Managing membership threats through collective efficacy

Individuals cope with membership-threatening situations in organizations through their level of collective efficacy. Basically, members' perception of the resourcefulness of the organization provides them with a strong basis from which to believe that they are collectively competent in handling unforeseen situations. To support this argument, this paper empirically analyzes two changing organizations in which high collective efficacy de facto lowers members' preoccupation with seeing features of the organization key for their membership disappear. These findings confirm previous work on the role of collective efficacy during general organizational threats and provide initial evidence of the importance of collective efficacy in containing membership threats in particular.