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Assessing the Impact of Dispositional Resistance to Change on Organizational Attraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Luis M. Arciniega  and
Adriana Maldonado
Luis M. Arciniega*
Affiliation:
Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (Mexico)
Adriana Maldonado
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield (UK)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Luis M. Arciniega. ITAM Business School. Río Hondo 1. San Ángel. México 01080 D.F. (Mexico). Phone: +52-55-56284000. Fax: +52-55-56284049. E-mail: larciniega@itam.mx
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Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing interest among researchers and practitioners to analyze what makes a firm attractive in the eyes of university students, and if individual differences such as personality traits have an impact on this general affect towards a particular organization. The main goal of the present research is to demonstrate that a recently conceptualized narrow trait of personality named dispositional resistance to change (RTC), that is, the inherent tendency of individuals to avoid and oppose changes (Oreg, 2003), can predict organizational attraction of university students to firms that are perceived as innovative or conservative. Three complementary studies were carried out using a total sample of 443 college students from Mexico. In addition to validating the hypotheses, our findings suggest that as the formation of the images of organizations in students' minds is done through social cognitions, simple stimuli such as physical artifacts, when used in an isolated manner, do not have a significant impact on organizational attraction.

En los últimos años se ha registrado un creciente interés entre investigadores y profesionales de la psicología de las organizaciones por analizar qué es lo que hace que una firma resulte atractiva para trabajar ante los ojos de estudiantes universitarios, y si las diferencias individuales de éstos, tales como rasgos de personalidad, tienen un impacto sobre este afecto general hacia una organización en particular. El objetivo principal de esta investigación consiste en demostrar que un rasgo específico de personalidad, recientemente conceptualizado como predisposición a la resistencia al cambio (RC): tendencia a evitar y oponerse a los cambios (Oreg, 2003), puede predecir la atracción organizacional experimentada por estudiantes universitarios hacia firmas que son percibidas como innovadoras o conservadoras. En esta investigación se llevaron a cabo tres estudios complementarios, empleándose una muestra total de 443 estudiantes universitarios de México. Además de que nuestras hipótesis fueron validadas, los resultados sugieren que dado que las imágenes sobre las organizaciones son construidas a través de cogniciones sociales, los estímulos simples, tales como artefactos físicos (e.g. fotografías, gráficos), no poseen un impacto significativo sobre la atracción organizacional cuando son usados en forma aislada.

Keywords

dispositional resistance to changeorganizational attractioncollege recruitmentpredisposición a la resistencia al cambioatracción organizacionalreclutamiento en universidades
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , November 2011 , pp. 798 - 807
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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