Especially in the context of complex organizational changes, employees’ support is crucial for success because change-supportive behaviors of employees are required to compensate for higher uncertainties related to the implementation and the consequences of the changes. Yet, change support of employees is no automatic reaction. Seen from a psychological perspective change support represents a planned behavior of employees that is preceded by change-supportive intentions formed in reaction to the specific changes at hand. Hence, it is important to understand how employees react to organizational changes and how they form change-supportive intentions. However, research on employees’ change reactions is a rather fragmented field that poses great challenges for researchers and practitioners striving to establish evidence-based approaches of change management. Therefore, the present research answers the call for more theoretical integration and refinement in the field of organizational research. Specifically, the present research makes use of the theory of planned behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1991) which as is an established psychological theory for explaining human behaviors in social contexts. Based on this theoretical foundation, the present work systematically examines influences on the formation of change-supportive intentions from change-specific management factors (Study 1) and from personal factors (Study 2), as well as interrelational influences among the psychological determinants of change-supportive intentions (Study 3). Across all studies, the value of the TPB for understanding the formation of change-supportive intentions is supported. In addition, each study reveals unique insights. Revealing systematic linkages of change-specific management factors and psychological factors, Study 1 highlights the value of theoretical integration to promote evidence-based management. Study 2 finds affective organizational commitment to be an important predictor of change-supportive intentions with direct and indirect effects via the psychological determinants. Study 3 shows the relevance of a configurational perspective for more fully understanding the psychological processes involved in the formation of change-supportive intentions. Taken together, the appended studies contribute to the theoretical integration and refinement in change research and enable more systematic, well-founded diagnoses in change processes by providing scientific guidance for evidence-based change management.

This dissertation aims to apply the configurational perspective to organizational surveys. The studies included in this dissertation demonstrate that an increasingly popular configurational method can be applied to large dataset sizes similar to organizational surveys. This method is called fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Additionally, the incremental insights of fsQCA are illustrated by taking traditional methods into comparison. At the same time, the presented research addresses current methodological challenges to fsQCA in order to shed light on its application in the context of organizational surveys and to reduce reasons inhibiting researchers to use this method. The first study conceptualized and empirically investigated differently complex interplays of core manageable factors predicting and influencing high levels of affective commitment. Specifically, the results indicate that job design, organizational treatment, leadership, and recognition were consistently found to be essential in terms of incremental, relative, and configurational importance for the management of affective commitment. The second study aims to deepen the understanding of the formation of change-supportive intentions by adopting a configurational perspective. Investigating the theory of planned behavior in a longitudinal setting, the results suggest the combination of high change-related attitude and high change-related perceived behavioral control as the most consistent and reliable solution for fostering high change-supportive intentions. Both the first and second study addressed methodological challenges by adopting robustness tests for large-N fsQCA to increase trustworthiness and reduce sensitivity of the results. Additionally, as required for fsQCA data preparation, recommendations for thresholds were made and different calibration techniques investigated. The third study connects these two studies by performing a simulation on artificial small-N and large-N datasets comparing regression analysis, fsQCA, and its different calibration techniques. In particular, new insights on the joint use of both methods and methodological recommendations on the calibration of fsQCA could be given. In sum, the presented research highlights the applicability of fsQCA to organizational surveys and that a configurational approach can further enrich the understanding of organizations and organizational life.