Understanding How People React to Change: A Domain of Uncertainty Approach

Abstract

Change is ubiquitous in people’s daily work and life experiences. While a sizable body of research has examined individuals’ reactions to change, different literatures have remained largely siloed. In this review, we integrate research on people’s reaction to change in seven research clusters (marketing, macro-organizational change, micro-organizational change, creativity, technological innovation adoption, voice, individual adaptation), through a domain of uncertainty (DOU) framework. We identify that the uncertainties associated with change fit into four domains, reflected in the questions people ask about change: conceptual uncertainty (What is the change?), functional value uncertainty (What is the value of the change?), process uncertainty (How will the change come about?), and impact uncertainty (What is the broader impact of the change?). The DOU framework integrates the existing research through the common lens of uncertainty, thus allowing specific communities of practice studying individuals’ reactions to change to better engage in a dialogue with other nonoverlapping communities. By identifying two central levers—people’s goals and the change features of novelty and ambiguity—that impact the relevance of the uncertainty domains and the ways people reduce uncertainties within those domains, the DOU framework further helps scholars better determine the factors that are important to an individual’s reaction to change.