**1. Introduction**

Organizations constantly change, sometimes gradually evolving and at other times quicky redirecting strategies, structures, business models, and operations. An abundance of studies analyzes and synthesizes the antecedents, the process, and the outcomes in an attempt to help understand how organizations change and what makes them successful or not when changing (Dempsey et al. 2022; Lausier et al. 2020).

At times there are unpredicted major events requiring organizations to react immediately, often at big leaps. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted practically all organizations worldwide by putting a strain on supply chains, modes of working, technologies used, and demand. The war in Ukraine posed another set of challenges to societies and markets. Peaking energy prices and inflation, expected tightening of access to financing, increasing cyber threats would require organizations to further rethink strategies and business plans, and many will need to implement significant organizational changes to survive. The list of environmental challenges above is far from exhaustive.

While the effects of the recent crises on societies and economies are yet to be fully assessed, there are calls for the need to reevaluate what we know about organizational change. Worley and Jules (2020) conclude that too many organizations did not have the capabilities to respond to COVID-19. Amis and Janz (2020) underline the need of trust and a safe environment where organization members can share information and experiment with ideas to quickly adapt and take advantage of the new economic realities.

The world has seen major disruptions before, and organizations have been forced to react in order to survive. Still, many studies on organizational change highlight the low

**Citation:** Mladenova, Irena. 2022. Relation between Organizational Capacity for Change and Readiness for Change. *Administrative Sciences* 12: 135. https://doi.org/10.3390/ admsci12040135

Received: 30 August 2022 Accepted: 8 October 2022 Published: 12 October 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

success rates when implementing planned change initiatives (Kotter 2007; Meaney and Pung 2008). Some authors claim failure to establish sufficient readiness accounts for half of the unsuccessful organizational change efforts (Wang et al. 2020).

It seems we still do not know for sure what makes change effective, thus what guidelines should be followed (Bamford and Forrester 2003; Dunphy 1996). Part of the explanation acknowledges that the variations in the conditions when change happens might result in different types of changes. Consequently, the search for a unified methodology and theory should rather be replaced by constructive debates and analysis of empirical evidence on the validity and applicability of competing theories (Dunphy 1996). Even when defining change as "*one type of event, [..] an empirical observation of difference in form, quality, or state over time in an organizational entity*" (van de Ven and Poole 1995, p. 512), the question of how it happens may have a variety of answers. Consequently, what the antecedents of change success are.

Readiness for change is seen as one of the key success factors when organizations implement changes (Armenakis et al. 1993; Herold et al. 2007) measuring the attitudes within the organization. The attitude to one change event can be positive, supportive, or negative, resisting. It depends on the evaluation of the organizational members of whether the change will be beneficial and possible to implement. Readiness for change, thus, can hardly be developed "in general" and be applied to changes with different scopes and goals. Individuals may believe they can implement one specific change or align with one goal while disapprove or doubt the implementation of others. However, there is not enough research on whether readiness attitudes differ depending on the type of change (Rafferty and Simons 2006), and whether readiness is equally important for different types of change (Weiner et al. 2020).

The concept of organizational capacity for change (OCC) is an emerging area of research interest over the past decade. It addresses in part, limitations of readiness for change such as the above. Increasingly, literature shifts focus from how to prepare the organization and mobilize support for a specific change initiative (associated with readiness for change) to how to create a longer-term capacity that can serve the organization in the implementation of multiple change processes (Schwarz and Stensaker 2014). This interest relates to the increased appreciation of change as a multitude of processes–often overlapping and being at different stages with different success at a given point in time–in an organization facing turbulent environment.

Still, the concept of organizational capacity is characterized by some ambiguity. There are several theoretical contributions while empirical research is limited (Heckmann et al. 2016). Its applicability to different types of change has not been researched much as well. The concept is often confused with readiness for change (Stevens 2013; McGuiness et al. 2002) although some authors conceptualize its difference.

Judge and Blocker (2008) differentiate the two concepts based on the level of manifestation–unlike readiness, organizational capacity for change goes beyond the individual level and describes the collective capabilities of an organizational unit to change. Typically, readiness for change is assessed at the individual level. Yet, Vakola (2013) differentiates its implications on the individual, group, and organization levels and proposes a multilevel readiness for change incorporating all three levels. The multilevel model responds to the calls to accommodate multiple changes (which hampers assessment and development of readiness separately for each change initiative), as well as the need to maintain readiness during and beyond the change itself. Thus, the level of manifestation might not be the proper differentiator between the two constructs.

Vakola suggests that "*readiness could be perceived and 'invested' in as a constant state, which is conceived as a core competency to cope with continuous changing external, as well as internal, conditions*" (Vakola 2013, p. 103). Stevens (Stevens 2013) also calls for a process model of readiness for change, which should reflect its recursive and multidimensional character. These arguments pose the question whether readiness for change could be conceptualized as a continuous phenomenon and depart from its association with a particular change

instance and the assessment of its efficacy. Or, as the research on organizational capacity for change claims, another concept may provide this missing link.

This article explores the two concepts–readiness for change and organizational capacity for change. Their differences, relationship and roles are reviewed to contribute to the two concepts' understanding and differentiation. Theoretical assumptions, dimensions, antecedents, and applicability to selected types of change are explored based on extant literature findings.

The conclusions demonstrate the differences between readiness and organizational capacity for change. This article proposes that organizational capacity for change–reflecting capabilities, distinct processes as defined by the dynamic capabilities framework, could help in building readiness for particular change initiatives. More empirical research is needed to test the relationship between the two constructs, identify antecedents of organizational capacity for change as well as map it to dynamic capabilities and organizational ambidexterity taxonomies.
