READY OR NOT…? WHAT’S THE RELEVANCE OF A MESO LEVEL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF READINESS FOR CHANGE

Organizational change often yields limited success. Failure in many cases is due to the lack of motivation or readiness for change among organizational members. This study proposes and tests a meso-level model of readiness for change. More specifically this article examined the influence of organizational climate factors on readiness for change over and above the effects of their eponymous lower level psychological climate variables (i.e., trust in top management, history of change, participation in decision making, and quality of change communication). By means of a large scale survey administered in 84 Belgian companies, a total of 2543 responses were collected. HLM analyses revealed a contextual effect for quality of change communication on the three components of readiness for change (emotional, cognitive and intentional), even after controlling for psychological change climate. Furthermore, the results indicated that the individual perceptions of history of change, participation in decision making, and quality of change communication were positively correlated with readiness for change. These findings are discussed in relation to previous literature.