engleski

Relationship between personality traits and readiness for organizational change: A case from Croatia

Since the environment in which organizations operate today is faster than ever before, only those that quickly, effectively and in timely manner implement organizational change can survive. However, as much as change is needed in the organization, it will bring adverse effects to its employees as it changes the way that they knew and had been working, so they may then react with resistance. Therefore, the understanding of resistance, the ability to predict which employees will react that way and the application of appropriate means for implementing organizational changes are necessary for successful change implementation with the least possible consequences for those who are involved. The research in this article strives to comprehend the relationship between personality traits and readiness for organizational change, and the subject of the research is the need to analyze the relationship between personality traits and readiness for organizational change, as well as the perception of these relationships and the efficiency of implementing organizational changes in an organization. The main goal therefore is to analyse is there a correlation between personality traits of employees and their readiness for organizational change, starting from the assumption that sources of specific employee behaviors should be found in his/her personality, stable over time and in different situations, and that personality traits determine whether the employee is resisting change or accepting it. The theoretical framework which was chosen for this research is the Big Five personality factors model with five main dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellect. The authors wanted to test the correlation between personality traits and readiness for organizational change. During the research process, 83 questionnaires were collected among postgraduate students on the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb. The candidates were asked to fill in the IPIP-100 questionnaire measuring the five personality traits and a questionnaire specially designed for this research to measure readiness for organizational change. The results showed that there is no correlation between personality traits of respondents and their readiness for organizational change, and that personality traits are not good predictors of employee behavior when changes are introduced in the organization, as well as they can not be the basis for determining sustainable model for change implementation, at least not without the context in which the change appeared.

Organizational change; readiness for organizational change; personality traits

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