Journal of Applied Psychology 2008, Vol. 93, No. 2, 453– 462

Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0021-9010/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.453

Employee Resistance to Organizational Change: Managerial Influence Tactics and Leader–Member Exchange
Stacie A. Furst
University of Cincinnati

Daniel M. Cable
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The authors explored the relationship between managerial influence tactics and employee resistance to organizational change. Using attribution theory, the authors developed a series of hypotheses concerning the effects of influence tactics on employee resistance to change and the ways in which these relationships are moderated by leader–member exchange. Results, which are based on multisource data, suggest that employee resistance reflects both the type of influence a manager uses and the strength of leader–member exchange. Keywords: organizational change, influence tactics, leader–member exchange, attribution theory

Organizations are cooperative systems that rely on the willingness of members to behave in ways that support the organization (Barnard, 1938). However, people’s personal goals often differ from those of the organization, and a primary responsibility of managers is to persuade members to direct their efforts toward organizational goals (Cyert & March, 1963). The importance of employee cooperation may be particularly salient during organizational change—when an organization sets out to establish conditions that are different from the current conditions (Ford & Ford, 1995; Robertson, Roberts, & Porras, 1993). As the primary link between the organization’s change strategy and the employees responsible for implementing that strategy, managers must be able to “unfreeze” employee beliefs that the status quo is acceptable and motivate employees to make the desired changes