Managing resistance to change

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:English

Document 1

100) detail why resistance occurs in organisations. Accordingly, the Georgalis et al. identified the drivers of resistance to change as the impact the change would have on individual's employee work and success. The second driver recognised was the trust relationship of the people communicating and steering the change process (p. In an organisational, employees become cynic about the impact of change whenever the people driving and communicating the change are not trustworthy, and therefore leading to resistance. Other indicators of resistance include acting out and being overbearing, reduced productivity and non-compliance, expressing anxiety, emotions and depression at work, and a lot of negativity regarding job and the employer as well as outright defence of the current state of affairs (Coghlan, 1993, p. The impact of resistance to change is cross-cutting and hardly noticeable in the short run.

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Hon, Bloom, and Crant, (2014 p. 914) argue that resistance to change is a top obstacle and cause for poor performance. Among the significant consequences for poor management of change resistance include project delays leading to extra costs and risks, in the worse, project abandonment, absenteeism and declined productivity. As such, the change management team is equipped with techniques and tactics to contain the resistance. Equally important, the right people are also recruited and added to the change management team based on readiness assessments and the influence (Burnes 2015, p. The second phase of managing change is during the transition period and involves the actual management of change. When the organisation is going through the transition state, the people experience an unfamiliar environment, and therefore, more intense resistance.

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During this critical phase, most of the change containment activities are reactive in nature. The first step to managing resistance to change has a management team that is itself aware and approving of the changes in the organization. Identifying a team to manage the resistance early during the strategy formulation is important to anticipate and accordingly plan for the possibilities in resistance. During the implementation of the changes, most employees resort to resistance as a result of anxiety caused by the uncertainty of what the future holds. It is at this point that the leaders tasked with change management should handle each employee with empathy and share with them the vision of the company. Communication and feedback are an inherent component of the change management process.

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