Secord and Beckman (1969, p. 167) defined attitudes as certain regularities of an
individual’s feelings, thoughts and predispositions to act toward some aspect of his
environment. Arnold et al. (1995) indicated that “attitudes reflect a person’s tendency to
feel, think or behave in a positive or negative manner towards the object of the
attitude”. According to Elizur and Guttman (1976), attitudes toward change in general
consist of a person’s cognitions about change, affective reactions to change, and
behavioral tendency toward change. Researchers have therefore, identified various
employees’ responses to an organizational change ranging from strong positive
attitudes (i.e. “this change is essential for the organization to succeed”) to strong
negative attitudes (i.e. “this change could ruin the company”), (Piderit, 2000). Therefore,
change can be received with excitement and happiness or anger and fear while
employees’ response to it may range from positive intentions to support the change to
negative intentions to oppose it.