State and explain the organizational resistances to change in modern organizations.

4 years ago

Organizational Resistance to Change

Individual resistance: Individuals are considered as the main source of resistance to change due to their perception, personalities and needs. Because of the following reason individual resist the change.
1. Habit: Once we become habituated on anything, it will be difficult to change that habit. As human beings, we are creatures of habit. Changes in old work habits create resistance. Employees tend to respond in accustomed work.
2. Security: Employees may fear loss of job security, reduction in pay and increase in workload. The cost of change may be higher than benefits of change.
3. Economic reasons: These include the fear unemployment, fear of reduced work hours and consequently less pay after change, fear of demotion and low wages, etc. Whenever people sense that new

Machinery pass a threatening challenge for their existence, they resist change.

d. Social reasons: Change often results in disturbance of the existing social relationships. People in work organizations develop some sort of informal relationships and any change breaking these relationships will be strongly resisted. Group pressure also brings about resistance to change in individuals.

2. Organizational resistance: Organization itself is another key source for resistance to change. Many times, the resistance to change is initiated by the organization as a whole or by the top management. The main reasons for organizational resistance are explained briefly.

Inflexibility in organizational structure: Some organizational structure has a built-in mechanism for resistance to change. For instance, in typical bureaucratic structures where chain of command is clearly spelled out, authority, responsibilities and duties are clearly defined, flow of information is stressed through proper, channel and the entire pattern is highly mechanistic and rigid, and any change in the organization structure or pattern would be difficult.
Resource constraints: Organizational change usually invoices a huge expenditure. In this regard, resource usually is a major constraint. In such a situation, change is resisted by the departmental heads and employees. This is true, when government forces the organization to introduce certain technological, organizational, or social changes but does not provide adequate human and physical resources, the organization oppose such changes. Similarly when trade unions pressurize management to introduce certain changes for the safety, welfare and comforts of the employees, the management put resistance to such changes for lack of amiabilities of funds.
Fear of loss of investment: In case when organization has invested a huge capital in their permanent assets and training of employees, they are afraid of their capital being sunk, if they introduce a new technology.