Transformational Changes and Sustainability: From the Perspective of Identity, Trust, Commitment, and Withdrawal

Abstract

Drawing upon the psychology of sustainability, effective organizations can create a sense of belongingness for people, and successfully facilitate growth and development activities for both individuals as well as the organization itself. Extending the recommendations of Zappala, Toscano, and Licciardello, the current study considers a range of variables. The role of overall justice judgements and change favorableness are taken as predictors of affective commitment to change and exit-based withdrawal. The relationship is mediated by organizational identification and moderated by trust in organization. Overall, the results support the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, findings showed that both change favorableness and overall justice judgements are positively related to affective commitment to change and negatively related to exit-based withdrawal. Organizational identification mediates the relationships between overall justice judgements–affective commitment to change, change favorableness–affective commitment to change, and change favorableness–exit-based withdrawal, whilst trust in organizations moderated the direct relationship between overall justice judgements–affective commitment to change, and change favorableness–exit-based withdrawal. Furthermore, the indirect effect of trust in organizations positively moderated the relationship of overall justice judgements and change favorableness with affective commitment to change, and at the same time, it negatively moderated the relationship between change favorableness and exit-based withdrawal via organizational identification. Crucially, for practitioners, this brings trust of employees as a key factor that should be managed to ensure sustainable change. Both trust and identity appear important in improving commitment and lowering the exit-based withdrawal behavior of employees. Future recommendations, implications, and limitations are discussed.