Orc-Q

Organizational changes as a method for ensuring competitiveness are an integral part of an organization’s daily life. A comprehensive understanding of organizational readiness for change is essential for managing change successfully and in a goal-oriented manner. Yet, established measures for mapping organizational readiness for change are often based on a unidimensional construct definition. Therefore, the goal of this study was to construct and validate a measure of a well-defined organizational readiness for change construct. Based on a systematic development process, the measure was constructed and tested in two samples for its psychometric properties and validity. A five-factor structure aligned with theoretical assumptions was identified that enabled the interpretation of the factors Organizational Valence, Individual Valence, Positive Affect, Negative Affect, and Change Behavior, which in turn constitute a second-order factor Organizational Readiness for Change. Further results indicated satisfactory values for the reliability of the measure as well as its convergent, discriminant, criterion, and construct validity. Implications and limitations are discussed and the outlook for potential future research questions is given.