Employee Cynicism and Organizational Change

Abstract

Organizational performance and its sustainability significantly depend on aligning business procedures with the fast-changing environment. Because of its significance, the study is based on the Social Exchange Theory. It has developed a new model that has five latent variables (i.e., organizational change, organizational commitment, trust, employee cynicism, and tendency to gossip and a total of fifteen direct and indirect relationships. The study has focused on SMEs in New York. The sample size for the survey was 390 calculated at a 95% percent confidence level and a 5% margin of error. The scales used in the study were adapted from earlier studies. The author has collected the data personally by visiting selected SMEs and used SmartPLS for data analysis. The results suggest that employee cynicism has a negative association with organizational change, the tendency to gossip, and trust. The organizational change also has a negative relationship with organizational commitment and trust. The tendency to gossip and trust have a negative association with organizational commitment. The results support all five single mediating relationships and two multi-mediating relationships. Based on the results, the study has concluded that the element of trust between employees and management is the most crucial aspect in SMEs of the surveyed units. Employees who have confidence and trust in management policies and procedures tend to support change management processes and have a high commitment level towards the organization.Keywords: Organizational change, commitment, trust, employee cynicism, the tendency to gossip.