Antecedents of employee readiness for change in the IT sector and the manufacturing sector: A comparative study

A sample of 305 employees comprising nearly equal numbers from the manufacturing sector and from the information technology (IT) sector in India was assessed in terms of: 1) attributes of the individual employees (practical intelligence and creative behaviour); 2) processes (participation in making decisions and the quality of communication); 3) contextual factors (trust in management and history of change), to predict the readiness of the employees for change. The predictors of employee readiness for change differed between the two sectors, and the factor most closely related to the readiness was prior experience of organisational changes.