Research Authored by Jennifer Franczak Explores the Impact of Employee Change Championing

Effective employee change championing, or uniformly promoting change to others in your team, is critical for change implementation outcomes. In research co-authored by Pepperdine Graziadio Professor Jennifer Franczak and published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the authors sought to quantify the effects of change championing at both the group and the individual level. 

To study employee change championing, the authors collected data at two points in time from 267 employees in 69 groups undergoing an organizational change in a German technology company. The study’s multilevel modeling results showed when groups had dissimilar championing that weakens the positive effects on change implementation effectiveness. 

For leaders, their findings revealed that it is important to pay attention to the team composition, the level of championing, and the degree to which group members differ in their championing. It is important for change leaders to recognize subtle cues in employee actions in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the change and suggest appropriate interventions when needed. 

Read the full study at the Journal of Organizational Behavior website.