Keeping up with the pace of change: A recipient-centered perspective on change and its outcomes

We discuss organizational change (OC) events from the recipient’s perspective, and stipulate that these events account for a range of different learning and well-being outcomes. We offer a typology of change derived from two facets of employee change experiences: frequency and impact. We propose that each change event can trigger different learning and stress-related outcomes, and offer a theoretical rationale explaining why we deem it likely that each change event will be associated with specific outcomes. We further theorize that time will play a significant role in how change affects employees, and suggest that the duration of the exposure to change (in addition to the change frequency and impact) will largely account for employee change experiences and change-related outcomes. In addition, we discuss how the sequence of occurrence of change events and the prior change experiences (i.e., the recipient’s evaluation of the prior change experience as rather positive or negative) may determine how current change events will be approached. We conclude the chapter by elaborating on the challenges that lie ahead, and propose avenues for future research based on the theoretical propositions made in this contribution.