How do Managers Manage Resistance to Change?

  1. 6-2 Explain how to manage resistance to change.

We know that it’s better for us to eat healthy and to be physically active, yet few of us actually follow that advice consistently and continually. We resist making lifestyle changes. Volkswagen Sweden and ad agency DDB Stockholm did an experiment to see if they could get people to change their behavior and take the healthier option of using the stairs instead of riding an escalator.20 How? They put a working piano keyboard on stairs in a Stockholm subway station to see if commuters would use it. The experiment was a resounding success as stair traffic rose 66 percent. The lesson: People can change if you make the change appealing!

Managers should be motivated to initiate change because they’re concerned with improving their organization’s effectiveness. But change isn’t easy in any organization. It can be disruptive and scary. And people and organizations can build up inertia and not want to change.

Let’s look at why people in organizations resist change and what can be done to lessen that resistance.

Why Do People Resist Organizational Change?

It’s often said that most people hate any change that doesn’t jingle in their pockets. Resistance to change is well documented.21 Why do people resist organizational change? The main reasons include:22

  1. UNCERTAINTY. Change replaces the known with uncertainty and we don’t like uncertainty. No matter how much you may dislike attending college (or certain classes), at least you know what’s expected of you. When you leave college for the world of full-time employment, you’ll trade the known for the unknown. Employees in organizations are faced with similar uncertainty. For example, when quality control methods based on statistical models are introduced into manufacturing plants, many quality control inspectors have to learn the new methods. Some may fear that they’ll be unable to do so and may develop a negative attitude toward the change or behave poorly if required to use them.

  2. HABIT. We do things out of habit. Every day when you go to school or work you probably get there the same way, if you’re like most people. We’re creatures of habit. Life is complex enough—we don’t want to have to consider the full range of options for the hundreds of decisions we make every day. To cope with this complexity, we rely on habits or programmed responses. But when confronted with change, our tendency to respond in our accustomed ways becomes a source of resistance.

  3. CONCERN OVER PERSONAL LOSS. We fear losing something already possessed. Change threatens the investment you’ve already made in the status quo. The more that people have invested in the current system, the more they resist change. Why? They fear losing status, money, authority, friendships, personal convenience, or other economic benefits that they value. This helps explain why older workers tend to resist change more than younger workers, since they generally have more invested in the current system and more to lose by changing.

  4. CHANGE IS NOT IN ORGANIZATION’S BEST INTERESTS. We believe that the change is incompatible with the goals and interests of the organization. For instance, an employee who believes that a proposed new job procedure will reduce product quality can be expected to resist the change. Actually, this type of resistance can be beneficial to the organization if expressed in a positive way.

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