Employee Resistance to Organizational Change: Managerial Influence Tactics and Leader–Member Exchange Stacie A. Furst University of Cincinnati Daniel M. Cable The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The authors explored the relationship between managerial influence tactics and employee resistance to organizational change. Using attribution theory, the authors developed a series of hypotheses concerning the effects of influence tactics on employee resistance to change and the ways in which these relation- ships are moderated by leader–member exchange. Results, which are based on multisource data, suggest that employee resistance reflects both the type of influence a manager uses and the strength of leader–member exchange. Keywords: organizational change, influence tactics, leader–member exchange, attribution theory Organizations are cooperative systems that rely on the willing- ness of members to behave in ways that support the organization (Barnard, 1938). However, people’s personal goals often differ from those of the organization, and a primary responsibility of managers is to persuade members to direct their efforts toward organizational goals (Cyert & March, 1963). The importance of employee cooperation may be particularly salient during organi- zational change—when an organization sets out to establish con- ditions that are different from the current conditions (Ford & Ford, 1995; Robertson, Roberts, & Porras, 1993). As the primary link between the organization’s change strategy and the employees responsible for implementing that strategy, managers must be able to “unfreeze” employee beliefs that the status quo is acceptable and motivate employees to make the desired changes (Lewin, 1951). Yet, employees often resist organizational changes (Reger, Gustafson, Demarie, & Mullane, 1994), and reducing this resis- tance may be difficult given employees’ disparate motives, inter- ests, and needs. The change management literature has explored the various strategies that managers use to reduce employee resistance to organizational change (e.g., Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Nutt, 1986). For example, managers may impose rewards or sanctions that guide employee behaviors (Poole, Gioia, & Gray, 1989), ask employees to help design the change (Nutt, 1986), or explain why the change is needed (Rousseau & Tijoriwala, 1999). Managers also may rely on others to persuade employees to support the change (Nutt, 1986) or give inspirational speeches to gain em- ployee support (Armenakis et al., 1996). Unfortunately, after decades of research on this topic, research is inconclusive about how these strategies affect employee resis- tance to change (Mossholder, Settoon, Harris, & Armenakis, 1995; Robertson et al., 1993). For instance, inviting employees to par- ticipate in planning a change has been found to increase employee support for a change (e.g., Coyle-Shapiro, 1999) and to hinder such efforts (e.g., Bruhn, Zajac, & Al-Kazemi, 2001). Similarly, the use of sanctions or edicts to force employee support for a change has been effective in some cases (Poole et al., 1989) and ineffective in others (Nutt, 1986). One possible explanation for the conflicting findings in the change literature is that employees may respond differently to managerial behaviors depending on how they interpret their man- ager’s intent. In particular, attribution theory (Heider, 1958) posits that observers try to make sense of an actor’s behavior by search- ing for a cause for the behavior. In their search for a causal explanation, individuals rely on an array of cues to determine an actor’s underlying motives and to assess whether a behavior is caused by dispositional factors (i.e., caused by the actor) or situ- ational factors (i.e., caused by the context or situation; Ferris, Bhawuk, Fedor, & Judge, 1995; Kelley, 1973). One of the most useful ways in which individuals may search for meaning is by comparing an actor’s present behavior with past behaviors. Ac- tions that are consistent with past behaviors typically are assigned a dispositional cause, whereas actions that are inconsistent with past behaviors are assigned a situational cause. For example, studies show that individuals tend to accept negative feedback when it comes from a well-liked source because they attribute good intentions to the source. Yet, when negative feedback comes from a source that is not liked, individuals tend to reject that feedback because they do not trust the source’s intentions (Fedor, 1991). The logic of attribution theory suggests that an employee’s reaction to managerial influence attempts may reflect the quality of the interpersonal relationship he or she has with the manager (Ferris & Judge, 1991; Porras & Robertson, 1992). Indeed, re- search on leader–member exchange (LMX) suggests that employ- ees develop unique relationships with their managers through an ongoing series of interpersonal exchanges (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975). This relationship shapes the expected behaviors of both parties. Interactions in high-quality LMX relationships are characterized by loyalty, emotional support, mutual trust, and Stacie A. Furst, Center for Organizational Leadership, University of Cincinnati; Daniel M. Cable, Kenan Flagler Business School, The Univer- sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stacie A. Furst, Center for Organizational Leadership, University of Cincin- nati, 6412 French Hall West, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0094. E-mail: Stacie.Furst@uc.edu Journal of Applied Psychology Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 2008, Vol. 93, No. 2, 453– 462 0021-9010/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.453 453