Assessing the relationship between employee’s perception of change, organizational commitment and structural empowerment in steel manufacturing company

Abstract

The primary research objective aimed to assess the relationship between employee perception of change and the level of employee's organizational commitment, and whether the implementation of change management had affected employee level of commitment to the company. The research population was individuals employed in an international steel manufacturing industry operating in South Africa. A research questionnaire was developed and circulated to a sample of 1176 employees, of which 282 responses were received. The responses were collated into an excel data sheet and were statistical analysed by the Statistical Consultation Services of the North-West University. The statistical analysis to a large extent confirmed the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. A data reduction method, Cronbach's alpha was performed as an exploratory factor to group the question into constructs. The findings showed organisation commitment, perception on change and structural empowerment where found to a greater extend related. Positive relationship found implies that employees resist change as they fear they are to be trained when the change comes at the same time fearing communication culture will be changed as a result of the change. Base on the regression analysis it was found that change readiness was found to be affected positively by age, access to information, affective commitment, organisational valence, perception on communication and training change. The findings further showed a positive relationship between readiness to change and access to information hence structural empowerment. In conclusion, we can say the study achieved its primary research objectives, and recommendations for future research have been included in Chapter 5.