Resistance to Change: A Case Study MBA Practicum Project Christine Enmark Presentation: April 13, 2017 Advisor: Dr. Gina Grandy EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Research Overview • Context • Technical Organizations • Resistance to Change • Research Purpose • To understand and evaluate the factors contributing to resistance to change within technical organizations • Research Objectives • To identify types of resistance an organization can face • To evaluate how change management models consider resistance during a change process • To empirically explore resistance to change in a technical organization • To outline recommendations for practice in technical organizations when dealing with resistance in change processes EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Relevant Literature Causes of Resistance Communication People Change Type Expectations Personality Stage of Change Evolutionary Fairness Formulation Implementation Transformational Perception of Language Political Change Motivation to Cultural Change EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Research Methods • Qualitative Approach • Case Study: Technical Organization [ name disguised ] • Intrinsic & Instrumental (Grandy, 2010) • Data Collection • Semi-structured Interviews (ten) • Data Analysis • Thematic analysis (Mason, 2002). • Research Ethics • Approved by the UofR Research Ethics Board EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Overview of Findings Findings Nature of Change & Why Change is Resisted Improving the Change Change Management at Technical Org. Process Change Fatigue Culture of Resistance Government Oversight Absence of an Intended Change Management Capacity for Change Skills for Change Process Lack of Logic Irony of Change EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Theme 1: The Nature of Change & Change Management • Sub-Theme: Change Fatigue – “It takes the staff awhile to adjust. They haven’t quite adjusted and then another change comes along. Just working through what are the new processes you need to follow, procedures and you are kind of getting all that mapped out and then there is a new change that comes along. Not enough time to adapt.” • Sub-Theme: Absence of an Intended Change Management Process – “Like a deliberate process?” – “[ Technical Org.] never closes off the old processes” EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Theme 2: Why Change is Resisted at Technical Organization • Sub-Theme: Culture of Resistance – “The work stopped. People are wanting to know more about [the change], gossiping about what’s happening. Wanting to know why certain people have been picked for that opportunity. It’s because it hasn’t been communicated and they want to know more about it.” • Sub-Theme: Capacity for Change – “We tend to have new processes but still live in the old ones. We still have databases in Lotus Notes even though we were supposed to migrate to Outlook and things like that. We are pretty notorious for one foot in one camp and one foot in the other and never really following through on the change management of closing it off.” EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Theme 2: Why Change is Resisted at Technical Organization • Sub-Theme: Lack of Logic – “You have to let people know what the change means. You have to let people know where that piece fits in the puzzle. Because people like to be productive and they like to contribute. So if you’re just changing something and slashing their productivity, even it it’s six months to improve their productivity later, they want to know what than means. If you are making a linesman go through seventeen different steps to fix that transformer he might, but if you say we are doing this because we want to save lives, we want to do that, [the change] might be better taken than this is the way we are doing it now.” • Sub-Theme: Irony of Change – “People are just too busy.” EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Theme 3: Improving the Change Process • Sub-Theme: Government Oversight – “I guarantee there was more money spend on wages used up in meetings about getting the program than the program actually cost us… The whole process took seven months’ worth of meetings and we had ten different approvals, nine of which were not even in our area or had any idea what the program was of how to use it or what’s its impact on our work area would be. So it made the whole approval and change process incredibly lengthy and incredibly inefficient.” • Sub-Theme: Skills for Change – “I think as far as change goes, it takes leadership to really bring about change. I think there is a lot of soft skills that are involved in that kind of thing and that’s not something that the technical organization really excels at or recognizes or promotes. Technical Organization is predominately an engineering company. They really focus on the engineering and making sure the system is running, which of course is important, but to help bring about the change that is needed, to help make sure the system does run properly, we struggle with that.” EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Conclusions • Resistance in Technical Organizations • Differences • Recommendations • Communication requirements • Personal Reflections EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
Questions EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
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