Change management theory and organizational resistance to change

CHANGE

Building Support

Tavares, T. (2009, September). 'Change management' faces major changes. Canadian HR

Reporter, 22(16), 11. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global.

(Document ID: 1895112551).

Tavares, T. (2009, September). 'Change management' faces major changes. Canadian HR

Reporter, 22(16), 11. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global.

(Document ID: 1895112551).

It is a cliche that the one constant in life is change: however, resistance to change within organizations is unfortunately just as 'constant.' According to Tom Tavares' article "Change management' faces major changes" from the Canadian HR Reporter, despite the explosion of change management literature in the past thirty years, an effective change initiative theory has yet to be realized. Change management first became an obsession of management theorists in the 1980s, an era of many large mergers and corporate reconstruction. This gave rise to the joke that one way to become known as a great an accurate prognosticator of a business' future was to predict that every merger would fail: amongst the major mergers, large-scale changes took 5-7 years on average and 60% to 70% failed to meet expectations (Tavares 2009, p.11). Mergers often result in an uncomfortable melding of contrasting corporate cultures, and the change management strategies that might work with one group of employees will not necessarily work with the other group.

The commonly-cited approach to deal with resistance to change is to "highlight the risks of clinging to the status quo and to be forthright about the uncertainty of the future when introducing employees to the proposed changes, which assumes that employees can rationally predict and understand their interests (Tavares 2009, p.11). Furthermore, employees are often justifiably suspicious of change, given that their personal interests and management interests may not be aligned. The recent series of debacles in the technology sector, the American auto industry, and the financial services industry are all testimony to this fact. Thus finding a true 'change management' approach that is demonstrably effective remains elusive: furthermore, managers often have trouble understanding why certain changes do work.