Psychosocial predictors of employees` readiness to change at International Islamic University Malaysia : role of job satisfaction and organizational commitment as mediating variables

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the psychosocial predictors of employees’ readiness to change. The present study examines the interrelationship between the psychosocial variables namely; appropriateness of change, management support, individual change efficacy, openness to experience and individual spirituality with employees’ readiness to change. It also aims to investigate the mediating role of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the relationship between psychosocial with employees’ readiness to change .The research questions were explored using six instruments including Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) to measure job satisfaction, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) to measure organizational commitment, Openness to experience scale of (NEO-PI-R) to measure openness personality, Spirituality Well-Being (SWB) scale to measure individual spirituality, affective, cognitive, behaviour readiness to change to measure employees’ readiness and psychosocial predictor of employees’ readiness to change scale to measure appropriateness of change, management support and individual change efficacy. 428 random sampling of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) staff consisting 214 academic staff and 214 non-academic staff were selected for this study. Descriptive analysis, T-test, One way ANOVA, and PLS structural equation modeling were used to test the hypotheses. Results indicate that appropriateness of change, management support, individual change efficacy, openness to experience; individual spirituality and organizational commitment significantly predicted employees’ readiness to change. Job satisfaction was not a significant predictor for employee readiness to change in this study. Therefore job satisfaction did not show mediating effect in the relationship between variables investigated in this study. However, organizational commitment partially mediated the relationship between appropriateness of change, management support, openness to experience and individual spirituality with employees’ readiness to change. In terms of demographic information, male employees showed higher readiness score than female employees. Older employees with higher educational background also showed higher readiness than younger employees with lower educational background. Exploratory analysis in this study confirms the three types of employees’ readiness to change, namely affective readiness, behaviour readiness and cognitive readiness as second order construct of employees’ readiness. Significant relationship was also found between psychosocial predictors with three types of employees’ readiness to change. Individual change efficacy and management support significantly predicted three types of employee readiness. Openness to experience significantly predicts affective and cognitive readiness, while individual spirituality significantly predicted behaviour readiness. Findings in this study can be used to enhance employees’ readiness in IIUM as well as the general framework in preparing intervention for enhancing employees’ readiness to change in higher learning institutions.