Resistance to Change Essay

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 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.

Fear – Fear is the main cause for resistance to change by employees. Fear of facing rejection. Employees undermine their abilities with present situation and fear failure. That is the reason they try to be away from it rather than facing it. Fear of the unpredictable.

As we all know, change is inevitable and we cannot control the world changing around us, but what we can control is how we can deal with how the employees deal with change. Knowing and understanding the common cause why people is resistant to change gives you the chance to plan your strategy to address these factors.

Several instances exist where within an organization; changes take place regardless of the geographical position. These changes often encompass one or more individuals. In any case of a change taking place, people are likely to face abnormalities in their regular actions. A number of internal and external aspects also contribute much to this phenomenon as individuals resist change in their lives. Several instances exist where individuals portray resistance in terms of opposing change to them. This resistance in terms of change occurs because of lower tolerance level to change. This paper would take into account a number of significant aspects related to this resistance as far as change is concerned.

Many people resist change because they fear the idea of coming out of their comfort zone and because “Change brings new choices that create uncertainty” (Heath & Heath, 2012, p. 53). People resist change because they dread the idea of not being able to adapt to new work requirements. According to Milhauser (2011), “people naturally resist anything that is outside of their control” (p. 4). As a result of this, they freeze and become worried that they may lose their job and/or colleagues when they hear the word change. When people have a good thing going for them, they are very reluctant to give it up. This is where self-interest comes into play. Someone’s ego can interfere with his/her ability to adapt to change. They might want to maintain

Fortunately, it has been established (Bateman and Zeithaml), some steps can help managers to overcome resistance changes in organization. One of demonstrated methods is communication and education. According to (Elving, 2005, cited in DiFonzo and Bordia, 1998; Lewis and Seibold, 1998; Schweiger and Denisi, 1991), “communication is vital to the effective implementation of organizational change”. Therefore, workforces should understand about processing change in company before organization announcing the changes through commercial reports, meeting or individual discussions. Then, employees will be became a part of overcome resistance by participating in activities during the period of organization change such as design and implementation. Another solution to against organization change is through assistance and encouragement. For example, during phases of change, employees will be ensured that they will be provided the resources help them make the change. Besides that, (Managing Change and Transition) the managers also support employee’s efforts and listen to their troubles as well as accept initial their

Change is a fact of organizational life that develops in response to interpersonal, cultural, environmental, and other external factors that fluctuate and change for various reasons. Employees can display varying levels of resistance ranging from aggressive resistance to apathy (Spector, 2012). Resistance is a concern because it undermines the effectiveness of the change implementation process, but there are tools available which leaders can utilize to reduce this possibility. The essential tools will be discussed in this paper along with the reasons for utilizing them in a change implementation process.

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.

Changing situations throughout the world affect all organizations in business today. Therefore, most organizations acknowledge the need to experience change and transformation in order to survive. The key challenges companies face are due to the advancements in technology, the social environment caused by globalization, the pace of competition, and the demands regarding customer expectations. It is difficult to overcome the obstacles involved with change despite all the articles, books, and publications devoted to the topic. People are naturally resistant to fundamental changes and often intimidated by the process; the old traditional patterns and methods are no longer effective.

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:

In today 's business world, many elements are forcing companies to change in order to survive, such as the new technology, new customers’ taste and also new systems of management. Under the dynamic business environment, organizational change becomes one of the essential parts of a business. During different stages of organizational change, various resistances between employers and employees will be created because of different perspectives from both employers and employees. In order to carry out a successful organizational change, developing an effective strategy to overcome the challenge became the most crucial part in the process of organizational change. Undoubtedly, it can be difficult for managers to decide which approach they want to apply to deal with the resistance to organizational change as they need to figure out the ‘best’ solution depends on their company’s condition. It is therefore essential to evaluate critically different ways of solving resistance to organizational change.

Acknowledging and understanding employee’s different levels of resistance and acceptance is critical for change agents in a company as it directly effect the success of organization change strategies (Wittig, 2012). Witting explained Herein’s Spectrum of Employees’ Reaction to Organizational Change (SERCO) as a non stagnate scale; where employee’s attitude towards a change will move between the two opposite ends of the spectrum: resistance versus acceptance, during different stages of the change initiative.

The greatest challenge that leaders face when managing change is the employees' reaction and resistance ADDIN EN.CITE Bevan2011179(Bevan, 2011)17917917Bevan, R.Keeping Change on TrackThe Journal for Quality and ParticipationThe Journal for Quality and Participation3412011( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_2" o "Bevan, 2011 #179" Bevan, 2011). In any organization, there are three kinds of employees, the sheep, resistors, and change champions. The most difficult people to manage are the resistors. These employees worry so much about how the change will impact them negatively. They see the change will expose them to the top management and will be seen as not been valuable within the organization. As a leader, the best way to deal with resistors is to let them know that change will happen progressively, and all employees will be involved ADDIN EN.CITE Luecke2003180(Luecke, 2003)1801806Luecke, R.Managing Change and Transition2003Boston, MA 02163Harvard Business School