Top Management’s Communication and Employees’ Commitment to Change: The Role of Perceived Procedural Fairness and Past Change Experience

Studies on the effects of communication strategies applied by top management during organizational change are scarce. While first research indicates that a participatory communication strategy is more effective in evoking employees’ commitment to change than a programmatic change communication strategy, how this effect occurs remains unclear. The present study addresses this gap by investigating perceived procedural fairness as mediating and past change experience as moderating factor in the relationship between communication strategy and commitment to change. Results of the quasi-experimental study indicate that participatory change communication strengthens fairness perceptions more than programmatic change communication does. Results indicate that perceived procedural fairness explains the effect of change communication strategy on commitment to change. No moderating but a direct effect of past change experiences was found. Results show the potential of participatory change communication, and the importance of procedural fairness early in change, which are valuable insights for managers who initiate change.

The Effects of Manifesto Politics on Programmatic Change

The formulation of policies constitutes a core business of political parties in modern democracies. Using the novel data of the Political Party Database (PPDB) Project and the data of the Manifesto Project (MARPOR), the authors of this chapter aim at a systematic test of the causal link between the intra-party decision mode on the electoral manifestos and the extent of programmatic change. What are the effects of the politics of manifesto formulation on the degree of policy change? Theoretically, the authors distinguish the drafting process from the final enactment of the manifesto. Empirically, they show that a higher autonomy of the party elite in formulating the manifesto leads to a higher degree of programmatic change. If party members constrain party elite’s autonomy, they tend to veto major changes.