Perceived organizational change strengthens organizational commitment and OCB via increased organizational nostalgia

Abstract

Organizational change has been thought to evoke negative employee responses, yet it is ubiquitous in modern market economies. It is thus surprising that the adverse effects of organizational change are not more visible or apparently disrupting. We hypothesized that, although perceived organizational change, by inducing change apprehension, stimulates negative employee responses (i.e., lower organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior [OCB]), it also elicits organizational nostalgia, which engenders positive employee responses (higher organizational commitment and OCB). We tested our hypotheses in 9 studies. First, across four experiments (two preregistered), perceived societal or organizational change elicited organizational nostalgia and, via organizational nostalgia, increased employees’ organizational commitment and OCB. Subsequently, in two preregistered experiments, induced organizational nostalgia (vs. control) strengthened employees’ commitment to the changed organization and galvanized their defense of organizational change. Finally, in a preregistered follow up experiment and two preregistered surveys, we tested and validated our full model regarding the opposing mediating roles of change apprehension and organizational nostalgia. The findings help to understand why effects of organizational change are less disruptive than might be expected, and clarify the role of organizational nostalgia during organizational change.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Tim Wildschut: orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487

ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

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