Ayman Alshaabani

In the context of organizational change, employees can have different reactions, where some of them accept and engage with it, and others completely refuse and resist it. Hence, companies should permanently settle for the best and introduce a fruitful leadership style along with a good change management strategy to ensure the company’s prolonged survival and prosperity.
This investigation aims to examine the influence of transformational leadership on employees’ affective commitment and intention to support change. Both were chosen to constitute the main dimensions of employees’ reactions toward organizational change and highlight the importance of organizational trust as a mediator in that correlation.
To confirm the hypotheses subtracted from the literature review, a quantitative study was managed by a survey devoted to 428 employees working for diverse service companies in Hungary and going through different change cases.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then applied to hold out the favorable findings, which reveal that transformational leadership is a booster for employees’ intention to support change but not for affective commitment. It was also found that organizational trust firmly mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ reaction to change.
This statement justifies that both transformational leadership and organizational trust are able to reduce change complexity and lead to its acceptance, openness, and support.

Given the dynamic business world and influential trends shaping how companies function, resulting in resistance, anxiety, and confusion, thereby affecting employees’ performance and well-being, it is crucial to adopt an effective leadership approach. This study aims to explore how transformational leadership impacts employees’ affective commitment and their intentions to support change, considering the role that innovative behavior can play in this relationship. A quantitative approach was used based on an online survey of 401 employees working in marketing consulting, business consulting, transportation, and IT service companies in Hungary. These employees had to go through different organizational changes, such as transformation in structure and emergence of new technology innovation. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.
The study unveiled that transformational leadership significantly and positively impacts employees’ affective commitment toward organizational change but does not have any significant relationship with their intention to support it. However, overall, transformational leadership is a catalyst for employees’ responses to change situations. In addition, the intermediary role of employees’ innovative behavior in the association between transformational leadership and employees’ responses to change was confirmed as transformational leadership positively affects employees’ innovative behavior, affective commitment, and intentions to support change. With innovative behavior, the significant positive relationship between leadership and employees’ reactions to change remained effective. Transformational leadership and active team member engagement in innovation can facilitate the acceptance of change initiatives, alleviate business complexity, and foster collective efforts for individual and organizational success.