Case Study Problems Perrier

Over the years many studies have shown the different reasons and barriers an individual faces when they are facing change. Broadly they are categorized into two branches: internal reasons and external reasons. At one point in a career, employees tend to show resistance towards organizational change, due to these reasons.

Many people may resist change because they fear they will lose their jobs, status or position. It may be because they do not fully understand the purpose of change, or they may have a different perspective on the change than their management. “Individuals, groups, and organizations must be motivated to change. But if people perceive no performance gap or if they consider the gap unimportant, they will not have this motivation. Moreover, they will resist changes that others try to introduce,” Bateman and Zeithaml explained. Many times change for people at work

Resistance to change is an expected reaction of human nature. We are not accustomed to change, as it is possible to lead to failure; however, there are also ways to manage the resistance within the company.

The community based organization needs to develop an effective plan to overcome the resistance to change as expressed by Robert Smith and other employees. This plan should focus on addressing some of the major internal and external factors that contribute to that resistance. The most appropriate strategy for overcoming that resistance would require the use of Kotter’s theory for change. Moreover, the plan needs to address the most common rationale for resistance to change such as self-interest, lack of trust in management, low tolerance for change, differing assessments of the need for change, and lack of understanding (McVay, p.301).

Employees who feel pushed out of their comfort zone may also resist change, due to the unfamiliarity of new implications or managers. The fear of uncertainties due to the lack of communication can also lead to resistance to change on an individual level. If employees are not informed of the needs of the change then the fear of the unknown can cause resistance.

Individuals when faced with any major change will be inevitably resistant and will want to preserve the status quo, especially if they think their status or security within the organization is in danger (Bolognese, 2010). Folger and Skarlicki believe that organizational change produces skepticism in employees which make it problematic and possibly even impossible to contrive improvements within the organization (as cited in Bolognese, 2010) Therefore, management must understand, accept and make an effort to work with resistance, since it can undermine even the most well-conceived change efforts (Bolognese, 2010). Furthermore, Coetsee states for organizations to achieve the maximum benefits from change they must effectively create and

It is the purpose of this paper to describe and discuss resistance to change as it relates to organizations today. I plan to utilize several scholarly references including the book “Managing Organizational Change” as written by Ian Palmer as this book provides insight into diverse aspect of change. I also plan to utilize Brian Palmers book Making Change Work as it looks at the human side of change management.

The top obstacle to successful change is employee resistance at all levels: Front-line, middle managers, and senior managers.

To identify the key elements of the resistanceto change described in this situation, one may make use of the six Change Approaches of Kotter and Schlesinger.[1]The model prevents, minimizes or descreases resistance to change in organizations. According to Kotter and Schlesinger (1979), there are four reasons that why people resist change, three of which are applicable to this case:

There are four primary reasons that people resist change. Once managers know what types to look for, they will be better equipped to spot change resistance in the organization.

Bemmels and Reshef (1991) understand it as any employee actions attempting to stop or delay change. Obviously being viewed as adversarial and detrimental, resistance to change has gained a negative connotation (Waddell and Sohal, 1998) that allegedly confounded the problem of effecting change by promulgating a dichotomous thinking of labour versus management (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). Recently, an appreciation of resistance to change from a more pluralistic employee-centred perspective and its role in organizational change (Waddell and Sohal, 1998) has lead to the resistance to change interpretation from a psychological point of view (Conner, 1998), as a natural outcome of people 's internal defence mechanism (Bovey and Hede, 2001), or background conversations among employees that constitute the constructed reality (Ford, Ford, & McNamara, 2002). Paterson and Hartel (2000) interpreted resistance to change as a people 's cognition and affect or the perceived organizational justice done, while Rousseau (1989), McLean Parks and Kidder (1994) find it significantly related with the violation of the employment psychological contract. Resistance to change may be categorized into three groups of factors (Mabin, Forgeson & Green, 2001): organizational, group and individual. Organizational factors are caused by threats presented by unknown or unwelcome organizational structure and process change and threats induced by the environment inside or outside of the organization.

Change is defined as a move from the current state to some further state and that movement said to be resistance. Resistance to change is the action taken by an individuals and groups when they considered that a change is occurring as a threat to them (Hultman, 1998). The resistance changes when a large force is applied to the surprising amount to resist change for some trend. There are two forms: individual and systemic change resistance. Individual change resistance is a social agent like an individual, organisation, and corporation etc, to support or adopt new behaviour. Whereas, systemic change resistance is the tendency for a system to reject an attempt change, even if change is promoted over a long period of time by a large proportion of the population. Moreover, resistance among employees arises because of the negative feeling about the change in the employees and that feeling comes because the information regarding change process is not communicated to them by the superiors or the management. So, if management itself is not sure about the change that why change can resist. Resistance is mainly happened due to the insecurity or threat of employees during the change process. Change might be beneficial for employees or might not be beneficial. So, in a simple word, resistance is the employee’s negative attitude towards change. There are some common causes for resistance to change (Buchanan & Hucznski, 2010). Self interest in one of the main reason behind that. People

Employees resist change for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from a straightforward intellectual disagreement over facts to deep-seated psychological prejudices.

Resistance is a normal and a perfectly natural reaction to change. Each person has their own amount they can take, but the reasons behind why employees resist in the first place may be surprising.  According to these experts, the fear of moving into an unknown future state creates anxiety and stress, even if the current state is painful (Eroke, 2013). A complete understanding of the unique ways that resistance can be apparent is still needed because resistance to change has been acknowledged as an organizational difficulty for many years. If and when employees react to change in different ways, and if discrepancies in response result in

Organizational change has been defined as a planned alteration in the normal patterns or activities within an organization, which is initiated from a position of authority and intended to improve the organizational effectiveness (Argyris, 1970). Resistance has been defined as any act designed or implemented to inhibit progress toward organizational change (Coch and French, 1948). The general view of factors that affect resistance to change developed out of a need to understand organizational dynamics and improve organizational effectiveness (Coch and French, 1948). Previous research has identified a wide variety of factors that affect resistance to change (Gray, 1984). This paper makes an attempt to discuss in detail important and most commonly reported factors that cause individual’s resistance to change.