Levels of resistance to change

Resistance to Change

Learning objectives

On completion of this chapter you should be able to:

· Identify signs of resistance to change.

· Understand reasons for resistance to change.

· Be alert to resistance from within the ranks of management.

· Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to the management of resistance to change.

One of the commonly cited causes for the lack of success of organizational change is “resistance to change.” As such, it is not surprising that it is a phenomenon that encourages some strong responses. Maurer asserts, bluntly, that “resistance kills change,”1while Foote colorfully describes resistance as “one of the nastiest, most debilitating workplace cancers [and claims that] there isn't a more potent, paradoxical or equal-opportunity killer of progress and good intentions.”2 In a similar vein, Geisler describes those with a pattern of resisting change as “bottom-feeders” who resist change because of its potential to remove the “waste” (infighting, inefficient processes) on which they “feed.”3

At the same time, other commentators have a more sympathetic “take” on resistance to change. A stark example in popular culture is the treatment of change in the Dilbert cartoons.4 (See Table 6.1.)

TABLE 6.1 The Dilbert Principle on Change

People hate change, and with good reason. Change makes us stupider, relatively speaking. Change adds new information to the universe, information that we don't know…. On the other hand, change is good for people who are causing the change. They understand the new information that is being added to the universe. They grow smarter in comparison to the rest of us. This is reason enough to sabotage their efforts. I recommend sarcasm with a faint suggestion of threat.

Changer: “I hope that I can count on your support.”

You: “No problem. I'll be delighted to jeopardize my short-term career goals to help you accomplish your career objectives.”

Changer: “That's not exactly—”

You: “I don't mind feeling like a confused rodent and working long hours, especially if the payoff is a new system that I vigorously argued against.”

The goal of change management is to dupe slow-witted employees into thinking change is good for them by appealing to their sense of adventure and love of challenge. This is like convincing a trout to leap out of a stream to experience the adventure of getting deboned.

Source: Adams, 1996:198.

Similarly, the image that one has of managing change is likely to be associated with a different perspective on the meaning of resistance (see Table 6.2).

TABLE 6.2 Images of Resistance to Change

Image of Managing Change

Perspective on Resistance to Change

Director

Resistance is a sign that not everybody is on board in terms of making the change. Resistance can and must be overcome in order to move change forward. Change managers need specific skills to ensure that they can deal with resistance to change.

Navigator

Resistance is expected. It is not necessarily a sign of people being outside of their comfort zone so much as the fact that there are different interests within the organization and some of these may be undermined by the change. Resistance, therefore, will not always be able to be overcome although this should be achieved as much as possible.

Caretaker

Resistance is possible but likely to be short-lived and ultimately futile. This is because, ultimately, changes will occur regardless of the attempts of individual actors within the organization to halt them. At best resistance might temporarily delay change but not be able to halt its inexorable impact.

Coach

Resistance is something that needs to be recognized and expected as change takes people out of their comfort zone. Change managers need to work with resistance in a way that reveals to the resistor that such actions are not in accord with good teamwork within the organization.

Interpreter

Resistance is likely where people lack understanding of “what is going on,” where the change is taking the organization, and what impact it will have on specific individuals. Making sense of the change, helping to clarify what it means, and reestablishing individual identity with the process and the expected outcome of the change will assist in addressing the underlying problems that led to the emergence of resistance.

Nurturer

Resistance is largely irrelevant to whether or not change will occur. Changes will occur but not always in predictable ways. Therefore, resisting change will be largely a matter of guesswork by the resistor since change often emerges from the clash of chaotic forces and it is usually not possible to identify, predict, or control the direction of change.

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of resistance to change and what it might mean to manage it.

SUPPORT FOR CHANGE

Although “resistance to change” is a deeply embedded concept in the field of change, attention to this phenomenon should be placed in the context of recognition that people do not always resist change. Instead, they will often “embrace change”5 and work enthusiastically in support of change. There are many reasons why people are likely to be supportive of change. Kirkpatrick identifies the following as possible outcomes that are likely to cause people to react positively to change:6

· Security. The change may increase demand for an individual's skills and/or may put the organization on a more secure footing with subsequent impact on employment prospects.

· Money. The change may involve salary increases.

· Authority. The change may involve promotion and/or the allocation of additional decision-making discretion.

· Status/prestige. There may be changes in titles, work assignments, office allocations, and so forth.

· Responsibility. Job changes may occur.

· Better working conditions. The physical environment may change; new equipment may be provided.

· Self-satisfaction. Individuals may feel a greater sense of achievement and challenge.

· Better personal contacts. The change may provide an individual with enhanced contact with influential people.

· Less time and effort. The change may improve operational efficiencies.

SIGNS OF RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Resistance to change may take many forms. Hultman draws a distinction between active and passive resistance and identifies a range of “symptoms” associated with each.7 The symptoms of active resistance are identified as:

· Being critical.

· Finding fault.

· Ridiculing.

· Appealing to fear.

· Using facts selectively.

· Blaming or accusing.

· Sabotaging (see Table 6.3, “Merger in Adland”).

TABLE 6.3 Merger in Adland

When the advertising agencies Mojo and MDA merged, a decision was made to house all staff in the same building. However, as an interim step, all creative staff (copywriters, art directors, and production staff) would move to the existing Mojo offices and all management staff (the “suits”) to MDA's offices.

One of the Mojo people required to move was its finance director, Mike Thorley. Mike was one of the original Mojo employees and had come to think of himself more as a partner in the business than as an employee. However, the merger quickly disabused him of this when, the same as all other Mojo employees, he had no warning of the merger. When the announcement came, he reacted with both shock and anger. To add insult to injury, he was now required to move to the MDA offices—a move that felt to him like a banishment—where he would report to MDA's finance director, who had been put in charge of finance for the merged entity.

The Mojo culture had been considerably less formal than that of MDA. It was custom for Mojo staff to have a few drinks together after work seated around an old, solid-white bench in the office. In an attempt to make Thorley and his Mojo colleagues feel more at home, a modern black laminate bar had been installed in the MDA offices. One morning, Mike Thorley arrived at work with a chainsaw and cut the bar in two.

Source: Coombs, 1990.

· Intimidating or threatening.

· Manipulating.

· Distorting facts.

· Blocking.

· Undermining.

· Starting rumors.

· Arguing.

Those symptoms identified with passive resistance are:

· Agreeing verbally but not following through (“malicious compliance”8).

· Failing to implement change.

· Procrastinating or dragging one's feet.

· Feigning ignorance.

· Withholding information, suggestions, help, or support.

· Standing by and allowing change to fail.

This list is not exhaustive and there can clearly be some debate about whether the various symptoms are mutually exclusive (e.g., “ridiculing” and “being critical”). However, this does not reduce its value, which is primarily to alert us to the diverse range of phenomena through which resistance to change can be manifest.

WHY DO PEOPLE RESIST CHANGE?

Dislike of Change

It is very common to hear it said that the major impediment that managers face in introducing change is that people dislike change and will resist it. However, the difficulty with the blanket statement that “people dislike change” is that, if this is so, how do we explain that people sometimes welcome change? This suggests that it is unwise to assume an innate dislike of change, independent of context. Karp provides a possible explanation when he argues that people don't resist change; they resist pain and one of the most painful things is boredom, which is the opposite of change (see Table 6.4).

TABLE 6.4 A Personal View on Change

John Cage, the U.S. composer, pianist, and writer provides an interesting perspective on the notion of innate dislike of change when he states, “I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”

Source: Maurer, 1996:23.

Discomfort with Uncertainty

As individuals we tend to vary in terms of how comfortable we are with ambiguity. Some of us revel in—or at least are not particularly perturbed by—“mystery flights” where the destination is unknown. However, others of us are uncomfortable in this situation, leading us to be resistant to change unless significant details of the journey and destination are revealed. For some, the uncertainty is magnified by a lack of confidence that they have the skills/capabilities needed in the postchange situation.

To the extent that the strategic intent is not complemented by clarity as to expected actions, the chances increase that employees will fail to convert a change initiative into supporting action at their level of the organization. The key point here is that the lack of supporting action is not due to overt resistance or even apathy; it is due to the lack of a clear understanding of what such supportive action would “look like.”

Perceived Negative Effect on Interests

The readiness for change will also be affected by people's perceptions of the likely effect of the change on their “interests,” a term that can cover a wide range of factors including their authority, status, rewards (including salary), opportunity to apply expertise, membership of friendship networks, autonomy, and security. People find it easier to be supportive of changes that they see as not threatening such interests and may resist those that are seen as damaging to these interests.9

Attachment to the Established Culture/Ways of Doing Things

As noted previously, one valuable “image of organizations” is of them as cultural systems that comprise beliefs, values, and artifacts, or, put simply, “the way we do things around here.”10 Readiness for change can be significantly affected by the degree of attachment to the existing culture. Reger et al.11 argue that organizational members interpret change proposals from management through their existing mental models. In this regard they note:

A particularly powerful mental model is the set of beliefs members hold about the organization's identity … Identity beliefs are critical to consider when implementing fundamental change because organizational identity is what individuals believe is central, distinctive, and enduring about their organization. These beliefs are especially resistant to change because they are embedded within members' most basic assumptions about the organization's character.12

Reger et al.13 argue that two specific mental barriers tend to undermine the acceptance of change initiatives that are interpreted as inconsistent with the existing organizational identity. First, passive resistance (for example, apathy or anxiety) occurs when managers exhort subordinates to implement a change without first clarifying the connection between the change and some aspect of the organizational identity. According to Reger et al., such a connection is necessary “for deep comprehension and action.”14Second, active resistance occurs when a change is interpreted as directly in conflict with key elements of the organizational identity. Greenwood and Hinings make a similar point when they argue that ways of organizing “become infused with a taken-for-granted quality, in which actors unwittingly accept the prevailing template as appropriate, right, and the proper way of doing things.”15

Perceived Breach of Psychological Contract

Employees form beliefs as to the nature of the reciprocal relationship between them and their employer, that is, a “psychological contract.”16 A breach or violation of this contract occurs when employees believe that the employer is no longer honoring its “part of the deal.” In a variant on this theme, Strebel argues that employees and the organization for which they work can be seen as involved in a “personal compact” that defines their relationship.17 This compact may be explicit or implicit (or a mix of both) and involves three dimensions: formal, psychological, and social. The formal dimension covers such things as the specific task that a person is employed to do, how this relates to tasks carried out by others in the organization, how performance is assessed, and the associated level of remuneration. The psychological dimension—largely unwritten—relates to expectations in terms of trust, loyalty, and recognition. The social dimension refers to the espoused values of the organization. According to Strebel, where the proposed change conflicts with key elements of personal compacts, the outcome is likely to be resistance to change.18

Lack of Conviction That Change Is Needed

It helps change advocates if the belief that change is needed is widespread within the organization. However, what seems obvious to some (“We must change!”) is not necessarily seen this way by others (“What's the problem?”). There are many reasons that may account for complacency, including a track record of success and the lack of any visible crisis. People are likely to react negatively to change when they feel that there is no need for the change.19

Lack of Clarity as to What Is Expected

Sometimes proposed changes, particularly of a strategic nature, are not complemented by clear information as to the specific implications at the level of action by individuals. Where this is the case, the chances increase that employees will fail to convert a change initiative into supporting action at their level of the organization. “A brilliant business strategy … is of little use unless people understand it well enough to apply it.”20 The key point here is that that lack of supporting action is not due to antagonism toward the proposed change; it is due to the lack of a clear understanding of what such supportive action would “look like.” Taking this as their starting point, Gadiesh and Gilbert argue the virtue of organizations having a “strategic principle”; that is, “a memorable and actionable phase that distils a company's corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it throughout the organization.”21

Belief That the Specific Change Being Proposed Is Inappropriate

Those affected by a proposed change are likely to form a view that it is either a good idea (“We needed to do something like this”) or a bad idea (“Whose crazy idea is this?” or “It's a fad”). In turn, this view is likely to affect their readiness for change. As an advocate of a particular change, it is very easy to see those who support the change as perspicacious and to lament as myopic those who do not support the change. In this regard, it is not uncommon for those who are unsupportive to be given the pejorative label “resistant to change.” This is not necessarily an appropriate label given that the stance being judged is not a reaction to a proposal for change in a generic sense but to a proposal for a specific change.

In this regard, it is also worth considering that in some cases the “resistors” might be right; the proposed change may not be the great idea that its proposers assume. That is, sometimes “the voice of resistance can keep us from taking untimely or foolish actions.”22 The change also may be seen as inappropriate because of a fundamental difference of “vision.” Strategies are means to achieve objectives that flow from an organization's vision. Change, as a part of the enactment of strategy, is therefore highly likely to be an arena of organizational life where divergent views over appropriate strategic direction will be manifest.

Belief That the Timing Is Wrong

People may resist, not because they think that the proposed change is wrong—they may, in fact, like the idea—but because they believe the timing to be wrong.23 This may be due to change fatigue (as noted above) or it may be due to a completely different matter such as the view that the proposed change, if it were to occur at the proposed time, would have undesirable effects on key customers or employees or alliance partners—effects that would not eventuate if the timing were to be altered.

Excessive Change

Stensaker et al.24 note the phenomenon of “excessive change,” which they characterize as having two forms. The first form occurs where an organization is pursuing several change initiatives at once and these are perceived by people in the organization as unrelated or, even worse, in conflict. The second form occurs where an organization introduces a series of changes and people in the organization feel that resources (including their time) are being reassigned to new initiatives before the earlier ones have been given sufficient attention for them to be effectively implemented. These “waves of changes” may produce “initiative fatigue” and “burnout,” which inhibit readiness for further change.25 Similarly, Maurer refers to this as a matter of “resilience,” arguing that people will resist further change when they are “just plain beat,”26 while Abrahamson refers to “permafrost” organizations where change-fatigued managers react to “initiative overload” by resisting further change and voicing “an aggressive cynicism.”27 (For more detail on “excessive change,” see Table 6.5.)

TABLE 6.5 The Organizational Effects of Excessive Change

In their research into the phenomenon of “excessive change,” Stensaker et al. identified three common organizational consequences of excessive change that they characterized as “musical chairs,” “orchestrating without a conductor,” and “shaky foundations.”

Musical chairs— a reference to the children's game—is the phenomenon whereby managers move frequently between a declining number of positions in a regularly changing organization structure. Unless carefully managed, this can have detrimental effects. For example, those managers who are the most capable—and therefore likely to be the most attractive on the job market—may be the ones who leave the organization rather than the lesser performers. Another detrimental effect that was observed was that with the “churn” in management positions, fewer people in positions with implementation responsibilities had a grasp of the overall strategic intent that lay behind the various change initiatives.

Orchestrating without a conductor refers to the related situation where lower-level employees felt that they had been abandoned to their own devices because their middle managers seemed incapable of managing the change process. Sometimes this took the form of the incapacity of middle managers to translate the change initiatives into terms relevant to the daily work of the lower-level employees, because, due to restructuring at middle management level, those managers were not sufficiently familiar with the employees' work.

Shaky foundations refers to the sense by employees that the organization is in a chaotic state, in an uncomfortable limbo between partially abandoned past practices and partially introduced new practices. Where waves of change are involved, the new practices are in various stages of implementation from just introduced to nearly complete.

Source: Stensaker et al., 2002.

Cumulative Effect of Other Changes in One's Life

Individuals' readiness for change at work is affected by what else is going on in their lives. Indexes of stress comprise elements from diverse aspects of one's life, not just those associated with the employment relationship.

Perceived Clash with Ethics

Piderit28 notes that research on obedience to authority indicates that resistance might be motivated by individuals' desires to act in accordance with their ethical principles.29 However, this need not mean that the resistance is overt because, as Piderit also notes, threats to advancement or security can lead middle managers to not speak up about such ethical concerns.30

Reaction to the Experience of Previous Changes

The most reliable predictor of how people will interpret the implications of an announcement of change is their experience of previous organizational changes.31 Based on such experiences people develop “scripts” for “how change works” which become the “lens” through which they view subsequent change initiatives.32 (See Exercise 6.1.)

EXERCISE 6.1: Identify Your Change Script

People's previous experiences of change provide them with a “script”—a set of assumptions/beliefs as to what happens in a situation of organizational change.

Based on your previous experiences of organizational change, what are your expectations in terms of what events/actions/outcomes will follow the announcement of a program of change in an organization?

Note: Choose the format that suits you; for example, one option is bullet points; another is a narrative (story-like) approach.

The significance of this is that managers, when seeking to implement change in an organization, are likely to be the unfortunate victims, or fortunate beneficiaries, of scripts that were generated in contexts in which they had no part and of which they are quite likely to be unaware. Where key elements of this script come from experiences in the same organization and maybe also the same managers, the impact on reactions to change is likely to be even more significant. Scripts are influential because they are based on real-life experiences and, as such, are likely to be given greater credibility than the words/assurances of current managers (see Table 6.6).

TABLE 6.6 Change Scripts: Implications for Managing Change

1. Begin change initiatives with a systematic inquiry into organizational members' memories of past organizational changes.

2. Don't tell organizational members to leave their past behind as this is unlikely to occur. Because they are experience-based, scripts have a credibility that cannot be removed by edict. Suppressing them means that they “may go underground but they won't go away.”

3. If existing scripts are an impediment to successful change, their effect will only be challenged if the script-holders are subject to “direct, fully-engaged, rich-with-stimuli experiences” through which they learn that the change experience can be different/positive.

Source: Geigle, 1997:8.

Where the past experience has been negative, cynicism is likely to result, which in turn reduces willingness to engage in future change efforts.33 Stensaker et al. argue that the cynical, often-cited BOHICA (“Bend over, here it comes again.”) response is a strategy based on learning by experience.34

Disagreement with the Way the Change Is Being Managed

Dent and Goldberg describe this notion that people resist change as “a mental model that … is almost universally accepted in organizational life.”35 However, they argue, despite its acceptance, the concept “resistance to change” is severely compromised by its association with the idea that this resistance is a fundamental psychological syndrome.36 According to Dent and Goldberg, the use of this concept ultimately impacts negatively on the quality of change implementation because it focuses management attention on the supposedly innate reactions of employees to change and away from the quality of the management of the change process. Rather than framing situations as ones in which management must “overcome resistance to change,” they argue that they could often equally validly be labeled “overcoming perfectly natural reactions to poor management” or “common management mistakes in implementing change.”37

In a similar vein, Kahn advises:

In considering obstacles to change, we must keep in mind the deceptive nature of our concepts. When we want change, we speak of those who do not as presenting obstacles and resistance. When we want stability, we speak of perseverance and commitment among those who share our views. Behavior of people in the two situations might be identical; it is their stance relative to our own that dictates the choice of language.38

Piderit argues that the construction of the situation as one of “resistance to change” may be a manifestation of a fundamental attribution error; that is, those managing the change initiative attribute negative outcomes to the actions (“resistance”) of others rather than to inadequacies in their change management.39 (Note: This blaming is not one-sided; Piderit notes that employees are also likely to blame management for failed change rather than themselves.)40

It is easy to understand how a manager can be attracted to the proposition that the lack of success of a change program in which he or she is deeply involved is due to “resistance to change,” as this explanation displaces attention from the actions (specifically, the change management skills) of the manager to the actions of the recipients. It is also an explanation that is likely to seem very plausible to many people because of the “almost universal acceptance” of the view that people resist change.

EXERCISE 6.2: Preventing Resistance

Listed below are a numbers of reasons why people may be resistant to a change. For each of the reasons, identifyat least one action that could be taken by management to reduce the prospect that it will be a significant source of resistance.

Reason for Resistance

Proposed Action

Dislike of change

Discomfort with uncertainty

Perceived negative effects on interests

Attachment to established culture/ways of doing things

Perceived breach of psychological contract

Lack of conviction that change is needed

Lack of clarity as to what is expected

Belief that the specific change being proposed is inappropriate

Belief that the timing is wrong

Excessive change

Cumulative effect of other changes in one's life

Perceived clash with ethics

Reaction to the experience of previous changes

Disagreement with the way the change is being managed

However, while this explanation may be comforting to the manager concerned, it might not be the wisest course of action in an organization seeking to enhance the quality of its management practice. The latter is more likely to be served through a reflection on the contribution to the lack of success made by the way the change was managed. If a change is felt by those affected to be managed in a manner that is inappropriate—for example, insufficiently consultative—they may resist the change.41 This can occur even where they are supportive of the idea that the proposed change is needed.

MANAGERS AS CHANGE RESISTORS

Most discussions of resistance to change present managers as the advocates of change with lower-level employees cast in the role of resistors. However, it is important not to assume that the only ones who may not respond positively to proposals for change are “the managed” and not the managers. This requires a shift in the way in which we normally think of change; that is, as something that managers have to manage in the face of varying degrees of resistance from nonmanagement employees. While the latter certainly occurs in many instances, it is important to recognize that the managers in an organization are not necessarily always passionate advocates of change.42