The mediating effect of empowerment on the relationship between organizational culture and organizational change recipients' beliefs: Evidence from health care sector

Organizations are under pressures to change to cope with technological developments, advanced communication systems, digitalization and global competition for a long time. They should maintain their workforce in an appropriate structure to changing environment on timely manner responses to ever-lasting changes. Thus, employees or human asset became more importantly the source of competitive advantage for organizations and survival. Although the importance of employees' roles are highly accepted, underestimation of employee side on organizational transformation still continues to become a debated issue. This dissertation aimed to concentrate on human side of the change efforts through measuring change recipients' beliefs namely discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, valence and principal support management and principal support colleagues and how these beliefs are affected by organizational culture, psychological empowerment and their sub-dimensions. These concepts are assumed to play role in getting employees support for a successful organizational change for all periods; readiness, implementation and institutionalization. The first objective of the study was to study the relationship between organizational culture and employees' change beliefs and secondly to research the mediating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between organizational culture and employees' change beliefs. For searching the phenomenon, the data was collected from private health care sector through an online survey. 646 responses included in the analyses. The results were analyzed implying statistical methods such as reliability and factor analysis, validity tests, regression analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that employees' change beliefs; principal support management and colleagues are directly affected by organizational culture whatever the sub-culture type is. Appropriateness, discrepancy, efficacy and valence beliefs are partially mediated by psychological empowerment. Free from being dominant on any organizational culture dimension, psychological empowerment of employees, namely their feelings of competence on themselves and the meaning of change efforts help them regulate their beliefs of organizational change positively. Consistent leadership attitudes toward desired behavior change help decrease questions in change recipients' minds. Management support towards providing employees with autonomy to arrange their work also observed important as much as principal support for organizational change.