A Spectrum of Employee Reactions to the Adoption of Organizational Changes in the AEC Industry

9 pages•Published: June 9, 2021

Omar Maali, Amirali Shalwani, Brian Lines, Kenneth Sullivan and Anthony Perrenoud

Abstract

The architecture, engineering, and construction industry is introduced to a lot of innovations in various areas such as technology, management process, and business structure. The industry is rapidly adopting changes to cope with the current market. Many change initiatives fail to achieve their intended outcomes due to multiple barriers such as employee resistance to change. The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between various employee reactions to change initiative and successful adoption of that change, using a continuum of eight observable employee reactions. The study collected a data set of 447 cases of organization-wide changes from AEC firms across North America. The results showed that a more favorable employee reaction to change is positively correlated with successful adoption of change. Further analysis considered each reaction separately to find which behavioral responses are most associated with successful change adoption. A key finding was that reactions of reluctant compliance, passive avoidance, and lack of participation were most strongly associated with negative change adoption. This leads to an interesting contribution for practitioners, because this finding suggests that organizations may need to be wary of these more subtle behavioral reactions than more overt opposition, argumentation, obstruction, and undermining actions.

Keyphrases: architectural engineering and construction aec, employee reactions, organizational change, resistance to change, successful change adoption

In: Tom Leathem, Anthony Perrenoud and Wesley Collins (editors). ASC 2021. 57th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference, vol 2, pages 91-99.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/7jbQ
	https://doi.org/10.29007/1pdp

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ASC2021:Spectrum_Employee_Reactions_Adoption,
  author    = {Omar Maali and Amirali Shalwani and Brian Lines and Kenneth Sullivan and Anthony Perrenoud},
  title     = {A Spectrum of Employee Reactions to the Adoption of Organizational Changes in the AEC Industry},
  booktitle = {ASC 2021. 57th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference},
  editor    = {Tom Leathem and Anthony Perrenoud and Wesley Collins},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Built Environment},
  volume    = {2},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2632-881X},
  url       = {/publications/paper/7jbQ},
  doi       = {10.29007/1pdp},
  pages     = {91-99},
  year      = {2021}}

Download PDF Open PDF in browser