Change Management Effectiveness Within the Paper Industry: A Multi-Level Investigation

The central thesis of this research project is that we need to better understand how individual employees within the paper industry cope with and respond to organizational changes.  To achieve this, we will investigate how individuals' reactions to changes, such as their support for the change and its impact on their organizational commitment, are affected by the following:

1. Aspects of the particular change being implemented (e.g., the amount of disruption caused and the effects of the change on work unit functioning and performance).
2. How the change is managed (e.g., level of employee involvement).
3. Other changes taking place in the environment (e.g., restructurings while staff reductions are taking place).
4. Aspects of the individusals who are the targets of change (e.g., personality dimensions such as achievement orientation and their tolerance for uncertainty). Our objective is to identify empirically how these four factors work together, either synergistically or in conflict, to affect individual-level responses to change. The project will encompass multiple change efforts in host paper organizations that are nearing completion or have recently been completed. Our aim is to generate useful information for oranizations in the paper industry concerning the management of organizational change.