Digital Literacy (Competency) And Readiness for Organizational Change: The Mediator Role of Resistance to Change

Özet

Purpose – The study aims to investigate how employees' Digital Literacy (DL) levels impact on Readiness for Organizational Change (RFOC). In addition, the study seeks to determine the mediating role of employee Resistance to Change (RTC). An analysis of the outcome of organizational change and digitization trends on employees' RFOC and RTC was conducted in this study. Employee attitudes toward digital technologies in the workplace, their RFOC, and their RTC are significant factors as a result of digitization trends in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Although DL is discussed in detail in the literature, employee attitudes toward DL and digital technology, and their willingness to embrace organizational change, have not been explored much in light of RTC. First, the correlation between the research paradigm and the constructs that comprise the paradigm was tested in order to achieve the specified goal. Randomly, 317 white-collar employees of a Turkish retail company in the retail sector were selected for the accessible sample. The collected data was tested using IBM SPSS AMOS version 24 and the Structural Equation Model (SEM). All hypotheses were examined simultaneously with pathway analysis. For SEM, the assumptions were met and a maximum-likelihood estimation was performed. Findings – It has been determined that the level of DL of employees has a positive and significant impact on their RFOC with digitalization trends. In addition, RTC, which is included as a mediating variable in the relationship between the level of DL and RFOC, is assumed to have a mediating role in the research paradigm. Discussion – The findings show that the relation between DL skills and RFOC has been found to be fully mediated by attitudes of RTC.