The effect of anxiety due to coronavirus outbreak on job adjustment and change management in public libraries

Public libraries, like other organizations involved in the spread of coronary anxiety disorder, have taken different approaches to their activities. One of the most important challenges is job adjustment and change management during the corona outbreak. This study investigated the effect of corona anxiety on change management and the mediating role of work volition in public libraries.

The type of research is descriptive based on the applied purpose and in terms of data collection method. The statistical population of this study includes all employees of public libraries in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in 1400 (160 people). Using simple random sampling method, 115 people were selected as the statistical sample of the study. A combined questionnaire including corona anxiety assessment (Alipour, Ghadami, Alipour, Abdollahzadeh, 2020), job adjustment (Davis and LaFquist, 2011) and change management (Armenakis et al., 2007) were used to collect data. In this study, with the help of confirmatory factor analysis and using the partial least squares technique, the effect of corona anxiety on work volition and change management among public library staff has been investigated. The software used to analyze the data are SPS and SmartPLS.

The findings of this study show that coronary anxiety (mental and physical anxiety) can have a negative effect on employee adjustment and change management. But one of the important points that was obtained in testing research hypotheses is the effect of work volition on change management. Considering that in the last two years, the organizational space has faced a major challenge called the corona outbreak; The results show that in such situations, improving the work volition of employees can be a good option to reduce the negative effects of corona anxiety.

The effect of anxiety caused by coronavirus outbreak on job adjustment and change management in public libraries of Fars province has been studied for the first time and is innovative in this regard.