The Effect of Organizational Solidarity on Organizational Readiness for Change

At the present era, rapid and multi-faceted developments of knowledge and technology, as well as environmental fast changes have provided organizations with new and complicated circumstances. These complex changes place organizations in such an environment full of changes, uncertainty, complexity and dynamism; that is called strategic environment. Such circumstances make organizations inevitable to improve their strategies, and respond to their internal and external contingencies in order to be able to guarantee their meaningful survival in present and future environment. So, it is essential to apply organizational strategies and potentialities to communicate more with the society, and give meaningful and desirable response to environmental changes and transformations. Hence, organizations must use organizational solidarity- known as an important factor in organization success and effective on organizational performance to empower organizations to be able to respond suitably to environmental circumstances and contingencies. Since organizational solidarity indicates organization’s ability in planning, and change initiation, it is expected that creating and maintaining organizational solidarity strategies could provide necessary ground to create organizational favorable changes and developing readiness for organizational changes. To be more specific, the main goal of this study was investigate the effect of organizational Solidarity on readiness for change in the branches of a state bank in Shiraz city.

The research Approach used in the study was quantitative and the method was survey, with a descriptive goal. Data was collected by using researcher-designed questionnaire of Organizational Readiness for Change and also organizational Solidarity scale (Torkzadeh, Taghizadeh & Moharrer, 2012). Research participants were 221 employee (45 women and 176 men) who were selected by using simple cluster sampling method. All of the participants completed scales of researcher-made questionnaire of readiness for change and organizational solidarity. For inferential statistics and to test the hypotheses, we used Structural Equation Model (SEM) and one-sample t-test. The data was analyzed by SPSS 19 and LISREL 8.54 softwares.
Discussion of Results &

The results of this study indicated that, organizational solidarity explained 0/78 of the organizations readiness for change. So it can be said that organizational solidarity was a significant predictor for readiness for organizational change. It should be noted that the readiness for organizational change and organizational solidarity in the field of research as well as higher than moderate level and lower than optimum was estimated. As a whole organizational solidarity can directly affect Organizational Readiness for Change. Practical implications of the findings were discussed.
As results indicate, once we could achieve organizational solidarity that employees cooperate well to achieve organizational common goals and meet each other needs; divide their job responsibilities; and also take responsibilities for their activities or faults. Organizational solidarity makes employees accept changes, and enhances their readiness through group interactions and interpersonal relations. Thus, once employees show solidarity, solidarity and empathy while doing duties and performing individual and organizational responsibilities; solidarity is considered as a bed for organizational desirability achievement and creating appropriate changes. Thereby, it’s expected that organizational solidarity will provide organizational readiness for change.