Examining the effect of employee commitment on organizational change management: A study of Public Sector Universities in Iraq

Purpose: Purpose: In recent times, it has become important for the institutions to evolve according to the changing environment to sustain in the industry. In this scenario, the public sector universities, like any other institutions, need to respond to change according to the dynamic needs of the industry and the developments in general environment. The purpose of this study is to draw the attention of the universities about the significance of the organizational change. Methodology: The present study adopted the quantitative method and the SPSS program was utilized to analyze the effect of employee commitment (independent variable) on organizational change management (dependent variable). To achieve the objective, a questionnaire was used to gather the data from three public universities. A total of 54 responses were collected from the universities employees and analyzed in this study. Findings: The study results revealed that the increased degree of employee commitment has a positive impact on the success of the organizational change management process in public universities. In addition, the results infer that an increase in the employee commitment decreases the employee resistance. Finally, the results also confirm that when the employee commitment and their effectiveness increases, it has a positive effect on the need to change. Implications: The study findings are crucial and emphasize the importance to focus on strategic and sustainable human resource management in universities. This is attributed to the fact that it impacts the degree of employees’ commitment in fostering a successful organizational change management in the tertiary institutions. Originality: To the best of the researcher’s knowledge,no studies have been conducted earlier in this subject in the context of public universities located in Kurdistan, Iraq