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Petrovic-Lazarevic, Sonja; Cheng, Joseph --- "Resistance to change" [2005] MonashBusRw 7; (2005) 1(1) Monash Business Review 40

Resistance to change

Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic, Joseph Cheng

Transformational changes to “doing more with less” in organisations have been rapid, recurrent and structural. Many failures in these changes are due to employees’ resistance, but this resistance can be changed into acceptance with skillful, sensitive employee-focused management.

Charles Handy in the mid-1970s predicted the technological revolution, which had then just begun, would make its impact felt in the marketplace and would transform the lives of millions through a process he termed “downsizing”. People then paid only passing attention to what he said. However, the advent of information technology, the forces of globalisation, increased international competition, enhanced consumer demands, government regulations, the rise of managerialism, and waves of economic downturn since then have all necessitated transformational change in strategy, structure, and process in both private and public organisations to survive and thrive.

Restructuring, downsizing, and business process reengineering have become a dominant trend in both private and public sectors in the past two decades. Cuts across-the-board, organisational delayering, outsourcing, voluntary terminations, massive layoffs and shutting down of entire divisions or departments are common. Despite the fact that recent recession in most developed countries has technically come to an end, these transformational changes have not. A recent issue of Newsweek reported that: “There is a growing camp of economists who believe today’s brutally tough labor market is not a temporary American oddity. Falling wages, reduced benefits and rising job insecurity seem to be increasingly entrenched features of the job scene across most of Western Europe, the United States and other parts of the developed world.”

The quest for “doing more with less” becomes ritualistic in current management, while the change towards less pay, harder work and fewer benefits for workers becomes “structural”. Economists have begun to term this trend as “jobless recovery”, or economic recovery with no growth in jobs. This structural change manifests itself mainly in two features: “the predominance of permanent job losses over temporary layoffs and the relocation of jobs from one industry to another”.

Those who are not being laid off and those who have landed in a different job, have to face radical changes. These may come in the job nature, process, or workload; more often than not these changes occur simultaneously. Such a rush of changes might indeed be timely and essential for corporate survival and success, but does it mean the employees are ready and willing to change even under the threat of losing their job? Does it mean they will perform their very best under duress for long?

Trapped and out of control

Resistance to change is not exactly resistance to change per se at its start; it is more an interplay of natural human responses to negative change one is being trapped in and cannot control. People’s negative response to change has eight distinctive stages:

1. Stability This refers to the status quo or the state before any announcement of change.

2. Immobilisation Shock is considered the initial reaction which varies from temporary confusion to complete disorientation.

3. Denial People at this phase are unable to assimilate new information into the current frame of reference, and the reaction is one of rejection or ignorance.

4. Anger Frustration and feelings of being hurt.

5. Bargaining People begin to try bargaining to avoid the negative impact of change.

6. Depression People go through another phase of emotion now, usually expressed in the form of resignation to failure, feeling victimised, a lack of emotional and physical energy, and disengagement from one’s work.

7. Testing Finding of new ways to adapt to the new situation and to get on with the new framework.

8. Acceptance At last people respond realistically.

Individuals who are unconsciously inclined to use maladaptive defences (denial, dissociation, isolation of effect, projection, and acting out), are more likely to resist organisational change while those inclined to adaptive responses (humor and anticipation) are less likely.

The post-modernist constructivist view of resistance to change is that realities are socially constructed and there is practically no single concept of change for all of us. Resistance therefore is not to be found ‘in the individual’ but in their constructed reality. The substance of resistance to change falls more on employees’ background understandings and their socially constructed realities than on individual employees; and the differentiation of the resistance-giving background helps tackling resistance to change. Resistance to change therefore could be seen as a function of the following different backgrounds.

1. The Complacent Background Where historical success becomes the “evidence” for people to avoid making “disruptive” changes.

2. The Resigned Background This is constructed from historical failure. In organisations where things have gone wrong, the conversations people have accumulated to establish a theme of “this probably won’t work either”.

3. The Cynical Background Like resigned background, this is constructed from historical failure, either directly or vicariously experienced through stories and narratives of others’ experiences.

Resistance can play a useful role in an organisational change when carefully managed and positively utilised. First, it increases stability which allows a level of predictability so the organisation can get on with its job while also getting on with the impending change. Second, it draws attention to “not well thought through, or perhaps plain wrong” aspects of change. Third, it inspires an influx of creative energy.

Spurred on to contribute

One major contemporary conceptualisation of resistance to change uses the psychological contract violation and perceived organisational injustice as a platform to comprehend and configure resistance to change. According to Rousseau, the psychological contract emerges “when one party believes that a promise of future returns has been made, a contribution has been given and thus, an obligation has been created to provide future benefits.” Violation of a psychological contract is likely to have profound repercussions. Employees withdraw their work commitment and redefine terms. However if the management is very careful while steering change it will lesson resistance and perhaps even spur individuals on to contribute their best.

Figure 1 Change and transformation

Resistance is not something to fight against; it is something to be worked with. Organisational change and transformation stands a better chance of success if resistance to them is foreseen, respected, embraced, and worked with; particularly if the downsizing survivors are treated as assets valued to help achieve any transformational endeavours. Resistance-to-change management should become an integral part of the overall change and human resources management, with the designation of special management agenda, the formation of special task forces, the deliberation of special communication mechanisms, the establishment of special counselling units, coaching sessions, and staff development and training programs to facilitate both the leading and following of changes.

Cite this article as

Petrovic-Lazarevic, Sonja; Cheng, Joseph. 'Resistance to change'. Monash Business Review. 2005.; Monash University ePress: Victoria, Australia. http://www.epress.monash.edu.au/. : 40–43. DOI:10.2104/mbr050009

About the authors

Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic

Sonja.Petrovic-Lazarevic@buseco.monash.edu.au

Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic, BA(Hons) MA PhD Belgrade, is Associate Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. Sonja’s research interests include strategic management; corporate governance; organisational culture; fuzzy logic and neural network modelling; supply chain management and business ethics.

Joseph Cheng

Joseph Cheng works in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University.


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