95% CI [0.18, 0.42]. In depth analysis found that tenure (r = 0,404; p <0,01) and work unit (r = 0,508; p <0,01) have a statistically significance correlation with readiness for change.

Conclusions. Perceived organization support foster employees’ affective commitment which then increase their readiness for change. High organizational support perceived as an appreciation and attention toward employees effort and achievement. This condition then increase employees’ commitment towards organization. Further, committed employees show greater support for organizations change program.

Added-Values. The result explained above emphasize the role of perceived organizational support and employees’ affective commitment in their readiness for change. With this logic in mind, management should consider various form of encouragement for employees such as training, mentoring, and team building. Employees should be reassured that they will actively involve in the process of change and that their interests are adequately taken into account in every decision made. This way, employees will exhibit greater bond with organization. Committed employees predicted to enhance favorability towards change. They are not only perceived changes positively, but also can work as agent of changes in their unit or department. In the future, the research on this topic, researcher should consider demographic variable such as job tenure and group variable such as work unit. These two variable found to have a positive impact on employees’ readiness for change.

Keywords: Perceived Organizational Support, Readiness for Change, Affective Commitment

Word count: 520