Employee attitude to organisational change in small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract

The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic affects the daily operation of organisations, which also brings changes in the life of their workforce. Managing organisational change has been a significant challenge for organisations for several decades. The aim of the research is to assess the behaviour of affected employees toward organisational change. It is examined how different groups of employee's experience change in general and what they think about organisational change. Furthermore, it is explored whether employees understand the motivation behind the change and how does the change impact their organisation. To answer the research questions, a comprehensive questionnaire survey of small and medium-sized enterprises in Hungary was conducted in autumn 2021. The suitability of the application of factor analysis evaluating the dependence of selected areas of the questionnaire was supported by Barlett test a Cronbach's alfa coefficient. For individual hypotheses two-sample t-test, contingency table analysis, and Pearson's Chi-squared test, were applied. The evaluation of the 215 questionnaires shows that the behaviour of employees toward organisational changes is different. The difference in attitudes to the benefit of organizational change for employees were identified, but not for enterprise. Furthermore, the difference in attitudes between employees who have undergone organizational change in the enterprise and those who have not undergone organizational change, were identified too. It is interesting that contingency between the extent to which managers play a role in change and the well-executed nature of change were detected. The practical usage of the research can be helpful for SME management, especially in the HR field. The management can consider that employees may be afraid of the changes if they are ahead of them, but if the change is handled well, people will think positively of it.