Describe the reasons why people resist organizational change.
What will be an ideal response?
When faced with an organizational change, employee reactions vary from
resistance, compliance, or commitment to change. Resistance means that the
employees fight the change and try to undermine it. In compliance, they simply go along
with the change but secretly hope that it is a program that will come to an end soon.
Commitment to change is the most desirable reaction in which the employees support
change and help the organization implement it. Since resistance is the most difficult
reaction for the leader to deal with, this section will focus on understanding and
overcoming resistance to change.
Research on resistance to change dates back to a classic study of participative decision
making conducted with a strong research design. Employees were transferred to new
jobs in which they encountered significant changes to their work. Interviews revealed
employees resisted changes in their work methods due to resentment, frustration, and a
loss of hope of regaining their formal levels of proficiency. A second experiment was
then conducted in which the control group was transferred to new jobs, but they were
allowed to participate in the changes through chosen representatives; this group
recovered rapidly and reached a higher level of productivity compared to the group that
was not allowed to participate in the change. This study shows that OD can impact
resistance to change through an intervention that increased employee participation in
the process. A recent review of 70 years of research on resistance to change concluded
that the findings of this classic study have held up over time and subsequent research
studies. Lack of participation and input to the change is one reason employees resist
change. There are a number of additional reasons why people resist change that
include both personal reasons and organizational reasons. Personal reasons include
habit, security, economic, and fear of the unknown. Organizational reasons for
resistance are structural inertia (the structure is too rigid to support the change), group
inertia, threats to expertise, and threats to established power relationships.
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