Resource Protection and Motivation: A Dual‐Path Moderated Mediation Model of the Impact of Perceived Organizational Change on Teachers' Work Engagement

ABSTRACT Although previous studies have established a positive correlation between perceived organizational change and teachers' work engagement, the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions governing this relationship remain insufficiently explored. Integrating Event System Theory with Conservation of Resources Theory, this study develops a dual‐path moderated mediation model to examine how perceived organizational change influences teachers' work engagement through psychological contract violation and career resilience. Survey data were collected from 513 teachers across 15 vocational colleges in China using a two‐stage cluster convenience sampling approach. The empirical results indicate that rather than acting as a disruptive stressor, perceived organizational change functions as a positive structural event that significantly reduces psychological contract violation, thereby exerting a protective effect on work engagement. Simultaneously, this change perception actively stimulates work engagement by enhancing teachers' career resilience. Furthermore, emotion regulation capacity plays a critical moderating role within the model. Specifically, higher levels of emotion regulation significantly catalyse the motivational pathway driven by career resilience but demonstrate no significant moderating effect on the protective pathway concerning psychological contract violation. These findings provide a novel event‐resource perspective for organizational change theory in educational contexts and offer essential implications for management practices in vocational education.