Need for Cognition and Attitude Towards Change of Four Generations of Service Sector Workers

Abstract

Individuals are key determinants of the success or failure of an organizational change process (Yousef, 2000). Organizational leaders or change agents are increasingly required to improve their ability to obtain employees’ support for change (Choi, 2011), especially that today’s workforce comprises of four generations (Hillman, 2014). This study aimed to determine the relationship between need for cognition, or the tendency of individuals to engage in and enjoy thinking, and attitude towards change of four generations of workers in the service sector. The study also determined the relationship between need for cognition and the three components of attitude, namely, cognitive, affective, and behavioral tendency. Epstein (1973)’s Cognitive-Experiential Theory (CET) was used as the basis of the study framework. The fundamental assumption of CET is that there are two independent information processing systems, the analytical-rational and the intuitive-experiential, that operate in parallel and interact to produce an individual’s conscious thought and behavior. According to CET, rational and experiential systems are interactive in nature but are independent of each other. The Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984) and the Attitude Towards Change Instrument (Dunham, Grube, Gardner, Cummings, Pierce, 1989) were used to measure the respondents’ need for cognition and attitude towards general change respectively ( N = 112). A one-shot survey was implemented from April 27, 2016 to May 10, 2016 in Metro Manila through non-probability, purposive sampling. Spearman’s rho and Goodman and Kruskal’s Gamma were the statistical tools used. Findings showed that though there was a statistically significant relationship between need for cognition and attitude towards change ( p = .002); the magnitude of the relationship Z was low ( r = .30), yielding no practical implications. There is a significant relationship between position level or rank (clerical, supervisory, and managerial) and attitude towards change. It is recommended for future researchers to make the sample more homogenous, to focus on one company only, and identify one change to which they would be tested for attitude towards change to (whether resistant or receptive), thereby testing for specific change instead of general change.