Staff Reallocations and Employee Attitudes towards Organizational Aims: Evidence using Longitudinal Data from the European Commission

Abstract

Organizational reforms often involve substantial staff reallocations, creating both winners and losers within the same organization. We argue that allocating less (more) staff to a department signals a decrease (increase) in organizational support towards that department and its employees. We hypothesize that staff members respond to this signal by adjusting their support for key organizational aims and their plans to stay in the organization. We test these propositions using a two-wave survey conducted within the European Commission. Consistent with theoretical arguments, we find that staff (re)allocations trigger distinct reactions among winners and losers as well as across staff types.