The Influence of Organization Culture on Employee Readiness for Organizational Change

Abstract

The survival of living being in the globe is importantly depend on the existence of organizations.Every organization in the world today has to abide by the ever increasing intense competitive global business conditions. Modern organizations in the business world today have to prepare themselves to face high competition, make quick decisions, introduce innovations and develop the will and competency to cope with constant change (D’Aveni, 1998, p. 183). Today, the ability of an organization to change drives its growth (Vakola, 2013, p. 96). Successful, organizations must be responsive to the needs of constantly evolving business environment (Leana&Barry, 2000, p. 754).The environment in which Organizations operate is increasingly critical and dynamic in nature. Due to increasingly critical and dynamic environment, organizations are continuously forced with the need to implement changes in strategy, structure, process, policies, operations, technology, and culture.

The principal constraint in implementing a change process is the resistance from employees. Recent interest in academics to study and understand the attitudes of employees’ towards change has been growing (Rafferty et al., 2013 p. 112; Caldwell, 2009, p. 20). One of the most discussed notions in organizational change is change readiness. It refers to employees` attitude towards a change initiative (Rafferty et. al., 2013, p. 121). One of the first scholars to discuss change readiness is Armenakis, and the most influential and referred to work about change readiness is by Armenakis et al. (1993) and Armenakis& Harris (2002).

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational culture and employee readiness for organizational change. The objectives were to investigate organizational culture and identify the influence of organizational culture on employee readiness for organizational change in Divisional Secretariat, Eravurpatru in Batticaloa District where various change reforms has been introduced recent past. This empirical study proceeded by a systematic review of literature that led to development of a conceptual model. The data was collected from a sample of 100 Employee from Divisional Secretariat, Eravurpatru in Batticaloa district by using a survey questionnaire. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results showed that organizational culture was positively and significantly correlated to employee readiness for organizational change. This study provides empirical evidence for employee readiness predictor variables for organizational change and may contribute to strengthen the literature on change management, particularly for Sri Lanka, and may assist the management, change agents and practitioners of human resources management to shape the organizational environment in assessing, designing, introducing and evaluating new or existing programmes for organizational change.