Researchers widely agree that employees make or break organizational change initiatives. Traditional approaches have focused on the valence of recipients' reactions (positive or negative). However, a growing body of research emphasizes the more complex nature of these responses, incorporating another important dimension—activation level, i.e., whether the responses are passive or active. In addition, the endurance of employees' reactions represents another crucial and informative characteristic: one may possess a positive attitude towards a particular change today, but this attitude may not endure over time, thereby limiting sustained benefits.
The present study advances the understanding of responses to organizational change by extending beyond traditional valence-only models. To examine this, we conducted a two-wave qualitative study based on interviews with technology employees of an international betting company headquartered in Switzerland, which had recently undergone multiple acquisitions alongside significant structural and cultural changes. In total, we conducted 31 interviews across two waves and analyzed the data using configurational analysis.
Our findings revealed two key challenges. First, responses to change are not always immediately observable, as they often become entangled with the demands of daily functioning and the fear of being negatively assessed if performance delivery is deemed inadequate. Consequently, we found employees who continued to perform their tasks exceptionally well while simultaneously expressing disbelief, lack of support, or ambivalence toward the change. This raises the question of how resistance to change manifests itself in subtle rather than overt ways. Second, despite the change initiative being implemented simultaneously across the organization and accompanied by uniform communication and events, it exerted varying effects on employees and managers. These variations were explained not by the change itself but by factors such as an individual's position in formal or informal networks, the nature of their work, interpersonal relationships, and personality characteristics.