Commitment to Change Among Health Care Workers in Pakistan. (September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bakari, Haroon; Hunjra, Ahmed Imran; Jaros, Stephen
• Is Part Of: Journal of health management. Volume 22:Number 3(2020:Sep.)
• Page Start: 330
• Page End: 347
• Publication Date: 2020-09
• Subjects: Commitment to change -- compliance -- cooperation -- championing -- CFA -- Pakistan health systems; Health services administration -- India -- Periodicals; 362.1068
• DOI: 10.1177/0972063420938540
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0972-0634

Abstract

Commitment to organizational change as an important focus of commitment has received greater attention in the literature of action commitments. Research indicates that this construct represents employee attitude towards change initiative and may be a greater predictor of support for change. This is of particular import in health care systems, globally, and in developing nations, in particular, which are constantly seeking to change and adapt to new medical and administrative advances. However, commitment to change (C2C) has received very little research attention from Asian health care systems. Therefore, this study answers the call for validation, by validating a culture-specific translated version of the C2C scale in a sample drawn from the privatization context of public sector hospitals in Pakistan. The goals are to: (a) examine some psychometric properties of the major Western-derived measures of C2C in Pakistan to see if they are valid and reliable there; and (b) draw implications from our results for the management of change efforts in Pakistani health care systems. Thus, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted using SPSS and analysis of moment structures (AMOS) to provide evidence of reliability, construct validity and predictive validity of C2C among Pakistani health care workers. Results found evidence of the measure's cross-cultural validity and revealed a positive correlation between C2C and three dimensions of behavioural support for change. This study is a significant contribution to the literature, being the first to provide comprehensive evidence of validity of the C2C scale in Pakistan, a developing country. An important implication for leaders of organizational change in Pakistan is that they may use this construct to unearth employee level of understanding and attitude towards change initiative to envisage mechanisms to foster employee support for change. Researchers may also use this construct in Pakistan's context to assess employee C2C.