CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,268Organizational Change and LeadershipHealth Policy Implementation ScienceOrganizational Management and Change

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 67 of the 75 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A theory of organizational readiness for change

Open access
Weiner, Bryan J·2009·Implementation Science
DOI 10.1186/1748-5908-4-67PMC PMC2770024
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Change management experts have emphasized the importance of establishing organizational readiness for change and recommended various strategies for creating it. Although the advice seems reasonable, the scientific basis for it is limited. Unlike individual readiness for change, organizational readiness for change has not been subject to extensive theoretical development or empirical study. In this article, I conceptually define organizational readiness for change and develop a theory of its determinants and outcomes. I focus on the organizational level of analysis because many promising approaches to improving healthcare delivery entail collective behavior change in the form of systems redesign--that is, multiple, simultaneous changes in staffing, work flow, decision making, communication, and reward systems. DISCUSSION: Organizational readiness for change is a multi-level, multi-faceted construct. As an organization-level construct, readiness for change refers to organizational members' shared resolve to implement a change (change commitment) and shared belief in their collective capability to do so (change efficacy). Organizational readiness for change varies as a function of how much organizational members value the change and how favorably they appraise three key determinants of implementation capability: task demands, resource availability, and situational factors. When organizational readiness for change is high, organizational members are more likely to initiate change, exert greater effort, exhibit greater persistence, and display more cooperative behavior. The result is more effective implementation. SUMMARY: The theory described in this article treats organizational readiness as a shared psychological state in which organizational members feel committed to implementing an organizational change and confident in their collective abilities to do so. This way of thinking about organizational readiness is best suited for examining organizational changes where collective behavior change is necessary in order to effectively implement the change and, in some instances, for the change to produce anticipated benefits. Testing the theory would require further measurement development and careful sampling decisions. The theory offers a means of reconciling the structural and psychological views of organizational readiness found in the literature. Further, the theory suggests the possibility that the strategies that change management experts recommend are equifinal. That is, there is no 'one best way' to increase organizational readiness for change.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/1748-5908-4-67

Cites

67 of 67 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Figures

Figure 1 Determinants and Outcomes of Organizational Readiness for Change. Included in separate document, per instructions to authors concerning figures.
Figure 1 Determinants and Outcomes of Organizational Readiness for Change. Included in separate document, per instructions to authors concerning figures.CC BY · PubMed Central

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 75 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Kotter JP: Leading change. 1996, Boston: Harvard Business Press
  2. Bandura A: Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory. 1986, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall
  3. Turner D, Crawford M: Change Power: Capabilities that Drive Corporate Renewal. 1998, Warriewood, Australia: Business & Professional Publishing
  4. Nunnally JC: Psychometric theory. 1978, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2
  5. Elise LL, Steven VO: A measure of self-care self-efficacy. 1996, 19: 421-429.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 901–1,000 of 1,001

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Weiner, B. J.
Affiliations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
Corresponding author
Weiner, Bryan J
ORCID
Weiner, Bryan J
Venue
Implementation Science
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2009-10-19
Volume
4
Issue
1
Pages
67-67
ISSN
1748-5908 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/1748-5908-4-67
PMC
PMC2770024
OpenAlex
W2170135023
Cited by
2,268
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 264 · 2025: 182 · 2024: 224 · 2023: 190 · 2022: 229 · 2021: 233 · 2020: 187 · 2019: 153 · 2018: 141 · 2017: 108 · 2016: 84 · 2015: 85 · 2014: 76 · 2013: 52 · 2012: 28
FWCI
33.09
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Implementation Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Cancer Institute (R01CA124402)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Organizational Change and Leadership
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Policy Implementation Science
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Organizational Management and Change
Keywords
organizational preparedness, change management, commitment to change, change efficacy, health care delivery improvement, task demands, resource availability, situational factors, implementation capability, organizational change theory

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review