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Keywords
Organizational change, Resistance, Costs, Work, Legislation, Employees
Abstract
Our world abounds with constant, relentless change to the extent that most people no longer have an open mind about it. Unequivocally, they want it to stop. Many organizations have initiated change programs which have failed. Often, such failures are blamed on staff or on external constraints, such as cost, workload, and legislation. In this study, more than 500 responses were obtained from participants who completed the statement: "The three biggest obstacles to bringing about effective change in my organization are..." A total of 89 per cent of these responses pointed to factors within the organization itself.
Introduction
Constant change has permeated completely and indiscriminately every aspect of life and work. Its pace is ever increasing; and far from embracing change, many managers have had enough, and some would like it to stop (Kanter, 1995; Chia, 1999). On the other hand, there are those who believe that this upheaval has benefited them through improvements in technology (Galbraith, 1967) for example, and they anticipate eagerly the opportunities that further change will afford them in developing better products and services and increasing their markets (Koopman, 1991). Some will concede only that they must change to survive, and still others pretend that recent changes are just a blip in an otherwise predictable continuum. However, most recognize that some kind of change is necessary in their organizations and have made various attempts to accommodate these pressures.
Many see change as a threat because the outcome is less certain than leaving things as they are (Fox-Wolfgramm et al., 1998; Greve, 1998). This dichotomy of attitudes cuts across hierarchical boundaries in unexpected ways. One would anticipate that pro-active, openminded managers would embrace change willingly, as additional opportunities to make their organizations grow, to generate more sales and deliver more value to customers (Katz and Kahn, 1978; Freiberg and Freiberg, 1997). Equally, one would expect employees to do all they could to preserve the status quo in order to protect their turf, social position, and livelihood (Klein, 1970; Maslow, 1970; Watson, 1970; Zaltman and Duncan, 1977; Kanter, 1995; Cox, 1997), and to change only when they believed it was in their interest to do so (Manganelli and Klein, 1994).
Perhaps...