The Impact of Change Process and Context on Change Reactions and Turnover During a Merger

The authors examined relationships among two measures of the change process adopted by a firm and a measure of the change context and employees’ reactions to a merger. A longitudinal study was conducted. An employee’s perception that he or she had a poor change history was negatively associated with affective commitment to change. As the number of formal change information sessions attended increased, anxiety decreased. High quality change information was negatively associated with anxiety and positively related to affective commitment to change. Affective commitment was positively associated with job satisfaction and negatively associated with turnover intentions, which were positively associated with voluntary turnover.