CREATING READINESS FOR ORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGE

The purpose of this article is to clarify the readiness for change con cept and examine how change agents can influence employee readiness fo r organizational change. The article contributes to an improved unders tanding of change dynamics in four important ways. First, readiness fo r change is distinguished from resistance to change. Readiness is desc ribed in terms of the organizational members' beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. Second, a model is offered that describes the influence st rategies as well as the importance of change agent credibility and int erpersonal and social dynamics in the readiness creation process. Thir d, by combining urgency of, and employee readiness for, needed changes , a typology of readiness programs is offered. Fourth, a large multina tional corporation's efforts to create readiness for large-scale chang e are described to provide a cogent illustration of the various readin ess interventions described in the model.