Abstract

Liang-Chuan Wu and Maggie Wu

Employee satisfaction is one of the key factors that influences an organization’s performance and is thus critical to the organization’s success. In this paper, we report on an empirical study of employee dissatisfaction with organizational change, which resulted in huge staff turnover and hostility towards management. We examine in-depth how and why such a high level of dissatisfaction, which was well beyond management expectations, developed. First, we explore the organizational context and systematically extract the constructs that lead to employee dissatisfaction. Then, we integrate the constructs into a model to explain the dissatisfaction and resistance to organizational change. In this model, “benefits,” “workload,” and “promotion” lead directly to employee dissatisfaction, while “age” and “expertise” function as moderating constructs. Our study contributes to the literature by using qualitative research methods to explore employee dissatisfaction with organizational change. Top managers are best served by learning more about employee dissatisfaction, and making transitions during organizational change smoother and more effective.