Organizational Change, Resistance To

Robert A. Schmieder

It has been broadly reported that change is happening at an accelerated rate in organizations. As a result, employees are constantly required to understand the changes, cope with the challenges, and ultimately adapt. In this environment, a typical employee response is to resist the change. Arecent review of empirical research on reactions to change found cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of resistance. The shock, anger, resistance, acceptance (SARA) model of organizational change is a pragmatic way of looking at the different stages of reactions to change. Although these reactions are not universal, nor are they necessarily linear, the point remains that organizations benefit from considering that employees may need time to work through the process of dealing with organizational change before they move to acceptance. By leaping forward too quickly, organizational leadership may bring about either direct or indirect resistance to organizational change efforts. Organizational change can affect individuals in ...

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