A Top Management Team's Reactions to Organizational Transformation: The Diagnostic Benefits of Five Key Change Sentiments

From research dating to the 1940s, we identified five precursor sentiments deemed important by organizational scientists studying reactions of organizational change recipients. Collectively, these sentiments constitute a framework for understanding reactions to change. We investigated the validity and utility of the framework for assessing the progress of an organizational change by using it to guide the analysis of qualitative interview data collected from a top management team as part of an assessment of a major organizational change. We demonstrate that the five-sentiment framework provides a useful and reliable tool for coding interview responses. In addition, the data, thus coded, provided very useful insight into the underlying concerns regarding the change. We suggest that the five sentiment framework is a useful guide for diagnosing change progress and planning measures to correct change shortcomings.