More Resistance cont.
Background
"...Change is necessary and inevitable. The quality movement, continuous improvement, action learning organisations, advanced technology, competition, new consumers, media, new distribution methodologies, etc all alter the landscape of the familiar environment..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
Daily there is great pressure for change from customers, markets, technology, etc. In fact, it can become overwhelming.
Managers need to appreciate and understand the impact of change on individuals within the organisation.
"...As change is inevitable, so is the tendency for workers to feel the change as an indictment of their performance or an unnecessary whim of their management. Employees quickly move to blame management for the loss of comfortable roles and tasks, seniority, income and, sometimes, jobs rather than take up the challenge of change..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
Organisational change
"...Organisational change is an empirical observation in a organisational entity of variations in shape, quality or state over time ......after the deliberate introduction of new ways of thinking, acting and operating.....The general aim of organisational change is an adaptation to the environment......or an improvement in performance..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
In organisations context, you need to understand the cognitive process around decision-making, environmental sense-making, etc as part of the change process
"...The interest of research and how change phenomena are constructed and managed, with how they are measured, is a critical issue in our quest for understanding how managers reason of a change. This issue has become even more critical. With the continuing and dramatic transformation work organisations have been experiencing as a result of structural, process, and technological changes……Managers participate in the planning and execution of such change efforts, and they also react to them in various modes, thus affecting strategy, progress and viability of the organisation..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
Explaining resistance
"...Resistance is one of the top obstacles to change......Resistance is the result of employees’ reaction of opposition to organisational change......Resistance to change is a natural reaction of people to anything that significantly disrupts their status quo......change disrupts our expectations and produces a loss of the psychological equilibrium we value.....Human inertia makes people cling to certainty and stability......resistance is a common phenomenon as people are naturally wary of change..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
Types of resistance can be categorised as attitudinal and behavioural.
"...Resistance can be shown by lack of interest, perceptions and attitude, strong differing views, overt blocking behaviour like violent strikes and boycott...... consequences of employees’ resistance to change range from: slowing down of the change (and thus increasing costs), less productivity (outcome), employee corruption, high employee turnover, disturbances and trouble in change program, failure of the change program, and the extreme situation he can lead the organisation to the stabilisation and breakdown..."
Ajayi Samson Adeniyi, 2022
NB
"...People do not resist change per se. What they resist is the loss that they perceive will be caused due to the proposed change..."
Resistance can be seen as a defensive mechanism to protect people from the perceived threats posed by the proposed change.