Head, Heart, or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change over Time?
通过对一家美国跨国公司在智利子公司强制推行英语变革的两年纵向研究，发现员工的情感反应先于认知反应影响语言学习，而认知和情感反应随时间分别影响离职意愿和变革接受度。
To understand how recipients respond to radical change over time across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions, we conducted a longitudinal study of a mandated language change at a Chilean subsidiary of a large U.S. multinational organization. The engineering-focused subsidiary aiming to facilitate cross-border interactions embedded language-acquisition experts to transition all employees from Spanish to English full time. We gathered survey data and objective fluency scores from the language change recipients at five points over a period of two years. Using variable- and person-centered exploratory analyses, our results suggest that recipients’ negative affective responses to the language change precede their cognitive responses or self-efficacy, predicting their current language learning. Further, we find that recipients’ cognitive and affective responses over time differentially influence two future behavioral outcomes: intention to leave the organization and willingness to adopt the change. Although cognitive rather than affective responses over time drive recipients’ intentions to leave, affective responses influence recipients’ willingness to adopt English. Finally, we show that change recipients followed three trajectories of cognitive responses and two trajectories of affective responses over time. We discuss theoretical and practical implications to the literature on organizational change, emotions, and language in global organizations.