The impact of national culture dimensions on the response to the process of organizational change: A study in Syrian firms operating in Turkey

Today, the world is changing rapidly in all fields, which requires companies and organizations to keep up with it if they want continuity, survival, and competition . The change that organizations are witnessing today may be organized and planned, and it may be random and emergency imposed by the conditions of the external environment. The best example of that change imposed by COVID-19 (Corona pandemic) on societies such the new patterns of life and the change of many methods of work, which led to the disappearance of jobs and the emergence of other jobs and a radical change in work methods through the extensive use of technology and the emergence of new concepts or the strengthening and application of already existing concepts such as remote work, work from home, work through the Internet and others. The research problem is represented by the inevitability and necessity of change for organizations, especially in a rapidly changing world, and from the premise that the attitudes of employees towards this change differ according to their personalities, cultural backgrounds, and different environments to which they belong. The research problem also emerges in dealing with resistance to change, as the organizations view this resistance negatively because it impedes the progress of the change process and causes its failure, among the reasons for this resistance are factors related to national culture. One way to understand the link among culture and change is through time orientation. Traditional cultures avoid change as a result of their orientation towards the past, while cultures that are oriented towards the present have a hesitant to deal with change. Future-oriented cultures focus on future planning and achievement. In these communities, change is a fundamental issue. So that tend to view change as desirable and, to some extent, inevitable. The importance of research stems from the scarcity of researches that dealt with the Syrian Arab culture. so that thesis aims to study the effect of the national culture for employees on their response to organizational change in the Syrian firms operating in Turkey, does the influence of national culture on the response to the organizational change varies according to demographic variables, as it aims to reach a set of results and present a set of proposals that benefit scientific research and companies under study in this field. In order to reach sound answers and scientific solutions to the problems raised in this research and to achieve its goal, the research seeks to test two main hypotheses and sub-hypotheses emerging from them. The first hypothesis relates to the impact of the national culture dimensions according to Hofstede's study (individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, power distance, Confucian dynamism), on employees' response to organizational change. The second hypothesis tests the effect of demographic variables (gender, age and educational level) on the relationship between national culture dimensions and response to organizational change. To test the hypotheses proposed for this study, a deductive-quantitative survey methodology using convenience sampling used. The study reach more than 360 employees in more than 100 Syrian companies in Turkey, where questionnaires were distributed electronically via an Internet link and directly in paper to employees in these companies in a number of Turkish cities such as Istanbul, Gaziantep, Mersin, Hatay, Urfa, Adana, Kilis and other cities where there are many Syrian companies. According to the results obtained by analyzing the data using the SPSS program; It was concluded that the national culture has a positive impact on the response to organizational change and that the effect of each dimension of national culture on the response to organizational change differs from others. Where the results showed a positive correlation between all dimensions of national culture with response to organizational change, except for the individualism/collectivism dimension, which did not show a correlation with response to change. The results also found that the relationship between national culture dimensions and response to organizational change is not affected by demographic variables. In light of the results of the field study, the researcher recommends to the owners of the studied companies, companies in general, and business owners in order to increase their employees' response to organizational change and reduce resistance to it, and in order for the change programs to be more effective, the researcher presents a number of recommendations, such as eliminating uncertainty and ambiguity through training, announcing and clarifying the goals of change to employees, developing written regulations and rules that guide them, as well as instilling a spirit of challenge and success among employees and good planning for change. It may contribute to increased responsiveness to organizational change. Also, using formal authority to some extent may be one of the means of implementing change programs and may be useful in responding to these programs, and participation in the decision may also be useful in that.