Resistance During Change

As noted in Chapter 4, resistance is often vilified by popular press books and feared by managers as the root cause of change failure. Employee or other stakeholders' unwillingness to enthusiastically embrace a change and execute new procedures and tasks; adopt new philosophy or attitudes; discard old practices and the like is often blamed for change failure and labeled as resistance. Resistance is often characterized as a negatively valenced activity driven by fear, ignorance, stubbornness, or some nefarious political motive. Rarely are resistors considered to be focused on the improvement and protection of their organization or of change efforts. Rarely are they regarded as partners in the change process. Thus, the response to resistors on the part of implementers is usually to detect them, alter or discredit their views, and then persuade or pressure them into silence and/or at least a minimally acceptable level of cooperation.