The Moderating Effect of Cynicism on Middle Manager's Strategic Commitment

Organizational culture and manager's personal attitudes play a crucial role in conducting change initiatives, especially strategic change. In this regard, middle manager's commitment to change is of great importance and cynicism is the biggest obstacle in forming this commitment. In the present study, it is investigated whether organizational justice dimensions, senior management support for change and participation in decision-making bear any relationship to middle manager's strategic commitment, and then the moderating effect of change cynicism on these relationships is explored. To this end, data were collected from 334 middle managers of ICT companies across Iran, and analyzed using structural equation modeling. According to the results, change cynicism fully moderated the relationships distributive and interactional justice bore to strategic commitment and partially reduced the positive effects of senior management support. Results also indicated cynicism had no effect on relationships procedural justice and participation bore to strategic commitment.