Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)

School

Business Administration

Advisor

Michael Lavelle

Abstract

Organizational change initiatives in the United States frequently fail with estimated failure rates as high as 90%. Change failure rates resulting from underused and poorly trained front-line managers (FLMs) remained high, with no signs of improvement in the past 2 decades. The purpose of the correlational study, grounded in servant leadership theory, was to examine the relationship between employee perceptions of their FLM's servant leadership dimensions and employee affective commitment to change. A purposive, nonprobability sample of 107 employees of a U.S. manufacturing organization that had recently undergone organizational change completed a questionnaire for the study. Results of the multiple linear regression analysis were not significant, F(7, 107) = .714, p = .660, R2 = 0.045. Though results were not statistically significant, the beta weights for creating value for the community (β = .165) and behaving ethically (β = .168) indicated that creating value for the community and behaving ethically were potentially the most important variables in accounting for variance in the model. The beta weights for emotional healing (β = -.048) and conceptual skills (β = -.047) indicated that emotional healing and conceptual skills were potentially the least important variables in accounting for variance in the model. The findings may be of value to manufacturing leaders developing initiatives to improve change initiative success rates. Support for servant leadership during periods of organizational change has positive social change implications for employees. The practice of servant leadership reduces employee uncertainty and anxiety incurred during periods of change by resolving uncertainties and sustaining employee motivation for supporting organizational change.

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