Relationships between employee readiness for organisational change, supervisor and peer relations and demography

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationships and predictive power of supervisor and peer relations along with demographic factors towards employee readiness for organisational change in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach – Adopting a quantitative approach, this cross sectional study applies a self‐administered survey questionnaire for data collection. Descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlations are obtained using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15.0 for Windows. Multiple regression analysis (MRA) is used to test a number of hypotheses. Finally, multianalysis of variances (MANOVA) is applied to find the relationships between change readiness and demographic characteristics. Findings – The results show that supervisor and peer relations (independent variable) and the number of dependents and younger employees (independent variables) have positive and significant relationships to readiness for change. In addition, these predictors are the key determinants of employee readiness for organisational change in a developing country. Research limitations/implications – This study has methodological limitations as it employed a “one point in time” measurement; however, it involved several subsidiary organisations of a large public‐sector organisation. Practical implications – This study contributes to the literature on change management, particularly from a developing country perspective, and assists management and practitioners of human resources management, organisational behaviour and change agents in assessing, designing and evaluating new or existing programs for organisational change. Originality/value – This study provides empirical evidence of employee readiness predictor variables for organisational change.