Influence of Participation in Strategic Change and Goal Achievement - Annotated Bibliography Example

Lines endeavors to address the knowledge gap that exists with regard to participation in strategic change. The research hypothesizes that a positive relationship exists between post-change organizational commitment and the participation strategy process. The study asserts that a negative relationship exists between resistance towards change and participation and that compatibility of change objectives with the culture of the organization and the change recipients’ goals, moderates the negative effects of participation.

The article examines how the right to reject a decision on resistance to change, change goal achievement, and post-change commitment to the organization; and consultative participation are related. Lines, in testing his hypotheses, opted to include the option of rejecting a proposed change since may assist in capturing instances where organizations forego changes that they deem optimal because, from the change recipient perspective, they are not acceptable. Additionally, Lines used a set of three variables that represented outcomes, which allowed for a comprehensive assessment of whether a strategy implementation is complete or not. He tries to establish whether the effects of participation are dependent on the context in which an approach is applied by focusing on the extent to which change is: compatible with organizational culture, expected to lead to less or more job variety, and expected to lower costs.

The finding of the study indicated the existence of a positive relationship between participation and organizational commitment and goal achievement.

I picked Mowday et al., (1979) because it offered a lot of insight with regards to the compatibility of change with the organizational culture and the recipients’’ acceptance of the values and beliefs of the organization. I also picked Porter et al, (1974) as an influential article because it offered more insight into assessing post-change organizational commitment, and how it is affected by participation. The article by Hackman and Oldham (1975) was influential in the interpretation of the study’s results, especially with regards to answering the question of whether or to what extent change is expected to lead to less or more job variety, and expected to lower costs.