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Literature review on resistance to change
Literature review on resistance to change
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Recently, my company has experienced massive change. The company has had around a 50 percent turnover in the last year. Included in that turnover was everyone in the executive team, excluding the CEO. As our company struggles to handle new employees and a new vision, motivation and morale seems to be decreasing. In this paper I plan to explore why motivation and morale tend to decrease during times of change and investigate ways how a company can maintain high morale during massive change.
One of the main reasons motivation and morale tend to decrease during any type of change is because humans are naturally resistant to change (Resistance to Change). People often tend to find a comfort zone in their jobs or company and are uncomfortable when any change is made to it. People like the feeling of being safe and protected and change often does not let them feel this way. It forces people out of their comfort zone and requires them to look at things differently. It can appear in many forms in the workplace and may be public or private (Craemer, 2011). People also have a parochial self-interest and will resist change if they believe they stand to loose something if change takes place. They will focus on how the change affects them and not on the overall outcome (Ferguson, 2004). Managers and change agents need to understand that resistance to change is natural.
Each employee has a differing level of tolerance to change. Some may be able to adapt while others will be afraid and resist (Ferguson, 2004). Many people will be afraid and oppose change, or find it to be incompatible with their current job; they will often view it as a conflict. Three conditions help conflict arise, communication, structure and personal var...
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...roactive preformance: a longitudinal study. American Psychology Association , 95 (1).
Herold, D. M., Fedor, D. B., & Caldwell, S. (2008). The effects of transformational and change leadership on employees' commitment to a change: a multilevel study. American Psychological Association , 93 (2).
Huy, Q. N., & Mintzberg, H. (2003). The rythm of change. MIT Sloan Management Review , 79 (6).
Klein, S. (1994). Communication strategies for sucessful organizational change. Industrial Management , 26 (5).
Lawton, P. (1995). Initiating and managing change in your organization. The Management Accounting Magazine , 69 (n.7).
Melbourne, L. (2003). Managing organizational change: plan, execute, evaluate. KMWorld , s6 (2).
Mishra, J. (1990). Managing the Grapevine. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from Analytictech: http://www.analytictech.com/mb119/grapevine-article.htm
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
Elite Engineering has been unable to successfully implement change because they haven’t been able to get the employees to see the need for the change and to believe in the change. “It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.” (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008) Change is often met with resistance. When it comes down to it many people fear change. At Elite Engineering, the engineers were happy with the way things were being run. They enjoyed the billable work they were doing and did not want to take the time to collaborate with others, as it would take away time from their billable work. The engineers saw the billable work they were doing as a way to ensure they received their bonus at the end of the year. However, they were failing to see that the litigation business was going to begin to shrink and in order for them to remain competitive, changes needed to be made. Kotter and Schlesinger state that there are for common reasons that people resist change. The four reasons are the desire not to lose something of value, a misunderstanding of the change and its implications, a belief that the change does not make sense for the organization, and a low tolerance for change. (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008) At Elite Engineering, I think upper management was unsuccessful at implementing change because the employees didn’t want to lose their bonuses (something of value to them), they misunderstood the change, and they didn’t feel that the change made sense for the organization.
Graetz, F., & Smith, A. C. T. (June 2010). Managing organizational change: A philosophies of change approach. Journal of Change Management 10(2), 135–154.
In today’s ever changing world people must adapt to change. If an organization wants to be successful or remain successful they must embrace change. This book helps us identify why people succeed and or fail at large scale change. A lot of companies have a problem with integrating change, The Heart of Change, outlines ways a company can integrate change. The text book Ivanceich’s Organizational Behavior and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change outlines how change can be a good thing within an organization. The Heart of Change introduces its readers to eight steps the authors feel are important in introducing a large scale organizational change. Today’s organizations have to deal with leadership change, change in the economy,
Change affects more than just a program or a process within an organization, change affects employees, collecting data on employee’s readiness and willingness to accept a change will help leaders know if the organization is socially ready for change (Cole, Harris, and Bernerth, 2006). A change might be positive for an organization but if the employees who will be affect by the change are lost in the process then it could create a greater issue than not making the change. Leadership needs to communicate and inspire the employees to be positive toward the change, seeking to enhance their job satisfaction not make changes that will increase their desire to leave. This data is best collected early in the change initiative allowing leadership to properly cast the vision while addressing concerns. This requires leadership to create platforms for employees to engage in the change initiative freely (Ford, 2006). Employee attitudes can be measured through these dialogues providing leadership with necessary measureable data (Hughes, 2007).
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Akin, G. (2009). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill
Kotter, JP 1995, Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. In Harvard Business Review on Change, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
An employee’s perception of organizational restructuring can vary greatly, particularly when it comes to morale. For the purpose of this literature review, we will define morale as the feelings of enthusiasm and loyalty that a person or group has about a task or job (Merriam-Webster). Also for the purpose of this literature review, we will use Caplow’s (1976) definition of an organization, which is, a social system deliberately established to carry out some definite purpose (p. 3). Employees’ work morale is very difficult to decipher, and is very unsettling, highly dynamic, and sensitive to many factors. This includes individual differences, jobs, and workplace variations (Yang, 2009).
Hughes, M 2006, 'Strategic change', in M Hughes (ed.), Change management: a critical perspective, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London, pp. 52-63.
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 makes 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 that for organizations to achieve the maximum benefits from change they must effectively create and maintain a climate and culture that does not support resistance and rewards acceptance and support ( as cited in Bolognese, 2010). Therefore, it is important to understand what resistance is and how to reduce the effects of resistance.
Prevention of resistance is most effective when implementing change. Preventing the weight of inertia in a workplace allows the change to happen in a timely manner with minimal problems. As Lee (2004) emphasizes, leaders have the ability to effect change and performance. If someone is accountable for outcomes and poor habits, outcomes will improve. The manager must show a caring attitude over the process of change and welcome any positive innovation. This caring attitude will become contagious to the employees working under him and become a priority to them as well. Approaching the change in an accepting, open-minded manner can decrease the vulnerability and frustration associated with change. How the change is presented can make the biggest difference in the outcome of the change. The manager must show that blaming will be avoided at all costs. One will only ask why, not who, to avoid the feeling of belittlement. This can allow employees to become comfortable with voicing their opinions and mistakes, which can allow an even greater range of improvement. The manager must also encourage...
Middlebrook, B., Caruth, D., & Frank, R. (1984, Summer 85). Overcoming Resistance to Change. Management Journal, 50(3), pp. 23.
The change process within any organization can prove to be difficult and very stressful, not only for the employees but also for the management team. Hayes (2014), highlights seven core activities that must take place in order for change to be effective: recognizing the need for change, diagnosing the change and formulating a future state, planning the desired change, implementing the strategies, sustaining the implemented change, managing all those involved and learning from the change. Individually, these steps are comprised of key actions and decisions that must be properly addressed in order to move on to the next step. This paper is going to examine how change managers manage the implementation of change and strategies used
One of the first scholars to describe the process of organizational change was Lewin (1974). He described change as a three-stage process that consists of unfreezing, moving and freezing stage. During the unfreezing stage the organizations become motivated to change by some event or objective. The moving stage is like implementation when the organization actually makes the necessary change. Furthermore the freezing stage is reached when the change becomes permanent. Organizational change has also...
Organisational change can cause stress for employees at all levels of an organisation, one of the main causes of increased employee stress during organisational change is employees’ perception of organisational change as a threat; many employees feel that there may be a threat to their job security, their status, or their ability to achieve if the conditions of their work are altered (Dahl, 2011). Employees may face changes in their written contracts and also in their implicit psychological contracts during organisational change, the change to these unwritten contracts can result in increased stress due to feelings of anger or betrayal by employees as they feel that they no longer know what to expect from their employer (Robinson & Rousseau, 1994). In addition, if employees do not feel that the organisation acts in a fair and just way they are more likely to