Organizational change in the public sector: Augmenting the demand control model to predict employee outcomes under New Public Management

By A. Noblet, J. Rodwell, J. McWilliams. 2006

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This study identifies the environmental and personal characteristics that predict employee outcomes within an Australian public sector organization that had, under New Public Management (NPM), implemented a variety of practices traditionally found in the private sector. These are more results-oriented, and their adoption can be accompanied by increased strain for employees. The current investigation was guided by two complementary theories, the Demand Control Support (DCS) model and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, and sought to examine the benefits of building on the DCS to include both situation-specific stressors and internal coping resources. Survey responses from 1,155 employees were analysed. The hierarchical regression analyses indicated that both external and employee-centred variables made significant contributions to variations in psychological health, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The external resources, work based support and, to a lesser extent, job control, predicted relatively large proportions of the variance in the target variables. The situation-specific stressors, particularly those involving harmful management practices (e.g., insufficient time to do job as well as you would like, lack of recognition for good work), made significant contributions to the outcome measures and generally supported the process of augmenting the generic components of the DCS with more situation-specific variables. In terms of internal resources, problem and emotion-based coping improved the capacity of the model to predict psychological health. The results suggest that the impact of NPM can be ameliorated by incorporating the dimensions of the augmented DCS and coping resources into the change programme.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d56ba1c461d44b8ac45f7cf974a50b3058aac9e

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In General Health Professions

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Causes of stress before, during and after organizational change: a qualitative study (2015, background): “While the imperatives of the (no longer) “New” Public Management will continue to pressurize its organizations’ leaders (Kuipers et al., 2013, they can exercise some discretion in planning and implementing change.”
Change fatigue: Development and initial validation of a new measure (2011, background): “In response to heightened pressures and challenges, organizations are increasingly engaging in change efforts (Hansson, Vingard, Arnetz, & Anderzen, 2008 ; Noblet, Rodwell, & McWilliams, 2006 ; van Knippenberg, Martin, & Tyler, 2006 ).”