Arguments For And Against Resistance To Change Essay

Arguments For And Against Resistance To Change - Essay Example With evidence of companies failing to change owing to resistance by employees, it is no wonder that organizations invest great time and resources to conduct training and coaching in order to reduce resistance to change. While there are strong arguments that support this view, there are various reasons to prove that managing resistance to change may, in fact, may not be a good idea always. One reason why resistance to change may be productive is that it prevents bad/wrong ideas from being assimilated in the organization. Employee resistance to change allows firms to rethink â€Å"why† they are changing. In other words, it allows leadership to reconsider the business case for change with a critical perspective. If all employees agreed and there was no resistance, clearly management could oversee the ‘downside’ of changing making it unprofitable for the firm in the long run. Furthermore, because resistance to change often comprises of the fear factor (including loss of status, power or even job for employees), it encourages the top management to discover the impact that change would have on the ‘people’. Therefore, resistance to change is essential in the sense that it allows management to develop an open-ended view of change and consider the drawbacks of change. By doing so, managers can then come up with policies and procedures to counter the drawbacks and make change more workable and feasible for employees. Furthermore, the fact that resistance is seen as a â€Å"problem† to change leads management to derive strategies to overcome rather than engage it. Managers may often go at length to reduce the ‘threat’ of resistance and, in doing so, may adopt tactics that may be harmful to the organization. As a result, it is common to find management taking on an overly defensive role in trying to push the change too hard as well as become overly protective of their status in trying to win the argument against disgrun tled employees (Watson, 1982). This occurs because management views resistance to change as a reactive process in which agents possessing power oppose the reactions of other agents (Jermier et al., 1994). This leads them into an evitable trap whereby the management becomes overly concerned with protecting their position and argument rather than listening to what the disgruntled employees have to say. As a result, communication is reduced and the situation evolves into a manager-employee conflict. This stems from the fact that managers may alienate employees who are seen as obstacles rather than resources for change. Consequently, this conflict results in loss of reputation and poor relationships with employees, thereby reducing the morale of employees. Additionally, managing resistance to change often brings with the incorrect assumption that resistance is a one-sided phenomenon. Managers may become overly simplistic to assume that resistance is caused only by the attitudes and beha viors of employees. In fact, many models, such as three dimensional model of change, are based on the inherent assumption that resistance is solely the product of the behavior, emotions and attitudes of the employees (Hayes, 2010). Under this view, managers attempt to see the resistors as irrational and self-centered and consequently, try to block their interference in the change process. Although this true, resistance to change can be attributed partially to the way in which the organization is bringing about change and the behavior of managers in this respect. Therefore, managers who hold this view often ignore the fact that resistance to change is, in fact, feedback and that it must not be blocked or reduced but dealt with