Early research on change focused primarily on how organizations as a whole reacted to organizational change (Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999) and not on individuals' reaction or attitude to such change (Vakola et al., 2004). Later studies analyzed resistance to change as a defense mechanism (Zander, 1950) and its social impact as such a mechanism (Lawrence, 1954). The first studies on resistance to change in work and organizational psychology were published in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Coch and French, 1948). This new construct is the acceptance of change (AC), and researchers are currently engaged in verifying the main psychometric properties of a new multidimensional scale for assessing AC in its different forms. Based on this premise, the ability to accept change could be a very useful resource in many spheres of life at the intra- and inter-individual level as well as the global level.Ī new construct, up till now missing in the psychology literature, is therefore needed to study the phenomenon of change. To quote Zuckerman ( 2014), “change is a fact of life, that people can resist or accept, considering that the world around us inevitably will change” (Zuckerman, 2014, p. The present study, however, went beyond the concept of resistance to change to consider the concept of positive change, namely the acceptance of change (AC), in line with recent advances in positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 Compton, 2005) and bearing in mind Maslow's theory of needs (1954) and evolutionary theory (Maslow, 1954). In organizational psychology in particular, a body of literature has grown on resistance to change (Dent and Goldberg, 1999 Folger and Skarlicki, 1999 Oreg, 2003, 2006 Ford et al., 2008 van Dam et al., 2008), and most of the reported studies subscribe to the definition of resistance to change as a “restraining force moving the direction of maintaining the status quo” (Lewin, 1952 Piderit, 2000, p. Several researchers have identified factors that may be associated with people's openness to change (Miller et al., 1994 Judge et al., 1999 Wanberg and Banas, 2000) or resistance to change (Oreg, 2003), but little empirical work has been done in this area, especially as regards acceptance of change. Some people view change as an opportunity to grow and learn with positive implications for their personal development, for creating readiness for change in them (e.g., Armenakis et al., 1993) for “successful planned change” (Miller et al., 1994) in the workplace for promoting relational management (Di Fabio, 2015b Di Fabio and Kenny, 2016), well-being (Di Fabio and Bucci, 2015), and psychological strengths (Di Fabio, 2011 Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012a, b Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2012, 2015a Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014a, b Di Fabio and Kenny, 2015) and for improving their relational civility (Di Fabio and Gori, in review). Indeed, at the societal level, people who accept change positively can more easily respond to the demands of modern societies. In today's rapidly changing world of work, people need to deal with change constructively as a good attitude to change can help them find ways of meeting challenges successfully thereby promoting their well-being (Van den Heuvel et al., 2013 Di Fabio et al., 2014 Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2015a). In modern societies, a person's ability to face change is highly valued at the individual level, in the world of work, and in society.Īt the individual level, understanding and accepting change is crucial for personal development, particularly because coping with change is often very difficult for many individuals (Wanberg and Banas, 2000). The results of the present study indicate that the Acceptance of Change Scale (ACS) is a brief and easily administered instrument with good psychometric properties that can promote the development of clients' strengths and the growth of a sense of Self, thereby helping them choose their own way without losing any opportunities in their lives and their work. All the dimensions showed good values of internal consistency. The results of exploratory factor analysis indicated a factor structure with five principal dimensions besides confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) goodness of fit indices indicated a good fit of the model to the data. We first discuss the theoretical background of this new construct in the work and organizational fields and then evaluate the psychometric properties of a new measure for assessing acceptance of change. This article focuses on the usefulness of going beyond the concept of resistance to change and capitalizing on the use of a model that includes positivity and acceptance of change.
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