Good Example Of Essay On How To Manage The Resistance To Change

Abstract

This paper handles the concepts that force for organizational change, resistance to change, and suitable model that can be used to overcome resistance by individuals and organizations. Continuous developments, internal, and external stimuli trigger change initiatives. Even though, change is initiated for positive reasons for remaining competitive, members and stakeholders often react to change negatively by resisting it. Reasons for individual change resistance are needed for job security, fear of loss of income, power, and skills obsolescence. Organizational resistance to change occurs due to structural inertia, threat to resource allocations, group inertia, and limited focus of change. The Lewin’s Change Management Model is most useful and easy to use in handling resistance to change. Method that organizations can use to overcome resistance to change is participation and involvement, manipulation and co-optation, negotiation and agreement, education and communication, education and communication, explicit and implicit coercion. This paper provides the strategy for handling the resistance to change and planning to handle resistance by understanding that resistance is human, and it will always happen.

Change management

Change management is the techniques, tools, and process used to control the people-side to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. The techniques incorporate tools that an organization can use to assist individuals undertake a successful transition so as to achieve embracing and realization of change (Anderson, 2010). Change management concentrates on the people affected by the change as they move through a changeover to a desired future. The final goal of change in an organization is to improve the business by altering the ways in which work is done. Efforts towards Change initiated in a business affect one of the following sections of the organization: systems, job roles, processes, and Organization structure.
Change is as a result of a reaction to opportunities or problems facing the organization based on in-house or external stimuli.Some of the motivations to change include; need to get closer to the customer and become more competitive, or more efficient. Other motivations include goals which must be interrelated to particular impacts on systems, job roles, processes, and Organization structure.

Reasons for an organization to change

The Internal Environment comes from within the organization and affects the organizations need to change; the internal factors include people, systems, factors, events, conditions, and structures. The internal environment affects the business decisions, activities, and employees, hence are all related to managerial decisions and human resources (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010).
Changes in organization culture, organization's mission, leadership style are the internal forces that can drive change in an organization. In addition, other internal forces that drive change are changes in administrative structures such as working procedure, managerial hierarchies, discipline procedure, reward systems, and communication lines. Other factors include technology (tools, plant, and machinery), and primary tasks (business field), and people (human and resource).
The external environment factors that drive change are the factor outside of the business that influence change in the organization and are beyond the organization's control. The external factors include social and political conditions and resources, competition, customers, and technology. The external factors have a noteworthy pressure on the existing organizational growth, operations, and long-term sustainability.

Consequences of Organizations failure to change

Those organizations that fail to change regularly as the market environment changes risk losing customer loyalty and their market share.
Reasons for resistance to change
Organizational change is an attempt by the management’s to have the organization’s employees and stakeholders to perform, behave and think differently (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010). People have varied reactions to change efforts; some of the people may take on change with a lower acceptance. Some of the individuals may embrace the change while others fight it by disagreeing with its necessity (Burke, 2002). Resistance to change can be in the form of individual or organizational resistance.

Individual Resistance

Individuals pose resistance to change for the fear of failure to fit in the new system. Workers who doubt their ability to conform to the changes tend to resist any efforts to introduce change. For example, if the proposed amendment in job requirements, then employees who are not prepared with the relevant skills will oppose the new environment (Tanner, 2009). The reasons for individual resistance to change include; Loyalty to current relationships, personal ambitions, Tradition and set ways, job Insecurity, fear of loss of income, power, and skills.
Persons who have a high job security oppose change introduction because it may affect their state of job security. They believe that change would overturn their positions in the organization hence risk demotion or elimination due to their incompetence in the changed environment. Kurt Lewin developed a theory that can be utilized to overcome resistance to change; the Change Management model has three phases; unfreezing, transition and freezing.

Organizational Resistance

Organizations tend to be conservative in nature and hence resist change actively. For example, government agencies wish to continue their operations for years, irrespective of the changes type and level of needs in the services they offer. Many business organizations, too, are highly resistant to organizational change. The primary reasons for organizational resistance are:
Structural inertia – firms and businesses have developed built-in systems to produce stability. For instance, job and role selection procedure selects certain people and keeps the others out.
Organizational training and socialization methods reinforce particular skills and role requirement. The formalization provides rules, procedures, and job descriptions that the workers follow. Newly hired employees are selected to fit, are trained in a particular manner and guided to behave in a given way. In times of organizational change, the structural inertia counterbalances it to sustain stability.
Limited focus on change – limited changes in an organization tend to be resisted by the larger system, organizations are composed of many subsystems and a change in one affects the other subsystems. For example, a change in the technology field must be followed by matching structural change so that it gains acceptance.
Group inertia – group norms hinder behavioural change in an organization. For example, directions by worker's unions may cause organizational resistance even when individuals would take up the change positively outside of the said group.
Threat to resource allocations groups: groups that have a significant amount of resources control view change as a threat to their resources domination and budget size distribution. Groups that take current dominion feel change as a threat to their budgeted future allocations.

Dealing with Resistance to Change

Methods that organizations can use to overcome resistance to change are participation and involvement, manipulation and co-optation, negotiation and agreement, education and communication, explicit and implicit coercion (Anderson, 2010). The above methods could be used to reduce resistance to change in an organization and prepare individuals and organizations for predictive change.

Lewin’s Change Management Model

Developed by psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1950s, it recognizes that individuals operate under certain safety zones. The Lewin’s theory of change can effectively be utilized to overcome resistance to change through its three phases change the management model. The psychologist identified the three stages of change and developed three counteractive change management steps.
Unfreeze – Individuals make efforts to resist change, the Lewin’s Change Management Model proposes initiation of a period of unfreezing or thawing through the use of motivation. The unfreeze phase targets the powers involved when maintaining the status quo and cause a positive thinking in individuals and the organization. The step gives an event that makes the individuals appreciate the need for change in the organization and gives them the desire to find new solutions (Connelly, 2014).
Transition – When change is undertaken, the organization undergoes a period of development that may last for an extended period, reassurance should be undertaken during this transition period for successful change to occur. The step requires that the organization comes up with new behaviors, values, and attitudes affecting the processes and structure of the organization hence changing the older methods of handling issues.
Freeze – When change has effectively taken place, and the organization becomes stable with the change, then, the staff should refreeze to operate comfortably under the new guidelines.

Conclusion

The changing aspects of the business environment and economic forces in organizations lead to the need for functional and structural changes. Internal and external forces like government regulations, technology, people structures, and competition trigger change in organizations. Pressure for change causes members to elicit different responses such as defence mechanisms to protect themselves from feelings of anxiety and change. The main reasons behind resistance to including skills obsolescence, habit, economic implications, fear of the unknown, interference with the need for fulfilment, limited resources, and organizational structure.
Management of resistance to change requires clear understanding of human behaviours and psychological perceptions of the members of the organization. In order to handle resistance to change, organizations are advised to use participation and involvement, manipulation and co-optation, negotiation and agreement, education and communication, explicit and implicit coercion. The Kurt Lewin model can also be actually incorporated into the change management plan to reduce chance of resistance to change. Positive results will benefit the organization in terms of profits, better market placement, and better conditions for the members.

References

Anderson, D. L. (2010). Organization development: the process of leading organizational change. Los Angeles, Sage.
Burke, W. W. (2002). Organization change: theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage Publications.
Harvey, T. R., & Broyles, E. A. (2010). Resistance to change: harnessing its power. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Education.
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (1992). Organizational behavior. Homewood, IL, Irwin.
Tobin, R. M. (1999). Overcoming resistance to change. London, Kogan Page.