The employees' attitudes and their connections with the organisational culture in the process of change in the Estonian organisations

Purpose – Estonian companies have been in a continuous state of change for the past 15 years, and there is still a lot to be done to achieve welfare levels comparable with developed countries in the European Union. The crucial question is how to achieve employee commitment to organisational change. The aim of this research is to highlight employee attitudes toward organisational change and how organisational culture can influence these attitudes in a rapidly changing environment. Design/methodology/approach – A model showing the connections between organisational culture and employee attitudes in the organisational change process has been developed as the theoretical conceptual frame for the study. The empirical study was conducted by the authors in 26 Estonian organisations with 412 respondents. A tool for measuring employee attitudes in the process of organisational change and a questionnaire for measuring organisational culture were developed by the authors. Findings – Under the conditions of economic transition, employees with higher job satisfaction are more willing to participate in an organisational change process than employees with a lower level of job satisfaction. Employees who evaluated their organisational culture as being stronger were more willing to participate in implementing organisational changes and were more satisfied with their jobs and managers. The attitudes of those managers who were younger than 45 were more strongly related to a positive organisational culture than to a strong organisational culture. Originality/value – The most significant finding was that in a transition economy a strong organisational culture influences attitudes to change in a positive way. This is different from countries with more stable economies, where a strong organisational culture is considered to promote stability.