Locus of control and the three components of commitment to change

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of locus of control on psychological reactions to change. It examines the relationship between locus of control and the three components of commitment to a change (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002) that have been found to exhibit different behavioral implications. A total of 215 Chinese customs service staff participated in the present study. The results show that locus of control can significantly predict participants’ commitment to a specific change. In particular, the relationship between locus of control and the three different components of commitment to change are differentiative: participants with more internal locus of control were more likely to have high affective and normative commitment to change, whereas participants with more external locus of control were more likely to have high continuance commitment to change. The implications for theoretical research and organizational practice are also discussed.