Employees’ reaction to the change to work teams: The influence of “anticipatory” injustice

This paper reports the findings of a study regarding the reactions of 492 line‐level employees from two Fortune 500 organizations in response to the organizations’ recent implementation of self‐managing work teams (SMWTs). As predicted, we found that anticipatory injustice was significantly positively related to change‐resistance and turnover intentions; and significantly negatively related to employees’ commitment; and that procedural justice can mitigate the latter relationships. Implications for managing change are discussed.