Episodic" Change, and Under What Circumstances Does

¶ … episodic" change, and under what circumstances does it occur? Episodic change is when there is a single, discrete change event. This may occur with something like a merger, the creation of a product or service, or a shift in organizational procedures (such as the introduction of a new computer system). Change is occurring all of the time in the modern business environment, of course, but continuous change processes tend to be more subtle and less apt to promote active resistance to change vs.

episodic change, which forces people to change ingrained habits very quickly.

What are some of the individual and/or group tactics used when resisting organizational change? Some negative forms of resisting change include justifying 'digging in one's heels' via protecting one's turf (hiding personal resistance under the cover it is for the 'good of the organization); justifying resistance as protecting group rather than individual interests in a selfless fashion; shutting one's self off from the main entity by shifting alliances away from the larger organization; and by demanding new leadership (i.e. blaming the old leadership).

All of these are forms of conflict avoidance rather than dealing with the true need or roots of change. Individual Responses to Organization Change Individual's reactions to significant change in organizations, change that directly affects them, has been likened to the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's (1969) description of the five stages that most people go through when they are faced with a terminal illness. The struggle begins with 1) shock and denial, 2) moves to anger, 3) to bargaining, or attempts to postpone the inevitable, on to 4) depression, and finally to 5) acceptance.

Not everyone moves through all these stages; some never move beyond denial. And so it is with organizational behavior. Some organizational members fight the change to "to the death," constantly denying that the change is necessary. Others embrace the change readily and move with it. Most people are somewhere in between and move through all stages. Levinson (1976) has argued that whether change is resisted or embraced, all change is nevertheless a loss experience, particularly a loss of familiar routines.

And the more psychologically important the loss, the more likely one's behavior will take the form of resistance. Levinson further argued that all loss needs to be mourned (a bachelor party on the eve of a groom's wedding, most often a joyful change, could be thought of as a mourning ritual) and that people should have an opportunity to discuss and deal with their feelings if they are again going to be able to perform effectively on the job.

The phenomenon of resistance to change is not necessarily that of resisting the change per se but is more accurately a resistance to losing something of value to the person - loss of the known and tried in the face of being asked, if not forced, to move into the unknown and untried. Feelings of anxiety associated with such change are quite normal.

Another form of loss that leads to resistance can come from one's experiencing a lack of choice, that is, the imposition of change, or being forced to move to some new state of being and acting. That is, people are not simply and naturally resistant to change. What comes closer to a universal truth about human behavior is that people resist the imposition of change. Brehm's (1966) research and his theory of psychological reactance help to explain this human phenomenon.

When one's feeling of freedom is in jeopardy, the immediate reaction is likely to be an attempt to regain the feeling of freedom. This reaction is so strong, in fact, that people frequently will not bother to defend their beliefs and may even change them to oppose others' attempts at changing them.

In some cases, the issues of advantage and change are in conflict, leading to a situation in which people may prefer to continue on a path that is not in their best interests rather than to give up the feeling of free choice. Research shows, for example, that when a smoker is told to stop smoking his or her typical reaction is.