Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T19:54:28.560Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Development, Validation, and Practical Application of an Employee Agility and Resilience Measure to Facilitate Organizational Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2017

Thomas J. Braun ,
Bryan C. Hayes ,
Rachel L. Frautschy DeMuth  and
Olya A. Taran
Thomas J. Braun*
Affiliation:
Humana Inc.
Bryan C. Hayes
Affiliation:
Humana Inc.
Rachel L. Frautschy DeMuth
Affiliation:
Humana Inc.
Olya A. Taran
Affiliation:
Humana Inc.
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Thomas J. Braun, Humana Inc., 500 West Main Street, Louisville, KY 40202. E-mail: tbraun2@humana.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Traditional change management approaches that focus on linear models and top-down control have proved less than adequate in addressing organizational change within the complexity and speed of today's unprecedented change. Researchers have suggested that by developing greater workforce agility, companies may be better positioned to manage or moderate rapid change and use this capability as a competitive advantage. Complementing current strategies with a different approach to managing change focused on individual agility and resilience may be a first step. This article focuses on the development, validation, and practical application of an employee agility and resilience measurement scale as part of a program in support of an alternative approach to managing organizational change. Results indicate that focusing on individual agility and resilience can prepare employees to handle uncertainty more successfully by adapting to change quicker and managing stress more effectively.

Keywords

agilityresiliencemeasurement scaleorganizational change
Type
Practice Forum
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 703 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the many Humana associates who made this work possible, including Tracy Richardson for her help in assessment development, our Well-Being team for their partnership and insights, the Enterprise Learning and Development team for deployment support, and all of our FIT for Change facilitators who bring this work to life every day for Humana.

References

Alarcon, G., Eschleman, K. J., & Bowling, N. A. (2009). Relationships between personality variables and burnout: A meta-analysis. Work & Stress, 23 (3), 244–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Psychological Association. (2016). Stress in America: The impact of discrimination. Stress in America™ Survey. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2015/impact-of-discrimination.pdf Google Scholar
Baer, M., & Oldham, G. R. (2006). The curvilinear relation between experienced creative time pressure and creativity: Moderating effects of openness to experience and support for creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91 (4), 963–970.Google Scholar
Barrera, M., Sandler, I. N., & Ramsay, T. B. (1981). Preliminary development of a scale of social support: Studies on college students. American Journal of Community Psychology, 9 (4), 435–447.Google Scholar
Borman, W. C., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1993). Expanding the criterion domain to include elements of contextual performance. In Schmitt, N. & Borman, W. C. (Eds.), Personnel selection in organizations (pp. 71–98). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Bridges, W. (1980). Transitions: Making sense of life's changes. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Brisson-Banks, C. (2010). Managing change and transitions: A comparison of different models and their commonalities. Library Management, 31, 241–252.Google Scholar
Brown, T. A. (2006). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Charbonnier-Voirin, A. (2011). The development and partial testing of the psychometric properties of a measurement scale of organizational agility. M@n@gement, 14, 119–156.Google Scholar
Cohen-Katz, J., Wiley, S., Capuano, T., Baker, D. M., & Shapiro, S. (2004, November/December). The effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on nurse stress and burnout: A qualitative and quantitative study. Holistic Nursing Practice, 18 (6), 302–308.Google Scholar
Corporate Executive Board. (2016). Executive guidance: Driving performance in volatile markets. Retrieved from https://www.cebglobal.com/content/dam/cebglobal/us/EN/top-insights/executive-guidance/pdfs/eg2017ann-driving-performance-in-volatile-markets.pdf Google Scholar
Coutu, D. L. (2002). How resilience works. Harvard Business Review, 80 (5), 46–55.Google Scholar
Etzion, D. (1984). Moderating effect of social support on the stress–burnout relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69 (4), 615–622.Google Scholar
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. (June 25, 1938, ch. 676, §1, 52 Stat. 1060).Google Scholar
Goh, J., Pfeffer, L., & Zenios, S. (2016). The relationship between workplace stressors and mortality and health costs in the United States. Management Science, 62 (2), 608–628.Google Scholar
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. C. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96.Google Scholar
Halbesleben, J. R. B. (2006). Sources of social support and burnout: A meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91 (5), 1134–1145.Google Scholar
Hatch, M. J., & Cunliffe, A. (2006). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunter, J., & McCormick, D. W. (2008). Mindfulness in the workplace: An exploratory study. In Newell, S. E. (Facilitator), Weickian ideas. Symposium conducted at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Anaheim, CA. Google Scholar
International Personality Item Pool: A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality Traits and Other Individual Differences. N.d. Retrieved from http://ipip.ori.org/ Google Scholar
Jorgensen, H., Owen, L., & Neus, A. (2008). IBM global making change work study. Retrieved from http://www7.ibm.com/au/pdf/making_change_work.pdf Google Scholar
Kanter, R. M. (1999). Change is everyone's job: Managing the extended enterprise in a globally connected world. Organizational Dynamics, 28, 7–23.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, J. D., & Kirkpatrick, W. K. (2016). Four levels of training evaluation (1st ed.). Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.Google Scholar
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Kotter, J. P. (2012). Accelerate! Harvard Business Review, 90 (11), 45–58.Google Scholar
McCann, J., Selsky, J., & Lee, J. (2009). Building agility, resilience and performance in turbulent environments. People & Strategy, 32 (3), 44–51.Google Scholar
McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications. Journal of Personality, 60, 175–215.Google Scholar
McKinsey. (2010). Competing through organizational agility. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/competing-through-organizational-agility Google Scholar
Mento, A., Jones, R., & Dirndorfer, W. (2002). A change management process: Grounded in both theory and practice. Journal of Change Management, 3, 45–59.Google Scholar
Muduli, A. (2013). Workforce agility: A review of literature. The IUP Journal of Management Research, 12 (3), 55–65.Google Scholar
Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. (2009). Individual- and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of applied Psychology, 94 (1), 122–141.Google Scholar
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 879–903.Google Scholar
Project Management Institute. (2012). Pulse of the profession in-depth report: Organizational agility. Retrieved from https://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Research/Organizational-Agility-In-Depth-Report.ashx Google Scholar
Reivich, K. J., Seligman, M. E. P., & McBride, S. (2011). Master resilience training in the U.S. Army. American Psychologist, 66 (1), 25–34.Google Scholar
Robertson, P. J., Roberts, D. R., & Porras, J. I. (1993). Dynamics of planned organizational change: Assessing empirical support for a theoretical model. Academy of Management Journal, 36 (3), 619–634. doi:10.2307/256595 Google Scholar
Schwartz, T., & McCarthy, C. (2007). Manage your energy, not your time. Harvard Business Review, 85 (10), 63–73.Google Scholar
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Building resilience. Harvard Business Review, 89 (4), 100–106.Google Scholar
Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (2013). Ready for anything. Scientific American Mind, 24 (3), 32– 41.Google Scholar
Van Prooijen, J., & Van der Kloot, W. (2001). Confirmatory analysis of exploratively obtained factor structures. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 61, 777–792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, R., & April, K. (2012). Building personal resilience at work. Effective Executive, 15 (4), 53–68.Google Scholar
Williams, P. G., Rau, H. K., Cribbet, M. R., & Gunn, H. E. (2009). Openness to experience and stress regulation. Journal of Research in Personality, 43 (5), 777–784.Google Scholar
Wolf, J. A. (2011). Constructing rapid transformation: Sustaining high performance and a new view of organization change. International Journal of Training and Development, 15 (1), 20–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G., & Farley, G. K. (1988). The multidimensional scale of perceived social support. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52 (1), 30–41.Google Scholar