Organizational Change and Resistance Intervention

Many types of risk are created – risk to the project, to the organization, to the employees involved and to the individuals supporting the change.

43-45). Top-down change process provides prescription that has only been developed by top managers and given to lower cadre employees down the ranks to consume without their input. According to Bovey & Hede (2001, p. 540) resistance occurs at the individual level, where employees are motivated by psychological factors to change that include resentment, frustration, low motivation and morale, fear, and feelings of failure. At the same time, earlier publication by Yilmaz & Kilicoglu (2013, pp. 17-18) identified four factors that motivate employees to resist changes in the organisation: employees focusing on self- interests as opposed to those of the organisation, having inadequate understanding of

Implementing change in an organization is complicated. It is important that a manager understands their role and responsibilities for which could very well be the success or failure of an organization. A manager should know how to handle staff resistance, and the areas that require change. There are processes that help management with assisting their staff members with adjusting to change and concentrate on the areas of importance. This process includes planning, assessment, implementation, and evaluation. The difference between a failed organization and a successful manager is when the manager has the ability to implement change with little disruption to

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 more active the participants are in the planning, the less resistance there will be later (Sullivan & Decker). If staff does not trust leadership, does not share the organization's vision, does not buy into the reason for change, and aren't included in the planning, there will be no successful change, regardless of how brilliant the strategy (Goman, 2000). How people react to change is important to understand. Change takes an emotional toll on people, some more than others. It is important not to underestimate that toll and understand who will have a harder time adapting to change. Fear of change has many roots. Those roots can be a lack of trust, fear of failure, fear of loss of income or a belief that the change is unnecessary (Sullivan & Decker). By understanding the reason for the resistance a manager can help the employee overcome his or her fear and become a supporter of the change. The last two steps are to provide feedback mechanisms to keep everyone informed of the progress of change and evaluate the effectiveness of change (Sullivan & Decker). People need to be kept informed of the change process to minimize anxiety. Sometimes there are unexpected consequences to the change, and it is important to have a system in place for those consequences to be discussed and if needed more changes made in order to accommodate those consequences.

This article discusses the pros and cons of advocating change within the workplace. It also discusses the reason (s) individuals are said to resist change because of habit and inertia, fear of the unknown, absence of the skills they will need after the change, and fear of losing power. OD approaches to organizational change presents a solid consensus that change and resistance can and should be "managed" by developing a strategy for change and using the OD tool kit of interventions such as training and communication programs, confrontation meetings, stakeholder

Changes are very critical to enhance organizational effectiveness. An organization needs to implement changes to stay productive, competitive as well as avoiding calamity in the case of aviation sector. Changes are the process of instilling new attitudes, values, norms and behaviors within an organization to support the way of doing work. However, the implementation of changes is a task that requires adequate planning and design since changes are not always welcome and could lead to individual's resistance to change. (Agboola,& Salawu,2011). The identification

Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss organizational change and the management of that change. I will talk about the different drivers of change, the factors a leader needs to weigh to implement change effectively, the various resistances a leader may encounter while trying to implement change, and how various leadership styles will effect the realization of change. I will also discuss the knowledge I have gained through the completion of this assignment and how I think it might affect the way I manage change in my workplace.

Personal impact and fear of change are not the only causes of resistance by individuals during a change to business practices. The lack of respect and negative attitudes can also lead to employees resisting business change. If an employee lacks respect or has a negative attitude towards a person or department leading the change, then there are more likely to oppose the new ideas being implemented. Poor communication greatly impacts individuals’ accepted to new practices in a company. Typically if an employee is given new behaviors to adopt, but is given no reason, then that employee may reject the change. Upper management must effectively relate the value, need and benefit of the change to help get employees on board with new changes. The lack of individual input can also lead to resistance. Some individuals feel the need to be included in new ideas. When employees are not asked to be involved in changes, they may lack the vision of importance or will to change. A heavier workload can also cause opposition among employees. Employees may not embrace more systems and requirements needed

According to Palmer, Dunford, and Akin (2009) there are six different approaches to managing resistance to change which are, situational, let nature take its course, thought self-leadership, creative counters, tinkering, kludging, and pacing approach, and finally the power of resistance approach. While all of these different methods or approaches for dealing with change have positives and negatives, some are better than others. For example, Kotter and Schlesinger’s situational method is great in that it recognizes some situations need to be treated differently than others. However, they suggest that manipulation could be used and while they explain the dangers of this approach, its application is very limited and the rewards don’t outweigh the risks.

For most, resistance to change inevitable, for some it is their personality and others it is fear of the unknown. Organizational structure may change through downsizing, outsourcing, acquisitions, or mergers. In this paper, I will be examining resistance to change during a merger and how to manage this type of stressful and many times unclear change in an organization. There are three key strategies for managing resistance to change; communication, participation, and empathy and support. Throughout this paper I will discuss the three strategies above as well as some other contributing factors to change in an organization.

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:

Resistance to change is one of the biggest barriers that organizations face in their efforts to implement organizational change. This greatly hampers the uptake of new technologies, new ways of doing work and even progress of organizations. Reviewing on this, the British Journal of

NASA had a firm hierarchy and this brought about a lot of resistance to change from people. NASA could have gotten more of the people involved in the changes. I find that by getting people involved and having some key people or champions to support the change, there is less resistance. People want to feel involved and a part of decisions, especially if it impacts them directly. When it comes to successful change management, get people involved earlier, which will contribute to greater buy in and acceptance. Keep in mind that this should not be the sole solution for employee resistance; successful change management is about understanding the true nature of the resistance.