Change and employee behavior: private higher educational institutions perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the common change management practices in Private Higher Educational Institutions (PHEIs) in Malaysia. It is also done to identify how communication, support and participation play an important role in affecting employee behaviour in event of change implementation in an organization. This study examines the role of psychological contract and employee attitudes as mediating factors in linking change implementation and employee behaviour. This study involves non academic employees who have experienced organizational change in their organizations. The population of this study was 37 institutions with university status listed under PHEI in Malaysia. Random sampling was used to select 17 institutions for online questionnaire survey. A total of 840 questionnaires were distributed; only 89 usable questionnaires from different job levels and functions were received. The findings showed that restructuring of organization and work process change were common types of change management practices in PHEIs in Malaysia. The result also indicated that the psychological contract and employee attitudes were serving as mediating factors between change implementation and employee behaviour. The skewness of the variables were within the expected range of fluctuations without significant skewness problem. The instruments used in the questionnaire were found to have high reliability, well above 0.7, indicating good internal consistency. The findings in this research were determined by using multiple regression analysis. This analysis was used to determine whether the hypotheses generated could be rejected or accepted. The outcome was that all six hypotheses were accepted. It concluded that communication, support and participation as change implementation processes showed significant relationships with psychological contract i.e. participation to be the most significant predictor. It has also shown that the relationships between psychological contract and employee attitudes and between employee attitudes and behaviour were significant. For future research, some of the recommendations made in this study can be further explored to enhance and add value to this research area.