Organizational change is one of the most quintessential aspects of an organization’s journey towards excellence and sustainable and continual development. In the last blog of Transformation Tuesday, we covered one aspect of resistance that might obstruct the transformation journey of an organization i.e. Individual resistance.

As mentioned in the earlier Transformation Tuesday article, the kind of resistance that the leadership of an organization might face during organizational change are as follows:

• Individual resistance
• Group resistance
• Organizational resistance

In this Transformation Tuesday, we will cover the remaining aspects of resistances that might incur during organizational change.

• Group resistance – 

  It is a very obvious and quite understandable fact that while working in the same company, people are likely to get acquainted and form an informal group amongst themselves. During the organizational change, it is very likely that these groups start resisting change. It happens mostly when the members of the group start considering themselves superior to the other groups and feel insecurity against their cohesiveness and belongingness to the group.

• Organizational resistance – 

  Organizational resistance is the resistance which resists the change at the organizational level itself. Some organizations structure themselves in a way that they resist the integration of new ideas and change and to continue their work in the same conservative manner. A classic example of such working groups is government agencies where the people continue their work in the same old manner even when change is desperately needed in the working culture to keep up with the changing trends.

  • Insecurity about Power –

    Power drives everything and the leadership of the organization usually resists change because they see change as a threat to their power, position and influence in the organization. Participative decision making or self-managed work teams are some of the key change practices that are seen as a treat by the top management.

  • Group torpidity –

    Another factor that influences organizational resistance is a threat one feels to his belongingness to the group. The magnitude of resistance depends on how loyal and integral of the group the individual is and on the manner in which the group resists the change.

  • Structure of the organization –

    An organization is built by closely knitting various departments together. This often motivates the official structure of the organization to resist change since job and flow of information is very tightly commissioned in the hierarchy of the organization.

  • Threat to experts –

    Change is also resisted when it starts to threaten the expertise or specialization of individuals or of groups.

  • Pressure on the resources of the organization –

    Adequate resources are needed in order to successfully execute a change journey in the organization. When the change starts putting pressure on the resources of the organization especially on the financial side, the organization is likely to resist it.

  • Waste –

    Top management of an organization also resists change when they anticipate that the new change will ultimately sink the huge amount of capital that has already been spent on the training of the employees and on the assets that were once considered useful and important.

Resistance to change is linked to human reactions and attitude. There is no logic to it. Every individual reacts to change as per his/her attitude. But we as an individual or group or an organization should understand and accept the fact that if you are not changing yourself then there is a big problem in your approach because personal or professional front change is only permanent.

Written & Compiled by Faber Kishlay & Faber Mayuri