Change Management

Resistance to Change and Its Management

Introduction

There are three types of forces that act on change. They are driving forces, resisting forces and neutral. Driving forces are those that triggers for change like crisis on organization, performance gap, competition, self awareness towards change etc. Driving forces are mainly classified as internal and external factors

Resisting forces are those that hinder the change process. They are normally internal factors like organizations and sometimes external like regulating body, government etc . For example, installing CC (Close Circuit) cameras on workplace is one of the changes these days organizations do in order to watch and investigate the workers’ working behavior. Those people who waste time on organization and neglect their work may resist that change mentioning that installing CC cameras will reduce creativity on work and it will challenge the personal privacy. One real life example during my work experience; my organization installed biometric machine for attendance to punish late coming staffs. After few days, there was scratch on the device that it could not record the pressed thumb. This is one of the resistances for change in an organization by the employee who comes late. Being neutral towards change program is considered as menace in an organization because organization won’t able to know the true response of employees about change programs.

Resistance to Change and its Management

Changes can create new opportunities, but are often met with criticism from resistant individuals within the group. Informed organization members are less likely to resist change. Causes of resistance for change are poor communication of decision makers, self interest of employees, employees feeling excluded on change process, lack of trust among employees, skills/trainings dearth. (Brookins). Before making changes that will affect others, it’s important for change managers to carefully think through what the specific...