Assessing organizational readiness for change

Abstract

A comprehensive assessment of organizational functioning and readiness for change (ORC) was developed based on a conceptual model and previous findings on transferring research to practice. It focuses on motivation and personality attributes of program leaders and staff, institutional resources, and organizational climate as an important first step in understanding organizational factors related to implementing new technologies into a program. This article describes the rationale and structure of the ORC and shows it has acceptable psychometric properties. Results of surveys of over 500 treatment personnel from more than 100 treatment units support its construct validity on the basis of agreement between management and staff on several ORC dimensions, relationships between staff organizational climate dimensions and patient engagement in treatment, and associations of agency resources and climate with organizational stability. Overall, these results indicate the ORC can contribute to the study of organizational change and technology transfer by identifying functional barriers involved.