Market Basket Strike: Employee Resistance to Change
This paper examines the 2014 Market Basket employee strike as a real-world example of resistance to organizational change. When the supermarket chain's beloved CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, was dismissed amid an internal family power struggle, workers walked off the job — not to demand higher pay or better benefits, but to demand his reinstatement. Drawing on organizational behavior scholarship by Hellriegel and Slocum, Griffin and Moorhead, and Sims, the paper identifies why employees resist change and outlines key strategies managers can use to handle such resistance, including open communication, trust-building, and proactive change management.
- Introduction: Market Basket strike framed as change management failure
- Reasons for Resistance to Change: Fear and uncertainty drive employee resistance
- Handling Resistance to Change: Communication and trust as key management strategies
- Conclusion: Lessons from Market Basket for managers
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What makes this paper effective
- Anchors abstract theory in a concrete, newsworthy real-world event, making concepts like overt versus covert resistance immediately tangible.
- Uses direct quotations from both academic sources and news reporting to support claims, demonstrating multi-source integration.
- Maintains a clear problem-solution structure: the strike is introduced as a change management failure, and the second half proposes remedies.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied theory — taking established organizational behavior frameworks (Hellriegel & Slocum's covert/overt resistance model, Sims's communication strategy) and mapping them directly onto a current event. This technique shows examiners that the student can move beyond definition and connect theory to practice.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief contextual introduction that presents the Market Basket strike and frames it as a change management problem. Two body sections follow, each with its own H2: the first diagnoses why employees resisted the CEO change, and the second prescribes strategies for managing such resistance. The references section lists four sources in APA format. The overall structure is lean and argument-driven, appropriate for a short current-events analysis paper at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
Managers often face numerous challenges in running the organizations they lead. Some of the most common include employee remuneration, employee motivation, talent management, and change management.
Two months prior to this writing, the employees of Market Basket — a supermarket chain — walked off the job in response to an issue that caught many observers, especially management experts, by surprise: the dismissal of the chain's CEO. The workers were seeking the reinstatement of Arthur T. Demoulas, the chain's CEO, who had been fired amid a power struggle among family members overseeing the company. According to industry analysts, what took place "at Market Basket is particularly unusual because the workers are not asking for higher pay or better benefits" (AP Reporter, 2014). The episode brings into sharp focus one of the central challenges in organizational management: change management. It is clear that Market Basket's employees were deeply unhappy with the changes being made at the managerial level, and their strike was a direct act of resistance to those changes.
There are numerous reasons why people resist change. As Hellriegel and Slocum (2008, p. 501) observe, "change involves moving from the known to the unknown." Change generates unfamiliar feelings and uncertainty. In the case of Market Basket, the replacement of their long-serving CEO made the future uncertain for employees. They may have feared that new management would bring unfavorable changes to the way the company operated. More specifically, they may have worried that a new CEO, focused on maximizing shareholder returns, would pursue cost-cutting measures and ultimately lay off workers.
As Hellriegel and Slocum (2008) further note, resistance to change can be either covert or overt. Covert resistance refers to suppressed opposition in which employees exhibit signs of demotivation and increased tardiness. Overt resistance, by contrast, involves more expressive opposition — including outright sabotage or work stoppages. In the case of Market Basket, the resistance was clearly overt, as employees publicly walked off the job and left store shelves empty.
Reasons for Resistance to Change
Just as change is inevitable, Griffin and Moorhead (2013) argue that organizations cannot avoid it. The most managers can do is learn how to manage change effectively. Several strategies are available for addressing resistance to change.
One of the most important is communicating about impending change in an open and honest manner. Sudden changes — such as the abrupt replacement of Market Basket's CEO — are likely to catch employees off guard, sow seeds of doubt, and invite mistrust. As Sims (2002) points out, transparent communication about change not only allows for negotiation but also gives employees the opportunity to make the relevant psychological and practical adjustments. Research in organizational behavior consistently identifies communication as the single most effective tool for reducing change-related anxiety.
Building trust is equally critical. Employees are more likely to accept and accommodate change when they have a high level of trust in the manager or the individuals driving that change (Sims, 2002). In the Market Basket case, "many employees were mistrustful of Arthur S. and the two co-chief executives who were brought in from outside the company" (AP Reporter, 2014). Arthur S. controlled the board of directors that ousted Arthur T. — the former CEO whose reinstatement the employees were fighting for. This absence of trust significantly fueled the intensity of the workers' resistance and underscores why organizational behavior scholars consistently emphasize relationship-building as a precondition for successful change management.
Handling Resistance to Change
AP Reporter. (2014). Huge protests to save 'It's a Wonderful Life' grocery boss: Workers revolt and leave shelves empty in attempt to save job of beloved CEO who 'put people before profits.' Retrieved from
Griffin, R., & Moorhead, G. (2013). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (11th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J. (2008). Organizational behavior (12th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Sims, R. R. (2002). Managing organizational behavior. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Conclusion
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