Perceptions of organizational change: A stress and coping perspective

Few organizational change studies identify the aspects of change that are salient to individuals and that influence well-being. The authors identified three distinct change characteristics: the frequency, impact and planning of change. R. S. Lazarus and S. Folkman's (1984) cognitive phenomenological model of stress and coping was used to propose ways that these change characteristics influence individuals' appraisal of the uncertainty associated with change, and, ultimately, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Results of a repeated cross-sectional study that collected individuals' perceptions of change one month prior to employee attitudes in consecutive years indicated that while the three change perceptions were moderately to strongly intercorrelated, the change perceptions displayed differential relationships with outcomes. Discussion focuses on the importance of systematically considering individuals' subjective experience of change.

Are country and culture values interchangeable? A case example using occupational stress and coping

Cross cultural research in occupational stress and coping has produced a wealth of knowledge. Although advances have been made, there are still problems to be solved. One of these problems is the confusion generated in the literature by researchers claiming that nation or country represents cultural values, and the use of the two terms interchangeably. It remains unclear whether this practice is correct. The present article reported on this by using 511 full-time employees from Australia, Singapore and Sri Lanka to study occupational stress and coping. Results revealed that cultural value paradigms (i.e. Individualism–Collectivism) were distributed across the three nations such that over 60% of participants were either high or low in both I–C paradigms. The findings also indicated that the relationship between cultural value paradigm and country impacted on stress and coping differently. The study shows that significant differences exist within countries as well as between countries, such that any attempt to equate ‘culture’ with ‘country’ becomes problematic. Therefore these findings established that country or nation is not the same as culture values and cannot be used interchangeably.