The link between psychology and resistance to change - Essay Example

Resistance to organizational change mainly comes from the people within the organization. This has been described as “psychological and organizational response” that comes from the attitude of people irrespective of the nature of change (Bovey & Hede, 2001). There are various reasons that have been identified which contribute to resistance to change on the part of employees. The most common factors that have been identified as contributing factors fuelling resistance are inadequate involvement of employees in the change management, ineffective process of communication and inadequate knowledge about change.

The biggest manifestation of resistance to change occurs through expression of grievances, lower efficiency, aggressive attitude towards higher management and reduction of output of the organization. In order to understand the concept of resistance to change it is important to understand organizational change. Organizational change can be defined as an adaptation to the changing environment with an objective of improving the performance. There are two broad types of organizational change which can occur the first one can be defined as first order change and the second one is strategic or revolutionary change.

In the former one the basic framework of the organization remains unaltered but in the second one the basic framework changes. The earliest mention of resistance was noticed in the article published by Lewin (1947cited in Gravenhorst, 2003) and the subsequent works published in the concept of group dynamics. The works of Coch and French (1948cited in Gravenhorst, 2003) had introduced the idea of resistance to organizational change but instead of properly shedding light on the concept they had rather introduced it as a motivational problem.

The works of Watson (1969) had identified that there are multiple stages in which the employees express their resistance to change. The first stage is characterized by