**4. Dimensions and Antecedents**

Readiness for change is the cognitive precursor of the behaviors of support for—or resistance to—organizational change (Armenakis and Harris 2009). The construct suggests change as a distinct event, which can be characterized by a clear goal towards which success is measured, a beginning and an end. These elements enable the assessment (and building) of the organization's readiness level. It is defined through the shared commitment and self-efficacy to implement a particular change (Weiner 2009), beliefs and intentions of members of the organization to change their behaviors (Armenakis et al. 1993) accordingly. Definitions are converging to describe it as a psychological rather than a structural construct (Weiner et al. 2020). Armenakis and Harris (2009) conceptualize the motivations to change through the role of change messages that impact five beliefs–discrepancy; appropriateness; efficacy; principal support; and valence. The authors develop a readiness model based on assessing and building the above five beliefs, which reflect the readiness dimensions. Readiness as change recipients' reaction, however, might be part of the internal context or a

consequence of change (Oreg et al. 2011). Miake-Lye et al. (2020) extract five dimensions which are typically used in readiness assessment measures-outer setting, inner setting, intervention characteristics, characteristics of individuals, and implementation process. They highlight however that readiness is operationalized differently across projects or settings. A review of instruments to assess readiness is elaborated by Weiner et al. (2020) and discusses on their dimensions, reliability, and validity.

Readiness for change may vary over time and from one change initiative to another. It refers to a state rather than a personality trait (Choi 2011). Readiness is subject to the influence from content (of the specific change initiative), context (of the environment, the organizational capacity), process (of the change implementation), and individuals involved (members of the organization) (Holt et al. 2007).

Several articles have summarized what is already known about the antecedents of readiness to change and come up with converging classifications. Rafferty et al. (2013) review extant research on two levels–individual and organizational, and identify external pressures, internal context enablers and personal (resp. group) characteristics to influence the cognitive and affective readiness to change. Weiner (2009) starts from the motivation theory and social cognitive theory and identifies change valence and information assessment to be antecedents of readiness for change. These antecedents are largely influenced by contextual factors, such as organizational culture; policies and procedures; past experience; organizational resources; organizational structure. Vakola (2014) identifies individual characteristics, contextual characteristics and work attitudes as impacting the individual readiness for change. Rafferty and Minbashian (2019) find cognitive beliefs and positive emotions about change to be significantly associated with change readiness.

The organizational capacity for change starts with the understanding that change is ongoing, but also manifested in single events which might be overlapping in time, contradicting in goals and competing for resources (Klarner et al. 2008; Heckmann et al. 2016). The concept addresses the need to explain the ability of organizations to tackle multiple change. Many authors (Heckmann et al. 2016; Klarner et al. 2007; Meyer and Stensaker 2006) conceptualize OCC as the ability of the organization to formulate, implement and maintain multiple changes in the long term and thus distinguish the concept from readiness for change which relates to a single change initiative.

While most of the definitions start from the dynamic capabilities' framework, there are disagreements as to what the nature of the capacity for change is and how to measure it (Supriharyanti and Sukoco 2022). Heckmann et al. (2016, p. 779) integrate existing definitions and conceptualizations to describe organizational capacity for change as "*a broad dynamic, multidimensional capability that enables an organization to initiate and successfully achieve changes of different types, sizes, and forms on an ongoing basis. OCC is multidimensional comprising different aspects of leadership, culture, employee behavior, and an organizational infrastructure supporting organizational change*". The focus on organizational capabilities includes employee behaviors but departs from the attitudes and beliefs as captured by readiness for change.

Organizational capacity for change as a dynamic capability may develop in time and with gained experience and relates to learning in the organization. Building OCC, however, does not necessarily mean each change initiative implementation will be a success (Meyer and Stensaker 2006). Dynamic capabilities refer also to processes, procedures (Barreto 2010) implying that capacity for change would incorporate experience and results from previous changes. It influences the quality of processes used by the organization to implement and sustain changes (McGuiness et al. 2002).

A review of OCC dimensions is summarized in Table A1 in Appendix A. Several common dimensions can be highlighted and grouped into organizational context, change process, transformational leadership, learning, and culture.

The question of antecedents of capacity for change as well as its relationship with other constructs, however, is largely unexplored (Heckmann et al. 2016). Judge et al. (2006) identify two antecedents–adaptability (one of the elements of contextual organizational ambidexterity as proposed by Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004)) and environmental uncertainty. In a later text, though, Judge and Blocker (2008) argue that change capacity is in fact an antecedent of strategic ambidexterity, and the relationship is moderated by environmental uncertainty and organizational slack. Shipton et al. (2012) argues human resources (HR) management systems help build capacity for change, and this influence is moderated by external factors (such as national institutional and cultural environment) and internal factors (such as HR power and HR competence).

Supriharyanti and Sukoco (2022) review a total of 48 studies and extract three groups of OCC antecedents–individual factors, organizational factors, and environmental factors. The authors highlight that the antecedents need further empirical evidence. This grouping of explored antecedents follows the dynamic capabilities literature. In a recent literature review, Schilke et al. (2018) identify the same three groups of antecedents of dynamic capabilities–organizational factors, individual/team factors, and environmental factors.

The review of dimensions and antecedents of the two constructs is summarized in Table 2.

**Table 2.** Dimensions and Antecedents.


#### **5. Applicability to Different Types of Change**

Understanding the type of change faced by an organization guides the way it is led, and what might help its success. There have been numerous approaches to classify the possible types of change. This article steps on the typology developed by Maes and Hootegem (2011). The authors summarize previous research advancements into a set of eight dimensions to describe the different types of change in a dynamic way. Four of these dimensions have been substantially researched: control, scope, frequency, and stride (Maes and Hootegem 2011), and are well defined and explored in empirical and theoretical studies. The higher level of clarity on these four dimensions motivates their selection for the purpose of this article.
