Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

Individual Resistance

Individual sources of resistance to change reside in basic

human characteristics such as perceptions, personalities,

and needs. This chapter’s Case Incident—GreyStar Art &

Greetings Makes Technological Changeson page 361 looks

at an individual who resists change in the workplace.

Exhibit 10-9 summarizes five reasons why individuals may

resist change:

• Habit. To cope with life’s complexities, we rely on habits or programmed
  responses. But when confronted with change, this tendency to respond in our
  accustomed ways becomes a source of resistance.


• Security. People with a high need for security are likely to resist change because
  it threatens their feelings of safety.


• Economic factors. Changes in job tasks or established work routines can arouse
  economic fears if people are concerned that they will not be able to perform
  the new tasks or routines to their previous standards, especially when pay is
  closely tied to productivity.


• Fear of the unknown. Change substitutes ambiguity and uncertainty for the known.
  This is also referred to as the “status quo bias,” in which individuals assume that
  their current state is better than whatever the changed state might be.^52


• Selective information processing. Individuals are guilty of selectively processing
  information in order to keep their perceptions intact. They hear what they want
  to hear, and they ignore information that challenges the world they have created.

Cynicism
In addition to simple resistance to change, employees often feel cynical about the change
process, particularly if they have been through several rounds of change, and nothing
appears (to them) to have changed. Three researchers from Ohio State University iden-
tified sources of cynicism in the change process of a large unionized manufacturing
plant.^53 The major elements contributing to the cynicism were as follows:

• Feeling uninformed about what was happening


• Lack of communication and respect from one’s manager

Chapter 10 Organizational Culture and Change 351

How do you

*respond to change?

Security

Economic

factors

Individual

Fear of Resistance

the unknown

Selective

information

processing

Habit

EXHIBIT 10-9 Sources of Individual Resistance to Change