Over the past few decades, social, economic, and political developments have forced public organizations to continuously adapt to changing circumstances, casting them in ongoing cycles of organizational change. The continuous introduction of various types of change in an employee’s work environment may generate substantial levels of role ambiguity, which in turn could hamper performance and satisfaction. Given the increasing degree of change complexity in the public sector, it is surprising that no research has investigated whether more complex change is associated with greater reductions in role clarity. To gain a better understanding of how change complexity impacts organizations and their employees, we analyze survey data from the Australian Public Service Employee Census using propensity score matching. Results indicate that increasing levels of change complexity results in greater reductions of role clarity, suggesting that change trajectories sometimes exceed employees’ capability to adapt.

在过去的几十年里，社会、经济和政治的发展迫使公共组织不断地适应不断变化的环境，使它们处于组织变革的持续循环中。在员工的工作环境中不断引入各种类型的变化可能会产生大量的角色模糊性，这反过来又会影响绩效和满意度。鉴于公共部门变革复杂性的程度越来越高，令人惊讶的是，没有研究调查更复杂的变革是否与角色清晰度的更大程度降低有关。为了更好地了解变化复杂性如何影响组织及其员工，我们使用倾向得分匹配分析来自澳大利亚公共服务员工普查的调查数据。