De relatie tussen behoeften en wendbaarheid van medewerkers en de mediërende rol van de attitude ten aanzien van verandering

This study investigated the agility of employees during an organizational change, and which needs make them proactively or adaptively display this behavior. The relationship was studied between basic motives of employees, namely the need for power, achievement, affiliation, and change on the one hand, and their agility behavior on the other hand. One hundred employees of a service organization undergoing a planned change assessed themselves for agility. Each employee was also assessed for agility by three direct colleagues. Self-and other-rated agility were integrated into one rating per employee. The need for power, achievement and change, but not the need for affiliation, are positively related to proactive agility. Apart from the need for power, adaptive agility could not be predicted by these needs. The attitude element ‘emotions about the change’ turned out to be a significant mediator between the needs for power and change, and proactive agility. These findings indicate that an organization that would like to stimulate the adaptive agility of employees needs to pay less attention to differences in their basic motives, except to the need for power. To promote proactive agility of employees, attention should be given to differences among employees in their basic needs.