Commitment to Change: Its Role in the Relationship between Expectation of Change Outcome and Emotional Exhaustion

摘要

Using a sample of managers and employees from telecommunications industry in China who were going through a large-scale organizational change, this study discussed the relationships between expectation of change outcome at the individual level and change commitment, between change commitment and emotional exhaustion, and whether the relationship between expectation of change outcome and emotional exhaustion was mediated by change commitment. The empirical results indicated that there were two dimensions in the expectation of change outcome scale: expectation of income-related outcome and expectation of jobrelated outcome. The two dimensions of expectation of change outcome both positively related to affective commitment to change; expectation of job-related outcome positively related to normative commitment to change; neither of the two dimensions related to continuance commitment to change. Affective and normative commitment to change both negatively related to emotional exhaustion; continuance commitment to change positively related to emotional exhaustion. The relationship between expectation of incomerelated outcome and emotional exhaustion was fully mediated by affective commitment to change; the relationship between expectation of job-related outcome and emotional exhaustion was fully mediated by affective commitment to change and normative commitment to change.