Analysis of the antecedents of favourable resistance to organisational change during the COVID crisis

Abstract

The spread of the coronavirus in 2020 and the pandemic declared by the WHO has had several impacts on businesses around the world. Industry, services and even other mining and agricultural activities have been interrupted. This has affected the economy in general and businesses in particular. The government tried to contain the spread of the virus while maintaining business activities. However, some businesses have had to change their way of operating and adapt to the current situation. Different working methods have been introduced, including teleworking, staff rotation, digitalisation of procedures, etc. As a result, employees in all Moroccan companies have been affected. Companies have been able to trace the impact of these changes on the work of their employees. To do this, they started to analyze the performance indicators of their employees to see if there were problems with these changes. In this article, we will try to analyze the context that allows a favourable resistance to change (acceptance of change). We have chosen the banking sector for this purpose because the widespread use of COVID has led to some changes in this sector. We apply structural equation modeling to understand the impact of certain variables on favourable resistance to change. This study was conducted among employees of a Moroccan bank. We were able to collect 99 responses which were used to test the impact of the explanatory variables. The results show that favourable resistance to change during a crisis, in particular the COVID19 crisis we are witnessing today, is determined by employees' perceptions of the benefits of change and flexibility. However, given the insignificant impact of the organisational involvement variable on the variables to be explained, this was not supported in this analysis. The results of this study could help organisations to better adapt to the changes that the current situation in Morocco and, in particular, the global health situation may bring. However, this study should be complemented by a qualitative analysis of managers and change agents to obtain a more detailed understanding of the disruptions caused by the current crisis.

JEL Classification : M12

Paper type: Empirical research