Resistance To Change

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND EMPIRICAL STUDY

Authors: Pardo del Val, Manuela & Martínez Fuentes, Clara Universitat de València, Spain Facultad de Economía Avda. Los Naranjos, s/n 46022 Valencia – SPAIN Tel.: +34 96 382 8312 Fax: +34 96 382 8333 E-mail: Manoli.Pardo@uv.es; Clara.Martinez@uv.es

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RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND EMPIRICAL STUDY Abstract: Thispaper examines organizational change, focusing on the distinction of changes according to their scope and presenting a typology of evolutionary and strategic changes. We also offer an in depth study of resistance to change. Through empirical research, we have analyzed the importance of the sources of resistance to change defined theoretically, also considering both types of changes. We have shownwhich sources of resistance differ most, according to the scope of change, offering hints about where organizations should pay special attention when initiating a change process.

Key words : change, resistance to change

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RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND EMPIRICAL STUDY

Many authors (Lawrence, 1954; Maurer, 1996; Strebel, 1994; Waddell and Sohal, 1998, among others)stress that the reasons for the failure of many change initiatives can be found in resistance to change. Resistance to change introduces costs and delays into the change process (Ansoff, 1990) that are difficult to anticipate (Lorenzo, 2000) but must be taken into consideration. Resistance has also been considered as a source of information, being useful in learning how to develop a more successfulchange process (Beer and Eisenstat, 1996; Goldstein, 1988; Lawrence, 1954; Piderit, 2000; Waddell and Sohal, 1998). Undoubtedly, resistance to change is a key topic in change management and should be seriously considered to help the organization to achieve the advantages of the transformation. Considering the importance of resistance to change, this paper aims to deepen in this field through atheoretical exposition of the concept. Later, we will offer the results of an empirical study of Spanish firms that had recently undergone a change process. In this study, we analyzed the main sources of resistance to change and their relationships with types of changes.

LITERATURE REVIEW Organizational change is an empirical observation in an organizational entity of variations in shape, quality orstate over time (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995), after the deliberate introduction of new ways of thinking, acting and operating (Schalk, Campbell and Freese, 1998). The general aim of organizational change is an adaptation to the

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environment (Barr, Stimpert and Huff, 1992; Child and Smith, 1987; Leana and Barry, 2000) or an improvement in performance (Boeker, 1997; Keck and Tushman, 1993).This definition encompasses many situations that should be distinguished by applying certain dimensions to establish ‘typologies of change’. We will refer to the scope of change, because it is one of the most used variables in literature to design change typologies. That way, changes can be defined along a continuum starting in lowscope or evolutionary changes to high-scope or strategic ones.With the aim of making the use of this dimension (scope) easier, we will describe both extremes of the continuum, but we should always keep in mind that real changes are not a pure type but a mixture. First, we will describe evolutionary, incremental, or first order changes. These are small changes that alter certain small aspects, looking for an improvement in the present situation, but keeping thegeneral working framework (Blumenthal and Haspeslagh, 1994; Goodstein and Burke, 1991; Greiner, 1972; Levy, 1986; Mezias and Glynn, 1993; Nadler and Tushman, 1989; 1990). The second type of changes are strategic, transformational, revolutionary or second order ones. They are radical transformations, where the organization totally changes its essential framework (Blumenthal and Haspeslagh, 1994;...