Formation of Expectations Regarding Change Outcomes: Integrating Information and Social Effects

Much of the literature in organizational change has taken a single approach to explain employee expectation formation regarding the outcomes of a change event. A conceptual model is developed to integrate two existing streams of research (the information effects approach and the social effects approach) and to develop a comprehensive picture of outcome expectation formation. We propose that information and social effects function simultaneously to shape an employee's outcome expectations. The strength and content consistency of information and social effects jointly determine what people expect regarding change outcomes and how confident they feel about those expectations. Implications are discussed in terms of setting the boundaries for information and social effects as well as future research directions.