Change Recipients' Emotions during Organizational Change A Review and Directions for Future Research

We focus on change recipients’ emotional responses to organizational change. We identify the key theoretical frameworks that have been used to consider recipients’ emotional reactions to change. Our review reveals a focus on appraisal theories of emotions, although other theoretical perspectives have been adopted, including affective events theory (AET) and the broaden and build theory of positive emotions. We argue, however, that other dominant theories, including emotion regulation theories and emotional contagion, have not received adequate attention in the change field. Our review identifies four key foci of empirical research, including efforts to (1) understand the structure of change recipients’ emotional responses to change, (2) develop process models of emotional responses to change, (3) explore the antecedents and outcomes of emotional responses to change, and (4) consider the influence of change recipient and leader emotional intelligence on change outcomes. We develop an integrative framework that provides a conceptual map of relevant concepts when studying change recipients’ emotional responses to change. We conclude with identifying future directions for research.