An initial analysis of software engineers' attitudes towards organizational change
Journal article, 2017

Employees' attitudes towards organizational change are a critical determinant in the change process. Researchers have therefore tried to determine what underlying concepts that affect them. These extensive efforts have resulted in the identification of several antecedents. However, no studies have been conducted in a software engineering context and the research has provided little information on the relative impact and importance of the identified concepts. In this study, we have combined results from previous social science research with results from software engineering research, and thereby identified three underlying concepts with an expected significant impact on software engineers' attitudes towards organizational change, i.e. their knowledge about the intended change outcome, their understanding of the need for change, and their feelings of participation in the change process. The result of two separate multiple regression analysis, where we used industrial questionnaire data (N=56), showed that the attitude concept openness to change is predicted by all three concepts, while the attitude concept readiness for change is predicted by need for change and participation. Our research provides an empirical baseline to an important area of software engineering and the result can be a starting-point for future organizational change research. In addition, the proposed model prescribes practical directions for software engineering organizations to adopt in improving employees' responses to change and, thus, increase the probability of a successful change.

Attitudes

Behavioral software engineering

Organizational change

Readiness for change

Social psychology

Software engineering

Openness to change

Human aspects

Systematic literature review

Author

Per Lenberg

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Software Engineering (Chalmers)

L. G. W. Tengberg

University of Gothenburg

Robert Feldt

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Empirical Software Engineering

1382-3256 (ISSN) 1573-7616 (eISSN)

Vol. 22 4 2179-2205

Subject Categories

Software Engineering

DOI

10.1007/s10664-016-9482-0

More information

Latest update

1/29/2021