Work relations as a precursor to a psychological climate for change : The role of work group supervisors and peers

The current study focuses the impact of leadership and teams on employees’ psychological climate for change. Integrating streams of research from the change, organizational climate, leader‐member exchange (LMX), and group dynamics literature, the paper proposes that supervisors and teams will shape employees’ climate perceptions as a function of the relationship quality employees experience with these two social units. The impact of the supervisor’s and team’s personal view of the climate, as well as the dyadic quality‐supervisor climate view interaction, and team relations quality‐team climate view interaction were also examined. Results support a main effect for LMX, team relation quality, and team climate view on employee psychological climate for change. In addition, results revealed a multiplicative effect for LMX and supervisor climate view. Overall, the findings suggest that both types of work relationships employees share may serve as potential mechanisms for transforming employees toward change.