Resistance to change is a very common phenomenon in organisational life. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that people's stress levels increase when confronted with change. And it seems that change makes people step outside of their comfort zone and face more uncertainty.

Bernard Burns wrote extensively on change in organisations.

@Patrick and Mohamed, good points.

I think it is related to what is called "equilibrium point", when the person reached it, he or she started resistance any changes. I think it’s a healthy one, but as a manager you need to know how to deal with it. Don't let any person in your organization reached to the "equilibrium point". It is exactly like a chemical interaction.

Yes Prof Debi, change can be painful. We have got used to doing things in a certain way that we view as effective. It has become a habit, and EASY to act, without having to think a lot. But with 'change', we must accommodate, unlearn and relearn. This is going to be energy consuming! But certain things need a change.

Probably it is the need for a luxury life, without many worries about everyday's habits, one of them being each person's job. Not all people are revolutionary beings who want to change the world: Instead the majority of people are trying to find a safe workplace in order to earn a standard income and be able to organize their lifes without surprises like unemployment and bankruptcy and home losing and ...

My opinion is that some people are happy the way they are. They feel if things are stable there's no reason to look for changes. Changes may be extremelly good for an organization but they may as well turn things for the worse if you don't know how to deal with them. Now, there are also people who like to keep changing ( I believe they may be called lifestyle entrepreneurs) and those people don't care if the changes will or will not work because they will try and implement new "innovations". I think these people search better results, they aim to position their company on a competitive market and they seek to differentiate from the others that are aimed for a specific target market. This probably helps create a known brand, giving these companies an amazing competitive edge.

Dear all

Thanks for your most impressive and insightful answers to the question of change. I think some of the other related questions that arise are as follows:

1. Can organizations do without promoting change in today's chaotically changeful business environment?

2. Are there situations where the employees themselves want the change for the good of the organization?

3. Can the top management through 'sagacious leadership' minimize people's resistance to change so that it ceases to be perceived as a painful process by them?

4. What role can be played by creating an 'urgency for change' in this regard?

These are some of the supplementary issues that you may like to look into to take the debate to the next level.

Routine is the god of manufacturing according to Alfred Whitehead. However, changes are required as data or economic environment changes. Without changes the firm will not realize profit and resources will not flow to that organization. People need to learn and learning requires your time. Innovation is disruptive.Therefore, people resist changes. The firm will face a crisis when the firm does not innovate. The crisis of loosing jobs motivates people to change. Some managers create an artificial crisis to make changes. Changes are made as U.S. Automobile firms faced the crisis. Experiences in crises changed people's mindset and changes have become routine and people are willing to make changes in today's business. The 1997 Asian financial crisis made changes easier in Korea. People changed during the current financial crisis.

You may read my paper, Changes in economic environment, learning and dynamic capabilities of Korean firms.

Yes, the ability to change is important, and surely there is some stress involved in changing. So, people are biased towards the status quo as they already know it.

But, management science is biased too. A great saying is that you're a good manager if 51% of your decisions are right. Probably, the percentage should be bigger, but let's address the fact that not every change is a good one.

A certain percentage of all change initiatives is just plain stupid. Resistance to these changes is probably in the best interest of the companies - but very often destined to fail anyway.

From my experience I must say that many, many employees of many, many companies will greatly support certain changes that will reduce cost, will (in the long run) streamline the company, might actually even reduce staff.

There are a lot of studies that point out (generally speaking) that around 80 percent of the working population feel no genuine duty towards their employer, while 10-20 percent have mentally already cut their ties with their job. I cite the numbers from memory, so don't be too harsh if I miss them a bit.

If we combine the resistance to change with these numbers, I cannot believe that those people resist to change because the status quo seems very attractive to them. Some of them might resist because it's the 100th change initiative they get involved in, and maybe they cannot agree to the chorus of mid-level managers who applaud their superiors for the cunningness of their latest intiatives. And MAYBE they are right.

So, the first thing you should do to raise the chance of getting these changes done is making sure that it is really a good change. Listen to those people who face the problems that come from enacting your change. We (adressing the people who decide) tend to think that making the decision is the hardest step. And we might actually be wrong.

Then make sure that you do not necessarily believe what your middle managers tell you. They, too, serve their own interests, and saying yes to all of your decisions might actually be their strategy of survival. A lot of information gets filtered out before it reaches you.

And so on ... :-)

Yes, Andreas. You are raising very important point in change. Outcomes of changes can be positive or negative. They are uncertain. Managing changes is very a important task. After you make changes you have to monitor closely the outcomes and take corrective measures if the outcomes are negative. All changes accompany

unintended consequences.

This has been a great discussion. Many of my students have adopted the mantra that change is desirable, though of course like most other things it depends.

- In general, people dislike uncertainty and change is associated with it to a great extent.

- As well, the status quo may serve the interests of some of some, who will then oppose it. They are people too! ;-) Those who wish for change are usually in the camp whose interests are not satisfied, but that is not the same as making change obviously necessary and good.

- In yet other cases, the status quo is the result of many organizational debates and conflicts over time and it reflects a fragile, hard-won consensus; moving pieces in such a situation may seem like a good idea but it may rattle the precarious equilibrium and open the way for destructive conflicts.

- In some situations, change is driven by the desire of new managers to show what all they can do (so they can list "accomplishments" and move on to higher positions, leaving behind those who must live with the change).

- In other cases, the specific change proposed, rather than generic change (which only exists in our conversations), is a really bad idea. (See Andreas' excellent answer above).

In general, very few things are true"in general." The devil is in the details of specific situations.

Nevertheless, we address the resistance in itself only as a problem. We should start discussing the value of it as a signal, too.

Dear Debi, Probably this issue is connected somehow with semantics of changes, which as word is relative. Personally I like changes. Without changes life would be so dead.

As we know flow takes the least resistant path, so are the human beings. Resistance to change comes naturally with them.

1. Knowledge about change: May be the new organization did not tell their employees very clearly about the overall implications.

2. People are scary to change because of the fear of unknown. Also tell them what they are likely to lose if they do not change.

3. Make sure that the change you are trying to bring is properly aligned with the beliefs of the people.

4. People will be more interested in the short term gains than the long term repercussions. So try to amplify the immediate benefits.

5. Make sure that you are not overloading the people because of the changes you are bringing.

6. People will be comfortable in their groups. So enlisting them as a group may be easier so that they can talk to others more confidently.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Resistance to change is human nature. Even babies with wet nappies do resist change. You may ask nursing mothers, they will tell you better. However, we cannot all run away from changes because the world is always changing into change, as it once was in an earlier life- Prof Wilfred Ukpere.

Some of the contributions imply that someone knows what's good/necessary change and what's left to do is getting around those who oppose it: frame it right, amplify short-term gains, educate etc. The implicit assumption is that it's a matter of understanding the good of change, and the great unwashed don't get it. However, change is not abstract and it's not really like vitamins ("good for you"). It is specific to each situation. Magically, the change benefits its proponents (does anyone have evidence showing that in most cases proponents do not benefit or even lose for the good of others?!) Also magically the sticks-in-the-mud are expecting losses (not necessarily monetary). So what is necessary in order to implement a change that will inflict losses to some is to do the utmost to mitigate the losses. Of course those who have the power to inflict change on others don't feel the need to mitigate losses but they should not expect enthusiastic agreement from the losers... And wherever possible, we should monitor, to check whether the touted benefits of change materialized.

If changes in a firm are easy, we will not need managers or leaders. Economic environment is changing and the firm also hast change to stay in business. Dynamic capabilities are responding to changes in environment. People learn that they need to make changes and develop disposition on the changes. Dynamic capabilities in firms have to become a routine in high velocity of changes in technologies, regulations and markets.

Sanda has a good point. There are winners and losers in changes. Losers resist to changes. Gainers' gains can be shared to minimize resistance in changes. We often advocate the win-win strategy for a change. Changes to be efficient gainers' gains have to exceed the losers' loss.

Hong, good point regarding efficiency butt it is nit the same as fairness to the losers, for whom the efficiency argument is cold comfort. We should care because they can impede change or make it costly. We might as well take care of their concerns by construing efficiency more broadly. Arguments rarely sway someone incurring tangible losses. Ask yourself how you would respond to efficiency arguments if change hurts your position, income or anything else you value...

Sanda, I agree that losers' losses are more intense than gainers' gains because gains are widely dispersed.This is the reason that changes are difficult. However, without changes organizations will not survive and not selected in the evolutionary process. Yes, we need to mitigate losers' pain in changes. They are exactly the problems of economic globalization which cause income inequality in the U.S.

Changes in human history are made towards the progressiveness of human life.

Hong, you are one big optimist :-).

I would still recommend considering each change initiative carefully. Sure change is necessary in many cases. There is, however, no generic change and not all initiatives are brilliant ideas.

Coming back to the question paragraph: Who determines that 70% of all M&A fail because the people cannot accept the merged organization? How many mergers fail altogether? Because there must be other reasons, too.

But I doubt it. I guess someone found out that 70% of all mergers fail, and then somehow (that's just the magic Sanda pointed out several times) they all failed due to the inability of "the people" to accept the merged aquisition.

Simple logic dictates that at least a big portion of all attempted mergers must fail because it had been a bad idea to merge anyhow. But, you won't find them mentioned in statistics, because researchers address the question "Why did your merger fail" to someone. And that someone is a person. And this person - in most cases - was somehow involved in the decision to merge, or at least he is now responsible for painting a positive picture of the company.

That "the people failed to accept the merger" is simply the answer that is the least painful for the decisionmarkers to give.

I know many projects that sunk hundreds of millions, and where silently revoked after 10 years, but you will still find praise for the decision in internal newsletters and presentations.

And this has nothing to do with being against change in a general way. But, as Sanda pointed out, there is no general change. Change programs are specific, and maybe 51% of the change initiatives are good ones.

When switching sides from university life to management, you either directly enter top management or consulting, where you can hold on to most of your beliefs, because what you do or what you sell is tailored for decision makers. Otherwise, the first idea you have to throw overboard is that economic competition leads automatically to wise decisions.

Sanda. Yes. I also saw a whole nation was suffering when changes are not made.

Look around the world: North Korea, European crisis and Arab Spring. I also know that changes can be disastrous like subprime mortgage crisis. However, changes are made because the universe is emerging and economic environment is changing. No question, some adapt well to changes in environment and survive and prosper. Some are not selected. It is a tragedy for those who are not selected. There are good and bad in changes, but changes are moving towards the progressiveness on balance. I hope that we can find the frictionless changes. It may be a new direction of our research.

One has to overcome fears, the most basic human emotion.

Hi Debi,

Interesting question, which i personally happened to delve into it very often.

There are many factors that lead employees to resist changes. One of which, failing to increase urgency. Employees need to sense the need to change. They have to be aware of the consequences of not accepting the change and how the required change would improve their lives, work practices, or incomes. This could assist them to overcome their fears and embrace the change. The theory of Edgar Schein regarding the change and resistance is very interesting.

It has been said that "employees leave managers not organizations" but i believe that employees leave "SYSTEMS", which i discussed on my capstone. If the system is well-structured and embraced by all employees, then the system will tolerate bad practices by managers, and those managers who don't follow the systems will be leaving, not the employees.

Resistance to change

Perhaps a preferred state for people is to minimise change but in essence change in many organisations means risk of losing their job. Not having many skills and/or being in a tight labour market is a clear obstacle for change. Change tends to benefit management not workers.

If jobs are safe in the change process, will employees be supported to adopt new ways of working? People do not like to look incompetent so preparing them for change does help. Need to also consider the pace of change.

Open and frequent honest communication also helps employees to better understand the need for change. They may not like the news but. .. . . .

M&A - behind the management speak of efficiency is job losses so again for employees we have a situation of trepidation; will I survive the merger? what I will be asked to do? can I trust my new manager? How will the work climate change?

Every natural entity with life favors some how to stay and live in the space it knows - comfort zone, as long as nothing threatening happens, except we humans ( there might be other creatures ) with innate desire of exploration and looking out for what is unknown. The unknown is a psychological challenge and existential treat by itself and therefore avoiding is an instinct measure. But if a better situation or result is sought and believed to be achieved then change is preferable, a priority and people do that.

For example, the yearly desire of people to line up to buy a new technological product of better efficiency and simplicity - a change that is preferred. There are also cases where society simply forced to abandon what it knows, either place or otherwise and pick things that are unknown with mere survival energy, and ended up working for them. Companies and organizations do not like unknown changes and taking unknown voyages of profits or better results because they feel that the consequences of a negative outcome is not only proving the unknown is not working but the continuity of their very existence will be in danger.

But a scientist researches and searches things which are on the outskirts or boundaries of what are known and try to find something new - if fails nothing will be lost that threatens existence but if succeeds then mission accomplished - a discovery of a new result.

I support Kamal's position. At the same time not all employees can face the future with sufficient confidence. Hence my suggestion that we support or provide people with the tools to face the future.

I do not want to offend Kamal, but I cant' support that position, because it is not a position, it is a slogan. It is not false, it is a truism - meaning that you cannot prove it wrong, it is too obviously true.

The whole discussion suffers from sloganism. "Change is great", "Without change there is no progress", "Those who do not change will be left behind"

Well, yes, all of this is true. Change, in general, is needed. But: A certain change program, a certain strategy change, a certain M&A idea is not a general idea, but a specific change. And that change might actually be a bad idea, might actually be a stupid endeavor. And this is what numbers miss. 80% of all M&As fail? Might be. But assuming that 80% fail "because of the people resisting change" is hilarious. This is just the most comforting excuse, because the explanation by itself does exclude the top management.

I do not doubt that the number 80% derives from some sort of research, but I think it is one of the major weaknesses of management research to accept numbers like this just because this is what you can read from filled-out questionnaires.

I guess (so, this is not a research, but it will be nearer to the truth than the 80%) that 80% of all failing mergers could well have been foreseen by the managers if they had thought beyond the sheer numbers of the deal. There are systems to merge, facilities to shut down, products to eliminate....

And if you really take part in projects like these, you usually learn quite fast, that many, many of that changes do involve so many internal company politics, that economic thoughts or stakeholder interests (and even shareholder intereses) happen to be quite neglected. So, many people do not even have the feeling that their performance (as employees, as teams, as facilities) does not even affect the decisions at hand.

I a climate like this you will have massive resistance to change. And anyone taking part in this discussion, would be waving his banner if he / she was actually affected by a change like this. And rightfully so.

Andreas, I am again in your corner! Progress might mean change, but sadly change does not necessarily mean progress. As well, contextualizing is very important - there is no general change, only specific changes in a specific organization at a specific moment for specific reasons. Too often the reasons include new managers' quest to prove themselves so they can move on to a higher position or different organization while those they leave behind have to live with the changes. Evaluation of the effectiveness of change is often forgotten, or those who should allocate resources to the evaluation are the very proponents of change with little incentive to be proven wrong; or they may have already left by the time others notice problems.

Complacency, fear of incompetency may be primary reasons!

Resist any change is natural to human beings. Change requires: a) overcome the fear that the new situation is worse; b) overcome the fear of the unknown; c) take risks; d) leave the comfort zone; e) beat the natural accommodation where anyone is. It's amazing the human capacity to accommodate even with bad situations and withstand extremely practical and plausible attempts to improve his life. Thus, especially in relation to organizational change, it's necessary to conduct extensive meetings to communicate the benefits of what you want to change, and should be given broad course people speak of their fears.

Not everyone resists change, especially those who are change drivers. However, the possible resistance to change may relate to one of the most fundamental needs that we have, that is, to understand the 'meaning' of change, the why? Therefore communication becomes an essential component in relation to imparting the reasons for change that may, in turn, create meaning and understanding. This may bring forth an excitement of challenge and mastery in maintaining and developing new resources etc. Silence becomes the enemy of commitment to change. Silence may, indeed, greatly contribute to fears associated with change.

The more contemporary environment may have also played a large part regarding restructuring, one that is often associated with redundancies and possible consequence of a loss of self-identity, possible loss of what has been mastered and loss of income if one is made redundant. It may well be said tat we must fight these fears but the reality is that past history of redundancies etc. Therefore those fears are a natural reaction and should not be dismissed as an individual weakness. It may take some time to adapt to a new job etc and to be able to build resilience in overcoming such obstacles.

Thee is a good article that examines aspects of successful mergers and acquisitions. It is Larsson, R & Lubatkin, M (2001). Achieving acculturation in mergers and acquisitions: an international case survey. Human Relations, 54 (12), 1537-1607. They found that it was "the amount of coordination and socialization

efforts expended by the buying firm" that was a primary driver of successful M&A.

Working as a CEO in a company, I can add that e.g. in sales you see people who prefer to look after customers and grow them which are the typcial key account managers. We call them gardeners. And you have the ones finding new customers. We call these people hunters. If a gardener fails, he will tell you that it is the fault of the customer: political reasons, no requirements, we have the wrong products, ...

The hunter does not care, because if the three reasons from above, he just looks for another type of customer (if he is a good hunter).

My conclusion is quite easy: there are people who love change and challenge, and there are people who always want to stay with the same. By the way, this is true for both male and female employees so nobody come up with cave theory now.

If this behaviour is genetics or family and environment-induced I do not know but I would strongly tend for the second.

Your sentence above 'People leave the new organization out of disgust as they do not want to accept the new order. ' I would only underwrite for the hunter type. Staying are usually the gardeners (because moving would mean a even bigger change) and the ones with low-quality CVs.

So my argument for failing M&As is that the most inflexible stay, you experience also a brain-drain and then you have the mess to sort out a non-wanting to change organization

Debi, I believe the answer is in how you ask the question.  Shaul Oreg, Maria Vakola, and Achilles Armenakis used the term change recipient in their recent writing.  Change recipient accompanies change agents.  Personally, I believe that a third group exists ... change leaders.  Practitioners (i.e. Linda Ackerman Anderson, etc.) have been writing about this group for the past 5 or so years.

Therefore, I would tweak your question to read:  

What are the possible reasons that the following groups of people resist change:

1.  Change recipients,

2.  Change agents, and

3.  Change leaders?

have a closer look at the status quo bias as well. It is well researched

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

People resist change because of several reasons, including (1) change alters the status quo (2) change creates tension and uncertainty (3) change alters power structure that may cause personal discomforts (4) change calls for personal sacrifices in the forms of improving ones skills and abilities (5) change also has the potentials of making some persons services worthless and irrelevant in the organisation (6) change is a changer of everything that existed.

We can explain resistance to change in the many ways mentioned above. But one key reason is this: proponents want change because they expect it to benefit their interests; opponents expect their interests to be adversely affcted. We should keep this simple, practical reason in mind. In many cases, change proponents  would increase implementation chances by taking the time to understand their opponents' interests. Then they could either compensate opponents for their losses or prevent/mitigate negative  outcomes for these opponents. 

When one talks about "resistance to change", it's important to observe that this is a 'top management' construct (or even ideology). Scholars who have measured "preparedness for change" and "willingness to change" have concluded that in almost all cases and organizations facing the need to change, the willingness to change is inversely related to the hierachical position. That is, the willingness to change is highest among employees, somewhat lower among middle managers, and lowest among top managers. These structural differences also arise from sales reps, production staff, product developers and other employees being more in touch with the origins of change (e.g. customer preferences, new technologies). Everything else about 'resistance to change' is purely top management rhetorics & strategy.

This also implies that effective change mngt is about reinforcing and exploiting the "willingness to change" among members of the organization, rather than breaking resistance.  See e.g. the following studies by Wissema:

- Offensive change management with the step-by-step method, Journal of Change Management, vol. 1, nr. 4, pp. 332-343 (2002).

- Fear of Change? A myth!, in: Journal of Change Management, vol. 1, nr. 1., July 2000, pp. 74-90

These are interesting findings but their generic, generalized nature obscures important case-by-case differences: much depends on the nature of the change, the history of relations in specific organizations, and indeed the ways in which change is proposed and implemented. 

I see that this topic has sparked many comments, I have not read them all but in my opinion, people resist change because, generally speaking, people are lazy, scared to terror, that they may to lose their the old state of convenience, that already it is known and it it practice for a while ... Everybody must recognise it is better not to be disturb from ...the warmest status, that is snugness! 

The change explanation and their benefits, can help a lot...

Dear Prof. Debi S. Saini

According to Reger et al., 1994, employees resist change when: 

1- Change perceived as unnecessary (High inertia).

2- Change perceived as unattainable (High stress).