Organizational Change and Self-Concept Threats

The article presents a self-concept-based theoretical perspective for analyzing and interpreting employees’ reactions to organizational change. The authors suggest that change will be supported to the extent that it is concordant with organizational members’ self-concepts. Change will be experienced as stressful and be resisted to the extent that it poses threats to employees’ self-concepts, in particular to their senses of self-determination, self-distinctiveness, self-enhancement, and self-continuity. The authors demonstrate the usefulness of this perspective using quantitative and qualitative data from a case study of employees’ reactions to office relocation. The authors summarize their findings in terms of testable propositions, suggest directions for further research, and offer some practical implications of the suggested perspective.