UPON REFLECTION - COMMITMENT, SATISFACTION, AND REGRET AFTER A CORPORATE RELOCATION

This article presents a framework for examining the long-term effects of employees' retrospective evaluations of a major organizational chan ge and presents empirical data from one such change-a large-scale corp orate relocation. Drawing on the literature of employee-organization r elationships, we propose that the critical components of how employees remember and evaluate a change experience include post hoc assessment s of met expectations, fairness, and comparison of their present and p rechange organizational status. The independent variables in the resea rch included measures of met expectations, outcome and procedural fair ness, and perceived changes in membership status. The dependent variab les were organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and a measure of regret that asked whether employees would repeat their decision to re locate. As expected, the independent variables were correlated, but di fferentially related to the postchange measures. Discussion of the res ults highlights the complex nature of remembered experiences and the l ong-term implications of retrospective evaluations for member-organiza tion relationships.