Psychology Research and Behavior Management (Nov 2021)
Team Flexibility in Organizational Change Context: Antecedents and Consequences
Abstract
Bin Ling,1 Ziqian Liu,1 Dusheng Chen,2 Lijun Sun3 1Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 3Arts College, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Lijun SunArts College, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 29 Jiangjun Avenue, Nanjing, 211106, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail [email protected] LingBusiness School, Hohai University, Jiangning Campus, 8 Focheng West Road, Nanjing, 211100, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86-025-68514352Email [email protected]: The purpose of our study is to explore the antecedents and consequences of team flexibility in an organizational change context. In this regard, we considered team flexibility as an important theoretical mechanism under which the insiders would adapt to organizational change.Participants and Methods: A sample of 602 individual data that was nested in 108 teams and 43 organizations was used in this study, collecting from 43 enterprises located in mainland China through questionnaires. We adopted HLM 6.08 to testify all the hypothesized relationships and used the Monte Carlo method to create the confidence intervals for all the indirect effects.Results: The empirical results show that 1) balance dimension of ambidexterity and change leadership have a significant positive effect on team flexibility; 2) balance dimension of ambidexterity only has marginal significant effects on employee change-specific adaptive behavior, change-specific proactive behavior, and change fairness. And change leadership has significant positive effects on the three outcomes; 3) team flexibility has a positive influence on the three outcomes. 4) Team flexibility plays a significant mediating role in the links between the balance dimension of ambidexterity and the three outcomes. In addition, team flexibility only has a significant indirect effect on the relationship between change leadership and change-specific adaptive behavior and proactive behavior.Conclusion: The current study reveals how team flexibility is established and how such flexibility is associated with employee-level change-specific behavior and perception under an organizational change context. The study indicates that team flexibility is contingent on two factors across two levels: change leadership at team level and balanced ambidexterity at organizational level, which also contributes to individual outcomes of organizational change.Keywords: team flexibility, balance dimension of ambidexterity, change leadership, adaptive behavior, change fairness, proactive behavior
